Farmbots

When will Anet stop the massive use of farmbots , i know for a fact that already several players told them about this cheating going on.
Just take a look at the Talos Chute exit of Drogs and you will be amazed how many keep streaming out that gate in a constant flow.
Now i understand why there are so many auctions at Ebay where you can buy unlimited gold ,some claim to have several millions of platinum for sale !!
I think this is cheating in its worse form ,we all know that you have to play many hours to get a decent amount of gold.
I am not flaming here about the live players that farm but against the bot-programs that are running day and night to farm while the owner is asleep or at work or ..... (whatever)
I truly hope Anet will stop this soon because it also gives certain guilds an unfair advantage in let's say guild battles because they will alway's have the best stuff ,

Greetings from a player that really likes Guild Wars ,

Shrike

There has to be a million of this thread now.

The quoted section isn't accurate. No guild will win because they have a HOD sword or a 15% -5 energy fellblade. No weapon in the game is such a strong edge that it is better than skill. Most top guilds have good equipment because they are seasoned players who have played the game so long they developed a large amount of wealth. Also, this stands to accuse all ladder guilds paying for gold, something that is highly unlikely to be true at all.

I have to agree with studentochaos - having millions in gold does not really provide an advantage to anyone, it just allows them to have some of the more exotic items in the game. That 15^50 longsword from Droknar's Forge will work just as well as that 15 always fellblade in the right hands.

Bots have to go, agreed entirely.

Fortunately, the game is not gear based. You can buy perfect gear in droks, or get it from various collectors. Guilds especially have no need for gold, since they can trade loot items internally.

The one and only market for gold are certain individuals, who want FoW armor, and some who want to show off the rarest weapon skins. And even then, people interested into weird weapons usually have their fortune already, since they've been around for a while, so its again non-factor.

Where is this "Drogs" that people speak of?

/sarcasm

Studentochaos you wrote:
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Also, this stands to accuse all ladder guilds paying for gold, something that is highly unlikely to be true at all.
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I clearly stated "certain guilds" so your remark that i accuse all ladder guilds that play for money is ridiculous .
I do however agree that having lots of money will not automattically let you win guild-battles.
I'm just saying that it gives an unfair advantage because imho it's simply cheating to use farmbots .

Drognars Forge , a town ingame .

Doesnt exist, unless you mean DROKNARS FORGE.

I think Drog's is just west of Dork's

I took some video capture of the stream of farming monks leaving drok's this morning. Its like watching the birds fly south for the winter... so... mezmerizing...

Drog's?
Dork's?

God damnit, are these the new l33t towns that dont exist on the map?

I took your "certain" as a overly broad statement. Personally, I would be shocked if even one serious ladder guild bought gold because they felt they gained an edge from it.

Note: It is called "Droknar's Forge" which is why others were giving you a hard time about your spelling.

Edit: Wow, people sure jumped on the "drognar" thing fast.

But how does the use of farmbots give certain guilds an unfair advantage? A 15^50 req 8 crystalline sword isn't any better than any other 15^50 sword. There is no item in the game that a rich player could buy that is significantly better than an item that could be obtained by collectors or crafters.

yeah when you go international district in droknar you will be amazed how many go in and out there its like OMG O_O you can't believe it. first it was at augury but now they all run out of droknar.

The Troll Cave is probably going to get hit with the nerf stick soon, maybe even before Factions hits. Yeah, it's a great place for us legit players to rack up the skill points (and for power levellers too), but something has to be done about the bot farmer explosion in Drok's. In any case, in about a month legit players will be taking their Tyrian characters over to Cantha and spending lots of their time there, so any of them affected by a Troll Cave nerf will quickly get over it. ANet doesn't even really need to add a green-item subquest there like they did at Prophet's Path. Just reduce the numbers of trolls to a smaller, non-desirable-for-farming number. If farmers can run by them and pile them up, runners can as well. (Is that even the route from Drok's?) There's really no need for that many Trolls to be in that cave at this point. Seriously.

ANet, if you really are planning on nerfing away the Troll Cave soon, please do some advanced thinking and ALSO nerf any other spots these bot farmers will flock to next (if any else exist). Or dare I say it, remove the -50 health icon once and for all?

I had fun with the farm bots. While solo trapping i noticed a long line of people running to zone out. I noticed alot of monk/warrior, so I was like would be fun to tag along with one. I added like 10 of them to my list and one joined and zoned. Once in he got all his enchantments on, and he drew a line on the compass to stay back. Of course I didn't and he started rounding up the troll and getting drops as well as I. I don't think they care, but one or two of them responded . Plus I got some drops along the way. Another thing they are bad at soloing avicara I had to jump in and lay some traps.

Also when they leave they say "bai bai", as in bye bye im guessing.

I couldn't agree anymore, i've seen this thread so i wanted to go there and check it out, and sure enough, i couldn't believe my eyes, just loaded with "bot" monks or the pro farmer most have no guild attached to them some do of the same guild or whatever, just crazy..

It's a huge mess. And it seems to me that it's starting to effect the economy. I've noticed since the desert nerf that prices on many things at the traders have dropped significantly - dye prices in particular.

If you joined it or it interacted with you at all, it's not a bot. The majority of these are simply professional farmers.

This is not true. if they were people they would respond. i pmed over 40 of them yesterday in droks dis 2 international, 2 replyed, one was a girl rather nice. other just sent back "??? ???" i was spamming the message" human farmer or bot? I am taking a poll, no reply and you are on the bot list" weird, and it sucks b/c i have a monk that 55 when i feel like it. and i dont want them to nerf all the good spots.

So, because they didn't reply to you that makes them all bots? You ever consider that they didn't respond because they're doing what they get paid to do and aren't really concerned with your research project?

Also they were bottish the ones that I talked to and replyed back and partied with. When he became overcome and died by the avicara he didn't leave or zone I had to run into the zone. Than once between loading the map from Talus Chute to Forge he zones out again and repeats. He kept me along till I had to go myself. Some that talked just ran in circles and than left.

and
Are merely mis informed opinions based only on what Anet tell us and not on observation or reasearch. Yes we have all heard the stories about sweatshop farmers and yes their might be some. I can also say with full confidence that bots do exist and most of the 55's you see in Droknars are bots. How do i know this, partly the same reason as has been said already - that very few even respond and partly because i have seen the bot programs for sale on the internet.
There was a bot program advertised called "Augury farm bot" and upon Anet nerfing the area outside Augury (incedentally nerfing an area rather than banning bots does not tell me they care too much about legitimate players) the bot program dissapeared the very same day from many sites, only to turn up again after a week. And low and behold bots were not seen in augury for a week then reapeared in droknars. Co-incedence?

After seeing the bots in Augury rock for over 2 months (i complained many times but they continued to farm their) before Anet reacted, i would say they have already affected the economy beyond repair.

The trader system is contoled by Anet and these prices in a fixed margin that is set purely at the whim of Anet. How else have numerous instantanious price collapses occured (Sup Absorption from 100k to 65k overnight a few weeks ago comes to mind)? The dye prices float up and down regularly. Unless the desert nerf increased the number of bots somehow, their affect on the economy has not changed and your arguement actually doesn't make any sense at all. Prices fall when there are more sellers then buyers. Since the bots did not begin AFTER the nerf, this means that something else is the cause of this shift entirely. The troll cave wasn't newly discovered after the nerf. If it was better then the griffons the bots would have been farming the trolls instead of the griffons in the first place. Therefore, their affect is less then it was before meaning the deflation CAN NOT be connected to this behavior.

If farm bots are flooding the market with gold, prices would rise as supply is maintained but more currency enters the market (inflation). However, people universally complain about deflation of prices. Think about this. This deflation means that, if it is actually caused by the bots, it is they are selling crafting materials and dyes or whatever and are not able to sell the gold online (traders give them money which is effectively hoarded because they can't resell the money, an oversaving problem). This means that while the regular farmer gets less for selling dyes and crafting materials, drops of raw gold stay the same and your currency is more powerful in a deflating market (even 15k armors are in effect cheaper because the crafting materials are now easier to buy).

I know people hate the idea of farm bots ruining their hard work. But really, they aren't affecting the economy in ANY observable way as far as I can tell. Anet's trader system acts as a regulator that WON'T collapse under this pressure and the illogical sudden jumps suggest no real market controls this behavior compared to what Anet wants the pricing to be. Additionally, the deflating prices help new players overall who haven't had months to build a huge horde of items and gold. Since the amount of cash gold they recieve playing the game stays the same, but goods are now cheaper for them, they are much better off. The only people hurt in this deflation is those who are already very wealthy. If you are such a person, you probably own what you wanted to buy already or are waitng for factions to spluge buy on lots of new items (in which case the new money making opportunities that you can exploit will likely make up for any losses you may have had).

Anet wants bots to stop because it is intellectual property theft for people who do not own the Guildwars brand are making money off it, a clear violation of the EULA. Guildwars programed economy is built to resist this kind of behavior. This scews up other games but not guildwars because the trader system controls prices completely and random gold drops are standardized.

My major concern with the bots in Droks right now is the crazy lag I've been getting there lately. It's definitely becoming an issue there now and makes it difficult while making trades.

Was watching them earlier, theres a guild of bots on EU servers doing the troll run, i think the guild is called [baby], you can tell they are all bots as 6-7 of them all run out in the same exact line each time and just before they get to the portal they zoom off to the right, each bot follows EXACTLY the same path each time.

It just ruins the game, it wouldnt take long for anet to give all the trolls in the troll cave a KD like hammer bash, backbreaker or something funny like crystal wave, or even just go and ban all the botters.

I think they should just give every creature a skill like vamp touch, that would get rid of farmers for good.

This pisses me off to no end. Not only does seeing all those bots running solo out of droks lessen my gaming experience, but it has a direct in-game impact on me as well. Bots ruin the economy and make the plats that I worked hard for worth less. Then I see people running around with FoW armor and you know they just bought the gold, ectos and shards for it on eBay - all while I'm trying to earn it the honest way. You can already see that FoW armor doesn't mean as much as it used to and it's meaning less and less with every bot that runs into Talus Chute. It's to the point where people won't know that I'm a good player by looking at my armor. Pretty soon rank won't even mean much and the only way to get people's respect will be to demonstrate your skill in PvP, and who has time for all that? It's hard enough to find a good PUG for hard missions like the desert. This game is going to hell in a handbasket and I for one wish there were more threads like this one. Maybe then anet would get the point and fix the bot problem.

i agree 100% it took me over 3 months to get my Fissure armor...and i see people with it and im like oh hey nice armor and there like oh thanks..hey? do u want to go do missions in ascalon with me i havent really done anything...my friend powerleveled me...i got ran through the whole game...and i bought this armor of Ebay...i get angry at people that do that because they just ignore the point of the game...and "Bots" just give Noob Guilds more cash...you know a Guild bots when u see a whole guild in Fissure and they dont know wth they are doing in the arena...whitch is amuzing...

How about finding cool people to play with instead of worrying so much about others. Its Guild Wars not Trade Wars. These quiet bots that go in and out of droknar bother me far less than some stupid kid spewing retarded nonsense in the chat.

I really see no need to amass wealth and hoarding of virtual items beyond a certain amount. To me, it hints that the person has low self-esteem in real life and the time spent to gather all this virtual wealth would be better spent learning about trade in the real world such as penny stocks.

Other than having a set of the armor you want and a weapon or two (easy to find a good deal on almost perfect weapons) I don't see why some of you get so worked up on the activities of other people and what they do and have.

This is the nature of an online community/game. Everyone likes and will do different things and you won't change a thing. If you can't deal with it the simple solution is to leave.

Individual so-called honest people that farm and hold a virtual market captive (just look at the stacks of ecto and all the 'uber' items for sale in the 200k-2million gold range - who but super farmers like yourself or ebayers can really afford it?) are no better than bot farmers. Although I'm not condoning bots and such it is only up to the game developers on preventive measures.

Most of these bots farm to eat and have a roof over their head..most of you complaining only want self assurance of power and wealth in a game and I'm forced to believe a lot of you would do the exact same thing as these bot farmers if situations were reversed.

I hated 'ebay gold' and farmers just as the next guy but the complainers are starting to annoy me more. You do not need that super duper fellblade of charrpwnage galore and you do not need to constantly 'keep up and better the joneses'.

Move on jeez.

edit: what I want to know is the reason for a measly 10 people limit for the ignore list. I tend to like adding a spamming bot farmer every now and then.

How are you trying to earn your "it" the honest way? I do FoW nightly and am saving up enough shards for my armor. When I am done with FoW, I will do UW nightly until I have enough ecto. Also, the drops that I get in both places will more than enough pay for the gold part of my armor. So, when I get my FoW armor, because you choose not to farm, you will accuse me of being an ebay'er?

So far, I have gotten ~50 shards and ~20 ecto and I have only been farming for a week. At this rate, it shouldnt be too hard to get my FoW armor.

Also, I have done and will continue use solo builds to farm areas all over Tyria. If you do not want to take the time to do the same, do not point the finger and complain about those who do.

Furthermore, if you judge a player by his/her armor, you are probably using bad judgement.

Sure, bots have an effect on the economy in an mmo, but has it stopped people from playing mmo's? In life, there will always be people who try to cheat; but as long as you are not cheating, what does it matter?

Lastly, you should be able to do any mission in the game with hench (aside from FoW and UW). Take a look at your skills and the type of monsters that are in the area. You will see that you do not need those PuG's for the desert area.

Wondering What Would Happen If That -50hp is removed from the Cities of Ascalon quest :P

I would guess that the price would go up by quite a bit and people who have several in inventory would become very wealthy.

At this point if ANet ever decided to remove the -50 health focus it would be for economical/bot reasons and they'd probably delete them all from the game. Any problem ANet would have with the 55 builds would be inclusive of the existing 55's IMO. Stopping new ones from being created for the game by CoA quest wouldn't exclude the fact that there are tons of them out there already. This is unlike the Denravi sword where comparatively there aren't all that many around. -50 Cestas are everywhere these days.

I have no problem with the 55 build myself, but I'd also have no problem with ANet finally deciding that enough is enough. Note that I'm not pushing for either way (don't care, as I got bored of the 55 build about 3 days after it started becoming popular), but ANet may be forced to make the decision to take these cestas out of the hands of botters once and for all. And yes, the legit players may suffer, but hopefully they'd get over it. Like I stated in my previous post, in about a month these 'legit' players are suddenly going to have a whole expansion pack's worth of new areas/material to play with.