DEBATE: Solo-Farming

In real life, I can get a job flipping burgers at burger king, or I could get a job packing boxes at staples, or I could get a job at the library, shelving books. These would all (for arguments sake) pay the same amount of money. If I wished to buy something (lets say a copy of guild wars) I have at a minimum three very different jobs to choose from. Since I enjoy books, I would take the job at the library.

But in guild wars, the "haves", as you call them, have but one choice: to farm. But gee, maybe I like doing UW with my guild? Sorry, your screwed buddy, suck it up and solo, since only solo farmers should get obsidian armor? Er, ya, ok. . .

You seem to have missed a key point here. Compared to the solo farmers, how much impact does the quester have? Well, since he or she is likely to spend 2 hours doing titan source, and come out with, perhaps, 2k, and a farmer can spend 2 hours and make what? 10k? 15k? I'd have to say the solo farmers have a much bigger overall impact on the economy. Never mind the fact that solo farmers make up a much larger portion of the game's population (which is probably one of the reasons ANet has done nothing, though the recent AoE patch did show they will make changes they deem important)

So can 350,000 other people. Yet you missed a point once again. I think it should be obvious that areas such as the FA quest, fissure of woe, and yes, underworld, are not ment to be done with groups of two people. Not with 5 people. They are ment for groups of 8. But, as you said, mathimaticaly, 8 is worse for drops than 5. So why would anyone ever go down with 8? And, of course, very few do nowadays.

To you, it is more efficent to find 4 others to farm FA with you than it is to find 7 (flipping burgers). To me, it is harder to find 7 people who can work together like a well-oiled machine, able to take on any challenge and come out the victor (shelving books). Yet you get payed 4 times as much as I do.

I took out thunderhead keep and the bonus with myself and 7 henchmen. You could beat it with 8 warriors. A quester will still have a smaller effect on the economy, good or bad, than a farmer will. He will put less in, and also take less out.

And yet, I still did not say it straight out for you. I do not care if you are putting more gold into the economy than I am. I do not care if you are taking more out. I care that there exists only one effective way to make more than a small pittance of gold (flip burgers or nothing). Even if they left solo farming completely alone and merely buffed the return I could get for "shelving books", then I would have nothing to complain about, because I would then have a choice of "jobs".

I think what I posted was misunderstood and completely taken out of context when used as example.

Drop rate is constant. 8 mobs, 8 drops. If you go in with 1 person, you kill 8 monsters, you get 8 drops. If you go in with 8 people (henchies or otherwise, can it be arugued that people quest w/henchies only are anti-social as opposed to solo farmers? I digress), you kill 8 mobs, you get 8 drops, each person get 1 drop. How is this not fair? Any tweak to this formula will only encourage behavior of the type that benefits from that tweak.

As for limiting entry to UW, I agree with other posters that it would only encourage people to "trick" you into forming a group, enter the UW, and let you die and go on soloing. To me, that would be even worse than not having done anything at all.

Solo farming is playing within the same set of rules that everyone obey, it is not inherently unfair. People unwilling to do it, complaining and wanting it changed with unfair resolutions is unfair, there is no way to talk yourself out of it, it's pure logic.

I had one time thought that adjusting the drop rate for the number of players was a good idea too. But I changed my mind.
Its like Monica says, if you crank up the drops for teams then teams will farm far more effectively than a solo ever could. This would dramatically increase the cost of everything.
And it would make every area a farming outpost.

I think if you nerf the drops for gold or cash in every area while increasing the drops of rare materals you would have people with more rare items and less money.
Because the rare items will become more common and because people have less money - prices will go down like a third world country.

Make quest that reward in plat.
Create rare mobs or rare chest (in far out of the way areas) that drop plat.
This rewards the questing player with money to buy the farmers goods.
And then the farmers arent rich from farming, they are rich from selling to questers.
Little by little, questing players will be richer than farmers, but farmers will have more goods than questers. It balances out.

Now do insure that few things can be worth more than the average penny I got a good solution for underworld and fow.
Push all of the good drops to the mobs that appear via quest.
This ^ would push priorty in team work because...those UW and FoW missions is freakin hard even with a full team.

I'll just add one more thing!

Increasing rewards for quests (in terms of gold) is prolly only going to encourage people to farm quests! I guess that would make the questers happy, at least, people doing the same quest over and over again.

Frankly, I've done 3 characters and even only doing skill quests that I need for my 2nd and 3rd alts, they were mind numbingly boring tedius. At least with farming the result varies in each trip. Like the other poster said so aptly, it's almost like the playing the slot machine. Again, there's no difference if you do it by yourself 1 time or if you do it with 8 friends 8 times, the odds are the same over time.

If you really want to complain, complain about the random nature of the green drops! I've yet to have a Malinon's Shield (bought 2, sold 1), any Brohn's stuff, dropped on me yet. Fortunately, 2 Razorstones and 2 Rago's Flame Staff does make the pain somewhat tolerable! Woes is me, right? =) Now here is another example of the adverse effect of Anet meddling vs. what players do to the economy. My second Rago Staff was dropped shortly after the AoE nerf. I was only able to fetch 85k for a staff that days ago was worth 100k! I lost 15k for no good reason since the staff did exactly the same thing as before. How is that fair?

I already hear people that farm fame with smurf guilds! Tell me THAT has any redeeming value!

Complain about green drops?
Green weapons are to inflexable to be worth more than the price the merchant will give them for you, imo.

But about quest farming....I think..this was the original intention for UW and FoW.
There reduebly quest rewarding hugh EXP. for the most challenging quest in the game shows that, according to Anet - skills are the most valuable commodity.
If Balbazarrs faction, glint quest and SF were never implemented, UW and FoW would be where you had to go to diversify your character with skills.

Buuut, because no one plays PvP with PvE characters (general statement) and all this other stuff to unlock an account has been put in, the value of EXP. is way down.
And so the reward for achieving the most difficult things in PvE is also lacking.

(farm fame with smurf guilds? do you mean farm faction?)

The 230k sitting in my storage is losing value every day, as more farmers bring more gold into the economy. Yes, they also bring items, but more gold around is the same as higher prices. How is that fair?

No. Why spend the 16 hours for 8 underworld runs when you can spend 2, and make the same amount of money? Over time, the only constant is the farmer getting richer than the quester. It is not the odds of getting that cool crystaline sword I care about. It is the fact that a farmer earns so much more for such a smaller investment.

Yes, which does in effect make it less a "fix", more a knee-jerk idea (no offense to those suggesting it, I thought it was good at first as well).

Yes, unless the drops were increased enough to fix the problem with solo farming (as I see it), but not make it any more profitable than solo farming.

That solo farming problem, and the reason I am against it, is this. A solo farmer spends 10 hours farming underworld, alone. An 8 player team spends 10 hours down in underworld. Who is the richer player? What did that player do that makes him or her deserve such a huge gap in wealth? Saying "oh, well, if you spend 8 times the time, you get the same wealth" is true. Now, when you have a reason that players in groups only deserve 1/8th of the gold, based on wealth:time, please inform me. In both cases the player can just copy a build. In both cases, a mistake can kill that player and/or the team.

Lets face it. No matter what you do, things in this game will be based on time. Even pure pvp is based on time (just look at fame). You cannot remove the time investment completely. But when you tell someone that he should have to spend 80 hours to make the same wealth as a player who spends 10, I start to see a bit of a problem.

There is no easy fix. Based one what I have talked about above, the general fix is to make a team earn the same amount of money as a solo farmer, based on wealth:time. The problem comes that that is not an easy thing to do. If you buff drops, you just make farmers even richer. If you give gold as a quest reward, you have to set the value exactly, so that you could choose to either farm the quest or farm griffons, and make the same gold compared to time. But since some groups might take longer to do the quest, and some might be faster, that doesn't work either.

I do not like what that leads me to say. In effect, I can think of nothing ANet might do that could come close to fixing this. Some don't even see this as needing fixing. Since I do not think solo farming itself needs to be removed, I cannot suggest that as a fix, and since I don't want to see massive quest farming groups (FA farming takes on a new meaning) I cannot suggest gold rewards for quests as a fix. If groups are made to get more money than farmers, group farming will just become the norm, and people will not be doing quests, they will be doing one quest over and over.

They farm faction, not fame. The thing is, I see no redeeming value in solo farmers getting 8 times the gold for the same time investment. It is all in your perspective.

i agree with solo farming. it is good for generating wealth and it helps bring down material costs and other item costs for newer players. as for uw farming, i do that, and dont want to see it nerfed because in order to nerf it for rangers you would need to nerf almost every ranger stance and negative condition skill 9throw dirt, apply poison, etc.) i think if a player is skilled enough to solo farm then let them. reward skill. as for invisible monks, what are they?

They also farm fame (IWAY). Has anyone heard about that system in WoW where drops are "bid" upon by the players with their DPK. Person with the most gets it. For the gold/green items, I think a system like that might be convenient to have. (If Blizzard hasn't copyrighted it -_-) Have you guys heard about that and what are your opinions on it.

*EDIT*

Invincimonks are monks with 55hp (Superior runes of everything & -50hp focus item) running Prot Spirit and healing regeneration. They use Balths Aura and other AoE spells, so they're basically a walking bomb. They stand there, don't die and enemies take damage. Effective, but takes some time.

Banebow, you mean to tell me that 1 player can work faster than 8?
Thats 8 times the DPS and 8 times the defense.
You should be moving 8 times faster, increasing your liklyhood of getting 8 times the drops in 1 hour than a single person would.
...it should. If a team of 8 could cooridanate...

I do agree that drops are low and that many of the drops that a varity of people could have gotten have gone to solo farmers. (because they beat the odds going solo, ...over and over again)

But If you increase the drops for a bigger team, you increase the chance of an effective, bigger team to farm for more by way of saving time.

If DPK is damage-per-kill, then I have to say no. Monks would be about as scarce as mesmers/necromancers with full fissure armor are now.

No need for a smurf guild for that though, as far as I can tell

Defense will, in most cases, have no effect on how fast you kill. Perhaps I should mention here that not all classes happen to focus on damage. Remember that BiP necro you saw in ToA the other day? He probably does not pack the same punch as a solo monk. But he is a huge asset to the team, letting players cast their spells more often. Yet all of those spells are not damage-based either.

In fact, most solo builds aggro more than one group. Invincimonks for instance, can aggro 3 aataxes and take them all down. They can do the same to 6 ataxes, and suffer nothing, so I expect some of them do. While a few human groups can do that as well, the invincimonk will kill those aataxes in. . .~180 seconds? I know of few teams able to fell 6 aataxes in 22.5 seconds, so you move slower.

Well I made a penstion for Quests that earn you gold. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...416#post701416

I think adding something to balance a game is better then taking something away.

Also the reason I am AGAINST soloing the UW is because not all professions can do this. I have heard of Elementist, Ranger, Warrior, Monk, Mesmer, and Nerco builds for griffon farming but only ranger and monk build for the UW.

Some good arguements are here.

.....The invicible monk was/is a brillant gimmick that exploted artifical intelligance.

I dont think teams should be compete with invicimonk. Instead, invicimonk needs to go the way of the ghost by making AI smarter, varied and less predictable.

As that happens we can go back to what I was saying...
A team of 8 will mow through mobs faster than a team of 1, increasing thier drops.

if you really want to know what effects the econemy you are all over seeing an important aspect.

bots can solo pumping tons of gold into the econemy no matter what the supply or demand is. with minimum party sizes or party drops adjusted to ratio party memebers this would make bots extemely less efficient. with the way GW runs you can run maybe 2 instances on 1 comp but not play both aspects at the same time. if bots had to make a team to even makes some money that would req lots of computers for very little profit. players affect the econemy very, very, little compared to bots.

don't care to hear the supply arguement b/c there is LOTS of ecto and shards floating around. after the price reset the merchant completely sold out. people started hording them and they still do to drive the price upward. this will continue on till drops are fixed. they way drops are right now it punishes teams while only rewarding soloer.

soloing was never suppose to be apart of the game from the beginning so i am against it.

I agree, the invincimonk took skill to create. But it has been abused to no end by now, it feels a bit like the spirit spam of PvE (not totally, but getting close) And yet ANet still has not made it impossible. . .

And unless all the players are pooling that wealth, the soloer is still making a huge difference in gold earned vs time spent. The 8 man group gets more total wealth, yet individually they make little. The soloer becomes a rich man.

I am for solo farming.

I use to solo UW, like so many others, but now I do it with my guildmates, we do 2-3 man run. I also like to farm runes with my warrior. Majority of the runes I get, I sell it to the merchant to help the economy to increase the supply and demand. After awhile it gets boring, so I switch between farming and helping out guildmates, but I guess that's better than buying gold online.

Actually, the crappy drops don't come from solo farming but because of A-net messed majorly up here. I can see why they want to keep things balanced between soloists and group players. But nerfing the drop rates all over the place was probably the most stupid thing they could have done. Especially when there is a so much better idea like this one:

I really have no idea why they don't do things like that. The drops for people playing in groups are pitiful now - and they are pitiful just about EVERYWHERE. Just take a full group of 6 players and go kill the Griffons, for example. Lately, I did a couple of UW and FoW runs with a full group - I didn't get a SINGLE Ecto or a SINGLE Shard, despite I spend like 30 hours down there in total. And don't get me even started on the other things that dropped for me... *cough*... Demonic Remains... *cough*

The current drop rates are ok for SOLO players, but if people are going there with a group they really need to at least quadruple them. Nerfing drop rates doesn't hurt the farmers, it hurts the TEAMS. There is no reasonable way to get even a 15k armor by "normal" gameplay as it is now. A-net is pretty much forcing people into solo farming.

Other solution, especially for valuable materials like Ecto and Shards: Don't drop them - make them QUEST REWARDS. This way, every member of the group would get one, regardless of whether the quest was soloed or solved by party.

I'd hate to say it, but if ANET looked at the AI on World of Warcraft, they would get a few more ideas on how to make good AI to make farming more entertaining and interesting. But I doubt that they would implement it...

pretty cool topic, i have something to say about this.

its an exploit, and you know it is if you do it. i tried to get and answer about this from anet before the first solo monk nerf but they wouldnt answer. i made a post in some forums and i got flamed to hell. 100 people or so told me i was wrong and if i was right anet would have nerfed it.

that was a while ago and i always knew the truth but i just let it die, no sense in getting banned over it. i thought after the first nerf people would get the message but some still screamed 'its not an exploit its an intended part of the game'.

i was in LA Id1 last week and gaile gray was doing Q&A and told me directly the solo farming was not supposed to be able to happen and that it is an exploit. thats good enough for me but people will argue it anyway. let them.

and at mimi, you got it all wrong. anet took its alpha testers and measured the time it takes to unlock via pvp and pve and adjusted the pvp rate to match it. the only way thats an innacuracy is if the alpha testers were farming with invincimonks also.
also @ mimi, 1800 hours and i still havent seen a superior vigor or abs drop. i guess thats fair that you got them with solo farming but never saw one before that, and i never solo farm and never saw one at all. thats pretty much actually the definition of unfair right there.

do you mean solo UW/high areas farming?

As gail has posted on these forums about soloing high areas, but didnt seem to have a problem with solo-ing in general, and i would say going solo is an intended part of the game, just not high areas.

if your saying solo-ing in general ill fetch you a crowbar and help take your foot out of your mouth.

hehe, let me elaborate then.

in this game, there is an anti farming mechanism in place. it works everywhere except the areas bots hit the hardest, specifically riverside and ember. basically, if you find go to a spot, and farm it over and over, the drops will get less and less.

i tried it myself in nebo terrace. it works like a charm. you farm too much, the drops stop. yet in the high exploit areas they leave that feature off and let people farm all they want. i think this is to catch botters but im not sure. all i know is the areas where this game feature isnt turned on are very badly abused.

so like yes, you should be able to solo farm at level 20, but anywhere one single solo farmer can make a 'killing' should not be dropping all kinds of fat loot. it should be dropping loot that is proportional to the area. in otherwords if you are 1/2 way thru the game you shouldnt be getting end game drops. and you certainly shouldnt be getting endgame drops from endgame mobs if you are level 20.

so in a nutshel, yes you should be able to solo farm other areas than max level type areas but you should also get treasaure proportionally.

ahh, i understand some of the confusion now...

yes i did mean higher levels. as close to the exact words as i can recall were "for anyone to be able to solo several creatures of higher levels was obviously never intended by the devs..."
that would be anywhere that people solo farm in the game except riverside, which is broken.

after AI killed my solo trapping UW... im reduced to killing charr outside of piken. agony.

I feel that solo is the way to go. Oddly enough, this game encourages solo play right from the start. You can only be in a group with one other person in pre-searing, and it is hardly necessary. Most people go through pre-searing solo, only joining with others to get their Res Sig and to go Across the Wall. But why stop there?

I play the game solo whenever I can. I don't really think of it as 'farming' when I go out alone, but I suppose that is what it is. My reasons for going out to adventure alone are many:

1) I like the challenge. I find the game more entertaining when I must test myself against the environment with no outside assistance.
2) I find other people too unreliable. It's annoying to have to wait for others to grab a snack, go to the bathroom, answer the phone, etc. I want to play on my schedule, not everyone else's.
3) I find other people too incompetent. It's frustrating when others in your group run off, aggro unnecessarily, talk to NPCs too early, don't listen, etc. and generally mess things up for everyone else.
4) I like getting an item drop from (almost) every monster I kill. It seems unfair to me when I work with others to combat a difficult group of monsters, yet nothing at all drops for me. Where is the reward in that? When I kill something, I want a reward for my effort.
5) I like to explore Tyria. I make it my personal objective to uncloud every nook and cranny of the map that I can. It's amazing what you can find out there if you look hard enough. I find that most other players aren't interested in exploring. They want to get from point A to point B, complete their quests/missions/bonuses, capture their skills, and that's it. I don't have to deal with the impatience of others when I'm all by myself.

Playing Guild Wars solo is what makes the game fun for me. If I can manage to solo an explorable area or mission, then I absolutely will solo it. If I can't manage to solo it for some reason, I take a minimal number of henchmen along for the journey. I find that nearly every mission/bonus can be completed either solo or with henchmen, if you are strategic and patient in your approach. For example, I have completed all of the Crystal Desert ascension missions using only henchmen, as well as the all of the Ring of Fire missions. As a last resort, if I have trouble succeeding with henchmen only, I reluctantly join with a group of real players and take my chances. (The Aurora Glade mission comes to mind.)

Now I'm sure this makes me sound antisocial, and perhaps I am. I won't argue about that. And I'm sure some people will say that this is not how the game was intended to be played, and they are certainly entitled to their opinion on the matter. But I paid the same amount for the game as any other player, so I believe I should be able to play the game as I choose. If I choose to play solo and reap the benefits, how is that a bad thing? I'm not hurting anyone else by playing solo. If I'm able to design a build for my character that allows me to defeat my opponents alone, why should I be penalized for my ingenuity?

I fail to understand why so many people think that something must be done to change the game for this and that reason, to stop this and that behavior, and such and such. Most of the so-called 'problems' people discuss are so superficial. There are collectors out there who have the best weapons and armor in the game available for a few measly monster parts. Sure, they aren't the most attractive items in the game, but they are of the highest (or almost highest) quality, and easily obtained. So in a game where you only need money to get better looking equipment, what difference does the economy make? It's not like any of us are deprived of top notch equipment because only the rich can afford it. Fissure armor is no better than Droknar's Forge armor, as we are all fully aware. So having more money does not imbalance the game in any way. It only helps you look better, not play better.

As a counter to the suggestions others have made regarding minimum party size for entry to the Underworld or Fissure of Woe, I believe that if you can make it down there solo, you deserve to go by yourself. You paid your 1k, you should be allowed to give it a go. Furthermore, I think you should be allowed to take some henchmen with you as well. My biggest difficulty in UW and FoW are the people I go there with, not the monsters. If I could go there with a group of henchmen, I would have no such problems. Henchies know how to listen and work as a team, unlike many of the real players I have encountered.

It is just as valid to play solo as it is to play in a group. It is simply a different way of thinking.

one thing that people argu is that the drops have been nerfed in heavily farmed areas, whereas i feel they were just rubbish to begin with.

for instance, Hells precipe hardly a popular farming spot.

Last night i did the mission for the first time (i got put off by all the ***** there), i got....

about 400 gold
2 titan claws (or whatever there called)
a white bow with about 25 damage
a white staff (or maybe 2 wow)
and some white titan armours (again cant remember what there called).

All in all utter rubbish, and the mission took nearly an hour with stops. To be honest i dont know why i bothered.

I can make more than that in 5 minutes solo farming. The drop system for parties is what is the real cause of solo farming, solo farming shouldnt be killed off, but there is too huge a gap in what you can earn.

(EDIT, and what im hinting at is not nerfing of farming but increasing team bonuses, nerfing is all that is done so far and its just a quick fix)

Aron Searle,

Well, it all depends on your expectations, I suppose. Did you go to Hell's Precipice to:

A) Do the mission/bonus?
B) Capture some elite skills?
C) Explore and map the area?
D) Kill some challenging monsters?
- or -
E) To get good item drops?

For me, E) is not the answer. A), B), C), and D) are all good choices for why I would go there, but E) is simply not a priority. By the time you reach Hell's Precipice, your character probably already has the best (or almost the best) equipment they can get. So what do the drops really matter?

Your not getting my point.

Why i went there is irrelivent, the point was if you want to make money/get itmes going solo is the best way, by a HUGE margin this should not be so (the huge part, there should be some gap).

(I did enjoy doing the mission, and whent there with the sole intention of "doing it". But to do it again i would want some kind of incentive just like "most" people. I may go there again for elites, but thats it. Its a shame as now i have knowledge of the area and could help others through but other than being charitable there is no incentive, if there was a chance of good drops i would be there and other places often helping others through, but there isnt even a chance of getting average drops).

Pro-SoloFarming

I personally believe that solo farming shouldn't constantly be nerfed. From how I see it, if someone gets joy out of spending their time farming alone for items that they can use or sell, let them. Stop bashing on people that post their builds because they're just spreading the ability for others to have fun farming too. I recently made my invinci-monk, and every once in a while, i don't have the time to do a mission or pvp, so i go out and do 2-3 solo runs. I think it's awesome seeing me survive an onslaught of lvl 20's. Also, Props to all the other solo builds that don't incorporate warrior or monk skills. I think it takes someone with a great mind to manipulate skills in order to solo farm. Why punish them for this? Let them have their fun!

yesterday i posted that i was for soloing but thought they UW should not be soloed. i would like to retract this statement. first of all no i do not have a monk that solos the UW or anyone that solos UW. the reason im retracting it is b/c people work there butts off to be able to solo there. sup monk runes arent cheap, its a big investmant. also there has been alot of nefing of the UW yet people stil find ways. they work hard at it they should be allowed to. also the monks have to have 2 sets of armor in case they just want to be a regular monk. i know i dont want a monk w/ 55hp in hells precipe w/ me if they are just trying to heal teamates. so beinga solo monk is expenisve until u learn to do it well. and that takes PRACTICE!! dont take away what people have worked so hard to achieve. LEAVE SOLOING ALONE!! its fine how it is. it takes time to do it. now leave it alone. let people solo if they want and can.

thats just my 2 cents worth.

Aron,

My post was merely intended to address your statement:

"To be honest i dont know why i bothered."

I just wanted to point out that there are other reasons to go to Hell's Precipice besides farming.

Edit: To directly address your point, I don't think that the drop rate for parties should be changed at all. If you go out with 4 people, you should only get 25% of the drops. If you go out alone, you should get 100% of the drops. It makes perfect sense. Why should monsters have more loot on them just because there are more players in your party?

yea i was in ranting mode, point taken.

It does suck though that all hells has to offer is the "i did it" goal, and a few elites.

Which pretty much covers the fire islands. I dont think ive had any drops in the fire islands that have netted me more that 3-4 k in total with gold.

Drops are not the reason i do the missions, but the reason i dont re-do them.

I look at the missions in the Ring of Fire islands as the ultimate test for each of my characters. Despite being the same mission each time, it does not feel the same for my Mesmer/Ranger as it did when I went there with my Warrior/Monk. I doubt it will be the same when I go there as my Necromancer/Elementalist either. I have to employ a new strategy for each of my different characters, which makes the return trip worthwhile.

The elite skills are nice also.

Ya i agree took me some time to make money i started with 5k worked to get sup runes when they where going for 20k so that was like 100k for 5 sup runes then armor and really parchment suxs for me, so more money to waste then i started got used to it and made some money. i made around 300k and lost 100k it was a nice investment.

if someone gets joy out of farming thats golden but if someone gets joy out of an imbalance thats lame.

they should make an online mmorpg called "bruce lee" and your character can kill infinate mobs and bosses indefinately.

Did someone here say they get joy out of an imbalance? Of whom or what do you speak?

I guess it's because he belongs to the people who think that all chars who can solo farm are exploit builds...

I suppose that makes about as much sense as me saying that you are taking advantage of an 'exploit' by ganging up on the monsters when you go out in groups. Give those poor monsters a chance! Play solo!

ill just say
"including the devs"
and leave it at that.

Do you speak for the game developers now? Are you their official representative?

Has it been officially posted somewhere by Anet that it is against the intended purpose of the game to play (and succeed) as a solo character?

i have no problem with solo farming, i take joy out of making up new farming builds and trying them out on groups, and to tell the truth it dosen't take any sort of genius to make a solo farming build. So i don't understand why people make such a big fuss about people posting solo farming builds, because solo builds are one of the easiest types of builds to make in the game. (for me anyway)

and they will never be able to stop solo farming, tey might be able to slow it down, but that is about it.

Provide me the quote where they actually said they are against solo farming.

I have seen them say they are agains solo farming high level end game areas in response to an UW question, but nothing else.

Totally agree with him...solo farming is never gonna go away...there will always be new builds, new places to farm and what not...

Any ways i dont see what the big problem is everyone has the equal chanse of farming...no reason to get mad when u can do it too...i personally view solo and making new builds as a challenge and fun experiance...theres not much once u have beaten the game a numerous times..

Ne ways, Peace