Well, technically speaking, that dude and his 20,30 or whatever accounts has probably paid more than the rest of the people in the map š
Now, jokes aside yeah. Anet should up their game with botting and multiboxing
I was about to point out that those are probably all free/heroic accounts... but it's a living world map, and that guy's taking up almost the entire population cap. So if he's spent $10 total, and there's literally no one else, then you're *technically* correct.
~~Edit: Later realization, being on a LW map doesn't prove they paid. Probably AFK farmed somewhere free to get the gold to buy the gems to open the LW map. So no, probably not a paying customer.~~ It's been pointed out to me repeatedly that you need at least HoT to buy LW3, so there's a minimum total amount the asshole paid. So he was a paying customer at some point.
You can't access LW seasons w/o their respective expansion, HoT for s3, so they paid for the account. But that doesn't change the fact that they're a botter.
This just made me realise that there could possibly be people with so many bots that they alone fill up a whole map, and are thus never seen by others.
...Part of me will now consider it extra rude to bot and *NOT* do this, because at least that way, nobody else would be bothered.
Probably isn't a paying customer *anymore* though, not with an AFK farm like that. That's probably 120g/hr right there, or 300 gems after conversion. No way he's giving Anet any more money now that he has that all set up. Just a couple weeks and he'll have "bought" everything in the gem shop.
~~Edit: And the LW unlock for most of those accounts was probably paid for with AFK'd gold anyway. AFK somewhere free, gold->gems->LW unlock->AFK farm in living world *WITHOUT* being a paying customer.~~It's been pointed out to me repeatedly that you need at least HoT to buy LW3, so there's a minimum total amount the asshole paid. So he was a paying customer at some point.
> That's probably 120g/hr
So this was very interesting, and I went there to check it out for myself. There were about 36 players on the spot. Maybe a couple of spectators like myself. In 15 minutes of "benchmarking" with AOEs placed as best as I could, and trying not to miss any mob (they did go down quite instantly), here are the results: [80 Bags of Stolen Goods][6 Unstable Hides][14 Unstable Rags][13 Unstable Metal Chunks] plus 2 rare weapons, this totals to about 2.5g which is about 10gph.
Now, I would not want to assume the number of alts for any single person, some of the names were unique with different guild tags, let's say 20 were "that one guy" This would yield them 200gph; 4800 gold a day; 33k a week - would take 67 weeks to transfer to main, raw. So, you can imagine the amount of MC they have to purchase to do the transaction. Also, keep in mind the number of overflow maps we do not see.
As a side note, the lowest fps I've been getting was 54. The map did not lag at all, as OP suggested. And not everyone was afk, as some of them kept chatting and advertising party invites for better boon distribution - more loot.
There are ways to use the TP to transfer large sums of gold. Some is lost in taxes, but when it's earned for nothing, it's still a huge positive.
I don't understand how this is seen as normal behavior by anyone. It's clearly unintended gameplay.
> It's clearly unintended gameplay.
Many people playing a game in one spot and then selling stuff on TP? One person owning more than one account? Which part is unintended? It's quite unclear.
It's not normal, for us, but it's what they enjoy, who are we to judge?
No, no one is enjoying that. There's not a single person actually playing the game there. What they're *enjoying* is having unlimited gold obtained through violations of the ToS.
When they're actually playing the game, they're not standing on that spot.
> no one is enjoying - they're enjoying
It does not matter, I was talking about people I have encountered on that spot, in my 30 minutes of witnessing it. Beside that crowd, there were probably 9-10 people inviting each other to parties by advertising free spots, their goal was to share boons and tag as many mobs as they could, safe to assume they enjoyed it.
As for others,
> violations of the ToS
Not for us to judge, we understand this as a violation, and do not participate in this - we are fine, they do not, and the result speaks for itself. Whether Arenanet sees no violation or simply can't act on it for whatever reason, is unknown to me. My understanding is: to report it, if that is a no-no they will deal with it.
When there's actually people running around and *playing*, it's not a problem. But when one person who *isn't* actually playing is raking in *tens of thousands* of gold a week, mostly by selling mats, that actually does have a significant effect on the trading post.
"But that's fine with me! It means I get cheaper mats!" - many apologists
Sure, but you have less gold with which to buy those mats, as does everyone else, so that part cancels out. What doesn't cancel out though, is the fact that you have less gold with which to buy things that *aren't* deflated by the botters.
Anet knows there's violations happening, the problem is they can't *prove* it, because of the way autocast and pets work. All they can do is have a GM whisper the culprits to see if they get a response. There are tools to *autoreply* to GM whispers. Simple AFK whisper checks are not a hard problem to solve, it's been solved for twenty years now. There've been autoreply bots for that since week one of WoW.
There's a very simple solution I keep suggesting, and it would seriously cramp the style of the people doing this. Just Fix Autocast and Pets so people *literally can't* use those tools to violate the ToS. It would strip away the AFKers who just do it out of laziness, and leave behind only the actual botters. It'd be much easier to clamp down on them once all the merely lazy assholes are stripped away.
You also get a lot of spirit shards (and unlike loot they are not subject to diminishing returns). Their value (when being used for something like t6 conversion or legendary crafting) is higher than those bags of loot.
you were also testing without being under diminishing returns. I don't know how much those actually diminish the returns, but I've heard between 3gph and 5gph from a number of sources, so I went with 4, and ballparked 30 accounts.
Interesting results from your actual test though, if diminishing returns bottoms out at half, my fermi estimate and your empirical test agree almost perfectly.
Iām one of the people in the screenshot. Whatever the cause, I can guarantee the map was lagging. I didnāt have the same lag issue on other maps in the same session.
I don't understand why Anet doesn't clarify their TOS that this counts as unattended gameplay. It's clearly very unpopular among the playerbase and cannot be intended gameplay. It's their game. They can enact basically whatever rules they want.
To be clear, they do enforce relatively regularly. I'm not saying what they do so no one circumvents it more, but botters can easily be notified of enforcement practices before being banned and pretend they're at the computer pressing the buttons. What I'm saying is clarify that you can't do this at all. Do this and have consequences, whether you're at the computer or not.
Even if they did consistently say this sort of behaviour goes against TOS they still can't enforce it effectively in a way that is worth the investment.
Bots accounts can be created in seconds with the right programs. Having a person review each case takes more time and cost money.
Overall they would be taking away resources from other parts of the game to fight a never ending battle. It simply isnt worth it.
Found the botter.
I'm sure you know these accounts take effort to setup because they require the expansion and the LW map to exploit the karma/gold on kill items. This isn't a never ending battle. It takes less effort to click ban than to farm the account bound currency to setup these farms for each account.
Assuming its always a living world map. In this case it is. In other cases it isnt. Fact is on an enforcement level it isnt as simple as just hitting ban. Unless you wanna just indiscriminantly ban people with next to little investigation.
Fact is they need the staff to properly go through the effort of distincting legitimate players from bots via a process. Unless they change the TOS to fully not allow this sort of low effort farming, it has been ultimately allowed provided they are legitimately paying attention to the account. Which is something the person banning has to determine. This use of reslurces would be better put twoards the creation of new content or moderation of people who are actively reviewing cases of those who are actively ruining other players experiences in a malicious way.
Ultimately you dont work for the company so of course you think the solution is as simple as a big red button that says ban indiscriminantly because ultimately there is no possible consequences for you.
Clarifying the TOS to define this activity as unattended gameplay is exactly what I'm saying. Have a brief grace period and then indiscriminately ban, like you would other botters, because it is clear that most of these are bots just like the bearbows on release were bots. Pretending they're not is willful ignorance.
The majority of these accounts are on living world maps because the rewards on those maps do not have diminishing returns.
And, no, I don't work for the company, but neither do you. You know as little as I do about company resourcing. GMs have lots to do, I'm sure, but enforcing the TOS is part of their job and it is clear that this, at best, skirts the TOS.
It is not against ToS if they are not afk, that's why GMs visit such spots regularly and port people away from the spot, then ban those who do not react in time. But those who do react in time are not banned, so clearly Anet considers this not against the ToS in this case (otherwise they could just ban everyone and not bother with checking)
Well in some of these cases you can't tell me that these people are 100% paying attention to each account at all times especially if they are multiboxing .
Regardless of wither they are able to respond to GM in time, I refuse the notion that this is not unattended gameplay.
If anything anet should probably reconsider its stance on multiboxing and afk farming.
Yes they should reconsider it, or better just fix the spot which spawns tons of mobs constantly. But as of now it seems it's not against ToS (again assuming not afk). Most people on those spots are actually not bots but just people doing something else on second monitor.
They do visit them, port people and ban those who do not react. The reason you still see a lot of people on those spots is, believe it or not, most of those people are not bots.
So, you are saying that the necros using in a rotatory and circular fashion their staff skills are actually players aiming st empty ground? This is blatant you can se how there are predefined areas where they csst their abilities with or without enemies, on cooldown. That is bot someone having a relaxed night.
If they do that - yes they are most likely bots. But they are some stupid bots because necro does not need any marcos to kill mobs without pressing buttons - game provides all tools itself. From all classes doing that only engineers need to replace turrets every 5 minutes or so, everyone else can use game provided autocast, and some classes do not need even autocast. So by using marcos those bots just shoot themselves in the foot for nothing.
I think that in this case is because they are using more than just one skill in sutocast, as they where dummoning jagged horrors and using staff skills. I guess thst it is because of efficiency, msybe since there are too many bots they need to make sure they can get to tag mobs reliably? Its the only I thing I can think of now.
Well, I can't tell for all cases but at least on popular spots GMs do visit them and do ban afk people there (for 3 days first time, then more until perma ban).
As for the necro - there is no reason to use any macro in them, game itself provides all tools to stay at one place killing mobs without pressing any buttons.
You know, I personally don't care for bots (if anything, one could argue that they tank the price of mats on the BLT, which is beneficial for me) - but if we have reached a point where it's so wide-spread that it's affecting latency, then yeah, it's gone too far.
It's not though, any big meta is going to cause more of an fps drop to most rigs. If this is nuking a server then wtf is every LLA doing? The necro issue could be 3x what's pictured and I'd have serious doubts as to any server performance hits. Just do any Tequal and see the amount of stuff spawned and ppl dumping skills. This is such a red herring.
> The entire map is lagging
Not because of this, though. There would be a new instance open for everyone else, even before reaching any mildly taxing player numbers.
A map might indeed be lagging for whatever reason, but first, make sure your settings are not over the top, or just try another map.
> This needs to stop
This is not the place to ask.
Would be pretty poor architecture design for metas etc if a map instance couldn't handle most the map population in one area using skills. It might be unsightly but any lag is definitely at the users end.
What you say makes sense, except that if you check the chat map on the image you will notice it was not just me. So not a settings issue. Besides I have entered other instances of that map and they don't lag no matter the settings.
I went to that map, [not long after this discussion](https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18d4csc/this_needs_to_stop/kcfh201/). The map was not lagging, maps do not lag when 120-150 people (max?) use skills, and it would not lag from 38. There might be some other reason to lag.
> maps do not lag when 120-150 people (max?) use skills,
Not if those players are away from eachother. Like, meta events can lag and drop you to 10 fps but you won't notice that if you are not in the area.
I can imagine that stack causing issues when you are near it though, but it should indeed not affect the rest of the map.
> drop you to 10 fps
That's your fps, not a map lagging. The server side is fine. Optimize the settings to avoid this, depending on hardware limitations might not be completely avoidable.
Hell, the botting at the Ascalon wall ghosts in the south east corner of Iron Marches has been a thing for a decade, and they've never done anything about it. It's pretty clear they don't have any intention of doing anything to fix this issue.
I see many excuses and empty statements in my humble opinion.Probably some here are AFK farmers themselves.
I often police these areas and tag up to draw attention to their presence. After some time of thinking this through, here is my point of view;
Bots, Multiboxing or whatever, it is still causing issues and there is no automation on it to prevent. Just like in Bloodtide coast, harathi and more spots. And it is exploding in numbers.
I mean, it is not hard to detect accounts being created, get mastery for auto-loor and be stationary for 80-99% of their 'play' time in AFK farm spots.
Often these multibox accounts have the same level/amount of masteries and are in the same guild/ have similar names.
These people abuse guild banks and/or buy mystic coins/ectos or whatever on TP and send those to the main account.
The main issue is that GM's are not parked at these locations. If you have 72 hour time out or bans quite quickly there is no value for the exploiters.
Inb4 comments <"but they are doing this often!">
Let's assume the GM's are checking these spots every 3 hours. Then 3 hours of "AFK farming" might not be worth for 1 account If you get 72 hour time outs or banned. So, what is the impact of GM's doing these in person checks with 3 hour intervals? Exploiters gonna exploit and multibox to maximize Gold/h. And yes they multibox, as you see them log off simultaneously.
What bothers me the most is that there are some players in these blobs actually NOT afk. Claiming it is completely fine and invite them to join, luring other players into doing the same and ignorant as people can be, they will get time-out/ban as a result.
Inb4 comments <"but people have the ability to think for themselves!">
We all know people that drive over the speed limit and when being stopped claiming "but officer.... EVERYONE is doing this", that is usually because of NOT enforcing the speed limit on a regular basis and missing automation for law enforcement.
As mentioned, this is my point of view and I strongly believe that ANET is failing their dedicated playerbase by not doubling down on these issues and therefore exposing players that have never thought of exploiting before to the thought of doing so. After all, it is an unfair (and way too profitable) advantage that these exploiters have over regular players
I wish you all happy holidays and a happy new year.
Peace.
> that is usually because of NOT enforcing the speed limit on a regular basis and missing automation for law enforcement.
Things like red light cameras increase the amount of fines sent out without decreasing the amount of crashes. In fact, there's evidence to suggest they INCREASE the amount of crashes, as drivers are more likely to short-stop when it would be safer to run a red light.
[Automated enforcement doesn't reduce the amount of crashes, it just changes what kinds of crashes occur](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/)
[And here's the study in case you wanna read that instead of the author's blog post about it](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3078079)
While I get what you're saying, please don't use phrases like "Service availability for PAYING CUSTOMERS". The amount of Karen energy coming from those words is astounding.
Hahaha, that was exactly the point though, you gota admit it draws attention š¤£ (which kinda is the point, you know, hopibg someone from anet sees it or something, dunno)
People in the comments somehow thinking that these accounts actually have a person sitting there pushing buttons is the real joke here.
Once you get to this point the actual scripting is trivial. Push button, sleep, hit F, repeat.
Anet has cracked down on gold selling bots before. Anet has also said that people who farm like this while working or doing something in another window is acceptable. Iām aware of a group of people who have GW open and farm while working from home and make in game cash this way. Occasional screen click so. It truly afk. Anet does look for scripts but not for semi afk farmers.
It's a nice chill map and that is really damn annoying every time I go there, luckily it's not all that often, but it's ALWAYS like that. I am just surprised that something so frequent is left to be.
I see AFK farmers almost every day if I go do open world things.
I would say first as someone else said check your settings because it isn't usually a botting issue. Next report the player. Anet will deal with them if they are botting and doing illegal stuff. I.E. they threw a person's character off the highest place in PVP after deleting all their stuff and account (there might be a vid still out there)so they will deal with it. And third which kind of goes with the second option report it and keep playing. The thing is there are other maps that people do exactly that. The challenge is knowing who is doing it and who is just farming with friends.
I could report 1, was trying to click the player for sbout 5 mins and keep selecting pets and turrets. Sfter I managed to pick one I reported it, but didn't try any other ones as it might take a while. And the issue is thst I know its not mt settings as msny players on the map where lagging. There is a fragment of a conversation in the chat.
That map has been like that for well over a year now, Other maps going on multiple years. I think it's clear anet doesn't really care, at least not enough to do anything about it.
We make plenty of noise but it falls on deaf ears. Anet could solve the afk farm/bots and meta leeching overnight by banning multiboxing but they haven't. I doubt much would change unless either everyone started doing it or it started to effect their bottom line.
Are we starting these posts again? I agree with your title. This needs to stop - about people reposting the same thing of afkers / netflix watchers on maps.
Personally, I just move on, I have more important stuff to do / enjoy actually playing the game.
I normally don't give a damn, except when the game takes 3 seconds to receive input. The entire map was lagging badly, you can see someone complaining on the chat. Also, the reason why this behaviour continues to exist is because we haven't made enough noise. The simple truth.
So you are saying map was lagging bcs of 10-20 players ābottingā in it. In this case no one should be able to play WvW (~50 players x 3 each color) but they do. Weird logic you have there.
I doubt it is 10-20 players. Also, it is X players with several turrets and necros minuons, including, jagged horrors by the dozens. So yeah, they can make it lag.
Well, technically speaking, that dude and his 20,30 or whatever accounts has probably paid more than the rest of the people in the map š Now, jokes aside yeah. Anet should up their game with botting and multiboxing
I was about to point out that those are probably all free/heroic accounts... but it's a living world map, and that guy's taking up almost the entire population cap. So if he's spent $10 total, and there's literally no one else, then you're *technically* correct. ~~Edit: Later realization, being on a LW map doesn't prove they paid. Probably AFK farmed somewhere free to get the gold to buy the gems to open the LW map. So no, probably not a paying customer.~~ It's been pointed out to me repeatedly that you need at least HoT to buy LW3, so there's a minimum total amount the asshole paid. So he was a paying customer at some point.
You can't access LW seasons w/o their respective expansion, HoT for s3, so they paid for the account. But that doesn't change the fact that they're a botter.
This just made me realise that there could possibly be people with so many bots that they alone fill up a whole map, and are thus never seen by others. ...Part of me will now consider it extra rude to bot and *NOT* do this, because at least that way, nobody else would be bothered.
Gotta buy HoT/PoF to get access to Living Story maps.
Indeed, Saidra's Haven in Lake Dorik. A paying customer.
Probably isn't a paying customer *anymore* though, not with an AFK farm like that. That's probably 120g/hr right there, or 300 gems after conversion. No way he's giving Anet any more money now that he has that all set up. Just a couple weeks and he'll have "bought" everything in the gem shop. ~~Edit: And the LW unlock for most of those accounts was probably paid for with AFK'd gold anyway. AFK somewhere free, gold->gems->LW unlock->AFK farm in living world *WITHOUT* being a paying customer.~~It's been pointed out to me repeatedly that you need at least HoT to buy LW3, so there's a minimum total amount the asshole paid. So he was a paying customer at some point.
> That's probably 120g/hr So this was very interesting, and I went there to check it out for myself. There were about 36 players on the spot. Maybe a couple of spectators like myself. In 15 minutes of "benchmarking" with AOEs placed as best as I could, and trying not to miss any mob (they did go down quite instantly), here are the results: [80 Bags of Stolen Goods][6 Unstable Hides][14 Unstable Rags][13 Unstable Metal Chunks] plus 2 rare weapons, this totals to about 2.5g which is about 10gph. Now, I would not want to assume the number of alts for any single person, some of the names were unique with different guild tags, let's say 20 were "that one guy" This would yield them 200gph; 4800 gold a day; 33k a week - would take 67 weeks to transfer to main, raw. So, you can imagine the amount of MC they have to purchase to do the transaction. Also, keep in mind the number of overflow maps we do not see. As a side note, the lowest fps I've been getting was 54. The map did not lag at all, as OP suggested. And not everyone was afk, as some of them kept chatting and advertising party invites for better boon distribution - more loot.
There are ways to use the TP to transfer large sums of gold. Some is lost in taxes, but when it's earned for nothing, it's still a huge positive. I don't understand how this is seen as normal behavior by anyone. It's clearly unintended gameplay.
> It's clearly unintended gameplay. Many people playing a game in one spot and then selling stuff on TP? One person owning more than one account? Which part is unintended? It's quite unclear. It's not normal, for us, but it's what they enjoy, who are we to judge?
Bro. You know damn well that 33k gold a week is not intended. WhO aRe We To JuDgE?
Someone bought 20 accounts.
Someone's projecting.
No, no one is enjoying that. There's not a single person actually playing the game there. What they're *enjoying* is having unlimited gold obtained through violations of the ToS. When they're actually playing the game, they're not standing on that spot.
> no one is enjoying - they're enjoying It does not matter, I was talking about people I have encountered on that spot, in my 30 minutes of witnessing it. Beside that crowd, there were probably 9-10 people inviting each other to parties by advertising free spots, their goal was to share boons and tag as many mobs as they could, safe to assume they enjoyed it. As for others, > violations of the ToS Not for us to judge, we understand this as a violation, and do not participate in this - we are fine, they do not, and the result speaks for itself. Whether Arenanet sees no violation or simply can't act on it for whatever reason, is unknown to me. My understanding is: to report it, if that is a no-no they will deal with it.
When there's actually people running around and *playing*, it's not a problem. But when one person who *isn't* actually playing is raking in *tens of thousands* of gold a week, mostly by selling mats, that actually does have a significant effect on the trading post. "But that's fine with me! It means I get cheaper mats!" - many apologists Sure, but you have less gold with which to buy those mats, as does everyone else, so that part cancels out. What doesn't cancel out though, is the fact that you have less gold with which to buy things that *aren't* deflated by the botters. Anet knows there's violations happening, the problem is they can't *prove* it, because of the way autocast and pets work. All they can do is have a GM whisper the culprits to see if they get a response. There are tools to *autoreply* to GM whispers. Simple AFK whisper checks are not a hard problem to solve, it's been solved for twenty years now. There've been autoreply bots for that since week one of WoW. There's a very simple solution I keep suggesting, and it would seriously cramp the style of the people doing this. Just Fix Autocast and Pets so people *literally can't* use those tools to violate the ToS. It would strip away the AFKers who just do it out of laziness, and leave behind only the actual botters. It'd be much easier to clamp down on them once all the merely lazy assholes are stripped away.
You also get a lot of spirit shards (and unlike loot they are not subject to diminishing returns). Their value (when being used for something like t6 conversion or legendary crafting) is higher than those bags of loot.
you were also testing without being under diminishing returns. I don't know how much those actually diminish the returns, but I've heard between 3gph and 5gph from a number of sources, so I went with 4, and ballparked 30 accounts. Interesting results from your actual test though, if diminishing returns bottoms out at half, my fermi estimate and your empirical test agree almost perfectly.
Iām one of the people in the screenshot. Whatever the cause, I can guarantee the map was lagging. I didnāt have the same lag issue on other maps in the same session.
You cns check the map chat as proof that there was lag, maybe when you went something changed or maybe you are on a different server?
I was there at some point to see what the fuss was about and I can agree, many people are active. Loot isn't that good tho so I left after a while.
He had to buy the expansions to get access to the Season 3 content.
You need HoT to enter s3 maps. Can't buy that for gems.
Yes, you are the fourth person to point that out. Thank you.
Didn't see those posts before replying. I was about to say that maybe you could include that in your edit, but you did it now anyways. No problem.
One positive and hear me out. While on this map you wonāt get the message to switch so to low population ( joke)
I don't think I've ever seen that many in one place!
I don't understand why Anet doesn't clarify their TOS that this counts as unattended gameplay. It's clearly very unpopular among the playerbase and cannot be intended gameplay. It's their game. They can enact basically whatever rules they want.
Well it is against tos. The issue is enforcement is a never ending battle and isnt worth the resources
To be clear, they do enforce relatively regularly. I'm not saying what they do so no one circumvents it more, but botters can easily be notified of enforcement practices before being banned and pretend they're at the computer pressing the buttons. What I'm saying is clarify that you can't do this at all. Do this and have consequences, whether you're at the computer or not.
Even if they did consistently say this sort of behaviour goes against TOS they still can't enforce it effectively in a way that is worth the investment. Bots accounts can be created in seconds with the right programs. Having a person review each case takes more time and cost money. Overall they would be taking away resources from other parts of the game to fight a never ending battle. It simply isnt worth it.
Found the botter. I'm sure you know these accounts take effort to setup because they require the expansion and the LW map to exploit the karma/gold on kill items. This isn't a never ending battle. It takes less effort to click ban than to farm the account bound currency to setup these farms for each account.
Assuming its always a living world map. In this case it is. In other cases it isnt. Fact is on an enforcement level it isnt as simple as just hitting ban. Unless you wanna just indiscriminantly ban people with next to little investigation. Fact is they need the staff to properly go through the effort of distincting legitimate players from bots via a process. Unless they change the TOS to fully not allow this sort of low effort farming, it has been ultimately allowed provided they are legitimately paying attention to the account. Which is something the person banning has to determine. This use of reslurces would be better put twoards the creation of new content or moderation of people who are actively reviewing cases of those who are actively ruining other players experiences in a malicious way. Ultimately you dont work for the company so of course you think the solution is as simple as a big red button that says ban indiscriminantly because ultimately there is no possible consequences for you.
Clarifying the TOS to define this activity as unattended gameplay is exactly what I'm saying. Have a brief grace period and then indiscriminately ban, like you would other botters, because it is clear that most of these are bots just like the bearbows on release were bots. Pretending they're not is willful ignorance. The majority of these accounts are on living world maps because the rewards on those maps do not have diminishing returns. And, no, I don't work for the company, but neither do you. You know as little as I do about company resourcing. GMs have lots to do, I'm sure, but enforcing the TOS is part of their job and it is clear that this, at best, skirts the TOS.
It is not against ToS if they are not afk, that's why GMs visit such spots regularly and port people away from the spot, then ban those who do not react in time. But those who do react in time are not banned, so clearly Anet considers this not against the ToS in this case (otherwise they could just ban everyone and not bother with checking)
Well in some of these cases you can't tell me that these people are 100% paying attention to each account at all times especially if they are multiboxing . Regardless of wither they are able to respond to GM in time, I refuse the notion that this is not unattended gameplay. If anything anet should probably reconsider its stance on multiboxing and afk farming.
Yes they should reconsider it, or better just fix the spot which spawns tons of mobs constantly. But as of now it seems it's not against ToS (again assuming not afk). Most people on those spots are actually not bots but just people doing something else on second monitor.
> that's why GMs visit such spots regularly But they don't.
They do visit them, port people and ban those who do not react. The reason you still see a lot of people on those spots is, believe it or not, most of those people are not bots.
So, you are saying that the necros using in a rotatory and circular fashion their staff skills are actually players aiming st empty ground? This is blatant you can se how there are predefined areas where they csst their abilities with or without enemies, on cooldown. That is bot someone having a relaxed night.
If they do that - yes they are most likely bots. But they are some stupid bots because necro does not need any marcos to kill mobs without pressing buttons - game provides all tools itself. From all classes doing that only engineers need to replace turrets every 5 minutes or so, everyone else can use game provided autocast, and some classes do not need even autocast. So by using marcos those bots just shoot themselves in the foot for nothing.
I think that in this case is because they are using more than just one skill in sutocast, as they where dummoning jagged horrors and using staff skills. I guess thst it is because of efficiency, msybe since there are too many bots they need to make sure they can get to tag mobs reliably? Its the only I thing I can think of now.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Well, I can't tell for all cases but at least on popular spots GMs do visit them and do ban afk people there (for 3 days first time, then more until perma ban). As for the necro - there is no reason to use any macro in them, game itself provides all tools to stay at one place killing mobs without pressing any buttons.
You know, I personally don't care for bots (if anything, one could argue that they tank the price of mats on the BLT, which is beneficial for me) - but if we have reached a point where it's so wide-spread that it's affecting latency, then yeah, it's gone too far.
It's not though, any big meta is going to cause more of an fps drop to most rigs. If this is nuking a server then wtf is every LLA doing? The necro issue could be 3x what's pictured and I'd have serious doubts as to any server performance hits. Just do any Tequal and see the amount of stuff spawned and ppl dumping skills. This is such a red herring.
> The entire map is lagging Not because of this, though. There would be a new instance open for everyone else, even before reaching any mildly taxing player numbers. A map might indeed be lagging for whatever reason, but first, make sure your settings are not over the top, or just try another map. > This needs to stop This is not the place to ask.
Would be pretty poor architecture design for metas etc if a map instance couldn't handle most the map population in one area using skills. It might be unsightly but any lag is definitely at the users end.
As a WvW player, it absolutely takes way more people than this to cause skill lag. OP is making shit up.
again, the map could have lagged, but the two are not related.
What you say makes sense, except that if you check the chat map on the image you will notice it was not just me. So not a settings issue. Besides I have entered other instances of that map and they don't lag no matter the settings.
I went to that map, [not long after this discussion](https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/18d4csc/this_needs_to_stop/kcfh201/). The map was not lagging, maps do not lag when 120-150 people (max?) use skills, and it would not lag from 38. There might be some other reason to lag.
> maps do not lag when 120-150 people (max?) use skills, Not if those players are away from eachother. Like, meta events can lag and drop you to 10 fps but you won't notice that if you are not in the area. I can imagine that stack causing issues when you are near it though, but it should indeed not affect the rest of the map.
> drop you to 10 fps That's your fps, not a map lagging. The server side is fine. Optimize the settings to avoid this, depending on hardware limitations might not be completely avoidable.
>The server side is fine. Well, it's not xD Skill lag is very present at the game, and it is serverside one.
skill lag exists, map lag exists, didn't deny that. The server side is capable of having 38 people spamming shit in one spot, even more.
I mean, imagine several people having the wrong settings for their setups.... Unimaginable....
what is happening here? are those bots
Yeah
Nope, afk players with turrets and stuff. Not bots.
What the hell even is that? Lol how does one even do this and why?
I can't even guess the amount of bots, the entire map was lagging.
That specific spot has been an issue for about a year now, and anet have yet to do anything
Hell, the botting at the Ascalon wall ghosts in the south east corner of Iron Marches has been a thing for a decade, and they've never done anything about it. It's pretty clear they don't have any intention of doing anything to fix this issue.
I see many excuses and empty statements in my humble opinion.Probably some here are AFK farmers themselves. I often police these areas and tag up to draw attention to their presence. After some time of thinking this through, here is my point of view; Bots, Multiboxing or whatever, it is still causing issues and there is no automation on it to prevent. Just like in Bloodtide coast, harathi and more spots. And it is exploding in numbers. I mean, it is not hard to detect accounts being created, get mastery for auto-loor and be stationary for 80-99% of their 'play' time in AFK farm spots. Often these multibox accounts have the same level/amount of masteries and are in the same guild/ have similar names. These people abuse guild banks and/or buy mystic coins/ectos or whatever on TP and send those to the main account. The main issue is that GM's are not parked at these locations. If you have 72 hour time out or bans quite quickly there is no value for the exploiters. Inb4 comments <"but they are doing this often!"> Let's assume the GM's are checking these spots every 3 hours. Then 3 hours of "AFK farming" might not be worth for 1 account If you get 72 hour time outs or banned. So, what is the impact of GM's doing these in person checks with 3 hour intervals? Exploiters gonna exploit and multibox to maximize Gold/h. And yes they multibox, as you see them log off simultaneously. What bothers me the most is that there are some players in these blobs actually NOT afk. Claiming it is completely fine and invite them to join, luring other players into doing the same and ignorant as people can be, they will get time-out/ban as a result. Inb4 comments <"but people have the ability to think for themselves!"> We all know people that drive over the speed limit and when being stopped claiming "but officer.... EVERYONE is doing this", that is usually because of NOT enforcing the speed limit on a regular basis and missing automation for law enforcement. As mentioned, this is my point of view and I strongly believe that ANET is failing their dedicated playerbase by not doubling down on these issues and therefore exposing players that have never thought of exploiting before to the thought of doing so. After all, it is an unfair (and way too profitable) advantage that these exploiters have over regular players I wish you all happy holidays and a happy new year. Peace.
> that is usually because of NOT enforcing the speed limit on a regular basis and missing automation for law enforcement. Things like red light cameras increase the amount of fines sent out without decreasing the amount of crashes. In fact, there's evidence to suggest they INCREASE the amount of crashes, as drivers are more likely to short-stop when it would be safer to run a red light. [Automated enforcement doesn't reduce the amount of crashes, it just changes what kinds of crashes occur](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/) [And here's the study in case you wanna read that instead of the author's blog post about it](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3078079)
Need to find a way to kite a hostile mob over to where they are standing. Saw someone do it with a sand shark on PoF map, once. Was really funny.
I tried to bring some, but not all mobs follow you forever, also, they deleted a champion in about 20 seconds. There where a lot of them there.
Eh, was worth a shot.
While I get what you're saying, please don't use phrases like "Service availability for PAYING CUSTOMERS". The amount of Karen energy coming from those words is astounding.
Hahaha, that was exactly the point though, you gota admit it draws attention š¤£ (which kinda is the point, you know, hopibg someone from anet sees it or something, dunno)
Do they not get kicked for "afk" or does being in combat reset that counter the whole time?
They aren't afk technically as they use automation software tobuse skills and such. So to servers it seems they are doing things.
People in the comments somehow thinking that these accounts actually have a person sitting there pushing buttons is the real joke here. Once you get to this point the actual scripting is trivial. Push button, sleep, hit F, repeat.
Anet has cracked down on gold selling bots before. Anet has also said that people who farm like this while working or doing something in another window is acceptable. Iām aware of a group of people who have GW open and farm while working from home and make in game cash this way. Occasional screen click so. It truly afk. Anet does look for scripts but not for semi afk farmers.
It's a nice chill map and that is really damn annoying every time I go there, luckily it's not all that often, but it's ALWAYS like that. I am just surprised that something so frequent is left to be. I see AFK farmers almost every day if I go do open world things.
I would say first as someone else said check your settings because it isn't usually a botting issue. Next report the player. Anet will deal with them if they are botting and doing illegal stuff. I.E. they threw a person's character off the highest place in PVP after deleting all their stuff and account (there might be a vid still out there)so they will deal with it. And third which kind of goes with the second option report it and keep playing. The thing is there are other maps that people do exactly that. The challenge is knowing who is doing it and who is just farming with friends.
I could report 1, was trying to click the player for sbout 5 mins and keep selecting pets and turrets. Sfter I managed to pick one I reported it, but didn't try any other ones as it might take a while. And the issue is thst I know its not mt settings as msny players on the map where lagging. There is a fragment of a conversation in the chat.
Well strange that it was lagging but it could be other factors too. But hopefully they deal with the guy
Not how lag works, otherwise metas and WvW would constantly fall apart Move on, this kinda thing exists in every MMO and always will
That map has been like that for well over a year now, Other maps going on multiple years. I think it's clear anet doesn't really care, at least not enough to do anything about it.
I agree, but never before I had seen an entire map lag because of it. Also, ANET doesn't give a damn because we players haven't made enough noise.
We make plenty of noise but it falls on deaf ears. Anet could solve the afk farm/bots and meta leeching overnight by banning multiboxing but they haven't. I doubt much would change unless either everyone started doing it or it started to effect their bottom line.
If only this game is like RuneScape where you can freely select your own servers so we can hop into the least populated ones everytime :')
Are we starting these posts again? I agree with your title. This needs to stop - about people reposting the same thing of afkers / netflix watchers on maps. Personally, I just move on, I have more important stuff to do / enjoy actually playing the game.
I normally don't give a damn, except when the game takes 3 seconds to receive input. The entire map was lagging badly, you can see someone complaining on the chat. Also, the reason why this behaviour continues to exist is because we haven't made enough noise. The simple truth.
So you are saying map was lagging bcs of 10-20 players ābottingā in it. In this case no one should be able to play WvW (~50 players x 3 each color) but they do. Weird logic you have there.
I doubt it is 10-20 players. Also, it is X players with several turrets and necros minuons, including, jagged horrors by the dozens. So yeah, they can make it lag.
No way those are the cause of map lagg lol