Farmers Unite

Ok, I have been playing numerous online games over the past decade. I have played both text based muds (and I still play one sometimes) and graphical games. In that time I feel I have been able to identify some different types of players... This is not a complete list of them, since I want to make a point about farming...

Of the many types you get one of the better known is probably the explorers. They try to learn every area/secret in the game. Wether its a better way to run through the mission, or a shorter path to a certain boss, thats how they get their kicks. You of course also get the PvP'er. In general he has contempt for the plebs that does not PvP. Another well known, and greatly despised is the leecher. I dont need to introduce him, since he is the scammer that cheats you out of your hard earned cash. He is the guy who joins your group for a mission and just stays at the starting point.

And of course you also get your Farmer. He is the kind of person who likes to accumulate stuff. He concerns himself with getting as much plats as possible. He is the guy who wants to equip all chars with 15k armor and the perfect set of weapons for every occasion. And this is where my peeve is. Just by reading these forums its obvious that alot of people farm because they enjoy farming no matter what the reason. Why does the game creators actively go out their to stop this from happening? Its a valid way for alot of people to have fun, me included.

Sure, you can argue that the ingame economy needs to be balances for the betterment of the whole game. That even makes sense, but can you honestly tell me all the money will ever be spent? I sure as hell wont be giving all my stuff/cash away, so where is the problem? Just because you dont see how anyone can have fun farming the way I do, doesnt mean its not a valid way to have fun...

I invite discussion pro and against, since I am trying to understand why someone would try their hardest to stop people from farming.

If there was no farming how would ppl get money for FoW armor?
They could run (slow), do services and .... hmm I'm out of ideas

It's basically the attitude "I want it now, i want it all and i don't care how" that gets players to vigorously fight farming.

In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter if someone else is farming. Why should anyone care what someone else is doing? In Guildwars you can get the top notch equipment without even having to pay for it. Collectors, Green Items and PVP Characters.
However this is not a perfect world and things such as envy and the need for extravagance are quite present. Some take their time to collect the things they need to buy themselves a prestige armor or another nice looking weapon. As with every game, the things that are most expensive are normally the ones which have a certain flair to them. Many people love the Zodiac and ghostly items simply because they're shiny and different. Another factor of course is rarety (the urge to be different) and the only reason such uber ugly skins like the crystalline sword are so high in demand.
Now we have our Farmer, he got himself a nice collection of stuff and armor and he likes the way his character is looking. He will join other Groups and other people will see his equipment. Most don't even care but some do. They see that stuff and they instantly know that they MUST have it.
So they go and look it up and suddenly realize that this certain item is far out of reach. This is where most players are deciding upon the road to take:


Road 1:
Farm for it, collect the money or maybe hope for a random drop one day.

Road 2:
Just wait for a random drop. You never know when you'll get lucky.

Road 3:
Hate on farming

The road 3 is often taken by those that don't want to spend much time playing. Their argument is that the item would be cheaper if there were no farming in the game and thus they argue that the others are ruining his fun. That's the "want it all" mentality. And no matter how much Guild Wars lowers the barrier for them, they will still complain about it and use every chance to spread hate against farmers.
They want farming to be deleted from the game.
And this is where things are different between a farmer by heart and an anti farmer. The anti farmer wants force his way on others while the farmer is mostly concerned about himself. From my point of view, everyone should mind his own business. But most don't agree on this.

There are a lot of different examples of this behavior that apply in real-life as well. Take your not so common "vegan" zealot for example. Sorry, this is no offence to any vegan and there are a lot of normal vegans around. I'm talking about the vegan zealots.
You'll often see them moaning and complaining that no one tolerates them and their style of living. Well fine, i tried that. I really did. Until that day one of those vegans thought it would be necessary to tell me how incredibly much the animal suffered which i was eating. Yep. Tolerance up your ***. Get out of my home.
It's the same as in GuildWars. Instead of minding their own business they have to enforce their view upon others, be it with hatred, almost religious zeal or sheer ignorance.

The problem is when the Anet listens...

Great post Amity, Im with you on that one, another thing if I may add,

Why should we be deprived of farming and nerfs that Anet does because of bots, if they cant ban bots go to china and make it illegal there or something, but stop ruining the game for thousands of people out there.


... yeah, thats my opinion.

I'm one of those people that loves this game a lot and unfortunatly only been playing for nearly 4 months, I manage to get fow, countless 15k sets, a gold cryst,and other stuff. And one of the things I feel most deprived of this game is the farming that i hear people talking about 1 year ago, Its not fair on new players and its not fair on old players. So basicly these nerfs because of bots or whatever are not fair on anyone .

Last I checked I could still farm...what's the problem?

You say that Anet make it harder for us to farm. This is true. Lets imagine something for a second;

-Area of Effect skills could be used
-55 monks could still use the 5% (rather than 10%) damage/hit spell

So your monk enters the Underworld. At this point, there are only aatxe, and no Dying Nightmares. He then proceeds to solo the entire Smite-Crawler run; what's to stop him. And he does it fast; he uses Zealots fire and they DONT RUN! He gets, example, 3 ectos (he was having a lucky run). This run took him 20 minutes.

He then proceeds to do a further 12 runs, getting 3 ectos per run and completing each run in 20 minutes. Now he decides this is boring, so he grabs a macro-recording proggie off the web (after all, who will know!) and, as there are NO Dying Nightmares, he leaves it running overnight. He comes back to find he has completed a further 12 runs.

25 runs, 3 ectos. 75 Ectos.

Now lets imagine ANYONE can do this (afterall, what skill is needed when you can just Symbol-of-wrath, Zealots Fire and SoJ your way through melee enemies). The price of Ectos and other various rare items (storm bows, eternal shields etc) drops DRASTICALLY. Suddenly, to buy a perfect item, you are trading ridiculously high numbers of ectos + 100k.

Why not keep it simple; make it harder for people to solo these hard areas. Encourage some teamwork, and make it so that only a determined few can solo Underworld etc (its bound to happen with people like Witte Wasse playing :P).

I do agree with you; farming IS fun, and it is annoying that people abuse things so badly that they must be "nerfed".

However, it is to keep there from being

POOR __________________________________________________ ____RICH

However, it could be worse. I don't notice Anet removing the Troll cave from outside Droknars. I don't see Anet nerfing the 55 monk build; its a common build. They try to balance the nerfs by adding areas specially created for farming (an example might be the Vermin "race-track" or the Minotaurs at the start of Elona Reach).

Overall, I think Anet do a dam good job of keeping the game balanced. While you still get those who have FoW armor and 15k on all characters, they are fewer and further between. I would hazard a guess that the rough average gold each person has now is around 20-40k. Without the nerfs, gold would be worthless. Everyone would have full storage's with zillions of ectos piled up.

Well, I've always looked at farming this way( and I'm not saying Anet is wrong for doing this)

A gw player wants to get fancy/rare/pretty armor, a weapon, or whatever. So he/she/it starts farming for cash so he can get whatever he needs/wants. Once the player has completed his farming and gets what they want, what is left for the farmer to do? If desirables are quickly obtained, every player will get whatever they want, and eventually stop playing. Anet has made it so the extremely rare items are hard to get, so you have to work for them.

Think about it, if you had all the things you wanted, what else would you play for? (Besides maybe PvP)

^ And whoever said it above, I agree crystalines are ugly, and imo, pointless.

I am a huge pvp fan, but this topic seems very interesting to me. I am one of those people who create pve characters soely for the purpose of later using them in pvp. In this process i have made an ele, a monk, a warrior, and a ranger. obviously costing lots and lots of money. My source of money was originally to farm Kanaxai (back when a single weapon would go for over 120k). As that source of money is worthless nowadays i have just started to farm using my warrior.
I am farming and spending that money almost instantly. I don't plan on going any further with my farming tactics then i have to. 1. cuz its hella boring 2. cuz i don't play gw enough to really fight for gold.
i guess what i am trying to say through this post. Is not all people who farm do so just for the want of loads of money. Some people like myself are doing this stuff just to get by. Why should anet nerf something because of a few dumb people who create macros and stuff?

First, yes, cryst sword = ugly, like you're hitting someone with a giant piece of candy.

2nd, sephis axe = really sweet.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I agree in part that the need to eliminate bot farming from the game exists. However, if a person wants to spend their time farming all day (i.e. no life) he/she should be able to. Instead of punishing universally for some people using bots to farm, anet should be able to better monitor thier own mmorpg. I can't profess to be an expert programmer, but I don't see why they can't stop other programs, such as bots, from having an effect on their game.

Personally, I don't think Anet has it in for farmers...

Since some rave some time ago about how to re-set the farming code, I created a spreadsheet and started keeping track of my drops. I haven't got a whole lot of data yet, but from what I can tell, it appears random. Anet realizes people like to farm. Making farming easy or the drops too common,would completely wreck the economy and the game. Personally, if I had all that I 'wanted' I would stop playing.

Just in the interest of curiosity, I have this handy dandy little spreadsheet and I would love to have more data to look at. Anyone interested? (it does get a little time consuming and tedious, and frankly, I quit farming and went back to skill collecting because of the tedium - but hey, the plots are pretty =)) Feel free to pm me if you would. I think a week of serious data collection from 10 or so people would present a good baseline. You would need excel

Do you think Nightfall's inscriptions will have an effect on the farming? Green farm will no longer b wat it is and chest runs should decrease. Only thing that I see somewhat protected is Ectos/Shards.

As for "anti-farm code" and nerfs, they have good reasons. Exploits can be bad for the economy.

Overall I think Anet has it in for farmers. Decrease of the power of the economy almost brings GW close to a PvP style game.