The TRUTH about AFK Farming in Guild Wars 2 - Data Collection & Investigation

[@JaffasYoutube]

Its gotten to the point where there are way too many comments to attempt to reply to every question. Its highly likely i have responded to someone who has asked the same question you have. If not, i might eventually get around to yours. I apologise if you go unanswered.

[@Psoewish]

A literal GM standing next to a blob of afk farmers, just saying "hm" and then proceeding to do nothing is just oddly poetic, isn't it?

[@McMarc_1993]

It's insane. They SEE IT and do NOTHING about it.

[@rhettorical]

He's the same GM who just banned me for violating the naming policy for one of my characters. Which is fine because it means he at least does his job sometimes.

[@sunni6647]

as long as gw2 accounts costs money - the dlcs costs money - bad pr is still pr - gm should have banned all of them on the spot - but his "hm" just says it all

[@JaffasYoutube]

I just found it incredibly ironic that it's the same GM I was having email conversations with about how they have all these methods to detects all afk farmers.

[@sunni6647]

@@JaffasKZbin back in my days (wow) u would see gms ACTUALLY INGAME - nowdays its not even that anymore - u got a rare species right there - but gms are sadly not in a position where they do the right thing so thats that - i mainly played rvr and always was like pve focus and all thos pve playrs will be the doomfall of gw2 XD

[@hanneskarlbom6644]

Problem is, it doesn't. They use an old exploit to get a full account for free and then buy the LWs with gems from the gold they farm.

[@syzxgamingx]

I think the most wild thing to me about this is the fact that the AFK policy is so brutal, the idea that *Technically* you could be banned if you were like oh someone knocked on my door, brb, and then your ranger pet kills a mob that attacks you is crazy. Then you compare that to the actual practice being employed of extremely obvious AFK Farming which clearly could violate the ToS, and yet nothing happens. Like how do we get such an iron-fisted policy with near-zero enforcement? Crazy.

[@JaffasYoutube]

There are so many different systems they could use that only impact AFK farmers. My assumption is that they don't deem it to be an important issue to warrant spending money and resources fixing the policy or enforcing the rules. Another commenter mentioned that alt accounts bring heaps of real world money to ArenaNet through purchases and Gem Store. That could possibly be an incentive to keep them around too

[@snakesson]

Such rules/policies are made so that they can forced with utmost force when necessary. I am sure that no one was ever banned by quickly afking, or tabbing out (hell, I've missed crapton of events and all) - the words used there are as strict as they are because if someone needs to be banned for AFK farming, they can super enforce those rules.

[@kosan181]

@@JaffasKZbin72 hour ban on me and I quit the game. You think they take it lightly? Shows how much you know. Game is way to grindy, I was doing it so I wouldn’t get burnt out and actually wanted to play the game.

[@Nilruin]

That is absolutely not how anyone could interpret that policy. The policy itself specifically states that your CHARACTER cannot perform any actions whilst you are AFK. The policy states nothing about pets, minions, turrets, jade mechs, etc. There's nothing wrong with sitting in a spot with minions as a Necromancer/pets as a ranger/mech as a mechanist and being attacked by an enemy and the enemy being killed by your AI-driven pet. The problem occurs when you have these Necromancers using their autocast on Nightfall, or Guardians spamming a symbol skill, etc. Autocasting a skill to kill something whilst you're AFK is against policy. You know why? Because the game will just AFK time you out if you sit there not casting any skills. You HAVE to cast a skill or move your character in order to have the game not flag you as AFK. So any AFK'er not autocasting will just get timed out after half an hour. It's also important to autocast skills in order to get credit for kills. If a mob can only attack a single player, only that player will get credit for the kill if their minions kill the enemy. Autocasting a wide-area skill allows you to cast a net that will damage any enemy that enters the area, flagging them as active and having your pets attack and therefore, you getting credit. That's the actual violation happening here. Basically, there's nothing in the TOS or AFK policy that would punish a player in the circumstances that you described. What actual AFK farmers do is significantly worse and not at all the same thing. Honestly, the real solution to this problem is to remove the autocast feature entirely from skills. There are few, if any situations where it's actually viable to set a different skill to autocast than your basic autoattack chain. Or, and this would be a really funny troll for AFK farmers, have the game automatically reset your autocast skill every 10 minutes or so back to the default. That would really mess up their AFK strategies.

[@Nilruin]

@@kosan181 There is legitimate statistical evidence, provided in the video, that ArenaNet doesn't take AFK farming as a serious offense. It's incredibly obvious when a literal GM walks up to mass of players clearly AFK farming and does nothing about it, not to even mention the spreadsheet detailing the relative consistency of player numbers at these farms. I know that reading is hard for people like you, but you could give it a little bit of an effort before you make yourself look ridiculous, you know. Also, obligatory, "AFK farmers are bad and no one loves you".

[@R-N-Gesus]

Fantastic video Jaffa, incredibly well put together! Also lol at the into XD

[@phandrel]

Thank you for researching these numbers! Quite eye opening, because those profits are nothing to scoff at...

[@Draconicrose]

If there's someone at Anet who is struggling to get this taken seriously, this video might have just made their day by giving the community more ammunition to their complaints.

[@AntonMochalin]

I wonder why there's such a steep growth on the chart at 7:58 - it looks like the number has doubled over a couple months.

[@JaffasYoutube]

It's AFK farmers as I discover them, so as I come across multibox setups or new ones popup, it will increase rapidly. Once the 29 man multibox came on the scene it really blew up. I'd look more towards the right side where it's averaging out quite nicely between 110-150. Im interested to see how this video affects the numbers. After todays recording, about 1/3 were new people I've never seen before.

[@VendettaPSC]

@@JaffasKZbin You've added more Thrall to the Hive's forces! SUNUVABISH!

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

The more we talk about it, the more popular it becomes. Just looking at the numbers, i am tempted to log into my 30 accounts and just dump them somewhere to get a ton of gold. If Anet was actually banning these bots, then things would be different, but can't have player count going down or daddy NCSoft is gonna delete us.

[@Fredo55s]

The GM in game was the best part, Speechless. Wish I had a do nothing and get paid Job.

[@JaffasYoutube]

To give him credit, he does support tickets and investigates other reports. This is just an impossible policy for them to enforce with the way it's written.

[@Nilruin]

Honestly, and I've said this multiple times in various places, including my own videos, but it seems like most ArenaNet employees these days do the bare minimum and still expect full credit. This really isn't just a support team issue, it appears to be company-wide. Look at the new weapons in the next expansion: spears. They have been implemented in the laziest way ANet could possibly have done it. They took the models from the aquatic spear weapons and translated them onto land. They didn't even change the character's stance with the spear in their hands, it's a translation directly from the water. The new spear skills look decent, that much isn't being debated. I'm just saying that if you look at the technical aspect of implementing the new spears on land, it was literally the laziest thing ANet could've done. Then you have warclaws getting PvE access, also a super lazy to just take a WvW exclusive mount and put it into PvE instead of designing a new mount. Obviously, I'll take whatever I can get, but you can't really tell me that ANet developers have been giving 100% of their effort since End of Dragons. It just isn't objectively true. I'm not surprised that the support team is giving minimal effort, as well. It makes complete sense given what most other employees in the company are doing.

[@Aereton]

@@JaffasKZbin I don't know what's impossible about it everyone knows the spots everyone knows the mechanics employed everyone can clearly see those are multiple accounts by single users just ban them like, if you showed ppl a video clip of those afk farmers without giving any context whatsoever, what do you think ppl would immediately identify it as? afk farmers

[@VendettaPSC]

The fact you assume he does NOTHING based on one inaction is a bit wild and extreme. But, I will not lie, seeing him HM right next to them and.... nothing is just, fucking funny bro.

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

@@VendettaPSC It's downright Kafkaesque. Wanting to do something but unable to do it because of the very same rules you wrote. I'm sure there are movies made about this.

[@apoguita]

Explore a little more, numbers are way off, if you want to find out why, go to a LW4 map, stay there until you get kicked , stsy tgere a little more, keep lingering those maps, you will eventually get to a layer where all you see on the map are afk farmers. Theybare ocupying al of the maps slots and thats why no one see them. Sometimes can take an hour or two to get to this emaps, sometimes it takes 12, 20 hours... But linger enoigh and you will get there.

[@RyuDouro]

For over one month, I sent daily screenshots to Anet support about 1 person with multiple accounts afk on Tequalt. Everyday they refused to do anything. I gave up. The person had 4 accounts, getting 8g per day plus loot.

[@TitanTrigger]

These farmers have annoyed me for literally years; it's crazy how there are fully grown adults that actually believe this is something that shouldn't be banned. I ALWAYS report them when I see them. Good job documenting this!

[@300chase1]

as a new player who has seen a few of these dudes why do they annoy you i havent run into any that have impacted my gameplay

[@TitanTrigger]

@@300chase1 Well, for one thing; once you get through the story content in GW2 the majority of end-game content like eg. crafting legendaries forces you to care about making gold and these guys are blatantly auto-farming the stuff you are crying blood from boredom collecting.. Secondly, consider the converse argument "Why DON'T you AFK farm?" - because I understood it to be blatantly against the rules and thus spent my time doing it the fair way. AFK farmers invalidate the time I spent because then I could just as well have done that too. My time spent playing fairly is being invalidated because if it's not going to be punished I'd be stupid not to do the same. Auto-Players ruin games. Multi-boxers too.

[@seiya7459]

​@@TitanTrigger wow you're psycho

[@lordwhippleton9734]

​@@TitanTriggergonna be honest man none of your argument means anything. The only reason it impacts you is because of you holding that standard when you have said yourself no one gets punished. You are kinda riding a high horse, which is fine and all but that's something you have imposed on yourself. Now there is a very much more valid reason on why afk and multiboxing negatively affects players. This is the market inflation is from the gold they generate. This effectively raises prices and hurts all other players grinding away at it in a fair manner as they must put more gold into it to get out and thus means they must do more work.

[@samohanka]

This was a very interesting watch. I occasionally see puddles of Necros out in the wild - I didn't realize they made THAT much!

[@צמחישראלמרום]

make you want to do it as well LMAO

[@omgabaddon]

Everyone talks about the sort of AFK farming where you go away and grind something, but nobody talks about the guys who go to meta, die intentionally every time and wait for others to give them free loot. These people should ALSO get banned.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

Or those who never move during world bosses/Meta events F-in parasites

[@hanneskarlbom6644]

If Anet are steugling with the most blatant blob of AFKers, imagine how ¨hard¨ it must be to get rid of those hiding in a sea of actual players.

[@seiya7459]

None of those matter to me

[@jurionov5358]

Insane ammount of work with the data, great video, thanks❤

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

And he only made 10g. Another youtuber is gonna react to this and get 10x the amount. Way the world.

[@cinereus22]

Great video man. Dont feel discouraged from the comments on your reddit post. You analyzed afk farming pretty well.

[@JaffasYoutube]

Appreciate it. They do have some merit when it comes to the economy comparison. It was meant to be a hypothetical crude estimate since there is literally no way to know how much gold is being generated each day, however some took it as fact. I could have been more clear with that.

[@dagobertduck3847]

@@JaffasKZbin Its just straight up wrong numbers put on the internet with zero knowledge about the game's economy. Crazy part is that you dont even managed to get realistic numbers for afk farming. Like how do you fail that?

[@JaffasYoutube]

​@@dagobertduck3847 Funny you say the numbers are wrong when I've spent hours at each location on end logging every item collected. Not to mention 400+ hrs in bloodtide with 8.5k gold profit on the afk farming account. How is that possible if the numbers are wrong? It should be at less than half that if old numbers are to be believed. How much do you think an AFK farmer is making? Are you a believer of the 3g-6g myth?

[@dagobertduck3847]

@@JaffasKZbin Then share that data with a reasonable spreadsheet. Because all the data shown in the video seems just random to me (and alot of other ppl that saw your video).

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@dagobertduck3847 I forgot I removed the spreadsheet link because the subreddit mods were freaking out thinking it was witch hunting. I can DM you the sheet if you like, or once I'm at my PC I'll sort out the reddit stuff and put the link back.

[@DougWendler]

One of the downsides of AFK farming the same mob repeatedly is after a while diminishing rewards kick in and the drops are reduced.

[@JaffasYoutube]

From my testing it seemed to be about after 40 minutes. Each hourly rate was a 2hr period halved so DR was incorporated. Many AFK farmers do multiple 1-2hr sessions to avoid detection and bypass DR.

[@TropicsDweller]

Apparently not enough to stop them from AFK farming.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

​@TropicsDweller add the GM's lack of involvement

[@Jallentime]

AFK farming has so many defenders it’s wild

[@elocfreidon]

Likely the opinions of bot accounts, too.

[@JaffasYoutube]

It all stems from ArenaNets very poor policy with vague terms which has caused confusion for years. It creates a loophole which can be abused in the case if "idle" farming. Both AFK and Idle farms are violations, however idle players only monitoring the game still have the reaction time (~5 mins) to react to GMs making them appear as active when in fact they are not. This means they are not banned which makes players believe it's okay to do, and thus they will defend their actions.

[@RyuDouro]

it all started with people with multiple accounts that with the same excuses made a lot of gold with the logins, now that Anet made multi loggins useless for multi accounts, they put these accounts into bad use.

[@rainbwsprkl]

Not all of us turned into afk farmers! I had over 50 accounts for login rewards, now I use them to farm the wizard's vault. I do easy weeklies. I make a little less than I did before the change, but it's still worthwhile.

[@RyuDouro]

@@rainbwsprkl having many accounts for login rewards has the same negative effects of afk farming.

[@DavySilverwind]

Would love to see this gain enough traction to get a dev response. Is this video on the forum and has the list been sent to anet?

[@JaffasYoutube]

Ever since I started collecting data, I have been in constant communications with the Support Team. They know everything within the video and that I have posted it. It'll most likely be the typical "ignore it until it goes away" response. I'd love to see this video pump up the amount of people abusing the policy loophole on AFK farming to force ArenaNets hand into making a statement. If they're not going to do anything about it, everyone do it and turn Gw2 into a Gacha Mobile Game

[@Aereton]

threads on the official forums get locked since I can remember this ever being an issue so, not only do they not give a single shit about it, they are actively hiding the topic from being discussed for whatever reasons

[@Koakoa45]

I ran the meta in Auric Basin about 4 times total in one day, sold everything and made 40 gold that day and had a blast. There is no need to cheat in GW2 to make gold.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

There are even better legal gold farming methods but I'll not reveal them 😂 I'm limiting my profits to 100g-200g per day. Only a couple hours while blasting some music.

[@VendettaPSC]

Indeed, there's more depth to making gold in GW2 than people give it credit for. AFK farming is ofc the path of least resistance, which a lot of people will always take. You can also just play the game, make a bunch of gold and AFK farm in between play sessions on top of it to just stack it to the ceiling if yah want.

[@Ralesk]

8:05 also I guess there could be more because of megaserver sharding? different map instances with different farmers.

[@rsownageXxX]

My main MMOs are OSRS and GW2 and the difference on how acceptable afking is on these two games is wild.

[@JaffasYoutube]

I don't think its too bad on OSRS. Atleast for AFK combat, since there is always the risk of death (I hate safespot splashing though!). OSRS also has an extremely strict 5 minute AFK timer compared to GW2s 1 hour bugged timer that doesn't work with AutoLoot. But yes, AFK gameplay in many MMOs is being normalized, much like in those gacha mobile games.

[@nmdib]

@@JaffasKZbin osrs afk timer is 25 mins using runelite, (which is the main client players use over the default due to many QOL features). Risk of death while afking in osrs is very slim, and even if u do die your items go to a gravestone so its not lootable by players (they had to change to this since players would DDOS worlds to take players items at bosses in the old system since items were dropped to the floor. And for OSRS being strict, there were very many 6 hour methods (hard coded logout time) for afking combat skills in a minigame for exp called nightmare zone. Some even abused this to the max exp cap of 200m without a ban. Not to bash on you, just giving a bit more insight into it,

[@henobani8039]

incredible video , the amount of work that went into it... sometimes the farmers are stacked so tightly you cant even target them to find their account / character name hahah

[@Dribsy]

Anet please hire this man

[@JaffasYoutube]

I don't think they'll want to talk to me after this :(

[@kesamek8537]

Anet more likely to behave like butthurt enablers/accomplices, like they did last time they were exposed regarding gold duplication and infusion duplication. Worse than being incompetent is victimizing the well-intentioned attempts of helpful players to clean up such activity. It makes me wonder how involved Anet staff or supply chain might be, when it is handled like a guilty cover up.

[@embreis2257]

@@JaffasKZbin this sounds as if you assume/know ANet is more upset about someone collecting data about accounts violating the 'terms of use' then about the people who actually violate the 'terms of use'. what makes you think that?

[@xLeopanther]

​@@embreis2257 I would assume cause a company likely does not enjoy having its incompetence being proven and made public.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

​@@xLeopanther facts

[@BeyondTheWall_Gaming]

Interesting Info! I appreciate all the research. It begs the question: What is ANET Thinking? I think it is less likely to be oversight and more likely to be some sort of strategy on their part. I imagine the relaxed enforcement of their policy won't change unless they think they are losing money.

[@Llenadesal]

how could they lose money if people buy 10 accs with expansions instead of one?

[@Nilruin]

That's because ArenaNet isn't losing money. If a multiboxer has to purchase 10 accounts, that's hundreds of dollars going into their pockets. Of course ArenaNet doesn't care about AFK farmers.

[@arcady0]

I recall some large scale bans in other games and there was often a year or so long period of people complaining and documenting and saying nothing was being done. Then in one fell swoop the company would come in and ban thousands to tens of thousands of accounts. I think it was in either GW2 or FFXIV in their first few months where in one day some 30,000 accounts got banned to the shock of the community. But it's been years so I can't even remember which game. However on the corporate side it was the result of months of examining data and comparing between to be sure they grabbed the right accounts, and grabbed as many as they could. In that case I think they also wanted to make sure they had the right 'out of game data' to keep those people from being able to rejoin. Inaction isn't always inaction - it could just mean fools are being investigated. I'd never break a policy on the assumption that I can get away with it. Eventually your card comes up.

[@Nilruin]

Most large MMO-style video games employ this strategy, like World of Warcraft. Plenty of support team employees on different games have talked about why they do this. It's far more efficient to rack up a list of people to ban, wait a few months to grab more names, and then ban them all at once, than it is to ban people as you see them. The reason being primarily for botters. If you ban a botter as soon as you see it, the botter will learn from their mistakes right then and there. "Why did I get banned? What was the obvious tell that my bot was active?" And then they might do it again, better than last time. It's far more efficient to cause chaos in the botting community by just banning everyone at once after you have a big list going. However, this isn't the case for GW2. AFK farmers aren't typically botting, so there's no downside to just banning them right then and there, as soon as you see them. ArenaNet isn't going to wait a while and then ban them all at once in a wave, there's no purpose for it.

[@karnmattu3586]

Do you guys think the people who afk at Jp spots asking for tips in the lfg should also be in the same category?

[@propanenightmare69]

Nah, they aren't killing mobs etc. They technically have zero income from standing there, it's up to people to appreciate the skip to the end for that. Seems fairgame to me. Besides, being AFK with an lfg up isn't farming, it's just being afk

[@ObsceneDream]

I was going to ask the same thing. Many ask for tips, which is a way to generate income while afk/idle

[@sentokigames151]

You are not afk if you are talking in chat, second if you port someone it's not afk. 3rd, you don't have to pay anything. I never asked for money, but people sometimes just send it through in game mail, so it's your choice. They are helping you by skipping hard parts of in fact just time, so you can play more.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

Nope because they're not exploiting game mechanics, they're just chilling there. It's not like you're forced to give them money, they're acting like volunteers.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

You're confusing two different concepts: Afk farmers Parked volunteers

[@RuvimYurovskiyh]

I got 72 hour ban for the first time in over a decade of playing for being near some afk farmers in Istan.

[@JaffasYoutube]

That's pretty rough. What were you doing?

[@RuvimYurovskiyh]

@JaffasKZbin I logged in to do my pvp dailies with my engineer, which is what I primarily use this character for. I used to farm in this location a year ago but was never afk. When I logged in and saw some commotion and saw the GM Claude floating around, the GM wrote in map Chat for players who are not AFK to move aside, I was actively chatting in map chat, and checking out the transmog and skin of the GM, ran over to grab the some orbs of unstable magic, then ran over to the cluster of players to the side of the main cluster of actual afk players farming. Started asking them about the GM since this was my first time seeing him, apparently GM Claude visits the location around 11pm pst to check in on AFK farmers is what the other players told me, they said the actual AFK farmers usually get a 72 hour ban, then I got booted and handed a 72 hour ban as I was chatting.. I immediately emailed support that I think I was wrongfully banned for afk farming.

[@RuvimYurovskiyh]

@JaffasKZbin "Violation: AFK Farming Suspension Duration: 72 Hours This game account was observed using macros or auto-casting abilities to farm without the input or supervision of the account owner. Any form of automated farming (more commonly known as "AFK Farming") is forbidden by the Guild Wars 2 User Agreement and Code of Conduct, which is why you've received this notice." After I asked for them to review their findings, this was their reply, "Hello, We have thoroughly reviewed this incident and confirmed our initial findings. As such, our decision to uphold the suspension is final. The account will be accessible again upon completion of the suspension 06/08/2024 07:38 GMT."

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@RuvimYurovskiyh That makes me think they have an AoE ability that bans people and you were caught in it. The fact you were talking to them and still got banned is crazy

[@Aereton]

@@RuvimYurovskiyh probably got banned because you made anets precious afk farmers uncomfortable with your questions lol the fact alone that those people already know what GM checks on them at what time tells me all I need to know: "come back to the keyboard at 11pm so we can pretend we're doing something then I'll leave you alone for the day" lmao what a shit show

[@costanick]

Thank you for the investigation and reporting

[@newbornkilik]

As an old OSRS player I can say that the war against bots in insane, Apparently they ban hundreds of bots every day and they just keep coming back. That could be a PR statement tho

[@PedroDoderoEscalante]

Saw a horde of Necros with minions raiding the centaurs during boss event pissed me off.

[@Bunstonious]

They really need to update the policy, when I read it I immediately felt that it was way too broad for what it's targeting as even myself would fall in that category (I normally watch youtube while I play games, even when i'm actively playing). In principle I don't necessarily have an issue with AFK farmers per se as long as they're not botting, but I have thought for a while now that the inability to be able to select different maps from a list or to target "meta maps" makes these sorts of players infuriating because that's when it impacts other players just trying to play the game. It would be good if there was an ability to target maps for a specific purpose (eg. a meta map, or a questing map, or a grinding map), and I think this would benefit the regular game too. I think the main takeaway from this video is sadness because i'm so freaking poor I can barely exist in the game XD

[@JaffasYoutube]

Yeah the policy is awful. What you describe isn't against the ToS because you're being active. I perhaps should have elaborated on the example more. You can have things open on other monitors as long as you are active within the game. The main question you need to ask to determine if ToS is being broken is: "Am I manually using the skills to farm/kill/obtain this reward?"

[@Bunstonious]

@@JaffasKZbin yeah that's fair. I do also agree with you that they can easily solve the problem by actually clarifying and enforcing the policy, while also doing some changes to the autocast system. Thanks for the video also.

[@rhettorical]

Someone got offended by one of my character names, and I got a 72hr ban within a couple hours of being reported. But AFK farmers just keep right on trucking. I spat out my drink when you brought up GM Claude because he's the one who banned me.

[@JaffasYoutube]

Let's not give Claude a hard time. I wouldn't be surprised if he's left to try and do all the moderation on his own. But yes, it's so stupid that they will ban you over a name that affects no one, yet will allow thousands of gold in profit per day to be cheated. They really need to create an effective way to detect AFK farming other than playing little games of Simon says.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

Not a snowflake, but come on! People should think twice their toons names 😂 I've seen a lot of stupid, seriously stupid names I come to think "This player thinks we don't live in an era of hypersensitivity" "Straight out of 4chan or Reddit" "This is just asking for a banhammer" "It's a game not a political revolution or hot chatrooms"

[@rhettorical]

@@Baard5Szomoru I'll admit I knew it was a risk, but I've seen names that range from equally stupid to actually racist so I figured no one ever cared. I had a friend who had a character called "Dill Doe" for years until he was forced to change it. Also, it's not just Claude doing the moderation, I had an email chain back and forth and had a different mod respond every time.

[@rolling_get]

Anet, hire this man. Excellent reporting ^^

[@velotti2109]

Spending months learning raids and the hardest encounters in the game just for pennies while afk multiboxers do literally nothing and make hundreds of thousands... feels great.

[@macmuffinz1641]

1) if it took you MONTHS to learn such easy PvE content then you obviously should stay away from PvE 2) if you do PvE content for the sake of golds outside boosting, then you clearly missed the point of PvE which is title/leg/gear grinding 3) if you think you can make that much golds by afk farming then just do it, qui wasting time in PvE my guy

[@velotti2109]

@@macmuffinz1641 I’ve been a raider since the beginning, clearing spirit vale only a day or two after world first. I mean maybe you had a different experience and your groups carried you and now you think you know raiding, but for us actual raiders who want to learn every mechanic and every role, yeah it takes months of learning. The time/effort input vs reward output has been a point of discussion ever since raids came out, and eventually ANet did raise the output rewards to better reflect the input. Idk if you know this, but this video is about this little thing called “AFK farming,” a system that gives a ridiculously high return on gold for literally no effort. My point was to compare the input/output with raids which have historically had the exact opposite problem despite being such prestigious content. Maybe understanding context really isn’t your thing, and that’s okay. Now go back to mindlessly gold farming so you don’t hurt your toxic little brain with scary internet comments.

[@kesamek8537]

You are doing Dwayna's work. Anet won't like it - same as last time they were exposed for hiding exploits - which makes Anet look extremely shady.

[@JaffasYoutube]

If Grouch finally gets back to me, there could be a little bit on that in the future too.

[@kesamek8537]

@@JaffasKZbin let me guess, he hired Casiano as Head of Exploit Prevention.

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@kesamek8537 lmfao that would be funny as. Or the ArenaNet treasurer

[@kesamek8537]

@@JaffasKZbin lol😂

[@reidspencer]

thanks for the tips. ive now started a new career in GW2 as a AFK farmer to sell gold in black market !

[@JaffasYoutube]

Looking at gem prices. The 29 acc farm is netting close to $1.3k worth of gold (in gems). I wish you the best.

[@kesamek8537]

Soon you'll qualify to become a GW2 reddit mod.

[@Jijiweepee]

With Gw3 being greenlit, I don’t think anything will ever be done about this.

[@2nd3rd1st]

Would it help to get this video in front of more interested people by naming the game in the title? I only clicked on this because I recognised the thumbnail after I used the "New to you" feature in the home screen, otherwise I would have never watched this

[@JaffasYoutube]

It is tagged under guild wars 2, Ill add it to the end of the title too. Thanks for the input!

[@lil.dashbored]

If they aren't going to enforce it at least give the community a chance to combat the afk farmers. i.e. allow players to report (/w timer or some mechanic to not be abused) bots and it would require the bot to complete a captcha puzzle otherwise teleporting them or spawning a boss or turning them into a tonic w/o skills

[@MageSkeleton]

15:05 This compounds my problem. i just KNOW they're not going to actually do anything about this type of stuff. While on the other hand, if i did ANY amount of "afk farming" even if it was over the course of two days i'd be greeted with "your account is banned." it's not fair, i do enjoy playing the game. And i know if my account gets banned they'll just tell me to make a new account instead of restoring my account.

[@ryanguerrero1303]

Jaffa is always impressively cool.

[@JaffasYoutube]

You're cool too!

[@axlmartens5237]

I honestly don't even bother to report them anymore. I even have around 1/5th of players in the festival's dragon arena shamelessly afk farming the public instance. What I potentially view as an even bigger blight are the people going afk and upscaling metas, only to swoop in like hungry vultures at the last 10% of the end boss and still getting all the rewards because anet somehow loves designing metas where the majority of rewards are given on the final event which they also make incredibly easy to tag. I'd love to see them redistribute meta rewards to pre events to both encourage people to participate earlier and reward those putting in the most time.

[@206Zelda]

From bots to bugs, to tickets and to forgetting to insert music in a PvP map, ANET's management has been worse off than folks realize. As long as the promise of a good time is sold, they'll do jack-all with the cash and give you a sliver of what was advertised as their actual thanks to the community. 👌

[@VendettaPSC]

Give the GMs a command. /botcheck $username. You then code the botcheck command to pop a ingame captcha or some other human check you may prefer more, fail? System handles the ban itself, temp, 12hr ban, have that same line of code slap that name into a list. Everytime botcheck is ran, have it check the list, if that person is on the list, bump them up a suspension tier, 24 this time, and keep raising until you hit the perm ban, whatever arbitrary limit Anet sees fit works I s'pose for the most part, reasonably, anyway. Something like this should take one of their average devs a few hours or a day or two at most to get a basic version of that functional, would also cut time on the GM side, all he has to do is run a botcheck on a name, or even make it an AoE check if you'd like, and let the system handle the proper handouts for failures and let successes go on their way. OFC, keep an eye out on people evading detection n stuff, and tweak it as you go to help sure up any issues or holes in the method. I'd say a dev or two could have that working pretty functional in a week or so. You can even have it not ban and just like, keep a list of the names and hit the banwave button whenever, at your leisure. This is like 1, of 1,000,000,001 ways you can address this issue. Anet I adore you, but if my average programmer ass can think of solutions, I know those boys you pay them big bucks to back there, can. Head in ass on this kinda.

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

I'm sure Anet has thought many more ways on how to deal with botters. How to deal with the loss of players once NCSoft hears about it on the other hand...

[@VendettaPSC]

@@JoseValdeolivar-n7b Lol. Depends on perspective, from a business perspective, yes, running off paying customers is a bad idea, unless you absolutely have to. Botting does mess with the game, messes with the economy, looks like shit to new players, all the problems you'd think plus more, but it's not ruining the game on any sort of tangible way in the business sense.

[@wessredd7237]

I started playing two days ago and even I have already acquired the knowledge of hidden nooks and crannies full of afk necromancers 😂

[@Kitabake]

15:00 Through 3 years Arenanet was coming to AFK spots and banning people, they would teleport person 2k distance from spot and check if people were botting or idle farming, if they were afk for 5mins they would get ban. There is a lot of things guestaminated here. To complete process you should really talk with some idle, afk or bot farmes. Someone could spill the beans if you asked them. I am talking about EU*

[@JaffasYoutube]

I have talked with quite a few mass multiboxers and farmers. Sadly the owned of the huge one just ignored me, it would have been great to get some real numbers from them. I've seen GMs teleport people or ask them to move as a check. This is unfortunately the consequence of poor policy. If they had definitive rulings they wouldn't have to play these games. Anyone idle farming is still breaking the policy, however they are aware enough to move an account back without issue. I do feel bad for the support team that has to resort to this kind of thing. If they made AFK farming okay to do, or just outright banned it entirely, I dont mind. They just need to pick a side.

[@Kitabake]

@@JaffasKZbin if they said idle farming is sus and can get you ban, people would stop it.

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@Kitabake I would agree with that. They could do something along the lines of: "Due to being unable to distinguish active but Idle Farmers from AFK Farmers, all forms of suspicious gameplay of this nature is prohibited" and then offer perhaps a basic 12hr suspension as a grace period.

[@sentokigames151]

@@Kitabake logging in just for daily rewards and logout again is just 'idle' farming too. Where do you draw the line?

[@Kitabake]

@@sentokigames151 just ban everyone 😂

[@shierufu]

This gives Chaotic Neutral energy

[@Joromonni]

Good video, appreciate all the effort on data collection. Ive always been interested in collecting data like this in MMOs. Reminds me of SirPugger who does botting investigations on oldschool runescape.

[@JaffasYoutube]

Love me some SirPugger. Haven't played Runescape for years but I still watch him. Guild Wars 2 with 360 degree movement and 3D terrain does mean botting is way more lucrative thankfully.

[@fliessa4950]

The Spreadsheet link is not in the description.

[@JaffasYoutube]

Reddit got mad. Im just making a display version that hides the names incase anyone decided it's a good idea to harass other players. Once that's done, Ill pop it back in.

[@Kitabake]

@@JaffasKZbin this is not reddit, you can link it here :)

[@realhuman6792]

@@JaffasKZbin This one? docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15L-nGDNvf08RTUotZclIuCbvMcKeoHK1avWrv6SpC1w/edit#gid=1285758571

[@ginx2666]

@@Kitabake Plebbit's jannies are lurking here, like chomos around kindergarten, so posting it again will just get OP banned on plebbit (which is arguably a good thing, since reddit is a grooming platform anyway).

[@Baard5Szomoru]

​@@ginx2666 reddit grooming platform Meanwhile Discord: you amateurs

[@ColdMystery]

AFK-Farmers are the worst in my opinion. Such farms (also including hackers) ruined the economy of a game I used to play. IMO they should close the grey areas in their terms of service and ban people that actually AFK. Like if you are actively PLAYING the game while being on such a spot and you're responding if you're asked to - FINE. But entirely being AFK should be regulated.

[@keith2562]

LoL... I reported your "LIterally AFK Farming" account several times. I had some hope that accounts were being banned as the numbers I was seeing do appear to have been reduced lately, but now I'm not sure. Oh well, I treat reporting bots as a mini-game so I'll keep at it regardless. Thanks for your hard work here, I was sure this was the truth but it's good to see the actual numbers verified.

[@JaffasYoutube]

"Literally AFK Farming" is still alive and well, sadly. And don't worry. All profits are staying on the account. Even if ArenaNet think it's okay, I feel scummy transferring it into a Guild Bank.

[@kapenike]

Just a fun note: i found people clearly scripting their afk farms and sent a video to anet. Posted on the forums but my post was removed for "claiming game abuse" and i was restricted ... the afk scripters are still there xD pretty sure anet doesnt give a shit

[@FoundaPeanut]

I solo farm in the places where afk farmers do their thing... they hate it.

[@samohanka]

Good for them! You're doing Joko's work.

[@Kitabake]

Don't get me wrong, all who AFK or bot farm should get banned, not the players who hit the mobs near them, just people who are actually not attending to computer as stated in TOS.

[@JaffasYoutube]

"They must not be interacting with the world" - Your honor, I am simply protecting this individual for interacting with the world while AFK and being banned!

[@kirvu9677]

Unfortunately I happened to know a guy who was new that got banned because he went to go do an event and simply attacked a mob that an AFK bot was farming and he was the one who got banned. Not even the bot that was AFK.. this was maybe 4 or so years ago? Ever since then I don't even bother attacking mobs or going near AFK farmers unless there's an entire squad doing map events. Been playing this game since beta and it's.. just unfortunate that it's come to this.

[@kapenike]

Seems like theres a lot of development that could be done to fix this .... But since anet lost all the cores devs i'm guessing youre stuck with "pweez dont or we ban"

[@Baard5Szomoru]

Makes me wonder they'll never touch older code in order to fix all of this bs

[@VendettaPSC]

@@Baard5Szomoru To be fair, a game of this size is likely a pretty DEEP codebase at this point, not as easy as we make it sound. With the being said, it is their fucking jobs. lol

[@thiamisu]

I´m regularily doing TT on bloodtide coast and the orga regularily has to scout maps so they find one with few afks. there were instances of three maps each with 30+ people farming loot cave. which is more than just annoying considering the numbers you need for TT to succeed and there only being 150 slots on the map

[@AlexandreLefaure]

It is prohibitted to use a second monitor to watch Netflix but not if you watch Netflix on your TV while playing the game... How stupid

[@wyldlibrarian3549]

ANET really need to get busy doing their job and make the activity annoying eg Mass porting ppl out of the area to somewhere else

[@Fawstah]

I don't afk farm, but I do multi-box. I honestly did not know it could be this profitable. I've been only doing weeklies, I try to find places away from the bulk of other players, because people get understandably upset when they see 11 engis turret farming an occasional event that pops up. I try to talk to players as they come by, say hello, say they're welcome to join if they like, just so they know my accounts aren't afk, but I guarantee my accounts still get reported for botting- despite that I myself am controlling them actively as anet says I must to not get banned. in spite of the "you can afk for 5 minutes" in my experience it's more like a minute and a half before some of your accounts will get kicked for being afk, though that could be people reporting my accounts for botting. So it actually becomes more difficult to respond to people, because I have to make sure 11 accounts all use a turret skill every so often. They were unable to survive some places I did want to farm, such as Balthazar camps for mastery point experience. I ensure they aren't kicked by only using one turret skill at a time, and then destroying the previous turret skill, swapping back and forth as soon as recharge allows. I was mainly doing weeklies, because I wanted to farm t6 mats using laurels and mystic coins off the wizard's vault for myself and my friend alone. I wasn't selling, so zero impact to the tp. I sold almost none of the gear from the farms, and the little gold I received (about 21g per account on average for 3-5 hours of doing the weekly) mostly went to buying more mystic coins for legendaries, offsetting the ludicrously high cost of legendaries, or getting every account a "rechargeable teleport to friend" using gold to gems - invaluable if you really want to multi box, because moving accounts is the most tedious and difficult part of multi boxing by far. The best farm I found for group events is a boss outside the dungeon in mount maelstrom, largely because it has a decent enough respawn rate. though, I've been considering going to world bosses. I don't like that idea, largely because I'd prefer to multi box away from other players to not ruin their fun. world bosses would be faster and more lucrative however. that spot does fit in with the 2-3g an hour outside of weeklies, even with the many inquest you can pull into the farm. When farming a race to kill, I usually google that race and look up locations on the wiki, finding somewhere core tyria that is in the 60-80 range. Usually these places are less player populated. if you need weekly veterans, the lowest tier of urban battlegrounds fractal can supply an endless swarm of veterans that die in one hit, they don't drop any loot, but it's better than parking where 3 veterans spawn in open world and upsetting players "damn bots ruin everything" as one player said, when it died farming the veterans in queensdale. learned my lesson there lol jumping puzzles are the easiest, with the aforementioned rechargeable teleport to friend, 1 account can teleport to an account that did the jp using lfg, I send them 20 silver to say ty, then leave that person and rejoin your private squad, allowing your other accounts to teleport in. finally, doing a fractal is the second easiest one of the lot. have the accounts sit in lions arch, divide them into groups of five, have 1 leader with a build capable of soloing a low end fractal (reaper works well for this), and have the reaper go in and do the fractal, while your accounts sit idle at the start. dodging and combo fields for dailies have to be done manually, but if you're decent at the game and have enemies nearby that telegraph ranged attacks like in Orr, or golems in inquest areas, it's fairly easy to do, but it's tedious because you have to do it for every account manually. legendary can be done either with personal story or farming some world bosses (not all are legendary) shadow behemoth is doable as a legendary boss- but multboxing open world is significantly easier than trying to multi box world bosses. I'd recommend the accounts have end of dragons expansion with access to the mechanist spec, if you're starting from scratch. use a personal guild hall to teleport engis to lions arch when you need to inventory manage them one at a time, or if you need a safe spot to be able to teleport to friend. (you have to be out of combat and not in an instance such as guild halls in order use the rechargeable teleport to friend) all that said, I'll try some of your spots tho lol. if I can get 14g, that would be incredible for legendary farming haha *edit* I tried some of the spots, the data i received from 2 hour of farming across 7 accounts in living world season 4, is as follows. They received around 2 gold in volatile magic per hour, and with exception of one account getting really good drops for some reason in the first hour, all accounts received around 1 gold in drops per hour. this could deserve further research, perhaps they nerfed repeated kill drops, perhaps that character was new and so got. a much better drop rate at first, perhaps the other engis had been used to multibox farm more and so had been reported more. It’s unclear. but considering the changes profit, a 21g farm going down to a 3g farm, i’d disagree with your thesis about afk players destroying the game or drastically having an impact, even.

[@burneverything5585]

The worst are afk farmers in wvw.. I kept seeing at least 10-15 ppl on EB afk in camp, just to get participation q.q And WvW has very limited amount of spots (around 70 ppl on EB, 60 on other maps) so it makes the population of wvw are 20% bots... And ppl cant join the map cuz there is a huge queue

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

I used to do this (because fuck WvW) and would pay 15g an hour to a very nice person who loved to play WvW.

[@burneverything5585]

@@JoseValdeolivar-n7b yy, you do that in spawn. But what I hate is that there are 10-15 ppl afk in camp to cap, not the main base. And they all probably belong to 1 guy who jsut afks in camp for participation. Idc about participation buyers - its not like I think it should be done, but they (you) are harmless imo, and not in that huge numbers, at least not at once

[@Koakoa45]

all we can do is report these cheaters and hope they do something, but yeah we know how that goes. Beginning to think after your video that the mods are the ones afk farming.

[@JaffasYoutube]

I gave the support team unrestricted and editorial access to the spreadsheet too. Oh well, I'm going to keep doing frequent surveys to see if populations rise or fall

[@La.máquina.de.los.sueños]

I did it 2 times, fully scripted runs, on my alt account. The amount of karma needed to get basic stuff is quite insane when you start a new account and when you know exactly what's worth spending your karma on. I mostly feared being reported by AFK farmers because scripted bots are more efficient + less detectable + I was ruining their AFK passive farms. Once I had enough Karma and bought what I needed, I scrapped my scripts. It wasn't to make golds, but to give my account a better karma start (when starting with less than 10k karma but when some items are sold 60k+ karma). I don't know if it was less shameful since karma stuff don't usually give a real in-game advantage. Overall, AFK farmers aren't ruing the gaming experience (since present in all games, every gamers expect to see AFK farmers somewhere), they never/rarely stop map events spawning, but it's terribly non-immersive to see them stack at one place... and most likely make legit poor (money-wise) players jealous of them gaining tons of golds while doing nothing.

[@sentokigames151]

In rare occasions they actually do interfere with you gaming. Try doing the heart in ascalon near the wall. Took me about an hour because the necro's were killing the enemy so fast I couldn't keep up. Some events could scale up...and that's only bad if you trying to solo some event or if that event doesn't give more rewards with more mobs. Other than that I've lived with the idea there isn't much you can do about it, and why stress about things you can not change that moment.

[@gex6616]

This is goldd!!!

[@solidcat3917]

AFK farmer what do they win by doing it? do they sell the gold?

[@elocfreidon]

They sell the materials which devalues the items. In the video they even admitted they crashed sacs which is most insect and spider farms.

[@sentokigames151]

@@elocfreidon that's this one person who advocates to do it. It's not about crashing a markets, it's about making gold. You make more gold if something is rare or hard to get. Imagine me thinking I finally would sell T6 materials because I keep hoarding stuff and I needed to buy something only to see the price was around 3s...I didn't sell because I thought it was a waste to do so and kept it.

[@solidcat3917]

@@elocfreidon Yeah I know they sell the materials but what is the goal of doing that do they sell the gold to other players for real money like $1dollar for 100 gold?

[@elocfreidon]

@@solidcat3917 I know where you're trying to go with this. This isn't a gold selling issue. It is a farm devaluing issue for new players. Gold is tied to gems, it effects the game as a whole. 10% of wealth generated is from the afk farming. Which means 10% of gem/gold value is depreciated. It is like suffering the TP fee twice.

[@missk1697]

Wait, so the Kourna farm with choyas actually nets that much gold? I think I found the perfect usage for my herald.

[@JaffasYoutube]

The number was based on Mechanist which can reach many spawns. Heralds do have a limited AoE range so I wouldn't expect it to be nearly as high.

[@missk1697]

@@JaffasKZbin As long as there is a mechanist firing his mortar kit, just giving him boons makes you tag mobs.

[@themeltedchocolate]

The real issue with afk farms are heralds who literally do nothing, no buttons, no turrets, no minions, they literally just stand there giving boons nobody asked for. I couldn't imagine being so shameless lol

[@JaffasYoutube]

​@@themeltedchocolate The best part, you can be under the map within boon range to get all the loot without being visible to the standard player. Heralds are probably the hardest to enforce the policy on, as they aren't killing anything, though they are interacting with the world.

[@panmaciej121]

I heard they come visit these spots and say 'hmm' or tp/whisper players to see if they react/reply. I can understand they don't want to ban someone by accident, but come on. What's the chance that at least 1 person is standing there and 'playing actively'? Here in eu it looks similar. I just went down to most popular spots and each of them had 10-15 farmers (it's low, but maybe because it's early morning right now). But I have to tell You that I recently went for core tyria completion on few characters and what surprised me was the amount of afk farmers there. Im not talking about the popular spots, but some random cave or tunnel (cause it's tight and mobs are close) or just any place with couple of mobs relatively close to each other. You don't see much people there, maybe 2-4 necromancers with minions, but the amount of those spots is huge. Basically each map has couple of them. People who say it doesn't affect the game are wrong. If the earnings are how You say, I only imagine more and more people will do that. 14gph for doing nothing vs 20-30 for active playing, damn. If was to solve it I would give short ban for 1-2 days as warning, I see them again - longer like few weeks, I see them again - permament. It's that simple anet, hire me and I'll do it.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

I'd run a screen recorder software and try to get as many evidence as I can. Hey don't underestimate the power of shamelessness as Those 2g or 14g/hr could be transformed into hundreds or thousands depending on the number of accounts the user has.

[@moopet4life874]

You are a modern Sherlock Holmes! Great Analysis! Behind an MMO is humans. Give enough space between "the rules" and they start to abuse that space. Now; if you want to know why nothing is really done about it.... it should be obvious. the spaces between "rules" are created by Anet because they also have employees that also Afk-farm. It would be hypocrite if they implement law-breaking while upholding the law? can't have both so instead of being vocal about it they simple say "we are working on it" and "hm...." The only way for this to stop is to stop Multi-box all together; wich shall not happen. there is too much financial gain at stake. Trust me. Hope this video gets more views.

[@צמחישראלמרום]

the side of me the want to get LOTS of gold, want to do it very bad. yet the other side of me agree with every point you said about it hurting the players the play the game actively. and also not nice to see as a player the explore the world. I, for the first time, encounterd this exact inquest event bag. today(before seeing this video). it really did not care. it was hilarious imo, but I can see how it can break immersion. but let's be honest... people walking around with such shiny outfits break immersion the same way as well. so i don't think the last part of immersion is really valid. but hurting the economy for players that play actively for those same materials, this is something I totally agree.

[@TheTolnoc]

This policy is ridiculously brutal. I watch KZbin videos on the side while I play some times, shifting focus back and forth. I could absolutely have been banned at some point for having a minion or turret out when I got distracted. What the hell?

[@JaffasYoutube]

Watching videos on the side while actively playing is fine. It's if you're monitoring the game / not focused on it while farming, that's where the policy applies.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

So brutal that when you report those bots, nothing happens! No ban, nothing...

[@spankyjeffro5320]

You should have been banned. Going AFK is never acceptable for any reason.

[@stevethedevilnerd2360]

The worst AFK spot in EU is Doric Sea, there are hundrets, the map is mostly not playable, because there are so many minions, that the whole map got an insane Ping, and you cant even cast skills, also Rifts scale insanly high near them a T1 isnt doable alone, because of both the said abouve things Edit: comment was made before you mentioned it XD I hope AFK farmers get punished more by Anet, I deeply despite AFK farmers

[@JaffasYoutube]

There were lots of locations only active on EU that I sadly couldn't check, Lake Doric for example, as I only have a heroic edition EU account.

[@perishVS]

I have some experience in being banned in gw2, a couple of times due to afk farming. The customer service/GM's in this game are sooo inconsistent, sometimes they ban sometimes they do nothing. I swear they must roll dice to decide on the outcome in any situation, also sometimes i think they lost the dice.

[@Baard5Szomoru]

Afk farmers shine for their lack of chromosomes.

[@TheVoltarus]

I really don't know how you reached those profit numbers. I agree on every point this video makes aside from everything related to profits, or how much it impacts the economy. I have tested this myself across multiple spots (mainly Ibogas and the underwater Inquest) and I usually only reach 1/3 to 1/2 of your profit. Sometimes less. Especially the underwater inquest spot, even in ideal conditions I only reach 1/3 of your profits. I talked with some afk farmers, and they had similar numbers to me. What did you do exactly? Did you really put down engineer turrets all the time to gather data at some spots? Did you really only autocast with Necro, or also use that one AoE skill all the bots use? Because I can ensure you, all people that use engis/spam that one necro AoE for this use scripts. No one will replace the turrets all 5 minutes for hours. And that isn't "afk farming", that is scripting/botting. Those are two entirely different things (as you mentioned yourself), but in some parts of the video you grouped them together.

[@JaffasYoutube]

I appreciate the questions, it's good to not blindly believe what you see. Firstly for the economy point. Meta events are the only measurable form of mass wealth production we can estimate as players as we can count how many full maps there are. Other larger wealth generators such as wizards vault cannot be measured, as we have no way to tell how many players login, complete dailies, weeklies or spend their AA efficiently. Applying peak rates to all meta event iterations was to roughly account for these other methods that cannot be measured. It's crude, however it's the only possible way to get any form of estimate. This is the same method Nike used when evaluating the economy. I could have phrased it better, but it's an example with a rough estimate, not an absolute fact. I apologise if that wasn't made clear. For the profits, each location was farmed like an AFKer for >2hrs with respective builds to mimic their profits and ensure diminishing returns was taking effect. Many afk farmers do 2-3 hour blocks several times a day which reduces the impact of D.R. Many farmers don't take into account the profits from Karma, Volatile Magic or Spirit Shards. They can add several gold worth of profit hourly. 1 spirit shard alone has a value of ~1g at the moment. 4 levels per hour can profit a player an extra 4g. These "hidden profits" are almost never taken into consideration by AFK farmers, either that or they willing withhold the information to appear like they're less impactful than they really are. Giving the benefit of the doubt though. Incredible Sushi, a popular AFK farmer who produces guides, confirmed that his hourly rate in Istan is roughly 9.5g/hr in his interview with mighty teapot. My hourly was 8.7(?) If I remember correctly. Another factor for profits is how many other players are there, as they may cause enemies to be dying too quickly, as well as the build you are using, as some builds are more effective. Eg. Underwater Inquest I used Mallyx Revenant positioned to hit both the event spawns, and the natural spawns of inquest. Scripting and botting make up a tiny amount of the data, removing them would make little impact. The reason they are all included is because they all fall under the unattended gameplay policy. If you are botting, you are AFK after all. Trying to reply on mobile, if I've forgotten anything or you have any more questions, just ask.

[@TheVoltarus]

@@JaffasKZbin Thank you for the very thorough reply. I guess I can understand your reasoning about the impact of the economy. Personally, I don't think it's a good metric but I guess the goal was to have a value that is at least somewhat correct. And I have no idea about how to do something better. Do I understand correctly that you used Engineer for most spots (like Ibogas and Choya)? My Iboga testing was done via a Necromancer (minions + Greatsword 4 on autocast), farming ~1,5 mob spawn locations (via smart positioning of the Wurm on other players - the Ibogas AoE hits the other player, which damages my minion, which makes me farm two spots at once). Even when factoring in Spirit Shards, Volatile Magic, Karma and the occasional Trade Contract I didn't get to 7g. Although I have to admit that Karma is really hard to properly include because dumping it is extremely tedious, or timegated. Maybe that's just the issue with Necromancers at that spot. More convenience (no turret placement), but a bit less gold? For the underwater farm I also used a Revenant (in a group with 4 others). But the spot is always extremely filled on EU servers. And apparently, the event also bugs out frequently which no longer makes it spawn in that instance. I'll have to test a bit further.

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@TheVoltarus Necromancer in general is a really inefficient AFK farmer. Great survivability, but terrible for kills per hour and enemy tagging. That's quite possibly why your rates aren't equal to that of an engineer. You are correct though for methods, Choya was Mechanist w/ Turret which was killing 5-6 Vet choya I think. Standard full turret engi for Iboga. Mentioning the spot is extremely full, that will also significantly impact rates. More players, more damage, mobs die quicker, less chance to tag. Again, I don't advise you AFK or Idle farm due to the policy, but clearly it's not enforced very well, so if that's a risk you're willing to take. Go for it!

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

Maybe DR doesn't kick in if your minions / turrets do the killing for you.

[@mauboy1983]

Don't forget to check the afk bot with his 100+ toons in Malchors leap, farming the wood node nonstop. One of his accountname is Nordpeak and they all belong to the same guild. Just check them. You can see how they log in, press F aand switch toon 24/7... getting rich doing nothing

[@FlowerBot]

if he's clicking F and logging in, is he technically afk? otherwise how could multiboxing 'technically not break tos' ..

[@AlexandreLefaure]

"not actively playing the game" does not mean anything. From this AFK farming is not identifiable. Nobody can prove that there is not someone behind the computer "actively playing the game". Even sending pm, even if the person is staying in the same spot for hours. Else, how much time is it tolerated to stay on one spot? Is it forbidden to not answer pm?

[@JaffasYoutube]

Spot on. The policy is horrifically written and impossible to enforce. It means that GMs have to play silly little games of Simon Says instead of having verifiable metrics that would make their job 10x easier and faster.

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

Hence why the 'Hmm' from GM Claude. His hands are tied.

[@platinumgrit]

An angle which needs to be thought about: how to compensate Anet for the drop in real-world money banning AFK accounts will cause? As a shareholder or a development manager, how do I justify banning paying customers when we badly need all the real-world money we can get? After firing a whole lot of staff due to being unable to afford to keep them on, do we really want to ban customers who've paid multiple thousands in real $$$? And who most likely spend a lot more money with Anet than you do? AFK farmers might sell some of their gold to other players, and they might then spend that gold buying more accounts, gems, etc etc. How do I ban a customer that's paying the company say $300 a month, versus you who are paying Anet $79 a year? Those AFK farmers might be funding the ongoing survival of your MMO. Asking for all AFK farmer accounts to be banned... might hasten the death of the very game you love.

[@paulminor4707]

this video makes me want to use all the heroic edition accounts i had for daily logins and just burn them up through afk farming. Is there any precedent of the main accounts the gold is being funneled to being banned as well?

[@apoguita]

Use a guild bank or transfer valuables, not gold

[@hanneskarlbom6644]

At this point they might as well remove the anti-AFK TOS and just add an afk function like BDO....

[@MrStanify]

Of course they will lie about the gold they make. They dont want competition. Keep reporting them. Good job on your investigation!

[@AB-pj7mc]

Those "real" bots aren't as rare as you may think. I quite commonly see at least 1-2 bots running EoD lanterns whenever i do a lantern run for myself. They are usually indicated by popping up next to the lanterns (Fairly often inside a wall or other nearby structure even), disappearing and seconds later showing up at the next lantern. I report those whenever i can but as often as i see that i have my doubts that Anet is actually doing anything at all upon such reports.

[@Maebbie]

thanks for showing me a few new locations where i can attendivly farm ;)

[@JaffasYoutube]

The choya spot is really good if you can tag all spawn locations. Obviously you have to compete with bots, but it's still very good

[@MonasteryOfSilence]

I quit GW2 2 years ago because of afk farmers and Anet not doing anything about it, i came back for the expansion and its still the same, i cant even believe it.

[@RaptorJesus.]

So what you're saying is...I should absolutely be multiboxing right now :P

[@pspdsi22]

I hear your explanation in the first five minutes of the video. I am now concerned when I alt tab to watch videos when I craft 30,000+ research notes. Am I AFK farming?

[@xobieu]

naming ur character ban me for afk is so funny in the end of the video lol

[@moti1s]

Good thing the all seeing eye of GW2 justice system didn't notice that I was listening podcasts while playing, otherwise I would be banned apparently

[@mikuplays3399]

I have no idea how you got 22g/hr at the choya farm, even 11g/hr seems high. I spent 30mins running around as burst scrapper killing all the choya on sight (vets and normal) and I managed about 6.5g an hour with drops quickly fading due to DR (I must have been unlucky I guess?). I was killing mobs at a MUCH faster rate than the mech engis too. Also, you mention that you're not witch hunting, but you provide access to a public sheet with all the account names on regardless? I'm not on your sheet, nor do I support afk farmers if you're wondering.

[@JaffasYoutube]

That's odd, I did the same thing afterwards just as a reaper and was about 30-35g for the hour. If you're tracking with the Gw2Efficiency Farming tool, that doesn't incorporate profit from Karma, Volatile Magic or Spirit Shards. Perhaps that's where the missing wealth is for you?

[@mikuplays3399]

@@JaffasKZbin I might have been really unlucky, I'll try again tonight for good science

[@JaffasYoutube]

@@mikuplays3399 Ill do some active farming there myself to track. Always more than happy to help out active players. Edit: In a very populated instance (AFKers at every spawn) I managed about 27g (20g materials, 4g shards, 3g Volatile Magic) I was using scrapper + rifle focusing the Vets Only to try and mimic what you appear to be using. I think Reaper is best because you can spectral grasp quite large amounts of them to increase kill rates.

[@mikuplays3399]

@@JaffasKZbin I'm still struggling to get to your values, and I tried several farms today while actively killing things and I feel that Diminishing Returns (and perhaps MF?) likely has a bigger impact on your profit figures than expected. I feel like your findings are ironically misleading (Not being disrespectful or trying to cause drama). Maybe people have worked out a way to exploit this and they haven't shared it, I don't know. But 8 hour afk farm sessions seem wildly unfeasible when DR kicks in within 30mins-1hr and drops turn to junk or none at all. I would like to see a more in depth update video with evidence of extended farming so we can see how long and what quality drops you continue to receive.

[@Tallbarrsix]

Where the spreadsheet at

[@JaffasYoutube]

Reddit moderators had a hissy hit that the sheet had account names in it. Im just making a display version that hides the names incase anyone decided it's a good idea to harass other players. Once that's done, Ill pop it back in.

[@banditoincognito8950]

Thanks alot for ruining my spot dude. Now theres 40 people in it.

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

Hey! The more the merrier.

[@Aranimda]

Noooo! Don't kill the little cactus people...

[@JaffasYoutube]

Melon Man goes *Pop*

[@SoloMona18]

I hope anet does something about these guys, it is a bit bothersome to know that they are actually being rewarded for it

[@andyblakeley4575]

Potential 4D chess move at the end, telling people not to AFK farm but giving them all the resources so that if the AFK population goes up it can hit critical mass and ANet must do something about it.

[@apoguita]

The way the infrastructure works, by having dynamic maps that get phased when full, makes your statement impossible to achieve, there could never be a critical mass if all of the actors are not centralized , as long as they are distributed in many map instances, a new map will open and the game will keep on working.

[@Mrmeowgi123]

write that down, write that down

[@JaffasYoutube]

A gold star for the best student!

[@diwi7552]

i wish anet would do something against afk farming at labfarm, its literally impossible to get squad members to the map, bc anet dont want to kick afk farmer from full maps. we always report them. they destroy the fun and the farmroute for everyone there.

[@themeltedchocolate]

Shit, anet is going to take away my phone for watching youtube during a boring meta 😭

[@DeanCalaway]

They don't care because they can tell investors "look at all the players we have" so every account counts. I honestly had no idea how much gold they make and it made me disgusted knowing how much effort it takes me in comparison.

[@eiderez]

I enjoyed that video way too much xD

[@CheezecakesMinis]

So what I need to do is stop buying gems and get a few more accounts and just go afk ok arena net challenge accepted thanks for fucking up another game. If you can't beat em I'll join em.

[@JoseValdeolivar-n7b]

Feed the beast, baby!

[@Ihave3gooddogs]

The hourly rates are higher for afk farmers now because ecto/t6/vm are worth at least 4x as much as they were previously. They weren’t lying, the economy is just way healthier now

[@Janalysiert]

What puzzles me - it should be SO easy to track unusual growth of gold on an account.....and find them superfast.

[@TeamD3ath2]

its bizarre that they don't just ban the account that thousands of gold worth of mats gets sent to from accounts they just banned