Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Will or how will GW2 be affected by professional farmers?
Winterhound
Member Posts: 66
in Guild Wars 2
They seem to invade inevitably and tend to ruin everyone's experience.
The limited supply of gems keeps the price of gems high (in terms of in-game gold), and my guess is that the farmers will push this price higher because they can "make" gold and players can buy gold with real money (through secondary market). At the same time can make the game easier (hopefully not to the point where they remove challenge) by jumping in on mobs you're fighting. Lastly, the spam chat by advertising their service. (I hate farmers.)
Thoughts on impact of farmers?
Comments
Well first off, how can gold farmers push the marked when Anet just can lower the price, and why would people buy from outside of Anet?
Anyway here is some leaked info, from the official forum from late July that will help fight gold farming.
Hard to say since you can't trade directly, only through mail system plus you can't trade gems at all.
This makes selling gold and rare materials (ala ectos from gw1) the only option, but if gem market is volatile, farmers will have a tough(er) nut to crack. It should stabilise after 2-3 weeks, but It's pretty hard to predict - It's first global economy in a triple A mmo, sociology and psychology will be useful here.
Also, with legal gold available in game (game->gold conversion) I expect most of demand will go away in favor of a secure environment.
Additionally, I'm pretty sure that thanks to linear leveling curve, gold/hour will stay relatively same, but I'm pulling this one out of my ass.
With these little details, I think farmers will have a harder-than-usual time - as long as there will be some nice scripts running through mails. Up to Anet.
Pretty sure It's going to be profitable once someone makes a working bot though. Which, of course, is inevitable, and again, is the matter of how Anet responds to that.
Regards
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Ah such fond memories of seeing dhuum come and kill people. I honestly hope they bring that to GW2 and it would be cool to see the reactions of new players(i.e non GW1 veterans. Which I'm sure will be a lot!) when they see it. But tbh, it doesn't matter even if there is a cash shop. They'll still come and people will still always buy. However, people who have played played GW1, would probably know that the you don't see too many gold farmers in that game. Hopefully it stays that way.
do not forget Karma most of the better stuff comes from Karma NPC
also what are they going to farm any way DE'S the gold you get from mobs kills is not that much and the mat nodes take a long time to come back
Yeah. The entire design of the game, the nature of the gem to gold exchange and specific mechanisms to prevent large amounts of un-earned gold from being shuffled around should combat Illegal Gold Farmers pretty effectively.
There is no person to person trade. You can send items and coin to someone via the mail, but it seems that there will be limits on how much coin you can send around, based on how much you have earned from playing the game. This means that a Gold Seller would have to earn all the gold they were going to sell on the toon that would deliver the gold, rather than having a huindred farmers and bots farm the gold and the consolidate it.
You can't buy an item from the Trading Post from a particular seller, nor can you buy an item at any price higher than the lowest price listed. The Trading Post is shared by all servers in your region of the world, currently there is a US and an EU datacenter. I'm sure Asia will have it's own when the game launches there next year. There just is no way to laundry money via the Trading Post.
On the demand side, how many people are going to risk their accounts to buy illicit gold, espescially knowing how difficult Arenanet have made it for people to do so with out being caught, when they can spend $$$ on Gems, which can then be exchanged for gold on a supply/demand driven official currency market?
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
At least not since they banned the 3000 bot. Haha I hope they have some sort of awesome animation like Dhuum.
There will still be gold farmers, unfortunately. There always is.
IMO, it's still too early to tell what role farmers are gonna play in GW2...It seems like they have certainly taken them into account and are doing what they can to minimize thier impact, but as others have already said...it's invevitable.
I personally don't let farmers ruin my expierience, back when I played Lineage 2 and FFXI there where so many and you had to compete with them for mobs....since they often use macros and such it was really a downer....but if you look at WOW for instance, the farmers didn't bother me so much. In fact myself and some friends used to get into some pretty funny pvp battles with them. Persistent bunch.
Why would goldfarmers put time into GW2 when they'll have to compete with the gems to gold system?
They'd have to sell cheaper than the going rates to sell anything. I'd rather sell straight than risk a ban over a slightly better gold per dollar rate anyway. As soon as goldfarmers got wind of a similar system in AO they bolted for the door. Zero gold spam.
Not enough money to be made there. Buying gold from players below the going rate and selling it to players above the going rate just isn't worth the time investment and the risk. It's just not going to happen.
There are still some unknowns on the gems to gold and the other way around, but if it works like I think it will then goldspam will be close to a non-issue.
They don't ruin everyone's experience do they ?
I've been playing GW 1 since the begining and I believe and even read it some where that, they programed it so the drop rate changes if you keep farming at the same spot
It happens to me many times when I try to farm certain materials or certain weapon. The longer I stay at the spot, it kind of get worse. Sometimes I'll log out and wait 5 minutes and log back in and hoping it would "re-set".
I believe they will have the same kind of programing in place for GW 2 as well so you can't stay at one spot and keep farming over and over like a robot.
If "professional" gold farmers ever make it into GW2, they would have to sell their gold REALLY cheap to be attractive. You can buy gold with gems from the shop, and it's 100% legal. You don't risk your account when doing it. Why would anyone buy gold from some unsafe remote company, with the risk to not only get his account banned but also his credit card data abused, when he can get the same thing legally without any risk?
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I would ask the same of Eve, but even the plex cards do not prevent them. Do not assume they cannot make profit through undercutting.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
On top of all the other points and features that others have mentioned that Arenanet has put in, I also believe the B2P model itself will also make it very difficult to be a gold farmer on GW2 with any hope for profit.
Consider that with a f2p game, thier is no barrier for entry at all so thier is no risk of loss of money if your bots get caught. You just lose a little bit of time.
In a P2P game on the other hand, The dev's are reluctant to ban accounts found to be bots since they are still hoping for the extra $15 a month that an account may pay. Some have even gone so far as to not actually ban the bots until day 32 of the account just to see if they can get the extra $15 out of the account and still be able to say "Look, we are banning the bots."
With B2P model however, Arenanet has major incentives to ban bots. Since the barrier to entry is $50 it will cost a farmer $50 for every attempt. Since GW2 has no subscription fee, they dont lose any potenital sub fee if they ban accounts so they have less reason to be reluctant to ban bots. One of 2 things happen from that point. Either the professional gold seller will be persistant, which would simply make Arenanet more money with each ban. Or the gold seller will simply move on and write GW2 off as an unprofitable game for gold selling given the risk/reward calculus.
The same can be applied to hackers as well. Sure hackers and gold sellers will always exist. But now Arenanet gets a payday everytime they ban one. Assuming they are stupid enough to come back.