As we all know, hyperspawning was introduced as a mechanic back in TBC to help people finish quests in crowded areas. It had since be abused everywhere by bots and/or multiboxers for mindless farming.
Instead of the current ineffective reporting/banning process, why not just nerf their productivity to the ground by a few gameplay changes?
Newly spawned mobs (outside of instances) will live for at least 5-10 seconds, during which they can be tagged by anybody (like designated quest mobs) without the 2x4 cap;
Mobs that are killed within 30-60 seconds of spawning (except rares or world bosses) drop only quest items and nothing else, and do not give any experience.
I agree with you in general, but not sure that I like this in the details. Definitely like the part about not dropping anything, but I think the criterium isn’t exactly right. For example if a mob spawns on you in regular play and you nearly died from it, it would kinda suck to not get a reward for defeating it regardless through great effort and CD usage.
How about this: A hyperspawned mob is marked as hyperspawned and provides no reward other than quest completions until it would have respawned naturally?
I get that there is a bot problem but we can´t dumb down the grind because of that. how are raiders/hardcore players going to farm gold and mats for the tools they need?
I had no problems whatsoever during the early days of DF when people hadn’t yet figured out all the best farm spots and the bots were broken. I could earn tens of thousands of gold a week just by flying around and doing a few things while waiting in queues or for groups to form. 10k an hour?
The problems only appear once farming gives nothing because you can’t compete with these tactics and bots, forcing you to buy tokens from said botters because even though the prices are lower, your income is way lower.
Hyperspawned mobs should be given a grace period before they drop something again, with the exception of quest items].
A feature to tackle overcrowding before Sharding has been so greatly abused, by bots and 2x4 groups, I find it surprising Blizz did nothing about it other than blanket delete specific drops from them like in Remix.
It won’t remove bots I don’t think, but it’ll certainly make their efforts a lot less effective, giving the rest of us a bit more of a chance to actually sell something at a decent price.
But it’s also the normal farming. I remember in 10.0.5 or 10.1 where I was often whispered to ask if I wanted to join a particular farm strategy that involved 10 mages all standing on the exact same spot. There were several options in The Azure Span, but it was very important that once you’d picked the spot you all stood straight on top of one another. Then you’d pull everything and flamestrike it all to death, and then they’d hyperspawn. Forever. For hours.
I did it for a little while and it did make a ton of gold, but gods was it boring. That sort of playstyle is completely degenerate and should not exist. And of course it flooded the market and was eventually not worth the time investment anymore, but bots don’t care one jot. They’ll farm until reckoning day if nothing is done to stop them.
For this to be realistic, mobs will have to be made much harder, I can’t think of a mob that takes longer to kill than 30 seconds, even in high keys (except bosses of course)
However I agree something needs to be done to stop hyper farming. A cap per hour on the amount of resources obtained perhaps?
What do you mean? Most mobs just drop grey vendor crap. Legion, I think, was so bad at that you even got the grey items mailed to you if you didn’t loot.
Firstly, a lot of those grey items actually have some value when you add it up. 4 gold here, 10 gold there - if you farm these things that will spawn every 4-5 seconds and farm them for 5 hours, that can actually add up to 20-30k per player in such a farm group - but more importantly they dropped cloth and you could skin them. Well, half and half really. I know there was a farm spot involving gnolls and hyenas. The hyenas you skin, the gnolls you loot for cloth. Obviously if you’re a skinner in the group you can basically just go to town while everybody else is spamming flamestrike.
That very quickly adds up to thousands and thousands of skins entering the market just from one farm group. Now imagine having thousands of bots doing this for weeks at a time.
And remember, as far as the cloth drops is concerned, they drop cloth for each player individually. Skins aren’t as bad, but it’s still a lot.
That’s a lot of tradeskill items. That’s why they’re often worth more to the vendor than the auction house.
On the herbing front, many herbs are now worth more dead than alive. Hochenblume is literally vendortrash, that’s how many are being farmed. 5s on the NPC, 4s-5s on the AH. Once you go below vendor price the market caps out because there’s no reason to put them for sale as it’s a loss after factoring in the AH fees. Just vendor them. There’s no way it’s normal players doing that. I can’t find the bots very often, but their presence is extremely obvious due to what they are doing to the market.
Yes, but also fix the problem that draws people to using them.
Otherwise, people will just keep gravitating to the next possible exploit to gain what is missing.
And before you complain about tokens, before them it was worse : The story you recount is 100% true. Except that once the boters found their farming areas (which used to be dungeons) you were left in the gutter poor as a rat with no other way to compete.
Except buying gold from said botters for real money.
No, you actually don’t. Blizzard are acting as a broker. Well, an anonymous broker, really. You can’t buy tokens that Blizzard never issue because nobody buys tokens to put on the AH (which is a scenario I have only ever seen once, but I have seen it!), and you don’t know from whom you bought your token - only that Blizzard facilitated it going from the seller (the one who created a token by giving Blizzard money) to the buyer - the one who now gets to consume it for game time or battle.net balance.
No it wasn’t. You just exchanged a less secure broker for a more secure one, making for a gameplay experience that ensures the safety of something I consider to be effectively cheating - though often inevitably in the modern game. Guilty as charged on the tokens - I had no other options due to bots. And the problem with the botters crashing the market is that it will eventually force you to buy gold.
Whoever vets the transactions is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. It’s only relevant for the buyers.
So much talk when you only had to answer a simple question :
Who is the sole creator of tokens ? Blizzard or bots ?
Once you answer that question, ask yourself : can you redeem tokens for real world money or cant you? The answer is NO. You cant.
THEREFORE :
As a consumer. When you swipe your card to buy gold… THIS is the reality.
TODAY : Swipe card on BLIZZARDS web-page. A trusted entity. You give 20E to BLIZZ.
BEFORE : Swipe card on some Chinese web-page. A un-trustworthy entity. You give 20E to some Chinese farmers.
THEREFORE :
Today blizzard profits from gold selling. Before, THE BOTTERS profited from gold selling.
But blizzard can print as many tokens as it wants. Dosent need to have farmers in hyperperspawn locations to acquire the product they intend to sell.
The ONLY reason gold sellers still exist is because they undercut blizzard tokens. And there still are people out there stupid enough to actually buy it.
GW2 has a similar mechanic, they call it bonus xp but inside out, a fresh mob is 25% xp and possibly less loot.
At one point WoW had anti-farm, reducing rewards from killing identical mobs in a streak.
I don’t need hyperspawns.
After clearing an area without completing my quest, I would likely be bored of it and spice it up by moving out - respawn will happen in the meanwhile.
I prefer few players around. Of course it’s nice to see other players on the road or in town, and kinda cool to cooperate sometimes. It is however quite annoying to fight for tags.
Timeless Isle was the first where I noticed aggressive spot grinding design, which got popular with players and bots alike.
I always felt like WoW was designed as a single player game.
Unironically GW2 feels like looking at WoW and fixing all the bad.
