Difference between revisions of "Farm"

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Farming is the repetitive killing of monsters which present little or no challenge to the player for the purpose of earning experience and winning treasure (at no risk).
#REDIRECT [[cheating]]
 
Farming is widely considered to be abusive play as it upsets the game balance if players can get items and experience for free.
 
Games with [[non-persistent]] levels or games that feature self-reproducing monsters are most susceptible to farming. Perhaps the quintessential example is worm-farming in [[Angband]]. Angband features a catagory of monsters known as "worm masses" which will divide to create more worms. A high level player surrounded by worms can level up ''ad infinitum'' by placing a marble on one of the arrow keys of his keyboard, causing the [[Player Character|PC]] to continually attack the masses, and come back several hours later to find his character seriously leveled up.
 
== Countermeasures ==
 
Some of the more common countermeasures developers implement to prevent or discourage farming:
 
* Grant little or no experience when the level difference between the PC and a monster is larger than some threshold
* Grant experience only for the first N monsters of one type that a player kills
* Make dungeon trips one way (all stairs go down - no way revisit ealier levels)
* Detect farming behavior directly and punish the player through divine retribution
* Disallow infinitely reproducing monsters
* Disallow [[stair dancing]] by limiting the frequency a player may use a set of stairs
* Use [[persistent dungeon]]s
* Do not use a conventional [[level]]-based system

Latest revision as of 03:46, 21 September 2006

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