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The AFK farming problem

XinZhao2WinNhao··7 votes·1,704 views

There are AFK farmers in games. They just farm the jungle and you ping them to take turrets but they won't push or join teamfights, they will just clean up after the team is already dead, and then go back to jungling instead of pushing lanes.

They have high KDAs because they only go in on low HP enemies, and run away whenever there's an actual fight. Then they continue jungling. They never join a teamfight. You can identify them because they will have an average of about 1 assist per game (because they never join teamfights) but a lot of kills and CS from AFK farming. They will have very low deaths because they only go in on low HP enemies after the team is already dead. They will also purposely let teammates die if they think that it means they will get the kill instead of the assist, or sometimes for other reasons.

I lost a game because of one of those AFK farmers. Reporting them doesn't even help because it's an automated system and doesn't see what theyre doing. Another problem is that champion masteries encourage this behavior. That troll that lost us the game? Got an S+.

I didn't post this under player behavior because there are 2 parts of this: Gameplay - champ mastery system, the current state of the game (too team reliant, hard to carry 4v5, etc) and player behavior - the automated system not identifying afk farmers, selfish attitudes in league of legends

And I think that gameplay is overall a more suitable umbrella for both of these problems since this affects games that people play in.

Proposal to fix the problem: 1 way to fix this is to include a champion mastery criteria where they measure the amount of time you spend around other champions and participation in grouping if they're not splitpushing. For someone who is split pushing, prioritize their turret damage over everything else. If someone is splitpushing and fail at actually getting turrets, then they don't deserve an S. And if someone is not splitpushing they should be with the group.

Other solutions: Make turret damage a visible stat again. Include turret assists as another stat that way not only the person who gets the last hit gets credit.

33 Comments

Swiftstrike42 votes

You are in Bronze. Junglers, and most players in general, are not good at exerting any map pressure. Laners so often get kills and don't shove waves or do damage to the towers. They just back.

I actually rather have my jungler AFK farm in that elo, than try to go in a lane and fail in an attempted gank.

No one understands wave management either. So getting a kill from a shoved wave and missing 10-20 minions in the process is not worth. The wave will reset and be on the enemy side after crashing into the tower. Making your teammates susceptible to a gank

Junglers have a hard time getting gold and staying up in levels. If they spend all their time trying to gank lanes, then they can fall behind if they don't get kills.

I think everyone in Bronze should ignore most what their "instincts" are and just farm. That's it. CS average per game is incredibly low for Bronze players because they prioritize trades and kills.

I guarantee you that you will win more games if you ignore your team (or have no expectations on them) and you just farm. That's it. Stay in your lane and farm. Don't try to trade, avoid dying (back early if you need too) take TP to got back to lane, and just farm. You will have more CS than you opponent, you will then have better items, and then you will steamroll them in the first team fight.

You could probably get to high Silver just by doing that.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I don't think you know what I'm talking about.

Had this player on my team a while ago. Guess why he's bronze 5 with a 34% winrate even though he has stellar KDAs and CS scores. Playing with him is playing a 4v5. I'm sure he gets rewarded very well by the champion mastery system though.

http://imgur.com/HGlKZKb

Swiftstrike41 votes

{quoted}

I don't think you know what I'm talking about.

Had this player on my team a while ago. Guess why he's bronze 5 with a 34% winrate even though he has stellar KDAs and CS scores. Playing with him is playing a 4v5. I'm sure he gets rewarded very well by the champion mastery system though.

http://imgur.com/HGlKZKb

I know exactly what you are talking about. You made it very clear in your OP and you had one anecdote of an extreme example. What I am saying that this one anecdote is relatively common in your Elo: high KDAs but a low win rate.

A lot of low elo players AFK farm because they don't know what to do. It is that simple. They are in Bronze for a lot of reasons, but the inability to close out a game is one of them.

Expect less from your teammates, you, yourself farm more effectively, exert some map pressure, and you should win more games and move up.

As soon as you begin blaming your teammates every game you will not improve as a player. In any Elo the chances of getting bad teammates is equal for both sides. Sure you have an AFK farmer in your game, but the next game the enemy has an AFK farmer. This means if you improve and win your lane, role, more often than not, then you should win more games. You capitalize on the times when your opponents get bad teammates and then when you get bad teammates you win 1 more time than you lose, by personally playing well.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

No, you don't understand. IT'S NOT THAT THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. IT'S THAT THEY WANT TO GET THEIR CHAMPION MASTERIES, EVEN IF IT MEANS SCREWING UP 9 OTHER PEOPLES GAMES!!!!!

That's why there are so many ways to improve champion mastery that I listed in my original post that I'm suggesting. THAT WAY AFK FARMING IS NOT ENCOURAGED BY THE SYSTEM.

Of course there are idiot trolls who purposely AFK farm so the enemy team will end a game faster if their surrender vote failed, but I think that honestly most people who AFK farm are due to champion masteries and not due to trolling. The effect is the same though and it's just as shitty to the other 9 players playing a game.

There are literally 2 things to do in low elo.

AFK farm but push turrets/splitpush.

Or join teamfights.

Swiftstrike41 votes

{quoted}

No, you don't understand. IT'S NOT THAT THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. IT'S THAT THEY WANT TO GET THEIR CHAMPION MASTERIES, EVEN IF IT MEANS SCREWING UP 9 OTHER PEOPLES GAMES!!!!!

That's why there are so many ways to improve champion mastery that I listed in my original post that I'm suggesting. THAT WAY AFK FARMING IS NOT ENCOURAGED BY THE SYSTEM.

Of course there are idiot trolls who purposely AFK farm so the enemy team will end a game faster if their surrender vote failed, but I think that honestly most people who AFK farm are due to champion masteries and not due to trolling. The effect is the same though and it's just as shitty to the other 9 players playing a game.

There are literally 2 things to do in low elo.

AFK farm but push turrets/splitpush.

Or join teamfights.

Caps does not reemphasize your points. You are assuming too much from your player base, but lets say they are only trying to play for the S. To achieve an S they need kills, assists, cs, and wards. If they do not do these things, they cannot get an S.

This means that they do participate in the game, and if they are killing people then you need to capitalize on the opportunities of dead opponents when teammate does chose to participate. You can also choose to exert map pressure and not group with the team while your jungler AFK farms.

You and your team needs to capitalize on those opportunities when they do choose to participate.

A good way to get the jungler to participate is to just take their camps in the mid game.

You are playing in Bronze, their are A LOT of problems besides AFK jungler farmers with high KDAs. I think this complaint is virtually a non issue compared to other problems at that Elo. If you play well enough, what the jungler does on your team should not really impact the outcome of the game outside of intentionally feeding.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Here's the problem.

The person in my game who AFK farmed wasn't the jungler! (Not the one in the stat image, that guy was just a more obvious example.)

He was the top laner and he'd steal camps from the jungler. The jungler was upset about this too btw. He got kills, but he'd wait for us to go in 4v5 and die, while refusing to help us (we pinged and pinged), and then he'd kill the enemies who are low health. And then he'd immediately go back to farming. He also let his team die a few times if he believes that it will help him get his S easier - for example if he believes that a teammate will contest his farm or that he might end up with an assist instead of kill if his teammate was alive.

Honestly letting his team die a few times is the main complaint I have about people like that.

He got S+. He had only 2 assists, but he had a high KDA from scavenging after every teamfight.

I'd rather have an intentional feeder on my team. At least I can report him then.

Troy2426212 votes

Yeah this isn't just a problem with our role, but it is a problem. People need to take some advice from Sky. Just don't. You could stay in the jungle all game, or AFK split push while never actually reaching tower or getting vision. Or, or. Just don't.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Why do people AFK farm? Here are several explanations:

  1. they want to surrender but their vote failed and they don't want to get leaverbustered.
  2. They are working on champion masteries and want to get high CS for the S.
  3. They just want to brag about their CS scores and KDAs.

No matter what it is it ruins games for 9 people.

paperbIade1 votes

I pick number 2

Brain Errör 4045 votes

Some people just prefer PvE.

item 3512 Nasus

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Yeah but Nasuses push their lane. They take turrets.

The AFK farmers I talk about don't, they just keep jungling (usually because their surrender vote failed but they know if they AFKed they'd get leaverbustered so they just farm the jungle and wait for the enemy to end).

Brain Errör 4042 votes

Oh, wait... what? You're suppose to push lane as a Nasus?

I just keep minions froze under my tower all game and power q through them until 40mins. Then I'll start shoving my lane.

And tbh, some people just don't know how to take advantage of a losing situation, so they end up just farming jungle. It happens to me some times. My team's in such disarray I end up just sitting down in the jungle farming looking for opportunities to do anything. I see a low hp champ, I go ahead and try to kill them, shove out the wave and go back to jungling because I'm too scared to try and take tower due to the other team being so far ahead. I now realize that's the worst possible way to try and come back from a losing game.

Swiftstrike42 votes

[{quoted}](name=Media TM,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=vvwXMEJL,comment-id=0000000100000000,timestamp=2016-09-02T22:14:12.800+0000)

Oh, wait... what? You're suppose to push lane as a Nasus?

I just keep minions froze under my tower all game and power q through them until 40mins. Then I'll start shoving my lane.

And tbh, some people just don't know how to take advantage of a losing situation, so they end up just farming jungle. It happens to me some times. My team's in such disarray I end up just sitting down in the jungle farming looking for opportunities to do anything. I see a low hp champ, I go ahead and try to kill them, shove out the wave and go back to jungling because I'm too scared to try and take tower due to the other team being so far ahead. I now realize that's the worst possible way to try and come back from a losing game.

Yep, I am a Gold I Nasus main. You have 15-20 minutes to farm and then you have to exert map pressure. You also need to shove the wave every time your laner tps if you do not respond. Your job is to take towers while your team fights a 4v5, if you aren't doing anything for 40 minutes then you won't win too many games.

Lentor1 votes

This is something you can complain about all day, but it's not going to change anything. it's just something you have to deal with.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Well, bringing back a human tribunal is 1 way to start.

The automated system won't catch them because they look like they're actually doing something stat-wise but they're not. A human who is watching it can see it. There was one of those people in my games. The whole team knew that they were doing that because their surrender vote failed and they want the enemy to end the game quick. The automated system will still pardon him. But humans know better.

Also reforming the champion mastery system to not encourage AFK farming.

Lentor1 votes

I would agree, but even with the tribunal we still had a ton of people who just won't cooperate. We will always have these kind of people unfortunately... :/

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Well a reform of the champion mastery system to not rely so much on CS could help too.

Lentor1 votes

but that's part of your skill in the game...

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Well CS matters, but I think that participation in team fights, taking turrets matter more. So that should be weighted higher than CS. Not saying that CS shouldnt be counted at all.

Lentor1 votes

This is true. If they could come up with a way of punishing players that don't cooperate more effectively I think that would help a lot, but it's not really easy to do.

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Honestly it's less about punishing them and more about getting rid of the incentive for them to do what they do.

Lentor1 votes

I would agree...but I mean how do you do that in a MOBA? :/

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I proposed a solution.

Weigh team participation, both kills and assists count equally (so KS isn't encouraged), as opposed to CS as the highest priority.

ZephyrDrake2 votes

{quoted}

I proposed a solution.

Weigh team participation, both kills and assists count equally (so KS isn't encouraged), as opposed to CS as the highest priority.

people will afk farm even if you change the champion mastery. People were afk farming before it was introduced and they will continue even if it gets completely scrapped. Instead of worrying about someone who is afk farming, worry about yourself and improve your play. If someone thinks that they need to farm like crazy in order to win, that's what they will do regardless of whether or not there is a champion mastery attached to it. If they have high amounts of kills guess what? they are participating in fights, they are doing things in the game. It's up to you and the rest of your team to capitalize when you win a teamfight.

Just because someone is afk farming it doesn't mean anything and people won't ban them at all in the tribunal since all those players can see is someone who was farming well and had a decent KP% (kill participation %) so... how is that going to tell them that they were trolling? because they don't have many assists? plenty of champions just end up killing everything and barely getting any assists. Hell i had a game in which my ADC was 15-2-3, see how little assists they had? and he was grouping, pushing and taking objectives aka doing everything he could do in order to win. How is that score any different from someone who just farms all game and then comes and cleans up the fight?

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

No, it's about being there for the team, not about assists or kills. That's why I think they should be counted equally. Even if you have 100 assists, if all you did was some 5 damage to each champ and called it a day and got those 100 assists, you're useless to your team

Introducing a replay to tribunal would make it 100% obvious he's trolling. 7 other players in the game, the 4 from our team and 3 from the enemy team, realized it. It's 100% obvious that he's purposely dragging the game out so he could farm his S masteries. He had more than 5 chances to take a turret uncontested, and he didn't, not even when the team pinged him. He walked away from team fights if he was afraid that we'd end the game. But I don't even care if he's punished. I care about other people not getting the incentive to do the same thing, and the champion mastery system is giving them the incentive to AFK farm.

In the end, after he had a good enough KDA and CS score to get an S, he didn't even try to recall when our nexus was under attack.

Also I think I checked his op.gg at one point, and he alternates between pwning and feeding. I don't think he's ever had a moderate score.

ZephyrDrake1 votes

{quoted}

No, it's about being there for the team, not about assists or kills. That's why I think they should be counted equally. Even if you have 100 assists, if all you did was some 5 damage to each champ and called it a day and got those 100 assists, you're useless to your team

Introducing a replay to tribunal would make it 100% obvious he's trolling. 7 other players in the game, the 4 from our team and 3 from the enemy team, realized it. It's 100% obvious that he's purposely dragging the game out so he could farm his S masteries. He had more than 5 chances to take a turret uncontested, and he didn't, not even when the team pinged him. He walked away from team fights if he was afraid that we'd end the game. But I don't even care if he's punished. I care about other people not getting the incentive to do the same thing, and the champion mastery system is giving them the incentive to AFK farm.

In the end, after he had a good enough KDA and CS score to get an S, he didn't even try to recall when our nexus was under attack.

Also I think I checked his op.gg at one point, and he alternates between pwning and feeding. I don't think he's ever had a moderate score.

all i see is that someone is mad because they got a bad teammate on BRONZE! there is a reason why that person is in bronze! IMPROVE YOURSELF AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT OTHERS IN BRONZE! stop treating bronze players like they are challenger players. Bronze players have several things that they need to work on in order to improve, they don't close out games well, they don't know how to balance being with the team and farming, they have limited map presence, they aren't mechanically skilled, they don't have enough game knowledge, they don't go for easy objectives when they should and they contest things when they shouldn't, they don't know how to cs properly, they don't know how to position themselves in teamfights. All of those things and maybe even more are the things that bronze players are usually lacking.

No one is going to look at a replay and say "yep he is just farming he must be trolling". You can't expect people to always be there and there are plenty of champions that is much better to have them be AWAY from the team than WITH the team since they offer next to nothing in teamfights but are better at splitpushing. I have seen people go 0/7/0 and still be a major part of why we won the game since they just provided so much pressure on the map, even though they NEVER grouped with the rest of the team. There are more ways to win the game than the "let's all group up" strategy to win a game which in some cases, depending on your teamcomp, would be the WORST thing you can possibly do

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

If you watch the replay you'll know. I know a player who does that and he streams. The consensus of his viewers is that he's a troll.

ZephyrDrake1 votes

{quoted}

If you watch the replay you'll know. I know a player who does that and he streams. The consensus of his viewers is that he's a troll.

yeah and i have also seen viewers also call people feeders when someone dies once. Sorry but try again, twitch chat is the last place i would ever go to see the "consensus" of anything since it 90% of the time people are just screwing around and saying whatever they want and also extremely few people (if any) even bother streaming bronze games, usually they are gold at the bare minimum with most being pretty high elo players. Once again... STOP TREATING BRONZE PLAYERS THE SAME AS CHALLENGER PLAYERS! you will be sorely disappointed every single time

Lentor1 votes

I think you are missing the point man, no matter what you do people are gonna be trolls

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

I added proposed solutions to the OP by the way.

LadyRenly1 votes

isnt kill participation already calculated for mastery?

XinZhao2WinNhao1 votes

Not as highly as CS

CerealBoxOfDoom1 votes

why should people get potentially punished for not staying with the group, especially if the group is bad or worse if they play bad just because theyre having a tempertantrum

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