[b][i]Notice:[/i][/b] [i]Bungie has officially patched all known forms of engram farming. Monster caves, Nexus, and Moon farming are patched for engram farming. You can still use Nexus and Moon for XP and glimmer grinding, but they are no longer viable sources of loot.[/i] I've seen a lot of people in here griping and crying about the way people are farming their rare/legendary gear. They say Bungie needs to patch the spot, and the users be punished in some way, shape or form. Here's why you're all utterly and completely deluded: [b]It's not as efficient as advertised[/b] You see people talking about getting one legendary every ten minutes. This is simply untrue, and would require the most ridiculous RNG to be able to get a legendary engram every ten minutes. [b]It takes [i]time[/i][/b] This isn't something you do for an hour, and then go back to the tower to bask in your new legendary loot. It takes hours upon hours to acquire enough blue engrams to level up the cryptarch effectively. And you're only going to get 9-15 engrams every [i]three hours or so[/i]. Not a lot of people have this kind of time on their hands. This is totally different from the chest route from the beta, where you were guaranteed at least 200 glimmer per run at level cap. With the RNG involved in this farming spot, you are not guaranteed engrams. However, it is extremely unlikely you will not get at least a few. [b]You're [i]supposed[/i] to farm[/b] Farming is finding the best possible conditions for things to appear, and then capitalizing on that. Neither Bungie, Gearbox, or any other developer would ever intend on making the only way of acquiring loot to be to just stumble across it. Gearbox explicitly says in their game loading screens that bosses can be killed over and over again for a chance at their best loot. This is no different. You have no way of knowing whether or not you will get their valuables, it's just shoot and hope for the best. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. My friends and I were doing this last night, and we went through dry patches where we would kill them all and not even get ammo pickups, let alone rare/legendary engrams. Such is the nature of farming, and why it is balanced. [b]Bungie only bans for cheating/exploiting[/b] Some call this cheating, or exploitation. Cheating is using a third-party program to influence in-game events or advantages. Exploitation is using an obvious flaw in a game's design, such as a glitch, to accomplish a task. Examples of cheating: Modding your save file J-tagging your system Infections Etc. Examples of exploiting: Gun-merging in Borderlands 2 Wall breaching in multiplayer B-X-B in Halo 2 Item duplication Etc. Examples of farming (notice how nobody has ever been banned for this): Credit farming on ONI Sword Base Legendary midget farming in Borderlands 2 Commendation/credit farming in Gruntpocalypse Dashboard farming in Borderlands 2 Farming is finding the best possible scenario with intended in-game mechanics to produce the most lucrative results. It takes time, patience, and luck. Anyone with those three will be rewarded for their efforts, as they should be. [b][i]But wait, there's a line[/i][/b] Up until this point, I've defended farming against the barrage of hatred it's been subjected to this past week. I will, however, say that there is a line. What does this mean? It means that some methods of farming are perhaps [i]too[/i] lucrative, and [i]will[/i] take away from the spirit of the game. This is not a straight line however. [b][i]Too lucrative[/i][/b] Pre-patch loot midgets in Borderlands 2 Destiny Beta chest farming Cryptarch leveling Where do you draw the line, though, with bosses like OMGWTH, who are guaranteed to drop an ultra-rare item? Here's how: OMGWTH by himself is not exactly a difficult boss, but you are intended to fight through the entire Digistruct Peak in order to earn your pearlescent. However, there was a well-known [i]exploit[/i] where people would grenade jump through a wall where they only had to fight one wave of enemies before taking on the boss, making this farming technique much too lucrative and therefore worthy of addressing. Since he is guaranteed a pearlescent drop, the intended difficulty of this farm makes it acceptable. But with the exploit, it needs to be addressed. [b]See where this is going?[/b] With the Vault Of Glass opening next week, we are [i]guaranteed[/i] a set of legendary raid gear upon completion. The reward resets every week, but we can be assured that it will be extremely rare gear. Repetitive intended completion of this is called farming. Finding some sort of unintended way to reap the rewards of completion with minimal effort is an exploit. This is ratio of loot to effort. [b]Now we go full circle[/b] Using this loot to effort ratio, we can determine what needs to be addressed and what doesn't. Under this rule, the chest farming in the beta and the pre-patch loot midget killing needed to be addressed because it was simply too lucrative for the amount of either time or effort invested. Under this rule, the Nexus farming does not need to be addressed, as there must be many hours invested in order to achieve the extremely lucrative results of it. It requires relatively little skill, but the time invested in it makes up for it. As there is no guarantee of an engram dropping every time, there is no reason to consider this option [i]too lucrative[/i]. The huge piles of engrams you hear about are the results of many hours of repetitive, boring farming. If you've read all the way here, congratulations. I hope now you people have an understanding of why this is acceptable by Bungie (even though [i]you[/i] may not like it) and other developers. In the future, I urge those who would demonize others who have the patience to invest hours into farming (who could be doing other things in-game) to learn the definitions of cheating and exploiting in a gaming context. Edit: moved to Feedback [b][i]Note:[/i][/b] It is up to the developers to decide what uses of a game's mechanics are acceptable. Nukeboosting, a prime example, is a use of mechanics. However, this use of mechanics (usually unintended) is widely deemed unacceptable by game developers. This does not make it an exploit, merely an unacceptable and possibly game-breaking use of mechanics. It is up to Bungie to seem whether or not this specific use of mechanics is game-breaking or unacceptable enough to warrant a nerf.