Let's talk about Hunts - a detailed rundown of their assumed mechanics

[Kanjishin]

Why bother spawning SB and ShB S ranks who are much harder to kill and that you need other people for and that take more time if you can just spawn Cherno and run two laps for Nandi?

There are different types of spawners, some like to sit on pillars and wait for a fate to pop or just spawn one specific thing, others will do anything at anytime as long as its open. Regardless of the credit received, spawners gonna spawn. I get 3 to 4 lines of red text when I kill S ranks because I care about spawning and killing, even if there were no rewards I'd still do it.

[Kazgrel]

The entire thread isn't about adjustments that can be made to hunts. Many of the replies discuss specifics such as spawn times and method of spawn. The complaints have picked up only this expac because the additional achievements and mount were added with SB release and players have gotten that much stronger with the increased ilvls. If more players had voiced their complaints before instead of being happy with the gravy train of rewards for doing nothing but seeing a relay, SE might have done something.


Devil's advocate: A and S ranks aren't needed for anything but the achievements for killing a number of them. You can get more than enough seals from daily/weekly bills and BLU's weeklies. For the achievements, it only means it'll take longer to get them.


They have. Open-world content is open to anyone. As long as players aren't performing actions with the intent to grief, they aren't doing anything wrong.


I find it hard to believe one person is capable of spawning and killing all hunts on a server while keeping kill times a secret. I also wouldn't say players enjoy hunts. It's more they tolerate them for the rewards.


With hunts?


Meaning it hasn't been done before.

You can easily check that the hunt was added with patch 2.30 around July 7, 2014 and was adjusted in patch 2.35 around August 19, 2014:
Elite mark bills, as well as rank B elite marks, have been adjusted as follows:

The respawn time of rank B elite marks has been changed to five seconds.
The HP of rank B elite marks has been reduced so that they can be defeated by a single player.
In conjunction with the above HP reduction, the minimum contribution required to complete elite mark bills has been lowered.
Rank B elite marks have been changed from aggressive to passive.
Rank B elite marks will no longer yield rewards upon defeat.
* Upon defeating a rank B elite mark, players will only receive the reward granted by the elite mark bill in their possession.
In conjunction with the above change, the number of Allied Seals awarded by elite mark bills has been increased from 20 to 50 seals.
All players will now be assigned a different weekly elite mark.
Devil's advocate: A and S ranks are not required for anything except the achievements for killing a number of them. You can get more than enough seals from daily/weekly bills and BLU weeklies. As for the achievements, it just means it will take longer to get them.

NMs and "hidden" FATEs such as Odin have been around for ages as well and the latter is the what others have hoped S ranks become, with the added caveat of having level sync (something Odin and Behemoth no longer have). So what people are asking for has been done before. To say it hasn't based on my joke about sphaghetti code is being dense.

[Kazgrel]

What worries me is that we'll see something similar to what happened with SB A ranks - the earlier A ranks are much easier to kill for similar awards so it was hard to get groups for the SB ones. Why bother spawning SB and ShB S ranks who are much harder to kill and that you need other people for and that take more time if you can just spawn Cherno and run two laps for Nandi? Hell you could solo those in the future, the higher rank S ranks would become something people bother less with, I fear

Huh? SB A ranks held far more value early on since they were (and still are) a primary source of cracked clusters/grade 6 combat materia. On Zalera, at least (and other servers based on comments I've seen), it led to development of a "hunt train", where people would let most/all of the SB A ranks force spawn, find them all, then proceed through the zones and kill them all. Not sure if Balmung does that or not; wasn't a thing during my stay there during all of HW, but that's been almost 2 years now.

Some of the S ranks already have that "don't bother with it" mindset. Agrippa, Pale, and Senmurv all come to mind. Too much time/gil/RNG involved for most folks.

[Froggy_Ferrinas]

Are yall excited for alternate Mor Dhona and alternate Agrippa? OwO (pls don't do it YoshiP q.q)

Just wanted to bring this thread up again a bit ^^

[NoboruSouma]

Are yall excited for alternate Mor Dhona and alternate Agrippa? OwO (pls don't do it YoshiP q.q)

Just wanted to bring this thread up again a bit ^^

I just hope we don't get another Map S Rank. We didn't get one with SB so there's hope the got rid of that idea ...

[KageTokage]

Still hoping we get a S rank tied to emote usage and another tied to crafting.

More diversity is always nice instead of recycling old spawn conditions as long as it's not tedious.

[Rowde]

Crafting Landmine PLS

Go to a spot and craft an item, if you're lucky S rank will spawn on location... and promptly murder you since you are on a crafting class in crafting window, thus won't have time to exit window and run away!

[NoboruSouma]

Still hoping we get a S rank tied to emote usage and another tied to crafting.

More diversity is always nice instead of recycling old spawn conditions as long as it's not tedious.

I'd appreciate that!

Crafting Landmine PLS

Also make it so it needs to be HQ.
And a specific about, let's say 10 items to not be too sadistic.

[SamSmoot]

I just run around till I see one :-/

How do you know if you found one? I joined a group to kill one in Azim, and there was nothing unique about it other than a name. No A, B, S label, nothing. Could have just been some quest mob from it's general appearance.

[BillyKaplan]

How do you know if you found one?

One good indication is that you can see it from literally across the map. S ranks render regardless of distance so if you see a mob way way in the distance, that's one indication.
Another indication is that it spawns over you. Granted B or A ranks do that too when their timer is up, but that leads me to the next one...
They're huge. They will no doubt be the single largest mob in that zone. If you look at something and go "holy sh-- that thing's humongous", it's likely an S rank.

And then there's always the zerg rush to kill the thing, that's usually a good tell.