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

[NaiaLalita]

So do any admins or Very Important People actually look at this thread? I cannot tell you how many in-game GMs have told me to hit the forums, meanwhile a thread like this exists, the contents of which have only very recently been brought up to someone like Yoshida, despite this thread spanning years...

I'd love to see some adjustments made to The Hunt, so these community assets are less susceptible to selfish sniping.
And they ARE community assets. They cannot be reset or farmed like instanced content. Once an A or S Rank is felled, it's felled for the entire server, until it's timer refreshes, and/or spawn conditions are met. Time is not infinite. This game is pay-to-play, and the players are mortal. Time in this game has value--personally and monetarily--and having that time maliciously wasted or intentionally sabotaged should not be permitted.

Related, but not wholly on-topic: I'd also love for SE to put their foot down and define some actual community guidelines governing open-world content. And to enforce them, with meaningful consequences. When "This player is single-handedly sabotaging an entire server's ability to enjoy specific content" is somehow totally okay by the existing guidelines, those guidelines need improvement.

[Vnolan]

So do any admins or Very Important People actually look at this thread? I cannot tell you how many in-game GMs have told me to hit the forums, meanwhile a thread like this exists, the contents of which have only very recently been brought up to someone like Yoshida, despite this thread spanning years...

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.

I'd love to see some adjustments made to The Hunt, so these community assets are less susceptible to selfish sniping.
And they ARE community assets. They cannot be reset or farmed like instanced content. Once an A or S Rank is felled, it's felled for the entire server, until it's timer refreshes, and/or spawn conditions are met. Time is not infinite. This game is pay-to-play, and the players are mortal. Time in this game has value--personally and monetarily--and having that time maliciously wasted or intentionally sabotaged should not be permitted.

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.

Related, but not wholly on-topic: I'd also love for SE to put their foot down and define some actual community guidelines governing open-world content.

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.

When "This player is single-handedly sabotaging an entire server's ability to enjoy specific content" is somehow totally okay by the existing guidelines, those guidelines need improvement.

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.

He's asking for the FATE/NM treatment since it's been seen in action and proven to work.

With hunts?

Thus it should be the least difficult thing to implement, but of course, spaghetti code gonna spaghetti.

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.

[NaiaLalita]

The devil needs no additional advocates, and your retort failed to address my concern anyway.
Time in this game has value--personally and monetarily--and having that time maliciously wasted or intentionally sabotaged should not be permitted.
In fact, this exact sentiment IS supported by the ToS, and enforced... in instanced content. People who troll parties through duty finder or intentionally wipe groups during trials or mechanic-heavy bosses, they face consequences for that wasting of time and ruining of experience. It boils down to the same issue. It should merit the same consequences.

[Vnolan]

The devil needs no additional advocates, and your retort failed to address my concern anyway.
Time in this game has value--personally and monetarily--and having that time maliciously wasted or intentionally sabotaged should not be permitted.
In fact, this exact sentiment IS supported by the ToS, and enforced... in instanced content. People who troll parties through duty finder or intentionally wipe groups during trials or mechanic-heavy bosses, they face consequences for that wasting of time and ruining of experience. It boils down to the same issue. It should merit the same consequences.

It's already enforced with hunts. If someone pulls a hunt and spams emotes or antagonizes other players through chat, they can be reported.

[NoboruSouma]

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.

Maybe not in the NA community, but the complaints in the EU Spawning Community are there since 3.x, can't remember when exactly, but it was somewhat in the middle stages of HW. I was on almost all Servers and I heard complaints from not-a-few hunters.
It's only this expansion that the voices are coming from all over the game and it's gotten louder. But not as much as it needs so the Devs recognise it. At least that's what I thought when I heard the answer on a Hunt question on the Q&A panel on the latest FanFest.

[geekgirl101]

Someone in my FC mentioned a great idea on how else this can be done - scale the mob's HP dependent on how many people are in the zone. It's still level 50 and if people are leveling in the area then they won't get their hides kicked if they accidentally ran into it unless there's a load of people turned up to beat it up.

[Tranquilmelody7]

Someone in my FC mentioned a great idea on how else this can be done - scale the mob's HP dependent on how many people are in the zone. It's still level 50 and if people are leveling in the area then they won't get their hides kicked if they accidentally ran into it unless there's a load of people turned up to beat it up.

Any kind of level sync for S ranks would solve most issues with the Hunt.

With maximum ILV available for most 50, 60(And soon level 70) players, the Elite Monsters won't be difficult too difficult to take down while still having some bite.

Most importantly, it would be very extremely unlikely for them be killed steathily.

[Kanjishin]

Any kind of level sync for S ranks would solve most issues with the Hunt.

Personally I see no issue with the hunt in its current state, so in my opinion level sync would just cause a lot of problems.

I do however think that, as someone else mentioned earlier, lowering the respawn times for old "no longer relevant" hunts is acceptable. And lowering the respawn time has already been done in the past with B ranks so it is possible. If they made ARRs on like a 18-24h window thered be 2-3x more of them and maximizes the chance of a relatively even distribution to all time zones, drop "semi relevant" to 24-48h and keep the current and last expansion at the current respawn times.

[Tranquilmelody7]

Personally I see no issue with the hunt in its current state, so in my opinion level sync would just cause a lot of problems.

I do however think that, as someone else mentioned earlier, lowering the respawn times for old "no longer relevant" hunts is acceptable. And lowering the respawn time has already been done in the past with B ranks so it is possible. If they made ARRs on like a 18-24h window thered be 2-3x more of them and maximizes the chance of a relatively even distribution to all time zones, drop "semi relevant" to 24-48h and keep the current and last expansion at the current respawn times.

I completely disagree.
Spawning S ranks is my favorite activity in this game, and while I go out my way to spawn Hunts, I don't even mind if I miss my spawns.

As long as the monster shows up and someone was able to receive credit for defeating it, that's good enough for me.

However, with the world visiting feature and the inevitable power creep of 5.0 on the way, the threat of S ranks being 'sniped' looms on most dedicated hunters minds more than ever.

It's one thing for us to miss S ranks when they spawn, but the prospect of us wasting our time and effort to spawn something that has been dispatched stealthily.

If no level sync is implemented, an in-game hunt tracker would suffice.
We don't need "defeat times announced" so much as a way of knowing when a S rank's minimum CD has been breached to avoid spawn attempts in vain.

As for the suggestion of lowering respawn times for old hunts, I actually used to agree - but have since thought the notion to be a terrible idea.

S ranks are supposed to be rare and elusive - having past elite marks spawn daily would break the 'thrill seeking" nature of the hunt.

As they are implemented now, S ranks are balanced across zones to have easy spawn requirements alongside difficult spawn requirements.

Just getting daily kills for the easier marks like Cherno and Safat would neuter the sense of accomplishment gained towards pursuing the centurio tiger while more arduous S ranks like Agrippa and Nunyunuwi would be ignored.

I don't think any server could reliably spawn Agrippa the Mighty on a daily basis, as a matter of fact.

[BillyKaplan]

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