Suggestion: Dynamic Hunt difficulties

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Greetings,

Problem: Hunts die too quickly from large partes, and from being rush-pulled by early-pullers, but are difficult/time consuming if tackled by a small party during early/late hours. I invite discussion on ways to make hunts more fun, more player-friendly, and more fair.

My Idea: With dynamic difficulty, a hunt gains bonus to damage dealt, damage-reduction, and ability strength/ frequency, even bonus savage-version abilities, when more players are attacking it. Vice versa for lower numbers of players attacking it, down to a preset minimum threshold. To compensate, having more players attacking it will give it a higher chance to rare drops such as minions, mounts, and materials with economic worth (similar to treasure maps). And a low-playercount killed hunt will gain a reduction to respawn time.

This will give an incentive to wait for more players before tackling a hunt, while making it more fun and rewarding to participate in a mega-hunt, but giving the option for a smaller party pull as well.

Discussion on further improvements, alternative solutions, and ways to address the flaws in this idea are welcome.

[QT_Melon]

Hunts are exactly that. A HUNT.

Early pulling is some kind of cultural thing we placed on a hunt. People have made arbitrary decisions on how long hunts should be up and rules vary from server to server. Some may have longer wait times, others have shorter windows.

What probably should be the most simple solution is shortening the length on spawns. IE A ranks in ARR decrease it from once an hour to every 30 mins, or leave as is (I don't think ARR A ranks have a problem) but have S ranks spawn once a day in ARR zones. S Ranks in ARR are meant for 50 players, not level 70.

[Sandpark]

Actual hunting mechanics manipulating environment, feed, traps, tracking steps, tracking dung, observing monster tendencies and habitats grants you a pop item or upon meeting requirements this particular hunt sucks your party into an instance.

1.Solo or form a party
2.Hunt the prey via actual mechanics.
3.Meet prerequisites for claim(3 tracking check off or gain a pop item, find tracks, desired bait, build special trap,etc)
4.Enter an pseudo instance similar to guildleves against thy prey, outside people can see but they can't help on your particular hunt unless invited.
5.Reap the rewards or die
6.Start a new hunt
7.Rinse and repeat

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Re-post of something I put in another hunt thread, which I think is quite descriptive of how one could visualize this dynamic difficulty thing.

And I quote (myself):

Well, let's use our imaginations for a sec. If a hunt knew that more players will arrive soon, and give it a "good fight", if the hunt crowd of players surrounding it would just wait for a bit, and what it really really longs for is a nice good fight, then it won't even properly engage you until both you and it, the hunt, come to some sort of mutual consensus of rules of engagement. So if programmable, yes, a "smart" hunt that adjusts its difficulty depending on the number of people attacking it, being eligible to drop some hunt-specific rare rewards and items (like minions, materials, etc.) if it is happy that it got to have a nice big fight with many players (thus enticing players to wait for more people to do the kill together), and adding extra abilities and "savage mode hunt" to make it more "fun" while more people are fighting it.

The hunt would fight less "passionately" and be weaker if a small party of people tried to fight it at very early or late server hours when there's not that many people awake for a hunt, but in compensation it will respawn sooner so more people will have a chance to go at it again, and also because the hunt "didn't get a good fight", and comes back sooner looking for more fight (and fun).

The hunt will also have some sort of "cross-realm a.i." listening in on other hunts, so if a chain-hunt is happening, the hunt will adjust its "expectations" depending on how many people, how fast, and how popular the other hunts in other regions got killed ... and make a "mental note" of how to prepare. So if you show up at its door and promptly start pounding it it will of course be happy you came, but will not be too pleased that you started "too promptly", and will likely carelessly swap you aside, or "hunker down"/"kite and cc us around" and simply refuse to properly take damage and fight, until the main groups can arrive. Of course if the main group takes too much time to arrive, more than the average time the other hunts had to wait, or whatever is "reasonable", then this hunt will likely realize this is about as many people as it'll get for this fight and "agree" to fight as is, or at a lower "threshold" of the dynamic difficulty. BUT if it hears whispers in the wind of many people still coming and some early puller starting at it, it'll get really really angry, and promptly chew up that early puller and spit'em out at the feet of the not-very-amused hunt crowd either, as an example to all you early pullers who would "cheat" a hunt out of a good fight, and players of their hunt! XD

Also possible that hunts would have as much variety as "fates". E.g. It might start running and relocating, changing fighting style as it went, calling for reinforcements, prompting some both scripted and non-scripted semi-randomized generated events, etc. just stuff to make it more "fun". And enjoyable. And maybe draw out the length a bit so even if it was early pulled players would still be able to join it as it went through its phases. At this stage, we can imagine the hunt would not just adjust its "difficulty" based on some pointers, but also its behaviour. From being aggressive to being tricky, or even cowardly. Even more personality and character than minions. So truly, dynamic hunts. (Which would make for a nice minion drop too, after the hunt has had its fun, players have had their fun, the hunt got to express its personality, got a very good and big fight, and is happy, and would thus have a higher chance of dropping an equally dynamic, detailed, and full of personality minion version of itself XD to the players as a reward.)(Please SE, take my money. I don't care about epic dark souls bosses, I don't care about monster hunter, I don't care about hi-def hi-res FF15 monsters. I want to hunt in big fun hunts with friends and other people, without toxicity. I'll throw my money at you if you can make something like that. I think others will too, for these open-world open-stage encounters of pure fun.)

And also as Sandpark pointed out, more fun in triggering conditions would be nice too. Think multi-staged spawns requiring players to go across the whole map and engage in mechanics to "activate" the hunt. Currently, pre-pull mechanics only go as far as "check hunt tracker, find hunt, use hunt macro to spam a dozen channels, make a party and play around with silly emotes while people get here." Which is not bad, but there is so much room for improvement. So much potential for this game ... to become a pillar of MMO design, to be able to eclipse whole games dedicated to a specific theme, by just having it as a mere feature in our game ... to become unarguably the best consumer choice there is, generally. But here I am starting to go off at it again xD better stop before I say something silly that'll make me facepalm tomorrow. But before that, life, LIFE, my friends, the ultimate goal of creation, to breathe life into our works, to have these hunts show life, LIFE! =D LIFE!!!

[Sandpark]

A little more thoughts:
For the unique footprints per hunt. SE would have to design unique footprints per hunt and I think an ground overlay would be easy to show hunters direction.

Let's say the footprints can only be seen by users who have a specific hunt registered for and only after some prerequisites have been completed.

• A: Defeat a common enemy to acquire something off a creature the targeted hunt eats.
• B: That acquired item needs to either be processed to become a bait or pheromone or used in creating some kind of trap.

Say you created or acquired a bait.

• A spawn timer would go into effect for your special hunt after you set the bait at a certain location.
• Remember, that only your group can see or interact in this special hunt.
• When the hunt is near, a UI Gauge will pulse a light red, the pulse gets slower as it strays and faster if it gets more near.
• If any members in your party act before the green light zone the enemy will run away and you will need to reset your bait.
• Would be even more fun if you had to watch which way the enemy is facing and you have to get closer and claim from behind.

Say you created or acquired a pheromone.

• A spawn time would go into effect for your special hunt after you loose the pheromone into the air.
• Remember, that only your group can see or interact in this special hunt.
• Once the pheromone kicks in, you will be able to see footprints on the map periodically showing a general location of the prey.
• You have to approach that general area and upon getting there you see footprints on the ground.
• Any member must go study the footprints to know the direction the hunt is from the group.
• As you get closer to finding it, you will begin to see the footprints getting fresher.
• In this moment a UI gauge will simulate a noise radar.
• Make too much noise and the prey will run, approach slowly and quietly enough under the radar and then you claim the enemy from behind.

Anytime a hunt is wounded or scared. You will see visual indicators in the environment such as broken branches, blood trails, etc which will help narrow it down to game time. The idea is to hunt using the senses of sight, smell, sound, touch, and feel. I only touched on sight, smell, and sound but I am sure SE could spend more time developing content towards all the senses.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

[*]Make too much noise and the prey will run, approach slowly and quietly enough under the radar and then you claim the enemy from behind.

So if you start fighting the hunt with too many people it'll make your life hard, you gotta first bait it with a purposefully small party, then pounce the rest of the crowd on it? Totally dynamic behaviour. Totally awesome.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

I like the idea as long the bait/pheromone obtained from hunting.

1) Would it fit to current S ranks or for new expansion?

2) Current S ranks like Thousand-cast Theda already implies bait through fishing.
Other S ranks which hard/random to spawn like Nunyunuwi or Garlok can have this bait thing where we deplete its food supply.

3) Best part is the wounded part. 2-parts Hunts, small party can earn something worth like A ranks (40 seals)
then after it runs away (somewhere else random but not disappear) become much stronger until a full or more party hits it.

[geekgirl101]

It's all well saying "go hunt them yourself", but if you don't know when an S rank is due up you could be wasting hours trying to spawn it, and even then someone using XIV-Hunt is gonna announce to all his buddies before you get your team in position and find it either half dead or already dead.