square enix: we need to talk about hunts and why you refuse to address the HP issue

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Point number 2 aggravates me the most because I've seen S ranks reset and minions despawn multiple times because they decided to randomly target some lazy bum who tapped them then ran into the distance.

I think just requiring them to remain with 50 yards of the hunt to get credit would work since they're still exposed to the hunt's mechanics at that distance and less likely to trigger a reset.

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Counter point to the bolded. Could it perhaps be that people are trying to allow more people to get credit but not killing it quickly? On Dynamis, my experience has been when a mark is early pulled, people will tag and then hold off until the pulled timer.

I also am not sure about the people who think people are cheating. Many trains are scouted (I've done a few myself) and you just fly around to the different spawn points, report them, and then when the train is called, the conductor announces each mark in order. For S ranks, people will do checks (i.e. Mango checks) and then relay if it spawns. I find it interesting that some people complain 14 is more single player, but then when there are events that bring a lot of people together (Hunts, S ranks, etc.) that you get complaints.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

I also am not sure about the people who think people are cheating. Many trains are scouted (I've done a few myself) and you just fly around to the different spawn points, report them, and then when the train is called, the conductor announces each mark in order. For S ranks, people will do checks (i.e. Mango checks) and then relay if it spawns. I find it interesting that some people complain 14 is more single player, but then when there are events that bring a lot of people together (Hunts, S ranks, etc.) that you get complaints.

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Cheaters are not a problem with A ranks.

S rank detecting add-ons have existed since ARR, but their functionality has gotten extremely advanced and now auto-relay to several different websites including Discord. If a S rank spawns and there is even one person using said add-on present in the zone when it happens, it means several hundred people also instantly know about it and they come flooding into the zone so quickly that they often end up at the hunt before me even if I was in zone and the one who spawned it. You're basically forced to rely on these add-on relays indirectly if you want to have a fair chance at getting to the hunts now.

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Originally Posted by Venarius

This is a community made problem. Hunting stopped being fun the moment they opened cross server travel. Those encounters were never designed to be merged down by literal trains.

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Did it? There's a sizeable community, much larger than it ever was before, around hunts as they currently are. A lot of people enjoy A rank trains and spawning and sharing S ranks.

There are just some small grievances, like A ranks dying far too quickly and people pulling S ranks early.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Cheaters are not a problem with A ranks.

S rank detecting add-ons have existed since ARR, but their functionality has gotten extremely advanced and now auto-relay to several different websites including Discord. If a S rank spawns and there is even one person using said add-on present in the zone when it happens, it means several hundred people also instantly know about it and they come flooding into the zone so quickly that they often end up at the hunt before me even if I was in zone and the one who spawned it. You're basically forced to rely on these add-on relays indirectly if you want to have a fair chance at getting to the hunts now.

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While its true that their functionality improved over time, I do believe the scope of who can access the hunt is what really made a difference over the years, it went from world to cross world to cross datacenter and soon cross region when region travel wont be limited to Materia

I can guarantee you if cross world or cross DC didnt exist, addons would produce the same result as back when we had manually updated tracker websites and linkshells (I remember the days of having 3 linkshells for hunts) but the number of people coming for the hunts is what is really causing the problem and the missing out, in my opinion

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Hunts and fates both need much better scaling system across the board.

It's too frustrating trying to solo fates only to be met with one raid scaled without any raid in the vicinity.

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They should still adjust to it regardless...and they seem to have already done so for the boss FATEs this go-around given that they can scale hard enough that even 300 players take a while to kill them.

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The system for fates scales them based on the number of people who participated in that specific FATE the previous time it spawned. If a FATE gets zerged, the next time it spawns it will be scaled significantly higher. If a FATE is left alone or has only a few people participate, it will be scaled down the next time it occurs.

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Couldn't it of been Centurio Seals instead of something with a dumb name, I don't want to be doing hunts for "Bags of nuts."

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I don't know why the DT ones also use the nuts, but for ShB and EW, it was Clan Nutsy run by a moogle - the "nuts" are kupo nuts.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

2) Don't reward for one hit and running off. Players who don't do 2% of the damage just don't get credit.

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As pointed out above that doesn’t work at all with many people around and many would not get credit (healers and tanks). Also, what is wrong with tagging the boss instead of egoistically going for the highest dps? When there is a big group of people slow dps gives a better chance for everyone to get credit rather than see the boss killed so fast some people can’t even make it.

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Originally Posted by Toutatis

As pointed out above that doesn’t work at all with many people around and many would not get credit (healers and tanks). Also, what is wrong with tagging the boss instead of egoistically going for the highest dps? When there is a big group of people slow dps gives a better chance for everyone to get credit rather than see the boss killed so fast some people can’t even make it.

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It's called a hunt.

If you want credit, party so the party collectively does more than 2% when it has enough HP for 60 players in the zone. I think some people are fundamentally misunderstanding the point of a hunt if they think they should be rewarded for licking it and then doing nothing.

Fundamentally the design is broken because the monster doesn't have enough HP when it spawns to take into account expansions and gear creep later. The easy fix is to simply give S rank hunts buffs/debuffs based on how long it lives once attacked. If it lasts 300 seconds, next time it spawns, it spawns with the same HP. If it lasts less than 300s but more than 180s, it gets a defense buff next time until it lasts more than 300s. If it lasts longer than 300s it drops one buff off, and then starts adding debuffs. So that disincentivizes "lick and run" tactics.

S Ranks only able to be killed by each individual server would be a good start as well, just as like you can't harvest materials on other servers than your own, it would be a huge leap ahead if so.

All S ranks from lvl50 to lvl90, set their level to 100 for all and likewise their firepower and increased HP.

The issue is that SE doesn't see this as an issue. Not everyone is supposed to make it to those.
The only reason it's so bad is due to us and how we decided to run the content.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

It's called a hunt.

If you want credit, party so the party collectively does more than 2% when it has enough HP for 60 players in the zone. I think some people are fundamentally misunderstanding the point of a hunt if they think they should be rewarded for licking it and then doing nothing.

Fundamentally the design is broken because the monster doesn't have enough HP when it spawns to take into account expansions and gear creep later. The easy fix is to simply give S rank hunts buffs/debuffs based on how long it lives once attacked. If it lasts 300 seconds, next time it spawns, it spawns with the same HP. If it lasts less than 300s but more than 180s, it gets a defense buff next time until it lasts more than 300s. If it lasts longer than 300s it drops one buff off, and then starts adding debuffs. So that disincentivizes "lick and run" tactics.

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It’s a collective activity that provides useful items and is for both casuals and hardcore. Idk why because it’s called a hunt you have to make it a dps race. It’s inconsiderate of the group. Some people have slower machines, some others internet connections and loading into a zone can take longer. Some are less experienced. I just like to work for the group in general and adjust my dps based on participation and type of mark.

Also, if you have (only) 60 players, the vast majority wouldn’t get credit with the 2% mark no matter the effort. It’s simple math.


I agree that they should review the design though but your proposal is not a solution.

Increasing the boss HP works in the interim maybe but it doesn't do much either considering how many people are going into hunt LS and zurging the mob anyway. Aether alone, a hunt train on average can have 300+ people hitting the mob, it's just not gonna survive and people need to accept that. Not to mention, long term, (assuming you significantly bloated the HP of these mobs), it falls flat as you essentially make these mobs grinds to kill even one for the eventual smaller groups once hunts starting dying down.

As for making it a fate, that's also dumb, for the sake that there would be nothing distinct about it from any other fate boss. Hunts are SUPPOSED to be 4-8 man party bosses that people take on. It was the community that chose to make entire LS around the system to zurg mobs. Devs shouldn't accommodate in that aspect as it's contrary to the intended design of it to begin with.

Beyond that S Ranks are still bulky enough, and special fates are as well.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

A DT A rank has 32 million HP and S ranks have 87 million HP. The current EX bosses have around 60 million HP. That alone should provide a good enough indicator of how undertuned they are.

It does not matter, and has not mattered since the dawn of the hunt system that the developer "intent" was for them to be fought in small groups because people will inevitably min-max the heck out of any system you put into the game, and in this case it was by coordinating ridiculous amounts of players to gang up on the hunts so they die before they can get more then a few mechanics off, which fundamentally makes the experience feel like a dull grind.

I think the simplest solution would be to just give the hunts a special buff that either raises their HP or reduces damage taken by a small percentage for every player over the "intended" amount for them (8 players for A ranks and 24 for S ranks would be reasonable IMO) within a 100 yard radius up to a certain limit.

They added extremely aggressive scaling to the two special boss FATEs this go-around (Such that both can end up with over 1.5 billion HP if there are enough players around) so if they were willing to address that, I don't see why they can't do the same for hunts.

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The solution is to make it like Treasure Maps/FF11 where the party goes to the hunt location, use an item to spawn the monster, and only the players in the party that spawned the monster can hit the mob. There you go. Hard bosses for small groups set out in the open world.