Hunts were a terrible/irresponsible idea

The main issue is that a lot of people are trying to do it, so contention - and in turn frustration levels - are very high. We should probably give it breathing room and then suggest changes in a week or so. I don't think increasing their stats will help. That isn't the problem. It's just sheer demand over supply right now.

One suggestion I would make is to have the weekly mark give a low amount of tomes/seals, but grant a considerable bonus. That discourages mass camping but makes the traffic flow easier. Get your weekly kill and a nice bonus, move onto other content. Could even have a specific set of weekly marks for this.

Honestly, the best advice I can give is to not fixate so heavily on getting them down. There are so many other things to do in 2.3. You can easily burn time (and sanity) waiting around for Naul to spawn, only for a group to have killed it before you even get there. Save yourselves the trouble for now, because it will ease off.

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Originally Posted by Renik

I disagree with this one, i have been waiting for this kind of content because i wanted an alternative to dungeon tome farming, i really hate instances and this gives the game much more life at least for me.

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Pretty much this.
Though I disagree with removing the gearing options too.

Issues do exist with the current system, but it's still a much more enjoyable experience than the alternatives the game provides.

I am so glad more people are getting frustrated. Not because I want to mock you, but because I was generally curious if I was alone or not. Yoshi-P, you have to change hunts ASAP. This is an old MMO feature, a relic of the past, the reason why it worked in the past is because the players didn't know any better.

What about the people working jobs? How are they even supposed to join in on this? This is atma farming, only worse.

Solution? Remove the sand of time from the vendor OR limit the amount of hunts people can kill.

Do not listen to people who say "It's the first day, give it time.". This kinda of farming won't change for a very long time, did you see the price cost on the armor? Let's not even talk about that. You can buy SANDS OF TIME. The farming won't stop, people can get i110 gear for all their characters. Yoshi, you have to change this, this is extremely frustrating content and the way it is now will not change for the better until 2.4 comes out.

People wanted open-world content that was challenging, made the world less unpredictable and dangerous, mattered enough to actually get people out into the open world, and didn't include tagging and lockouts.

So they gave us the Hunts that (when they aren't zerged down) challenging, spawn all over the place requiring prior knowledge of their spawn points, drop tokens for endgame stuff so that people actually care to do them, and did not include tagging so campers didn't rule the day, and the results are as followed.

Now if they throw massive amounts of health on top of them, I really doubt that will solve the problem of them being zergged down by an army. It just means it'll take longer for that army to kill it, but there will be minimal to no danger in doing so. There is nothing they can do with their spawn points and continue to claim they are open world so that's out. You could take away the endgame stuff and leave only vanity things in their place but then people will eventually stop doing it and its right back in Mor Dhona complaining. You could reintroduce tagging but that'll just make things worse, so the next viable option is force spawning the marks, but that really takes away from "Open world danger".

So pickle. I personally believe the hype around them will die down in a couple of weeks but yeah. A pickle.

I think a major problem is that we were all told to "shout" for help with these elite marks and now we discover that's the LAST thing we should be doing.

THESE MARKS ARE NOT HARD ENOUGH. :/

Here's the problem though, if the hp was increased dramatically so we could all get credit for doing damage, the number of people in the area would also keep increasing. And I guess this would lead to more lag, crashes, and problems like what some people see on Odin? What's the solution here?

I mentioned to a FC mate that this is XIV's version of claiming. :/

About the seals earned, a couple in my FC tested it on Naul and said you get 5 seals just for beating the monster and and extra 20 if it is your hunt mark (one of the couple hadn't unlocked the hunt quest and just got the 5 seals). We only tested this once, is this not the case in your experience? I've killed one mark I found randomly with one other person and got 5 seals; I joined a group of about 14 people to kill Stinging Sophy and got 1 seal. I kind of expected these marks to be on par with Svara, Lazy Larry, and Stereopes... what gives with the hp? :/

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

I quit ffxi because of abyssea... and I have to admit, I agree with you. Abyssea was leagues better than this. I love the concept of hunts. And the daily hunts are fun. But by daily hunt standards it will take ONE MONTH to get a peice of alexandria.... that is ridiculous.

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How would you fix the system?
The idea is a sound one but the implementation is poor.

Would you rather the game forced a claim system into effect on Hunt mobs? This would solve some small issues, but it would extremely limit the number of people who could participate. NMs were a hefty part of the fun of XI, but in terms of a "seal" system, they can't be adequately added to XIV.

The best way to implement this sort of system would have been to do so under a modified version of the TAU hierarchy NM/HNM system. Gain points from doing the "daily hunts", use points to either spawn harder NMs for your group or use them to purchase items for yourself. This game desperately needed something to do in the open world, it just happens that without a claim system, everything because a cluster%#$@ and nothing adequate is created.

We HAVE a claim system based in the DUTY system. We can spawn treasure map enemies without having to deal with others attacking our mobs, if we had spawned mobs with difficult to obtain spawn items and interesting drops, we'd have had a perfect system.

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Originally Posted by Sadana

Here's the problem though, if the hp was increased dramatically so we could all get credit for doing damage, the number of people in the area would also keep increasing. And I guess this would lead to more lag, crashes, and problems like what some people see on Odin? What's the solution here?

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It doesn't have to be increased dramatically and take hours to kill. It just shouldn't take 5 seconds to kill, that's all. I swear I passed by one of them and he died of heart attack when he saw me draw my weapon.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Sorry, but if the rewards for the Hunt were not as interesting as those drops in FFXI, no one would participate.

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Interesting rewards! I understand what you mean, but these aren't interesting rewards. You might be interested in the rewards but they're not interesting! This is a way for people to get their soft nerf gear quickly without stepping in Coil. This hunt would be fine without Sands and Oils, but because of the inclusion of Sands and Oils you have too many people trying to do it, since the rewards are just too good. Basically everyone is doing it, and if you think about it for a second it's pretty obvious that the incentives for it are just TOO GOOD. Imagine if Sands were put as a drop from FATEs, like Atma. Certainly you'd see the same thing, it doesn't suddenly make FATEs interesting. You'd all certainly be crying about it on the forums too!

It's the best way to get Sands and Oils, they're not on any other vendor right? There's no reason end game raiding items should be loaded into open world content. They were afraid it wouldn't be too popular so they took the easy way out and put end game gear on it. Now everyone can hit ilvl 110 by grinding and zerging hunts and pretend like they're having a lot of fun with this system when what they're really doing is having fun raising their ilvl with little work. I think they should at least have put these items on other vendors, rather than making it almost a requirement to sit around zerging hunts for hours on end.

I guess I should just shut up and get all my Sands and Oils while it's still popular. Because invariably a month or two from now people are going to be expecting some i110 before people even go into Second Coil. The SOLE problem with this system is that the Sands and Oils should not be on that vendor. I personally think those items should stay inside Turn 7 and Turn 8, but if you're going to put them on a vendor they should be on multiple vendors. What they've done is artificially made their new feature a hit by putting a really big carrot behind it, a carrot that frankly doesn't even belong there.

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Originally Posted by Worm

This hunt would be fine without Sands and Oils, but because of the inclusion of Sands and Oils you have too many people trying to do it, since the rewards are just too good. Basically everyone is doing it

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So basically SE shouldn't be designing content that everyone can take part in?

It's clear SE vastly underestimates how much people wanted to do this content and need to make adjustments. More HP/DEF on mobs shouldn't be hard to implement either. They can always lower them when the content becomes dated. That or make it scale.

All other issues aside, when people do wait to gang up on S ranks, they suffer the same issues as Odin/Behemoth with mobs and your party members randomly failing to render, leaving you with the ability to see a bunch of random faeries and egis but unable to target the mob or heal your party. The game just can't seem to handle that many people in one place at one time, even on relatively strong PCs - seems like it's maybe just a matter of there being too much data for the client to receive at once? Of course, SE seems to be insisting there's no such issue.

This are just fates without the mark in the map. Boring as hell. They should make them like maps and only your party hits them and spawns them.

First two days of hunts. Of course there are going to be hundreds of people on your server going to see the S ranks that spawn. It's to be expected. The server runs fine and can handle it all no problem.

The problem for lag when there are a lot of people now lies in the hands of A) people with less than stellar PCs and B) people who are using PS3s.

The S ranks seem to be on 24 hour timers (or at least that's what it seems like so far :/) so give it a few weeks when the hype dies down and you can take your FC and a few others to them.

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Originally Posted by Pylfer

First two days of hunts. Of course there are going to be hundreds of people on your server going to see the S ranks that spawn. It's to be expected. The server runs fine and can handle it all no problem.

The problem for lag when there are a lot of people now lies in the hands of A) people with less than stellar PCs and B) people who are using PS3s.

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Try playing on a legacy server - specifically balmung which sits at around number 2ish in population. Malboro is what... not even in the top TEN?

Try again. System builders with rigs that rip through modern games are having trouble too, not just "ps3" players.

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Originally Posted by Pylfer

The problem for lag when there are a lot of people now lies in the hands of A) people with less than stellar PCs and B) people who are using PS3s.

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Except... that's not true at all? My PC never experienced even a framerate dip, it just chose weird selections of characters to render, I have FCmates with bleeding edge rigs having the same issue where they can only see Odin or an S rank for a few seconds at a time. It's simply an issue of not being able to see everything, like the client gives up on receiving all the data before updating the scene and draws what it has at the moment. Maybe your server just isn't as populated as Exodus where we all play? When Croakadile was up and the crowd was gathering there was a sudden moment where shout filled up with "It disappeared!" because he stopped rendering.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

Try again. System builders with rigs that rip through modern games are having trouble too, not just "ps3" players.

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Thank you. My FC has people on high end PCs, PS3, and PS4, and everyone experiences it pretty much equally.

Well....you all wanted the open world NM system back.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Well....you all wanted the open world NM system back.

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It's a classic case of SE not really interfacing with the players, though. If they didn't know how much everyone hated Odin, they weren't really listening. This entire patch feels like a bunch of misguided attempts at content that no one really tested and was probably just being checked off some random list to say they did "something".

I feel like so much of this could have been prevented with a PUBLIC TEST SERVER

Yep. That's precisely what is needed and I can't believe that yoshi-p doesn't have one set up. I mean, he's so attuned to what other successful companies are doing with their products, how did this super-important part of the development process elude him? We all know they *have* test servers. They have used them in the past, but it needs to be an ongoing part of development.

Certain ideas:

They should make a system where as you use a certain ''currency'' (Company seals, gil w.e) to buy the ''wanted'' poster for a certain mob, giving you the right to target the monster.
Those wanted posters reset/change every 10min/1h, giving more people the opportunity to ''bet'' on the target that they want on first come, first serve basis.
The buyer only has a limited amount (same time as reset) of time before they lose the right to target, so other people can give it a try.

They should bring back claiming from FFXI, at least for B- and A-rank mobs. Once it's been claimed, only that player and his party can damage it, and increase the spawn rate to counterbalance it. S-rank mobs, however, should be beefed up to the level of the super-FATEs so that the whole server is the only thing that can even stand a chance. Possibly also change Odin and Behemoth to something like SS-rank mobs rather than FATEs.

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Originally Posted by Jacost

They should bring back claiming from FFXI, at least for B- and A-rank mobs. Once it's been claimed, only that player and his party can damage it, and increase the spawn rate to counterbalance it. S-rank mobs, however, should be beefed up to the level of the super-FATEs so that the whole server is the only thing that can even stand a chance. Possibly also change Odin and Behemoth to something like SS-rank mobs rather than FATEs.

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You know what would happen then? The same thing that happened in FFXI: everyone swarms around the PT that claimed it and spam shit to force a D/C. Or it would be botted. Take your pick.

Completely agree with the OP.
Friend in LS informed me an S mob spawned.
I rush to teleport to it - before I even get there he informs me that the mob is dead.
At least with Odin/Behemoth I actually have time to kill it.

These S rank mobs are a joke. Did SE think that nobody would be doing this?
Some suggestions:

• Increase HP of the mobs
• Or - make it so that the HP varies based on how many people killed the last mob (like with FATEs)
• Or - Make it so only those who have the "S Rank bill" from the GC are able to even attack the mob (like with treasure maps)
• Have the mobs actually spawning in different locations (since they obviously don't if people keep camping them)

As of now, it's just "who gets there first with their overgeared DPS race".
Sure maybe later on it will "die down" but since the rewards are so good (like wow sands of time anyone??) a lot of people who cannot do coil, this is gonna be their "to go" place to gear up for a long time. Please seriously reconsider this system for the next patch, or ninja patch it with one of the above suggestions. This is starting to bring back flashbacks to Dark Devices.

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Originally Posted by Clavaat

You know what would happen then? The same thing that happened in FFXI: everyone swarms around the PT that claimed it and spam shit to force a D/C. Or it would be botted. Take your pick.

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Sounds like a great way to increase blacklist/report a mass ton of people for harassment lmao

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Originally Posted by Rose-Wild

They should make them like maps and only your party hits them and spawns them.

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That's what I initially thought it was going to be as well and when I found out it wasn't I was really disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Well....you all wanted the open world NM system back.

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Yep we all do. Except SE went and implemented it in the worst way possible. People complain constantly we want NMS and the same people are complaining they hate FATES. SO what does SE do. They add more boss nm fates... but take away the marker and call it something else. yea GJ SE.

Then again the way that would make them not pointless zergs ever more people would be QQing because the person with 2 jobs, 11 kids, who is building a house on his/her own cannot claim enough. the whole ULTRA CASUAL WEEKEND WARRIOR CONTENT ONLY problem this game has.

NMS will not work with Yoshida's vision of the game where everyone has access to everything. NMS by default are competitive for PVE gear. Removing that 1 concept or adding subpar gear will negate the meaning of doing them. They should add real nms in this game still, just do not lock gear exclusive to them.

They need to change thier stance on open world. OR make some kind of tiered spawn NM or something. Pop B to get a pop item for A to get a pop item for S in each zone or something. NMS require a claim mechanic. They can either make it competitive(Claimable) or force spawn claimed (Like leve mobs).

Maybe SE is trying to teach people a lesson on why weekly caps can be a good thing.

The main problem with hunt is not HP of the mobs or too many people, it's the way the mobs pop, and the way this grind works, It could have been other ways to grind this, Dailies/weekly mobs to hunt, like a hunting log, or quests/leves where you have to gather items (crafted, looted or harvested ) to make a mob pop, and then have people kill different mobs for points. A grind where can see your progression, not this luck-based grind. Make these NM be forced pop and can only give rewards once a week so that people makes team to farm items and trigger the encounter and then kill it, something that is a true Open World content, because running everywhere hoping to find a stupid monster that pops randomly is just stupid.

I goes with all the other stupid things that could have been fun but are actually boring ( Mats in dungeons making gear farm boring, Sands/oils/tomestones in CT forcing you to get them and preventing you to get items for rerolls if you want to have better gear for endgame content while CT was supposed to be for rerolls/vanity, exploration log and RNG bitching again, Relic quest is fun compared to these )
Of course i don't hope for SE to respond to these complains, or maybe with a "we understand your concern but we won't change anything".

I'm going to give it a few more days...but I don't really see time stemming the flow to a significant degree. Even @ 6am CST Naul was dead in...oh let's say 3 seconds.

The rewards are insanely awesome for seals - so until everyone that has the time to farm marks has every job @ i110, its going to be hard to stop this. The solution shouldn't be to make it more accessible to everyone, as it would destroy the value of gearing up being able to sand and oil your gear in a week, and I like the open-worldness of it. My solution would be:

Elite Marks killed without a bill reward a maximum of 10 allied seals (10=S, 5=A, 3=B)
First - add GC seals as a supplemental reward to Frontlines
Regular mark bills cost 2,000 GC seals, have an 18 hour lock-out from regular mark bills, and reward 2 allied seals for each mark, no FATEs involved
B mark bills cost 5,000 GC seals with a 72 hour lock-out from all Elite mark bills, and reward 20 allied seals
A mark bills cost 10,000 GC seals with a 96 hour lock-out from all Elite mark bills, and reward 30 allied seals
S mark bills cost 20,000 GC seals with a 168 hour lock-out from all Elite mark bills, and reward 50 allied seals

The elite mark bills allow you to spawn the monster after you have obtained the right bait (crafted) and found the correct location on the map. Your friends can help you in up to a full party with your Elite marks, and they will receive the 10/5/3 seal reward from the down of whatever mark you spawned.

All of the other elite marks should be forced spawns with an RNG component - i.e. it has a 5% chance to spawn in any of 6 "place-holders" in Zan'rak or something. Take the sol and myth rewards out - I kind of find that silly.

Hunting system needs to be redone. I'm sitting on a whopping 5 allied seals after spending almost an entire day running around like a crazed looney praying to get even just one hit on the mob. I don't mind grinding mob after mob and slowly accumulating the seals but this like a dog eat dog, too bad so sad kind of ordeal. There's absolutely no skill, no diligent work and no player comaradrie involved in this whatsoever. It's making players hate each other, when really the flaw lies in the design and execution of it. People tagging the mobs are being blacklisted, cursed at and vilified in shouts.

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Originally Posted by lololink

Make these NM be forced pop and can only give rewards once a week so that people makes team to farm items and trigger the encounter and then kill it, something that is a true Open World content, because running everywhere hoping to find a stupid monster that pops randomly is just stupid.

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...What? Things randomly spawning is less Open World than using an item to spawn? Why?

I don't know. I would think a smart player would not even go after the Elite Mark until the end of week, or not at all, and just hunt the other ones barely anyone is killing. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Ehayte

stuff about lockouts

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I like the idea of GC seals but the 5 day lockout seems silly.
It should really just work like a treasure map. You don't have the map? You can't spawn the monsters.

This open world monster nonsense is so dumb and I'm really angry they took those stupid "we need more open world" content threads to heart.
That crap belongs in FF11, don't bring it back here =_=

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Originally Posted by Clavaat

...What? Things randomly spawning is less Open World than using an item to spawn? Why?

I don't know. I would think a smart player would not even go after the Elite Mark until the end of week, or not at all, and just hunt the other ones barely anyone is killing. *shrug*

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Getting an item on monsters in open world = you do things in open world and kill the NM
Wandering in open world = not playing the game, that's not content.

Got 500+ points and a book yesterday. Just by being organized (we were 16+ people hunting together).

The system is chaotic but it works.

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Originally Posted by Noll

The system is chaotic but it works.

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No, it doesn't work, that's why this thread is 12 pages of people complaining at how terrible it is.
You got 500 points? Good for you, you must have had a lot of time to spend doing nothing but hunts all day while majority of people were at work and get home with only a little bit of playtime and got nothing.

It doesn't works anymore on Ragnarok, there are too many people, even S ranks are getting killed in less than 1 mn.
People don't wait for others anymore so they just kill them before you can even finish to teleport. I'm not even bothering trying to kill one if it's not S rank.

I'm going to reserve my final judgement for when I get to wake up Sunday morning really early and try to get a group of 8 people together to snake some seal-age while others are sleeping : D If I can go from 6am-12pm every Sunday and grab 500 seals... I'd be OK.

This is how I see the forums (on the subject of open world content).

"Hey SE, I WANT more open world content."

"Hey SE, thanks for FATES but they aren't open world enough."

"Hey SE, oh Hunt looks promising, cant wait till patch."

"Hey SE, Hunts are stupid and you guys made it too much open world, get you stuff together."

Point being, nothing will satisfy the "Forumers" as they rather complain on the forums than play the game.

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Originally Posted by lololink

Getting an item on monsters in open world = you do things in open world and kill the NM
Wandering in open world = not playing the game, that's not content.

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Why not both?

Edit: Never mind, I don't care. I only see the complaints here, not in-game. I haven't even touched the hunts because I knew this would happen. How have you all not seen the pattern yet?

1. New Content released
2. Everyone tries to do 1 thing, and not everything
3. Everyone becomes frustrated they can't do that 1 thing to the full extent
4. They complain on the forums
5. They stop playing OR they do something else
6. 1 week later, no one cares anymore, the servers unclog, life goes on

Seriously. Every Patch. This is why I just stick to the story, sidequests, etc, until week 2 of the patch. I will do hunts, for sure, but for now, -that- is the side content to me. To each your own.

I fully expected it to be thing for pre-formed parties really. Multiple elite marks, pick one to fight then try and hunt it down. A bit like treasure maps but with a weekly lockout.

Kinda disappointing to see the Zergfest that is the current system. Hunts should really be left to 4-8 man parties, along with alliances for S ranks.

Just my personal opinion, I'll probably try and work with the current system by gathering people for S ranks.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

snip

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However you work it, the NM's are basically FATE's without it showing on the map. They should of just reintroduced the Faction Leve system that was in 1.xx. Guildleves are a borderline dead system when you hit 50. Have it that daily guildleves reward you faction points to unlock special guildleves that spawn the NM that requires a good 4 to 8 man party. After you kill it, it rewards the items you see from the vendor like gear and oils/sands. Also giving you allied seals you can put towards buying something in case drops don't work in your favor. This would spread people out in different zones, offers open world content without conflict, and gives the satisfaction of raid like bosses in the open world.

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Originally Posted by Erana

I fully expected it to be thing for pre-formed parties really. Multiple elite marks, pick one to fight then try and hunt it down. A bit like treasure maps but with a weekly lockout.

Kinda disappointing to see the Zergfest that is the current system. Hunts should really be left to 4-8 man parties, along with alliances for S ranks.

Just my personal opinion, I'll probably try and work with the current system by gathering people for S ranks.

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I thought so too.... all the hopes went to hell.

Guess the old saying, "Hope only brings Disappointment" ring true.

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Originally Posted by Clavaat

Seriously. Every Patch. This is why I just stick to the story, sidequests, etc, until week 2 of the patch. I will do hunts, for sure, but for now, -that- is the side content to me. To each your own.

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Try to do some hunts and you'ill understand, you are simply doing nothing for hours until you or your LS find a mob for a 10 sec fight. that's not a content, even exploration log makes you play more.