the hunts made me hate this community now

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

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Yeah I'm with you here. I just don't want to have to go back to grinding dungeons. While I don't necessarily do hunts very often, it's cool that there is content outside of dungeons that you can do to progress.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

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Most of the sane ones don't care if you get the items from a raid, coil or something else. It's the lack of effort that bothers them.

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Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

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That's really only something that's manifested in the forums, it's a pretty isolated section of raiders who think their time is more valuable than other peoples, I've found that you don't see it at all in game.

As for "early pulls", people need to realise that their information might not be first hand and they might actually suck at taking shortcuts. Then they can move onto the next stage of grief. Acceptance or something like that.

First of all: top-end gear does not mean top-end skill. Being full ilvl 110 does not guarantee you are a proper player. I'd take an ilvl 90 player with Second Coil achievements rather than an ilvl 110 shining player who geared up via hunts.

And second: people who whine about others not waiting are usually the leechers - hunts are supposed to be an ACTIVE business: if you sit semi-afk in town waiting for someone to spam a mark in your linkshells, you have no right to ask to wait.

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Originally Posted by murdercat

I think the implementation of the hunts is providing negative influence to the game.

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It is quite the opposite: the community was as is even before the hunt.

The only thing you can attribute to the hunt itself, is that the mechanic have drove (some of) the community to show off their best behavior.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

It is quite the opposite: the community was as is even before the hunt.

The only thing you can attribute to the hunt itself, is that the mechanic have drove (some of) the community to show off their best behavior.

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I'm not sure i would blame the Hunt for this to be honest.

While the implementation of the system isn't ideal (major props to those on Excalibur btw who have been able to make the most of this, seriously awesome cooperation guys)

This is yet another symptom of weekly lockout + vertical gear progression without enough alternate routes / not enough equal endgame content to round out rewards = unsatisfied players

If enough endgame dungeons / content had been offered as viable gearing alternatives to coil from the beginning you wouldn't have the starved population essentially frothing at the mouths to rush out and do Hunts to this degree.

This applies to both the groups who are doing coil and are getting shafted on drops and can't go for the rest of the week, and to those who aren't going at all because of static woes etc. The Hunt rewards are simply too good to pass up for what they are due to the lack of viable alternatives elsewhere.

Btw, this also throws out the tired old "Well if people could spam Coil they'll just burn out and quit the game!" argument you keep seeing on the forums.

The rewards offered by the Hunt have proven infinitely more detrimental than any removal of lockout would have been.

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Originally Posted by Davorok

This is exactly what is wrong with The Hunt and why many of us resist (and resent) the Horde mentality.

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You are gaining a HUGE benefit from being able to get at hunts with the Excalibur system, which has been proven to be a complete disaster on other servers with bribes and whatnot in order to even get into linkshells that track the marks. As part of such, we will advise you to the better role to be playing as FOR YOUR BENEFIT when running as part of the horde so that you and your party may gain the most from participating. We're not demanding it of you in any way, we recommend you do so because we know that while we're getting at every hunt target, being damage dealing class may or may not allow you to gain the maximum reward for participating. Anyone telling you and/or forcing you to do what is recommended by the permanent hunt leaders is driving their own party in a way which we do not condone, but we can not control individual groups even if we don't like what they are doing and demanding of the members of their group as a party leader. I would recommend running your own party with no restrictions of this kind and having fun with it this way. I can't guarantee that you will get maximum benefit this way, but you will be able to have fun the way you want to.

We will however ask you to remove your pet simply because they are sadly designed in such a way from Square Enix' side that they provide you zero benefit, which is just ridiculous, and as such they are an extra entity in the world which will unnecessarily add to the culling effect when near a hunt target and the horde's gotten too big. Same thing goes for minions. Note that we will only ask and say please, you are not going to be kicked or pointed fingers at or anything of the sort for not doing it. Anyone who's starting a witch hunt for pets and minions are told to stop, meanwhile we continue to ask nicely to help everyone's issues with the culling that happens since we run with so many for each target.

As for hunting targets on your own and killing them on your own, well done! Finding marks before the horde is a feat in itself that I back in the day was very good at myself and was also why most of Excalibur initially hated me and my free company until I decided to join arms with the horde and share information. Nothing's stopping you from doing so and nobody's claiming ownership of the hunt marks just because we're so organized in the horde. There might be some zealous misfits that think otherwise and will shout at you, but those are immediately told to shut up and instead offer a warm welcome to any outsider that we don't currently see in the horde and extend an invitation to hunt with us.

I firmly believe our way of doing the hunts is to the great benefit of everyone on the server and instead of causing friction, we are bringing the server together and surely finding new friends to play with outside of hunts.

But please do continue doing hunts in your own way, nobody's stopping you. I am merely offering the most efficient way to do it where everyone can reap the benefits.

Skogs Fru... Not a hard hunt in the least. I've trio'd it during off-hours. So the other day it's called out at say.. 3:00 ET. We get to the spawn point and wait 'til 4:00 ET. At this point a couple people say "My group is inbound, please wait". At 5:00 ET I /shout "Pulling @ 5:30 ET" and nobody in the zone objects. 5:30 ET rolls around and I promptly pull.

So... what happens next? I'm a douche bag who needs to die in a fire. How is waiting from 3:00 to 5:30 ET not enough??? I was called out in /shouts for being the idiot who pulled early.

The hunt system is crap.

The complete game has been devalued by Hunts. This was a step in the wrong direction in every single aspect and while the damage is already done one can only hope SE realizes this and does not repeat this mistake in future content.

This damage is permanent for the current iteration (2.3x), but due to this game's fast self-obsolescence cycle it's possible to fix it by the next big patch (2.4). This may or may not cause SE to change plans to ensure that hunts are no longer not only the most sought out content but also the only relevant one.

But there's a problem here. Hunts may not actually be the mistake some of us firmly believe it is, when you look at it in perspective.

There's certainly many people happy with this system. It gives easy top tier gear, requires no skill whatsoever or understanding of game mechanics, it's perfect for horde mentality guilds where a handful of people know what's happening and the rest follow on command (i.e. 4-5 leaders know the ToDs and where to look for the spawns while the rest of the FC waits till they are told where to go) and gives around-the-clock activities for the whole FC.

On the side of the people that complain about the hunts, there's two clearly opposed arguments:

- "Hunts suck because they make the game pointless" and
- "Hunts suck because I cannot get the credits I want"

While it may seem we are both on the same side ("Hunts suck!"), the problem is we most definitely are not even close. You often see "hunt defenders" argue back that people not liking hunts are jealous because they cannot get the stuff they want. While aggressive and juvenile, this is in a way true. The second group would be perfectly happy with the hunts if they could get the rewards they want from it.

This is a big problem because it means that there may be few people (relative to the mass of players) that believe that hunts are fundamentally flawed, not because we cannot get the rewards we want but because it makes everything else in the game pointless.

I firmly suspect that the player base that believes hunts are fundamentally wrong is rather small and it makes me wonder about the future of this game and the genre as a whole. This is a worry that has been going on for a while and as time goes by my expectations are met.

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Disclaimer: I have no problem getting the hunt credits I want in the most cases. I do believe the hunts have ruined most of everything else the game has to offer by trivializing it and replacing it with a Skinner's box style system: press button for (chance of) reward.

What if they changed the timer of A's to every 15 minutes instead of 4 hours. That way you have 8 or so parties hunting, each one can pick a zone, farm the crap out of their spawn, and not have to zerg the crap out of the limited spawns.

Or you could just give players a sands of time for logging in each day. Or for jumping.

I honestly see no issue with hunts. I do them enough to cap my soldiery each week and still have more than enough time to do second coil, farm ramuh, farm moogle ex, and level/gear all my other jobs. I don't do other content less because of hunts, the only people that do are the people who only play the game for i110 welfare gear which is just shameful anyways.

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Originally Posted by CYoung187

Ummm you waited 2.5 hours for a B rank? You realize that if you had just killed the damn thing it could have spawned 3 more times then it did? That is insanity.

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You do realize they mean (E)orzea (T)ime right?

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Originally Posted by CYoung187

Ummm you waited 2.5 hours for a B rank? You realize that if you had just killed the damn thing it could have spawned 3 more times then it did? That is insanity.

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ET = Eorzea Time.
ET = 1 bell, AKA 1 hour, AKA 60 minutes
RL Time for every In-game 1 hour = 2 minutes, 55 seconds
2.5 hours = waited over 6 minutes... He definitely gave enough of a chance.

I agree that the hunt have ruined the game and a lot of people I used to consider friends have become scum bags. Its like they have a crack addiction. The will not put a weekly cap on the even if they did they would continue hunting for drops or mythos or solids . they need to give us a way to get more seals on our own. To tell you the truth I loved this game before the hunts. Now I can barely stand it long enough to do my daily's. These Hunting elite scumbagearlypullingtrolls are ruining the game for a lot of people. They all have really nice gear and a library of blood splattered logs, must be nice. But for the poor souls on ps3 or that don't know the In crowd get nothing. Look at the forums. I don't see a lot of happy people. It has ruined a lot of my friendships. Sad sad sad. I don't know why they get 1000s of seals while we get 7 maybe a day from the posted hunts. Yea good looking SE way to look out for the little guy. Last I checked we all pay the same amount

My fc activity has gone from 10-15 players a night to 3-5 at once. Counting me, ive hardly been logging on as much as i used to. Quite the most destructive patch to have come.

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Originally Posted by Paladin13

a lot of people I used to consider friends have become scum bags. Its like they have a crack addiction. It has ruined a lot of my friendships. Sad sad sad. I don't know why they get 1000s of seals while we get 7 maybe a day from the posted hunts. Yea good looking SE way to look out for the little guy. Last I checked we all pay the same amount

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This x100000000000

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Originally Posted by DurtiMonkeyToe

You do realize they mean (E)orzea (T)ime right?

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OK that makes sense. I thought he was talking eastern time zone. That would have been bananas, still nobody should ever complain about waiting 6 mins for a B rank.

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Originally Posted by Iriadysa

While aggressive and juvenile, this is in a way true. The second group would be perfectly happy with the hunts if they could get the rewards they want from it...

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I'd be happy with hunts if they were more of an actual hunt or challenge. I know for a fact that not one person on this forum or even at that cesspoll over at Alla ever asked for a mob that spawns once an hour, for the entire server to converge on and destroy in a matter of 5 seconds that would reward oils and other top tier gear that previously came out of raids. Not even one.

So, hunts ARE fundamentally flawed in that they have rendered a lot of other content obsolete and frankly, unnecessary. Why bother with ST for 1 piece of i100 a week or maybe 1 oil when you can just be an aggressive jerk and get an entire set from hunts in far less time? I'm still trying desperately to get into coils but no one in my group cares about them because it's easier to just do mindless hunts.

So in short I think you are very wrong about the reasons behind the majority of players disliking hunts. Many of us play the game for the social aspect and the challenge of overcoming obstacles with our friends. You know, the whole idea behind every RPG, EVER - fight a big bad guy who is about to destroy everything you and your friends know and love.

Hunts should have been an interesting side activity that rewarded the same level or a little lower than ST. There's no reason it should rain i110 stuff on people, and if it didn't, entire servers wouldn't at each other's throats.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

I'll take challenge, please.

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I agree, look at the progression: Relic quest line: zero challenge, Hunts: zero challenge. Grind != content. I would so much rather have challenging, engaging content than mindless, dumb grinds. I can't stand the fact that to get Novus and i110 you just stare at your screen and follow the zerg. The only challenge in this game anymore is remembering why I'm paying for it each month.

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Originally Posted by Remilia_Nightfall

First of all: top-end gear does not mean top-end skill. Being full ilvl 110 does not guarantee you are a proper player. I'd take an ilvl 90 player with Second Coil achievements rather than an ilvl 110 shining player who geared up via hunts.

And second: people who whine about others not waiting are usually the leechers - hunts are supposed to be an ACTIVE business: if you sit semi-afk in town waiting for someone to spam a mark in your linkshells, you have no right to ask to wait.

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Even then, if you're in another zone looking for a mark and some other group finds one in another zone, you have no right to ask to wait since you weren't the one who found it.

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Originally Posted by JustPlainLucas

you have no right to ask to wait since you weren't the one who found it.

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I tend to agree, nobody is entitled to a mark simply because they're alive. But to flip the coin, what about the other members of your party, they didn't find it so do they have a right to the rewards? It's a group effort, everyone on the server has the same goal, and the only competition is between you and the environment ("competition"... let's face it, you could smash your face into the keyboard and be successful at hunts)

Basically, SE has created a system with mega-rewards, that isn't instanced, and therefore open to griefing. If everyone worked together, there wouldn't be grief. But attitudes like "you don't deserve it, you didn't find it" are nothing but corrosive to a healthy community, in my opinion.

That's half the problem with MMO's and the reason instances were created. Back in the day, you could have open world content in games like Everquest and everything generally went well. Along came WoW and suddenly you had to instance everything so people could actually accomplish something without kids on summer break ruining their experience. So now some people want more open world content. Well, now that MMOs are mainstream, you're getting a lot more people. Chances are a higher percentage are jerks, or there are just more of them.

It isn't like it used to be, you can't just trust a community anymore because more and more people could give even less craps about the other people around them. Need / greed loot systems and instances weren't in the first MMOs because you didn't need them. Can you imagine if coil loot dropped to a random player you had to trust to pass it out after you typed in /random?? It wouldn't last a day.

This is the monster we've created and allowed to flourish as a community, because after all: playing the game is generally free-market. Within reason you can play however you like. But think about how your actions affect the community before you do something like force hunts to become instanced just so people can participate.

TL;DR: don't be a jerk

the only bad thing i see on this and that's because i'm doing it, it's that now when i log in, i just find a hunt party/ls and i just do that, i dont do any more dungeons or raids, just when is necesary, i'm not a bad player, but theres a lot of people doing the same

If they wanted to do something more interesting for combat, they should try a Dragon Age 2 approach. Less elites, more group tactics.

This is the combat walkthrough the devs created prior to the game's release. While it still generally follows the holy trinity, because enemies are non-elite it allows for deviations from the norm, and makes each class feel more like its contributing to the overall goal of ending the encounter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJYtLOSPMnw

When a game makes too much use of elite monsters, the strategy devolves into tank turtle, healer spam, and damage dealers doing all the real killing. The gameplay becomes all about the numbers instead of executing a carefully planned strategy. It also doesn't leave much for end game encounters besides long scripted bosses, which are far more stressful than fun.

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TL;DR: don't be a jerk

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Your whole post is spot-on.

To be honest, its not the hunts, but the people that are a problem. There isn't much we can do to punish players who repeatedly attack marks on sight except to blacklist them enmasse (which is a good idea, but it could be abused). It isn't a crime to kill marks on sight, but it still remains socially unacceptable to do so because it is in everyone's interest to work together on these.

My idea? Do something like commendations for over world stuff, but allow players to mark someone down as well as up. Could it lead to tyranny of the masses? Possibly, but it would incentivize being kind to others.

I think the rush of end gameing elitists are slowly coming to an end. I've seen a lot more position calls for sharing, offers for hunt linkshells, and I've even stumbled upon the Ash one and the wyvern type one (sorry, don't do well with names) and hollered out coordinates. A massive amount of people showed up, and since I saw them first, I got the pull. Wasn't even in party, got full credit. I actually think at this point in the game, it's becoming a more social and open world friendly place. Sure, you still have Dbags, but lately it's been great.

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On the side of the people that complain about the hunts, there's two clearly opposed arguments:

- "Hunts suck because they make the game pointless" and
- "Hunts suck because I cannot get the credits I want"

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Why are these opposed? I'm of both crowds.

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There isn't much we can do to punish players who repeatedly attack marks on sight except to blacklist them enmasse (which is a good idea, but it could be abused).

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There's people who attack marks "on sight" because they're tired of getting screwed out of any credit due to massive crowds showing. I'm one of them. (For me, "on sight" basically means "when I think there's enough people to reasonably kill it without the mob melting in 10 seconds")

Frankly, I don't care if that makes people blacklist me. It means they're so petty that I don't want to interact with them anyway, so honestly they're doing me a favor.

Take out hunts = ppl will rage due to it not being there anymore.
Make a longer spawn time = ppl QQing about how long it now takes ( i.e atma fates lool )
Leave hunts the way it is = ppl as of now going on and on about it killing future patches/ content with the same ilvl rewards (true doe)
Nerf hunt rewards = ppl bitching about how its unfair tht ppl got it so easy before the nerf.

Only way to fix this mess imo is to severly nerf it to the ground in 2.4 patch and make other options in obtaining allied seals ( add them to duty roulette )

That way, higher ilvl gear will outshine the old hunt rewards.
And hopefully SE will not fck it up in 2.4 and be more weary of their generous givings in 2.3.

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Originally Posted by Jakeson

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My party is my party, a group of people I invited or let join via PF. The server is not my party. I owe my party the mark, because we're the party, not the server. I owe the server nothing. I don't expect someone to hold an A or even an S just because it took me too long to get out of my craft, switch to my SMN and teleport and THEN hope I get in a full party to get credit, so nor should anyone expect me to share something I found. Personally, though, I give at least 30 ET minutes for everyone to get there, but the zerg gets mighty packed mighty quickly. At roughly 50 or so people, that's good, and I'll pull when I announce it, but I don't wait for 100 people to gather, because then I'd have to wait for 200, and then 300 and honestly, I just don't like seeing that many people kill one thing. I really don't enjoy that, and like you said, so many people aren't even looking for the mobs when they get the news there is one.

As an aside, I killed Stinging Sophie all by myself last night (no one cared, as Melt spawned just before I found SS). It was very rare to find a mark (if only a B) that no one else was on, so I attacked it. It felt GOOD to actually kill a B mark the way SE designed it, by myself. If someone wants to call me greedy for not sharing it, I guess I'm greedy. But it genuinely felt good to have something to myself for once.

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Originally Posted by Vandesaan

...I firmly believe our way of doing the hunts is to the great benefit of everyone on the server and instead of causing friction, we are bringing the server together and surely finding new friends to play with outside of hunts.

But please do continue doing hunts in your own way, nobody's stopping you. I am merely offering the most efficient way to do it where everyone can reap the benefits.

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Thank you for your calm and informative reply Vandesaan but my issue isn't with The Hordes themselves but rather with this system that rewards The Hordes and encourages them in the first place.

In my opinion it is the Hunts themselves that are broken and many people have found ways to exploit it. Hitting a mob 2-3 times that dies in 15 seconds should not be giving full rewards to so many people. I suppose I sound like a jealous killjoy that just wants to spoil everyone's fun but I honestly believe The Hunts are unbalanced, unfair and actually detrimental to the game overall.

For me personally, I try to not take advantage of any exploits no matter how tempting they may be but even if SE says there is nothing wrong with "Zerg Hunting", I still will not participate because I do not enjoy it.

BTW, my solution to this whole mess is rather simple: "B" Elites should be Included in the Daily Hunts and should have the same "Red Mark" that dailies have or you get no credit whatsoever for killing one. The "A"' & "S" Elites can continue as Open World Coop Content.

In an older interview Yoshi said that every player would have a new "B" Elite Mark every day. I don't know if he was mistaken or changed his mind but I think he should reconsider it.

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Originally Posted by murdercat

....Abandonment of dungeon should also disable rewards from hunts for 30 minutes, and it would be great if this also works for party finder.

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So simply disable LS and FC channals in dungeons ^^;

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So simply disable LS and FC channals in dungeons ^^;

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Plz no. It's not like people can't get around this already and it's already bollocks that these channels are already restricted in pvp.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

So simply disable LS and FC channals in dungeons ^^;

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What would that do? would be a waste of time.

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Originally Posted by Jakeson

-snip-

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If you're out there working for the hunt and helping to find the mark, I would expect some courtesy.

If you're just lazying around, glamouring it up in the city and you see a shout, and then you shout back for them to wait for you and you don't get there on time and you then start to swear at everyone for not waiting - no, sorry....why o why are you putting stress on the groups that ARE putting in the work...?

Just a thought...

i love how people try to justify them own greed by saying: "we do this for the community, we bring people together"
let's be honest you do this for you first, the community it's just a steping stone that help you to get more mark than if you was doing with your small group.

i'm amazed by the hypocrisis of some people, hunt was never means to be a feature that reinforce the bond in the community and strangely it don't do it. people stick together because it in them interest. especially when we heard some story with hunting ls with rule almost as strict than the army, the people are amazing in them delussion, thanks to make my day tough.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

i love how people try to justify them own greed by saying: "we do this for the community, we bring people together"
let's be honest you do this for you first, the community it's just a steping stone that help you to get more mark than if you was doing with your small group.

i'm amazed by the hypocrisis of some people, hunt was never means to be a feature that reinforce the bond in the community and strangely it don't do it.

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Spoken like a true ***face.
I wait every single time and I expect the same cause its called being courteous. There's nothing selfish about it otherwise id whine about not waiting and not wait myself, that's hypocritical.
Fact is your view this your view that, its a problem otherwise there wouldnt be so much drama over it, and a simple invincible for a few minutes timer on spawn would fix it all.
Take your meds.

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Originally Posted by UnrealTai

Spoken like a true ***face.
I wait every single time and I expect the same cause its called being courteous. There's nothing selfish about it otherwise id whine about not waiting and not wait myself, that's hypocritical.
Fact is your view this your view that, its a problem otherwise there wouldnt be so much drama over it, and a simple invincible for a few minutes timer on spawn would fix it all.
Take your meds.

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Except they're right. Waiting, to a degree, can hinder your own chances. Not to mention, waiting INVITES people to take it because YOU have not claimed it. The system was designed for smaller groups than currently do it. And there's a few reasons for that decision. However, it's your choice to wait, but once you start doing that you EXPECT people to wait, otherwise they're discourteous in your eyes, which is wrong.

You basically look at it from the PoV of how YOU do it, and treat that as the "right" way to do it. So you start treating people who don't, poorly.

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Originally Posted by PrimeEvilPanda

If you're out there working for the hunt and helping to find the mark, I would expect some courtesy.

If you're just lazying around, glamouring it up in the city and you see a shout, and then you shout back for them to wait for you and you don't get there on time and you then start to swear at everyone for not waiting - no, sorry....why o why are you putting stress on the groups that ARE putting in the work...?

Just a thought...

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I 100% agree. And nobody should get butt-hurt over B's...pull away, I don't care.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

i love how people try to justify them own greed by saying: "we do this for the community, we bring people together"
let's be honest you do this for you first, the community it's just a steping stone that help you to get more mark than if you was doing with your small group.

i'm amazed by the hypocrisis of some people, hunt was never means to be a feature that reinforce the bond in the community and strangely it don't do it. people stick together because it in them interest. especially when we heard some story with hunting ls with rule almost as strict than the army, the people are amazing in them delussion, thanks to make my day tough.

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I love how some people honestly don't see this as a community. But then again, it isn't because most things are instanced...because the one time a game tries to bring out some open world content, it turns into this mess.