Discussion on Solutions to the Current Issues of Elite Marks

Rather than having threads just to talk about how terrible the Elite Mark system is. I thought I would make a thread where we, the player base, can discuss possible solutions to the problem, in order to make Elite Mark hunts better.

With a more positive centered discussion, focused on creating solutions, surely our community reps will be more likely to take notice and bring our suggestions to the dev teams attention.

Two things I have thought about concerning this:

1. Make the weekly Elite Marks GC specific (different for each GC).
2. Please make them much stronger, and with much more HP. As "Elite Marks" I feel they should be more capable of living up to that term. Something that we still have to work together to kill (fostering community), while not being so easily zerged down in a matter of moments.

What are your thoughts on how to approve our new Hunts system?
Feel free to discuss below.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

Perhaps the hunter scholar could give better clues as to "where" the mob could be found next pop. As of right now, they only imply possible spawn triggers, but it can pop on the opposite end of the map, if it wants.

I mean heck, when you look at naul's info, it infers killing Svara could accellerate its spawn chance, and that the "House Hautenard" (sp) as a victim of its attacks implies it could be found near their residence, northeast of the Observatorium. (note: This info isn't said by him outright, but if you ask guards, they point you in that direction. I find this more involved and fun than fixed info that means nothing.)

But if neither are true... makes me wonder why even HAVE hunter scholars, if they are going to send us on as much of a wild goose chase as some... rather cruel shouters calling out false spawns (just for fun).

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I agree, a hunt should be about finding and following clues of some sort to find your mark or cause your mark to pop, not a blind search over an entire zone.

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Originally Posted by IBNobody

Reduce the amount of damage/enmity that you need to generate to get the highest rank.

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I agree with this too. Some people are even suggesting to allow as much as one auto attack to obtain credit.

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Originally Posted by SongJoohee

I mentioned this in another thread, but what I see as an "easy" way to fix the difficulty is to give Elite marks an aura that increases their defense based on the number of players around them, that way when there's 100 people attacking an S Rank it won't melt in 60s. Maybe it's a limit of the game that doesn't let them, idk

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I agree with this as well. It's not something that should be outside of what SE is capable of doing. It could also help the zerg-fest problem. I know FATEs will spawn additional mobs based on the number of people in them, so I don't see why this wouldn't work. Though I would suggest making the Elite Mark's stats based on the amount of people in the zone, rather than simply the amount of people near it.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

But, let's talk about some suggestions.

1. Implement an aura that increases monster defense/HP in real time proportional to the current number of players attacking it. Alternately, just make them all beefier across the board.
An okay idea, to be sure. However, if SE was actually capable of doing this, FATEs would already be doing it. I'm not sure if this would ever happen. An alternate solution would be to institute the current system of FATE scaling: scale Mark HP proportional to the number of players who participated in the last kill. However, with the mobs of players we're dealing with, this would leave B Ranks un-soloable, which goes against the explicitly stated ideal of B Ranks being soloable.

2. Remove Sands/Oils from the possible rewards. Alternately, increase their price dramatically.
This is probably good. A possible compromise would be to just remove the Blood Splattered Logs from being buyable, attach them solely to S Rank Marks, and slightly increase their drop rate. This may reduce Zerging on A's and limit the mobbing on S Ranks only to those who are persistent enough to fight through low drop rates from low spawn rated monsters. I know we hate RNG, but if skill isn't going to be necessary, we need some RNG to reduce access to the highest tier of gear outside of obtaining them in raids.

3. One hit on the Mark = Full Credit. No in betweens.
A great idea in theory, but also quite abusable. There'd be no end to people popping all around the world, hitting every mark exactly once, and then sitting back and reaping all of the rewards.

4. (My own suggestion) Lower Myth and Soldiery Amounts, massively. Possibly do the same with Allied Marks themselves.
This one's about ratios. I can waltz around a zone, find a lonely B Rank Mark, and destroy it. I get 30 Myth and 10 Soldiery for this. For 3 minutes of work I performed alone, I obtained more Myth than the highest tier 8 man Extreme Primal fights, all of which take much longer... and don't even get me started on A and S ranks. They simply give far, far, far too much of these currencies for the amount of work necessary to kill the monsters. I'm not sure if the Allied Seals should be reduced, but perhaps they should at least be limited(Maybe 75-100 a day, or 750 a week?) when one considers that some people have managed to accrue enough for a Sands of Time in a single day.

5. (My own suggestion, deux) If you were not in the zone when a mark spawned there, you can not get credit!
Here's a controversial one. It'll kick Hunting LS's right where it hurts, but it will ensure that those who actually, well, hunted for a mark get their due credit. B's and A's would be just fine. S Ranks, being the creatures of "solve a riddle, do this specific thing, and then kill the monster" that they are, would simply need the coordination to get enough people into the zone before attempting the trigger. As for those poor LS', they'd go from a tool for zerging every hunt around the world to tools for communicating and coordinating the triggering of S Rank Marks.

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Another nice list of suggestions, some of them recapping previously liked suggestions. However, I especially like that last suggestion for some reason :) Also, on #2, I completely agree. The only form of actual progression that should be offered through this is Alexandrite, imo.

How about also give them render priority so they don't disappear on everyone.

Actually that shouldn't even be a thing. Render priority should always always always be enemies>party members> everything else. It does not make sense that I can see five garuda-egis but not the thing i'm trying to fight or my tank.

Open world PvP so we can kill the player who goes starts the battle early.

Perhaps the hunter scholar could give better clues as to "where" the mob could be found next pop. As of right now, they only imply possible spawn triggers, but it can pop on the opposite end of the map, if it wants.

I mean heck, when you look at naul's info, it infers killing Svara could accellerate its spawn chance, and that the "House Hautenard" (sp) as a victim of its attacks implies it could be found near their residence, northeast of the Observatorium. (note: This info isn't said by him outright, but if you ask guards, they point you in that direction. I find this more involved and fun than fixed info that means nothing.)

But if neither are true... makes me wonder why even HAVE hunter scholars, if they are going to send us on as much of a wild goose chase as some... rather cruel shouters calling out false spawns (just for fun).

Reduce the amount of damage/enmity that you need to generate to get the highest rank.

It astounds me that nobody seems to talk about the easiest solution: Just randomize the elite marks the same way the normal marks are.

This way not everyone is holed up in one zone, all the marks are getting hunted for by -somebody-, competition for the elite marks is low especially as the week goes on, and B-rank marks are left intact as they're obviously meant to be: solo or small group content. There'd still be plenty of incentive to help those people who got stuck with / were lucky enough to get S-rank marks for their weekly, and there wouldn't be roving legions trying to get a hit in on soloable enemies. This also requires the least amount of redesign on S-E's part.

The hard, probably best, solution would be to redesign elite marks entirely as high-difficulty, forced spawn monsters that require an organized, ready to party to take on: something akin to map encounters. Even with that, though, it would still be best to randomize the weekly to an extent so dozens of groups aren't spawning the same encounter on top of each other. This, however, would be a lot of new work from S-E and my prior suggestion would be easier and just as effective.

I mentioned this in another thread, but what I see as an "easy" way to fix the difficulty is to give Elite marks an aura that increases their defense based on the number of players around them, that way when there's 100 people attacking an S Rank it won't melt in 60s. Maybe it's a limit of the game that doesn't let them, idk

S Rank Elite Marks should outright have a ridiculous amount of HP and a set timer upon first engagement for it to be downed. Something like Odin, but way more HP. Maybe 100 million HP and to be killed within 10mins if engagement? Then people won't be able to zerg it down easily and have to call for as many people as they can to defeat it, instead of some being assholes who killed them at first sight before any other could even have a shot at it.

Or they could just have the B class elite marks spawn near a person with the elite mark in their inventory after a random amount of time that person has spent in the area. That way everyone gets to eventually complete it regardless of how many need it. Once a regular mark is fully completed, it disappears from your quest inventory so I assume it's the same for elite marks.

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Originally Posted by IBNobody

Reduce the amount of damage/enmity that you need to generate to get the highest rank.

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I think this is a necessity. I've heard most monsters you need to deal about 30% of the monster's hp to get credit if you didn't tag it (I've also heard enmity etc. but think hp for simplification). With those kind of numbers, if four or more people camp a spawn, kill the mark with about equivalent damage dealt, then only one of the four will get credit.

Even if the marks are much more forgiving than 30%, with enough people contributing, eventually, even if everyone contributes equally only the person that tagged it gets full credit. The system should support a vast number of people considering that everyone on a server is looking for the same mark on a given week (unless that changes). This is worsened further by the fact that rank B and A marks go down in under a minute, causing anyone that isn't camping it to have even less of a chance of getting credit.