B Rank Suggestion - Aether Compass Use

After just spending nearly 20 minutes searching the Dravanian Forelands for Gnath Cometdrone, the couple people who were searching along with me thought this would be a good idea: Use the Aether Compass we got during the expansion's story to help us search for weekly hunts, instead of polluting chat with constant queries for --insert mob name here--. When a player picks up their weekly B rank Centurio mark, it could temporarily attune their Aether Compass to said B rank (or both, just to give a little more "challenge" to it, to appease the "Why don't you just hand them seals" crowd) so long as they've unlocked the ability to fly in the area. This would help clear up shout chat from a bit of unnecessary spam and also make another use for an item that is otherwise (now) basically useless to many players.

I like the idea in general, but tying the feature to the aether compass doesn't really make thematic sense. I'd rather just see it unlock as a regular action you could use, like the Dig action for treasure maps.

As a counter to the "would make it too easy" argument, there could be varying levels of effect tied to consumables. You could buy tracker's manuals with seals, effectively making it so you can make it easier but get less of a reward.

Basic action: "You sense that an elite mark is nearby." / "You do not sense that an elite mark is nearby." Message changes if the closest mark is within a certain range, say 500y.
Tracker's manual type 1 active: "You sense that an elite mark is (nearby / some distance away) to the (direction)."
Tracker's manual type 2 active: "You sense that (name of mark) is (distance) to the (direction)."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

the "would make it too easy" argument

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Whoever thinks this didn't understand a thing. B ranks, much like daily hunts, are meant to drag the player out into the world. If they weren't they could as well just hand seals out directly. They are easy to kill, respawn instantly, and should thus be easy to find. Which they indeed were pre 3.0; zones were small enough to quickly check every reachable location. However by that time nobody ever thought about what happens when zones become as massive as they are now and support flying. Now you don't stand a chance to scan an entire zone in 10 minutes, and you're more likely to miss a few spots anyway, special thanks to extremely low enemy drawing distance. Add to that the grade of cooperation our community shows - you can literally tell the entire zone you're searching for a specific mob, hardly anyone goes out of their way to report it or even alert you when they kill it themselves - and you have a problem that simply stems from devs not thinking things through. Again. Searching for B ranks went from a slight distraction pre 3.0 to a massive pain afterwards. There is nothing you could make "too easy" about it because it set out being easy from the beginning, and needs to go back there ASAP.

YES
this
so much
please

it doesn't even have to work like the compass, just SOMETHING To make finding the B rank easier in areas where there aren't many people questing or running fates anymore.

Looking at you Azys La hunt bill marks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egnasya

Whoever thinks this didn't understand a thing.

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And in general I agree. However, I'm anticipating that if this feature were implemented poorly, some players might be upset - specifically, if the tracking action made it so you essentially know exactly where the mark is at all times then it would trivialize the process of looking for it, which can be fun if it's done right. Hence the idea for multiple levels of tracking ability - sometimes you just want a hint, sometimes you just want to get it done.