An example of why the ARR Hunts need an adjustment

On my server there is a small group of players who solo or kill with a very small group all the S/A ranks in ARR zones. It wouldn't really be a big deal, but they don't even report the deaths, so nobody knows when the spawn windows are up. So it's not a case of " if you want the hunt, do the work and spawn it yourself," these players are behaving in a way that literally excludes the rest of the server from being able to participate in a game feature that is one of the only ways to get mount speed upgrades for ARR zones.

Just because something is possible in the game doesn't mean it isn't exploitive. These hunts need some kind of adjustment to where this isn't possible.

There really should just be some way of knowing when a S rank's spawn window is open, because even with the spawn time variance, you're still at an advantage in finding the hunt before anyone else a second time if you know when it died due to how well-documented the respawn times/windows are at this point.

I saw some great suggestions a while back that could make old S ranks more fun overall:

1. Sync them all to 70, sort of like reverse FATES. This would ensure multiple people can participate like with SB S ranks or Ixion.

2. More transparent spawn windows. Right now the most efficient way to track S ranks is with third party tools. When nefarious players mess with those timers (as they have been doing) then other hunters have no idea when the spawn windows are open or when to attempt S rank hunting. Integrating spawn timers into each zone's hunt NPCs, even if it's just a simple "XXX S rank is far away..." or "XXX S rank is nearby!" alert for when the window is up, would really help so hunters don't have to rely so much on third party timers that can be tampered.

Hunts, when done properly, are a great community activity. They're also basically the only reason to leave town anymore. I really hope there are some improvements to hunts so everyone can benefit from them.

To those players defenses, there's no rule saying you gotta report a death of an overworld mob.
Especially if they went and spawned an S rank themselves, they're realistically more than entitled to do whatever they want with it.

That statement is true and all, but it doesn't change the fact that it really sucks if you're dealing with a hunt like Senmurv that can take forever and a half to spawn and you end up with people wasting hours trying to spawn it because they had no idea it was already dead.

Some other MMOs that don't have convoluted spawn requirements for their rare enemies/bosses are nice enough to publicly note when said boss was killed and when it's possible for it to appear again (Ragnarok Online is the first MMO I saw that adopted this practice to make things more fair for everybody, because the world boss hunting in that was extremely competitive due to said bosses having tons of exclusive and valuable drops), so I feel like XIV should do the same when there's an extra hurdle that needs to be dealt with on top of the randomized spawn times.

they could just add an option to hunt npcs, that makes them tell you, when an S rank was seen/killed the last time

People tell others to spawn the S ranks they want to kill and not leech off a LS, but then proceed to hide the information needed to spawn S ranks or defend this kind of behavior. How hypocritical. As I've recently discovered some go as far as giving misinformation to hunt tracking websites. There should be an in-game method to find out when the spawn windows are open, so that everyone has an equal chance to put in the effort to spawn these mobs.

I've stopped relinking ARR and HW S ranks we've spawned with our little group after we noticed nobody ever helps to spawn (most of the time only us fishing, gathering, killing 150 mobs, doing 1 hour of boring fates etc...), but everyone is 100% READY to whine if they miss the hunt (while being afk of finishing their long 2 star craft or something) and insult in shouts those who did such a great effort to spawn. No relinks = no shouts drama, no hate, no blacklisting us, and we don't really need their help to kill, ARR die in 2 minutes and HW in 7 minutes or faster.
Why we should work for leechers' and haters' tiger mount? We absolutelly shouldn't.

I kind of wish they'd give a "Thrill of the Hunt" buff or something to people who are present in a zone when a S rank spawns that gives them a bonus of some sort when it dies.

It would probably help motivate more people to actually try spawning the things.

So a group of players are actively spawning and killing hunts before you have a chance to come and claim credit for killing it?

A and S rank hunts are basically the NM/HNM of this game. Everyone isn't entitled to be able to go kill them whenever they find it convenient. If you aren't actively looking for/spawning/tracking them then you have no right to complain about missing the chance to kill one.