Hunts overshadowing the rewards of other content?

Am I the only one who feels that since Hunts have been introduced into the game they have disportionately rewards for the effort put in? Why are hunts set up in such a silly manner that's just zerg? I realize that this late in the game it's probably a moot point but hunts really disincentivize doing other content by a lot. Hunting gets better gear per hour than doing dungeons and a lot of other content. It also greatly devalues high end materia to the point where the materia market completely crashed hard. Especially with cross realm and instance jumps.

This leaves little incentive for Healers and Tanks to even queue for content which just leads to worse queue times for the rest of the base.

I think I said this back when hunts were initially introduced but what was wrong with world pops in the style FFXI had? They could actually make the HNMs require 8-24 players depending the monster and mechanics. Tactics would actually make a difference then. Literally Hunts are not really driving community engagement and they undermine other content. Just seems odd that this rather rudimentary, brainless system has stayed in the game for every expansion. Unless you're really into searching out the hunts. I'm guessing most people are just doing it for the rewards and really feel no fun or challenge in doing these.

For my part i do hunts because i find travelling through the overworld with dozens of others players way more fitting of a massively multiplayer game (like the 2 first M in MMO) than being cramped for hours in tiny instances with only 4/8 other players. I did like Eureka for the same kind of reason.

I dont really care of the rewards when nearly all is doable with 430 stuff and olds materias 6. If rewards were all that were driving me, to the point of doing content i dont really like just to get them, i would have try E1S a long time ago. Hunts aren't gonna give me 470 stuff and a 475 weapon, people doing savage raids have still better rewards than hunters.

For the disincentivize doing other content thing, i know a lot of people who are still doing their daily roulettes not caring about hunts at all. Because unlike me they like instanced content way more than overworld one. I am not sure players forcing themselves to do things they dont like only for the rewards are that numerous. And if they are, well, they did forgot that a game is supposed to be having fun, and not being frustrated.

As for the challenge, even if it is true that they seems easy once you know all the one shot mechanics and dont lose your focus during the fight, i see way more people being flattened in ShB hunts than in faceroll "expert" dungeons XD

It's curious, but while you're right that hunts are vastly better for rewards than roulettes, I don't think they affect queue times at all.

Very few people do hunts in my FC for example. I relink S ranks and hunt trains there but the majority won't touch them, despite the fact they'll hop into Alliance and MSQ all day and grumble how awful it is. A cross server hunt train gets about 200 people on my data-centre, which is like 40 people per world, which actually isn't much at all compared to the thousand queuing instances at that time. I really enjoy them myself, but realize Hunts just aren't everyone's cup of tea, the trains are laggy, confusing and a huge zerg rush and S ranks demand you drop everything you're doing immediately to get there.

Hunts and trains are the reason I still play this game. I do the new weekly quick bosses with Eden but I am not a dungeon runner/lover. I depend on A and S hunt tomes mainly to get my gear.

Despite hunts being more rewarding then a lot of other content for the time spent, the bulk of the playerbase doesn't bother with them for whatever reason so I don't think it's really a problem.

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Originally Posted by Orson_Dara

Why are hunts set up in such a silly manner that's just zerg?

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Because that's all they can ever do. as long as hunts remain open they'll only ever be throw more bodies at it and zerg it to death. dull boring it's basically just a hidden fate...

If you want to make hunts more interesting than just zergs you need to put restrictions in. such as only the party / alliance that pulls the mark can actively fight it. but then people will get butt hurt because they're excluded and can't take part. just like people already get butt hurt because someone apparantly pulled too early and it was killed before they could get there... (there's no such thing as early pulling) but then hunts were meant to be kinda competetive anyway thats the whole reason they're hidden and not just another fate. so i personally wouldnt see these restrictions as a bad thing.