Hunts: What's Really Wrong With Them

Incoming wall of text.

First, I shall preface this discussion with a single statement: Hunts are working exactly as the developers intended for them to work.

With that aside, let's get going. I'll start with a quick analysis of each Rank of Elite Mark and what it means for those hunting them.

B Rank: Tuned to be defeated by a minimum of a single person.

A Rank: Tuned to be defeated by a minimum of one party(4-8 people).

S Rank: Tuned to be defeated by a minimum of one alliance(24 people).

B Ranks are occasions where you're walking about and find this enemy that looks a bit out of place. It's Level 50, has that odd explody indicator next to its level, and it's slightly bigger than other monsters of its model. You pop up and give it a whack to see what kind of fight it'll give. It puts up a bit of a fight, but you've defeated it in about a minute or so. Perhaps an adventurer passing by decided to join the fray and make things slightly easier. It dies and you smile a bit at the reward for going out of your way to kill that monster.

A Ranks are visibly bigger than B Ranks. It's easy to tell that they shouldn't be tackled by a lone adventurer. So, you call up a friend or four and take it down. In a party, A Ranks are exciting battles and many of them have neat mechanics to deal with. You all walk away with your reward and your friends thank you for sharing.

S Ranks are huge, menacing, and definitely not to be underestimated. You know you're going to need a lot of people to take it down, so you take to Shout, FC, and LS chat and bring the army down upon it! Even so, the creature puts up a significant fight, and victory tastes sweet.

Here's the next major statement: S Ranks are the only Rank of Mark that developers expected players to shout everywhere for. They're the only Rank of Mark that are meant to handle "the mob".

Here is the biggest problem with hunts right now: We are treating B and A Ranks as if they're S Ranks. Bringing "the mob" to these lower Marks who are tuned to be defeated by a far lower number of people is a surefire way to get people angry at not getting credit. The fact of the matter is that B and A Ranks were not designed to be attacked by 50 people at once, so things fall apart when they are attacked as such.

Therefore, the crux of this is that the problems with Hunts are not the fault of the Developers. They are the fault of us Players. Square Enix did not create a broken system; we're simply using it wrong. This, of course, begs the question of "why are players doing this?", but that will be addressed later.

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Here are the most common problems with the Hunt that people seem to keep "identifying":

1. The Marks have too little HP.
2. "They're always dead before I get there!"
3. Open World Content shouldn't be giving Raid Level rewards.
4. "I can't see the Mark!"

Let's go over these one at a time.

The Marks have too little HP.
As I've alluded to above, they have exactly as much HP as they're supposed to. Any monster will go down quickly when more than the intended number of players attacks it at once. This is a fact of life. Imagine if you could take 8 people into a 4 man dungeon. Everything dies quite quickly because the content is tuned to be cleared with 4. What's happening with Hunts is exactly this, but on a much larger scale.

"They're always dead before I get there!"
This is a natural byproduct of the "incorrect" way of doing Hunts that players are currently employing. It is completely unreasonable to expect people to wait for the entire server to arrive at a single location to take down a monster. Every second that people do wait is a miracle in and of itself. The fact of the matter is that for every person who arrives at the mark, the chance of each individual person getting full credit for the battle decreases. There's a critical mass here somewhere.

Now, this leads to the direct result of people being angry that they didn't get to a Mark in time: The vilification of the player(s) brave enough to make the first attack. This is completely irrational. As I stated before, once more than 4 people arrive at a location for a B or A, it's completely possible for those present to just kill the Mark. I understand that you can see the "puller" as the exact reason that the Mark was dead before you got there, but the mob of people next to the puller who all started hitting it to are just as much at fault if you're going to use that logic.

The crux of this eventually falls into a statement going along the lines of "That stupid <insert name here> pulled early! Report him!"

First, someone pulled "early"? With the attitudes I've seen about how people are expected to wait for the entire server to descend on even a mere B Rank, it's become increasingly obvious that "early" is an empty word. People are expected to wait a literally infinite amount of time for others to arrive. Therefore, it doesn't matter when someone pulls. That pull is going to be "early". There will always be someone on the server who wants the reward for a Hunt but for some reason was behind the rest of the mob. Always. Nobody wants to wait an infinite amount of time to attack a Mark.

To those complaining about this reason: The fact of the matter is that the Mark died before you got there simply because you didn't get there on time. It's not the fault of the person who pulled. It's not the fault of the mob who attacked afterward. It's your fault for not being either the discoverer of the Mark or one of the first people there. This is called a "Hunt", not a "Wait for the LS to announce a location and then hurry there!" If a Mark has been called in an LS, it's probably already too late for you to get there... unless it's a S Rank.

As for reporting those "first pullers": This is also silly and irrational. Exactly what portion of the Terms of Service are these people violating? All most reports will do is get you warned. Exceptions can only be made when there is clear evidence that someone is intentionally attempting to make people angry, as that legitimately falls under Harassment. Most of the time, these pullers are just trying to get credit for themselves and/or their party with no ill intent toward the rest of the mob. In other cases, they're either taking on the monster alone or with their own personal party. It's not a crime to not announce the appearance of a Mark to the entire world.

Open World Content shouldn't be giving Raid Level rewards.
An interesting statement, indeed. I will go over this later, when I examine why so many people wish to Hunt.

"I can't see the mark!"
A limitation of the game engine that was, erm, supposed to have been fixed. Whoops. Staying right next to the Mark will help keep it in your render priority, so melee classes are recommended for S Marks. If B and A Ranks are disappearing on you, there were simply far too many people there for the strength of the monster.

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Okay, so those are the "problems". What are the most commonly suggested "solutions"?

1. Increase the HP of Marks across the board.
1a. Scale the HP and/or Defense of Marks either to the number of people currently present or by the number of people who last killed a specified Mark.
2. Remove Sands and Oils of Time as a possible reward.
3. Make all Marks a forced spawn that only allows credit for the party who spawned it.
4. Give full credit for any amount of damage or threat applied to a Mark.
5. Lower the reward of Seals, Myth, and/or Soldiery.
6. Institute a daily/weekly cap on Allied Seals.

Again, let's go over these one at a time.

Increase the HP of Marks across the board.
A flat increase to HP to the level players want them to be would completely ruin the intended number of people intended to be able to successfully down a mark. Attempting to make the developers pander to an incorrect way of doing a piece of content is not the right way to go about things. The same goes for 1a. If the engine allowed for monsters to dynamically scale their power/HP to the number of players currently near it, FATEs would already be doing it. Otherwise, FATE style scaling would create a horrible chain reaction of needing more and more people to defeat each Mark each time it spawns until B Ranks are as powerful as S Ranks and actual A and S Ranks are nigh undefeatable. The "caps" on the scaling would need to be very low in order to keep the intended number of people from being unable to defeat the Marks, which will not satisfy those who wish every mark to be alive for 10 minutes.

Remove Sands and Oils of Time as a possible reward.
This would surely cause a change in the number of people trying to do Hunts. However, the solution to "fix" a piece of content shouldn't be "make fewer people want to do it". I'll go into this further in the next section.

Make all Marks a forced spawn that only allows credit for the party who spawned it.
The only possible solution that will ensure that Marks are tackled by the intended number of people(or close to it). Possible variants of this include requiring specific items and leve-like allowances. This would certainly save the Hunt from "the mob", but at what cost?

Give full credit for any amount of damage or threat applied to a Mark.
This is very abusable and doesn't make a terrible amount of sense. Should the Paladin who rides in and manages to get the very last hit get full credit for the kill? I wouldn't think so.

Lower the reward of Seals, Myth, and/or Soldiery.
I'll go over ideas regarding this in the next section.

Institute a daily/weekly cap on Allied Seals
People don't do the Hunts just for the seals. They do it for Tomestones too. Limiting one currency wouldn't drastically change the dynamics of the system in regards to the number of people trying to use it.

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So, we've gone through problems and solutions. It's clear that players want the system to allow more people to get credit for Hunts, even if other players seek to or otherwise accidentally interfere with said system.

So, why do so many people want to do the Hunt? It isn't for "fun". It is the complete opposite of fun when everything but S Ranks dies in less than 10 seconds. The answer is simple: Incentives.

The flaws with the Hunt aren't with the Marks themselves. They aren't with the HP, defense, or power of these Marks. Any issues with monsters dying too quickly, people pulling before the entire server arrives, etc. are solely the fault of players, not the Hunt system.

Nay, the flaws with the Hunt are at the end of the journey. The reason so many people want to do the Hunt is because it's rewarding. Too rewarding. If there were to be any changes to the Hunt, it would have to be here; the point where players exchange their seals for rewards.

How is the Hunt "too" rewarding? Let's compare the time necessary to get common rewards based on "skill" rather than the Hunt.

X's of Time: A skilled and dedicated group of 8 people can get a maximum of two Sands and two Oils of time per week from the Second Coil. A coordinated and dedicated group of 8 people can, for example, each obtain one of these two hot ticket items per day via the hunt if they try hard enough. This is 4 items per week the "skilled" way versus up to 56(or more!) items per week the "hunt" way. If we throw Syrcus Tower into the mix, each player can obtain 1 of these items per week, for a total of 8 per week across the group.

Tomestones of Mythology/Soldiery: A B Rank Mark gives 30 Mythology for a maximum of 2 minutes spent fighting. This is more than even the hardest Trial fights. More than the original Coil. Content that is more difficult and takes longer. A Ranks give 80 Mythology, and S Ranks give 200. Given the rate at which these can be killed, there are those who aren't doing this for the seals, but for the fact that Hunts are now the fastest way to accrue both Mythology and Soldiery in the entire game by a laughably enormous margin.

It's perfectly okay for there to be a "fastest" way to obtain valued resources. However, the margin between Hunts and the "next best thing" is too wide.

Now, I stated earlier that the solution to "fix" a piece of content shouldn't be "make fewer people want to do it". However, the reason that people are coming to hate the Hunt is ultimately because so many people want to do it. It's a bit of a Catch 22. On one hand, the fact that so many people want to experience this content is a good thing. It's a factor of ultimate success for SE; successfully designing a piece of content that all of the varying types of FFXIV players all want to do. It's pretty amazing and SE should be commended for this, regardless of the storm it has riled up.

Unfortunately, the way to "fix" hunts cannot be to make them directly support larger groups of people because it explicitly goes against the developer's vision for the content. There have been several occasions where a patch directly attacked a way of doing a piece of content that went against their "vision", so it is possible that SE may do something to the structure of hunts to attempt to prevent this mob mentality regarding B and A Ranks.

When all is said and done, if the reason for something going wrong is the number of people trying to do it, the only ways to repair the damage are either to make fewer people want to do it or limit participation in some way. The easiest way to make fewer people want to do it is to lower the rewards and thereby make fewer people want to pursue them.

1. Tomestones: If tomestone rewards were reduced by between 75-90%, then Hunts would become solely about accruing Seals, not tomes. The tomes would be reduced to a nice bonus in lieu of the currency that Hunts are meant to showcase. Only the people who want the Seals would go after Hunts... which is what I believe SE truly wants to be the case. It may be possible that they added these huge amounts of tomes to artificially enhance desire to Hunt beyond the Seal rewards. If so, it worked!

2. Sands and Oil: It's too late to just remove these wholesale. It may even be too late to mess with their cost. However, it may be beneficial to raise the cost of blood splattered logs by a significant amount or render them only obtainable via the drop from Marks. Make this high ticket item less "inevitable" to obtain and fewer people will attempt to get them.

3. An idea for weekly caps: Hitting a weekly cap on seals also eliminates tomestone rewards. This would be the only way to institute a cap on Seals that would discourage players from Hunting after they reach their cap. However, they were originally designed to be uncapped, so suddenly capping them would go against SE's vision of the system.

An implementation of "limiting participation" is covered in the solutions: making all marks a forced spawn only targetable by the party who spawned it. This is very easy to limit, as such things would logically require specific bait and there could be transparent timers or leve style allowances allotted for the Hunt. This would, however, require a significant rework of a system the developers appear to be very proud of. I honestly cannot see this happening in any way, shape, or form.

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Conclusions

1. The biggest problem with Hunts is not only that it cannot support the sheer number of people who want to do it, but that these mobs of people doing it are doing it wrong. The issue is not with the Marks themselves.

2. Unfortunately, the only to fix this problem is to either lower the incentives to do it in some way or limit participation on a daily or weekly basis.

3. Hunts are at their most fun when Marks are tackled with the "appropriate" number of people. This is the way the developers intended them to be pursued. They are at their least fun when 50 people are at every hunt and the lower ranks die in less than 5 seconds. This is not the way the developers intended them to be pursued.

So, lastly, stop blaming SE for the state of Hunts. Just stop. The only people to blame for the issues you're experiencing is yourselves. The incorrect use of a system always causes problems. It's analogous to not heeding the warnings on your newest machine. It just doesn't end well.

PS: I haven't mentioned Hunting LS' in this post, despite them arguably being the "originators" of the mob mentality regarding hunts. To most, this is probably fairly obvious. It won't be possible to prevent communication about Hunts outside of the zone they are located, so there's no point in really discussing the merits of these LS' beyond the fact that they heavily contribute to the way we're doing Hunts wrong.

Aaaaand... this post is about 17 thousand characters long! This wins my personal award for "longest post ever written", indeed!

My eyes bleed at this much text D:
Some good points made but it's all stuff that's been said somewhere in the 5000 other posts on the subject.

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Originally Posted by Ephany

My eyes bleed at this much text D:
Some good points made but it's all stuff that's been said somewhere in the 5000 other posts on the subject.

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I've read plenty of those posts, but I've ever seen someone say "SE did it right and all of the problems are the player's fault".

While I agree with a lot of what you said, it is completely SE's fault for not foreseeing how swamped these hunts would be for the following reasons:

1) Many players have been asking for open world content since beta, including the return of Notorious Monsters
2) By adding really nice glamour pieces at over 1k seals each, it ensures that people will be blitzing to be the first to get them (just like win-trading for Wolves' Den glamours)
3) By adding other special rewards such as Alexandrite/Blood-spattered Mark Log for end-game progression gear
4) New content is always very busy anyway simply because it's new

Currently, the system is pretty much unplayable, it encourages people to cheat by using 3rd party radars (or rely on those who do cheat), and it is very poorly implemented. The system itself was pretty well-conceived...but there's no getting around the fact that SE should've known that more than 8-24 players would be hunting a given mob at a given time and should have tuned the difficulty accordingly or adjusted the available rewards as you said. Either way, the fault does in fact lie with SE.

The problem is simple.

There is no problem.

People have asked for open world content, even when presented with the downsides previous games have shown. The playerbase that suggested this have managed to convince the devs that open world content is indeed the way to go, and that it would be okay.

All in all, I agree with your points, they were very well thought out and pretty much took what I would say right out of my mouth.

honestly the only way i could think of dealing with this situation is for a and s rank mobs to only give you rewards once per week. b rank could still be open game. this would majorly cut down on the amount of people that would be swamping the a + s rank mobs.

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Originally Posted by jlewiss

honestly the only way i could think of dealing with this situation is for a and s rank mobs to only give you rewards once per week. b rank could still be open game. this would majorly cut down on the amount of people that would be swamping the a + s rank mobs.

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I haven't actually done hunts myself yet (semi-retired). But that solution would compound the issues at hand. The issue isn't players swarming A + S rank - in fact, according to the post, that is the intended design. The issue is players swamping B + A ranks.

Exactly right but I didn't see you touch on the subject of players running around using that app radar thing. It seems that they can't even get in trouble for it leaving players like myself (PS4) at a disadvantage for hunting which kind of sucks. Wish those using could get punished.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

So, lastly, stop blaming SE for the state of Hunts. Just stop. The only people to blame for the issues you're experiencing is yourselves. The incorrect use of a system always causes problems. It's analogous to not heeding the warnings on your newest machine. It just doesn't end well.

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SE decided to make hunts the only way of obtaining sands and oils that isn't subject to lockouts in the entire game. That a lot of players looking to progress would want to try hunts is a result of that decision. It is not the players fault that the developers chose to place the only method of obtaining end game rewards outside of weekly lockouts in an activity that cannot sustain the number of players interested.

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Originally Posted by Susanoh

SE decided to make hunts the only way of obtaining sands and oils that isn't subject to lockouts in the entire game. That a lot of players looking to progress would want to try hunts is a result of that decision. It is not the players fault that the developers chose to place the only method of obtaining end game rewards outside of weekly lockouts in an activity that cannot sustain the number of players interested.

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This is a little off topic, but I think the fault lies in soldiery gear requiring "upgrades" to begin with.

In 2.0/2.1, players were given the means to obtain a great set of gear in the Binding Coil, and for those who had horrible luck with lots, there was an alternative in mythology gear that was still up to par.
In 2.2/2.3, players were given the means to obtain a great set of gear in the Second Coil, and for those who had horrible luck with lots, there was an alternative in soldiery gear, but if you wanted to be up to par, you needed more items from the Second Coil.

If soldiery gear was item level 110 out of the gate and required more soldiery tomes to get, or was simply item level 100 without an upgrade, we wouldn't be in this mess.

I have to agree with Shake0615 on this. SE is completely to blame for making the ridiculous incentives. Fastest tome collecting (which is what the relic half of people play for), fastest way to upgrade to end-game raid gear (what the raid half plays for), and placed on open world content that too many on the forums have been begging for.

With those kind of rewards on brand new shiny content, the kind of rewards that cut this whole grinding game down to 1/10th of the effort, no more waiting for months to get gear, no more having to learn mechanics or sludge through criticism and harassment on your way to being the most geared there ever was .............. what did you expect the MMO playerbase to do? Apparently SE has way more faith in humanity than I thought. Too bad it not only backfired on them, but brought hacks and apps into more light than ever.

SE's over-the-top rewards for Hunts is the direct cause of the bad player behavior and the additional cheats we are seeing now. You can blame players all you want, but this was more than preventable with a little forethought.

removing oil and sands will definitely kill the system, ur crazy OP?

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Originally Posted by Donjo

So, lastly, stop blaming SE for the state of Hunts. Just stop. The only people to blame for the issues you're experiencing is yourselves. The incorrect use of a system always causes problems. It's analogous to not heeding the warnings on your newest machine. It just doesn't end well.

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Exactly, shame on us. It's because of the players that Hunts are poorly implemented, poorly designed and poorly tested.

We should hold a server-wide meeting across data centers to clean up our acts.

Very well thought out post Donjo, though I disagree with your suggestion that the masses can and should modify their behavior. Their craving for sands still exists. Regardless of agreement or disagreement, your post doesn't address the imbalance in the system.

People who cannot commit the hours of time required to make hunts pay off are demoralized by the system. They have to grind fates for atma, grind for myth, grind for mats, grind for spiritbonding, and now they are expected to grind for sands; they just want to improve their gear to get through coils easier or they are getting through coils, but want to increase their sand drops for their group. These people didn't want another grind. They wanted a challenging fun daily. They didn't want to compete with the entire server, just a fun daily they could do with friends that tested their skill and wit.

The solution is to greatly increase the daily hunts and greatly nerf what elites give

Brown (normal mob): 3 seals
White (fate mob): 5 seals

As it stands, you can only earn 7 seals a day using dailies. These new numbers would boost that to 19.

Elite B: 5 seals and 10 myth
Elite A: 10 seals and 20 myth
Elite S: 20 seals and 50 myth

Elites when aggroed should show on the map so nobody can monopolize them. A and S elites should also have damage immunity for 2 minutes after the pull. To give people time to join.

Finally, remove the chance of A and Ss dropping blood-splattered mark logs.

If you decrease the seals given then you are just prolonging this agony of hunts. If anything they should buff how many seals are given (both for dailies and elite mobs) that way people can get their items and move on. This will make it so people don't need to resort to using apps and mobs dying in .05 seconds of spawning.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

The solution is to greatly increase the daily hunts and greatly nerf what elites give

Brown (normal mob): 3 seals
White (fate mob): 5 seals

As it stands, you can only earn 7 seals a day using dailies. These new numbers would boost that to 19.

Elite B: 5 seals and 10 myth
Elite A: 10 seals and 20 myth
Elite S: 20 seals and 50 myth

Elites when aggroed should show on the map so nobody can monopolize them. A and S elites should also have damage immunity for 2 minutes after the pull. To give people time to join.

Finally, remove the chance of A and Ss dropping blood-splattered mark logs.

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More like they need to make it so once your hunt for the day/week is completed on your log, you get NOTHING until the next reset for it. So you've killed that S ranked hunt that was on your Elite Hunt list? Can't get any more seals or drops from them until next week, you're locked out of it. Somewhat overkill, but at this point there's no way I can see to stop the madness other than capping the Hunts.

Nice to see a well thought out OP on the matter rather than just outright whining, though I worry SE will want to stick to their guns. Lets please hope otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

So, lastly, stop blaming SE for the state of Hunts. Just stop. The only people to blame for the issues you're experiencing is yourselves. The incorrect use of a system always causes problems.

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all of that text and you come to such an incorrect conclusion.

don't design a system that will be universally used incorrectly. that is totally SE's fault. this cannot be a player problem if it happens on every server.

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Originally Posted by Saren

If tweaked with too much this early the content could end up desolate in the moderate future. More observation time is needed before any action should be taken, in my opinion.

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the thing is the devs don't really seem to care about desolate content. in 3 months they instantly made Brayflox HM, Halatali HM and Lost City useless. CT1 is mostly useless. Garuda, Titan and Ifrit EX are useless.

take out Oil and Sands, people will still do them for Myth, Soldiery, Alexanderite. when they abolish myth tomes in the next patch this will be the only way to get myth armor.

If the system encourages people to use it the "wrong" way, then it's a badly designed system. It's human nature, the nature of life itself even, to take the path of least resistance. It's completely SE's fault.

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Originally Posted by juniglee

I haven't actually done hunts myself yet (semi-retired). But that solution would compound the issues at hand. The issue isn't players swarming A + S rank - in fact, according to the post, that is the intended design. The issue is players swamping B + A ranks.

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This right here. Go to Coerthas and you'll see Naul getting swarmed, while Safat is almost ignored.

Appreciate the long and thought out post, but imo the design of content in respect to what players will do is part of SE's job duty (honestly only your first sentence hits on that point, so still thought out.. just my imo on your preface :P lol).

Certainly players will figure out that one way you didn't think of doing, and make it special (or broken), but what happaned here was obviously what has happened previously. Its not impossible to add open world content without zerging fast dying messes, it is impossible with a basic fate system and a good reward for doing it. (Removing rewards from a system just makes that system useless, so thats bad XD). If they wanted a FATE system I think they should have started out with player spawned and then moved to FATEs over time, like 1-2 months in.

I think adding more hp is the easiest most efficient "hot patch" and they should do that as soon as they get in, then figure out a longer term plan (I'm fairly certain they can modify hp on the fly without shutting the server down, which is why I said this is probably the most efficient fix till they know what they want to do next).

Mark spawning sounds nice, for the weekly marks I hope then the reward wouldn't be turned into a pittance.

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

I have to agree with Shake0615 on this. SE is completely to blame for making the ridiculous incentives. Fastest tome collecting (which is what the relic half of people play for), fastest way to upgrade to end-game raid gear (what the raid half plays for) ...

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Exactly. This is literally the only flaw with the system. Since this is a single part of the system, it cannot be said that the entire system is "broken".

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

all of that text and you come to such an incorrect conclusion.

don't design a system that will be universally used incorrectly. that is totally SE's fault. this cannot be a player problem if it happens on every server.

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Originally Posted by Jacost

If the system encourages people to use it the "wrong" way, then it's a badly designed system. It's human nature, the nature of life itself even, to take the path of least resistance. It's completely SE's fault.

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Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly. A system cannot encourage misuse of itself. Only the users of a system can encourage other users to try a method of effective misuse that they found. When legitimate glitches are found that can be exploited, what does SE say? "We're working on a fix. For now, please don't exploit this." Perhaps SE loves their rose tinted glasses a little too much, but that is irrelevant. The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take. A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system. A hole, glitch, or flaw may as well not exist if players make the correct decision of not exploiting it. Therefore, it is entirely the fault of the player for ruining what is otherwise a well designed system by completely circumventing it's intended execution.

Now, here's the real irony of the second half of your statement. You claim that swamping the hunts is the path of least resistance. This is certainly true in respect to the ability of the Mark itself to defend against players. However, the clear truth coming out of this situation is that the source of greatest resistance is not the monster you're trying to kill... but the other players who want to kill it first. Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

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Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

Sorry but this thread is almost a justification to SE mistakes at the time of make hunts.


Hunts should be a forced spawn for each party, with the very same times lockouts as any other kind of content such as maps or leve-allowances. Players outside the party should be able to participate of other`s Hunts but for a reduced rewards, so they are just incentivated to help if they are just passing by. And thats it!

Hunts should have always been party content in open world, not zergfest like FATE bosses. The raid rewards should just become something of increased cost. Besides, is only natural for a game with vertical progression that "exclusive" gear today becomes "common" tomorrow. 3 months passed for everyone to have the "exclusive" oil/sand weapons and armors, now, the time has come for them to become mainstream, next patch they will be as common as the ilvl90 gear is now, and in 3 more updates they will be drops of dungeons not even in the expert roulette but in the hard one, just as darklight is now.

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The whole hunt system is a big mess up from SE, saying that "is players playing incorrectly" is terrible, and is a mistake, because players by nature (and is what gaming is about really) work in a way they always find the "path of least resistance". That behavior is what beats games and archive objectives. The whole idea behind hunts design was bad, it was obvious that players will gather arround by thousands at marks. It was obvious it would show up serveral engine issues. It was obvious that this community is not a collaborative one, the ingame health of /sh channel is the proof, you already saw insults and everything because of the FATE farming and FATE requisites of atma/animus weapons. Is like... What was SE expecting to happen?

The only solution for hunts is them to become party content in open world. Each player has 5 daily B marks, 1 daily A mark, 1 weekly S mark. They can group up to 8 and go for those when they please and thats it, done. Marks should be like allowances, but with diferent time lockouts.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly.

The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take.

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unintended is not incorrect.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system.

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A prudent developer would see that something will clearly go wrong when they put the most desirable item in the game into this event and perhaps they shouldn't have put that item in as a reward when their intentions was not to create a system that can support the demand.

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

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I can, the other path to Sands of Time is Turn 8 and Turn 9 clear. and once you clear it there are no other paths besides Hunts, so Hunts are at the same time the path of least and greatest resistance since it's the only path for anyone to acquire more than 2 Sands of Time a week.