My thoughts on hunts and a possible fix to make it more approachable

Hello! I'm Blood Gestalt from the Ragnarok server and I lead a high number of hunts LS's. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nts-Linkshell. After spending a lot of time with this feature I've come to the conclusion that the game still needs work. This feature was simply not intended for a game like this, the claiming system for instance is one of the factors that's causing these problems. Even though Yoship didn't wanted players to compete against these marks. Competition will always exists in the MMORPG world, even if it's casual.

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Now there's something that I keep reading about here that the rewards are "too good". I believe that the rewards are reasonable enough considering that we could run dungeons and meet the same iLvl by purchasing Mythology Tomestones for AF+ to mirror the Allagan sets before. There should always be an alternative to gearing up your characters and I believe that this was a good decision by their part. So while the rewards are indeed good, they're not as good as what raiding can offer you apart from a few equipment slots. Considering everything said above, it all comes down to Overcrowding. There's a simple solution to that which I'll write about below after pointing out the negative impact this feature has on this game.

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Hunts are good, I love hunts but it's also taking away the fun out of the rest of the game. So instead of saying the rewards are too good, it should be "Hunts are too good". It's really fun when you know what you're doing and you have people around you that understand what's going on or are aware how this system works. So when SE implemented this system they forgot to do something to the rest of the game which is Rebalancing. On every big inclusion, you need to mirror those rewards with the rest of the game to add in significance to every part of the game. Otherwise, everyone will overcrowd what's relevant and approachable to them and Hunts accomplishes this.

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So while SE cannot change the claiming system, I imagine that they would need to go back to its roots to make a radical change. There's a solution to hunts and a simple one at that. Before I touch unto this, I'd like to present you with this picture.

http://i.imgur.com/leTzg9L.jpg

Why was it placed there? Maybe SE were trying to do something new with these dungeons at the time. Behind the beast, there's a treasure chest unlike anything on this game. This treasure chest has a chance to drop a class-specific ring. I believe that this was a really good addition but I never understood why they didn't include something like this to every existing dungeon on this game.

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Now on to the point of this thread, if they made Rank B elite monsters available inside dungeons it would allow everyone to spread out on different contents on the game. They could place these Rank B's like that beast above, it'll give players that extra and optional approach to a dungeon and make the experience a little more diverse. I know that Hunts were supposed to be exclusive to open world content but as mentioned above, this feature isn't really meant for a game like this. So it all comes down to "Why not?" It'll give back that importance of running those dungeons while keeping the importance of hunts to open world (Rank A's & S's).

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If you agree to this idea, like this thread and help me develop and possibly reshape this idea so that we could take it to the next level. I am aware that there are other more technical issues present like not being able to see a monster and so on but it all falls down to overcrowding. I am also aware that Daily Hunts has a really small reward compared to what roaming can offer you but Yoship stated that they'll raise those rewards on his last live letter.

The idea is good but I don't think any hunters will spent 20-30min on a dungeon just for a chance to kill a B. ^^;

I mean it was not enough. I think it would be attractive if seal/time from dungeon is similar to open world.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

The idea is good but I don't think any hunters will spent 20-30min on a dungeon just for a chance to kill a B. ^^;

I mean it was not enough. I think it would be attrative if seal/time from dungeon is similar to open world.

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Thanks for commenting! It should be a guaranteed B mark on every dungeon run, considering how many players used to speed-run these it should be a B mark every 15-20mins instead of 1hour (Open world) which I find to be reasonable. It's also less competition and it should make it more enjoyable for everyone that took part in it thus be rewarded for doing that run. I also believe that it'll help new players as well.^^ Of course, for those serious hunters it wont be enough considering how good they are at it already that they wouldn't need any sort of "fix" for this content.

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Originally Posted by Gestalt

...It's also less competition and it should make it more enjoyable for everyone...

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Yes, I agree it should make it more enjoyable, i like it.

You know what's a very easy fix.... Just add another hunt category, daily hunt for dungeon boss monster or primal boss. You need to kill ALL bosses in the dungeon to get final reward of 40 seals and one time daily bonus of 100 myth and 20 soldiery on top of you normal dungeon bonus and duty roulette bonus. You can get up to 3 daily hunt for dungeon monster - random dungeon and primal hunts will be posted on each grand company with one weekly hunt from LA and SC (that has a bit more rewards).

This way, if you don't want to deal with the mess that is NM Hunt, you can do the daily Dungeon Boss hunt and Primal hunt - get your seals the old fashioned way (but time wise - its comparable if you spam your normal hunting fest). Problem solved, more people will do Duty Finder Roulette since now they can get a more fixed reward. 120 seals per day is not a lot for doing three dungeon hunts.

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Originally Posted by Gestalt

Now on to the point of this thread, if they made Rank B elite monsters available inside dungeons it would allow everyone to spread out on different contents on the game. They could place these Rank B's like that beast above, it'll give players that extra and optional approach to a dungeon and make the experience a little more diverse.

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Just put 3-4 Rank B monster, and 1-2 random Rank A monster, and on the last three highest dungeon, add a condition that will spawn rank S Boss, only if you defeat Boss 1+2 under 5 minutes with zero death. This way, every run on dungeon is 35-60 seals and you can spam this instead of the normal hunt. This will tip the balance back to dungeon run to be just as attractive if not more since you are not dealing with competition. Each of the bonus notorious monster have a chance to drop level 90-100 gears, with 5-10% drop rate. And they could just add random Atma, Book, and Logs drop on every level 50 dungeon with 3-5% drop rate. This will make dungeon run far more rewarding than current Hunt.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

You know what's a very easy fix.... Just add another hunt category, daily hunt for dungeon boss monster or primal boss. You need to kill ALL bosses in the dungeon to get final reward of 40 seals and one time daily bonus of 100 myth and 20 soldiery on top of you normal dungeon bonus and duty roulette bonus. You can get up to 3 daily hunt for dungeon monster - random dungeon and primal hunts will be posted on each grand company with one weekly hunt from LA and SC (that has a bit more rewards).

This way, if you don't want to deal with the mess that is NM Hunt, you can do the daily Dungeon Boss hunt and Primal hunt - get your seals the old fashioned way (but time wise - its comparable if you spam your normal hunting fest). Problem solved, more people will do Duty Finder Roulette since now they can get a more fixed reward. 120 seals per day is not a lot for doing three dungeon hunts.

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Yes, multiple alternative routes are better than restricting everything through dungeons.

This suggestion will be great for those who prefer doing dungeons for seals and are frustrated by the lagfests.

I myself am so sick of waiting for dfs and running dungeons over and over again, and would rather do hunts in the open world with my FC and LS.

It is always good to have more options.

The biggest issue with Hunt is that the reward is TOO GOOD, it almost negates the need to do any dungeon run since you get far more better reward on Hunt and there is no limits (except your soldiery cap). Also it makes a lot of returnee and new players not used to the battle mechanic and will not prepare them for harder content ahead. There is no strategy nor skill involved in The Hunt. It is suppose to be casual content you do once in awhile, now it has become THE CONTENT to do every day till the next patch.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

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Thanks for commenting! I had something similar on mind before but I thought about it for a while and it wouldn't solve the issues present at the moment with hunts. Adding a daily hunt would simply make people do it and then return back to hunting the normal way so that really wouldn't solve the issue. By simply adding B's inside a dungeon, at least people will have a way to gain marks inside an instance without any limits similar to how people achieve it in the open world.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

Just put 3-4 Rank B monster, and 1-2 random Rank A monster, and on the last three highest dungeon, add a condition that will spawn rank S Boss.

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As for this, I believe that for them to add something like this they would need to redesign every dungeon which isn't really the case here.

After reading so many good suggestions,
I only can think current system was intended to make less players to run dungeon. ^^;

Not everybody wants to do Hunt in the open world and have to compete with 60-100 other people. By adding a category of dungeon hunts, you give players options. Even if only 20-25% of those players do that, it will help tremendously. Just imagine during peak time, I would think a good 30% of the players would rather do the dungeon hunts, get their daily and be done with 120 seals a day. And only then if they have more time, they will do more hunts outside. Any options that cuts down the amount of lag, distribute players somewhere else, and making other existing contents just as attractive is better than what it is now. Those who are sick of dungeon will do the open world hunt, and those who would rather not deal with competition will do dungeon runs. Everyone is happy and getting something to progress.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

Any options that cuts down the amount of lag, distribute players somewhere else, and making other existing contents just as attractive is better than what it is now. Those who are sick of dungeon will do the open world hunt, and those who would rather not deal with competition will do dungeon runs. Everyone is happy and getting something to progress.

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Now that you put it this way, I agree.