How to fix A and S rank Hunts

Let's have a serious talk about A and S rank Hunts. Before I start, I'd like to
say I currently do not partake in A and S rank hunts.

I'll cut to the point. Currently, A and S rank hunts are a mob scene of players
all trying to get credit for kills that were originally intended to be handled by
high level parties of much fewer than almost a quarter of the currently playing
population of the server. There are plenty of posts stating the problems that the
enormous level of toxicity that is experienced during these hunts with regards to
early pulls, players who are traveling to the location not getting credit for
taking the time to go to the hunt in the first place, full parties not being formed
due to players not inviting.

Yoshi-P himself has stated he didn't intend for hunts to be the way they are now,
yet they haven't really changed in the transition to 3.0. So I have a suggestion to
dramatically change how hunts work while still keeping the desired intention of the
content while not changing much about how players go through with getting their
credit.

My suggestion is to make A and S rank hunts acceptable on the Hunt board, like B
ranks. The A and S rank's would only be able to be accepted by parties of 4 or
more for A ranks and 8 for S ranks, you cannot accept them solo. You would have a
limit to how many you can accept a day, which would reset the normal time a daily
reset occurs. Let's say for now, 3 daily A ranks and 1 daily S rank.

When a party accepts one of these A or S rank hunts (a party can only accept one at
a time), they are told which target they are to hunt and must go to the area they
are in. An interactable "Destination" marker will be hidden somewhere randomly on
the map, unseen by the mini-map or any marker, and the party will need to search the
zone to find it. Only the party can see their specific "Destination" target.

When the target is clicked, their target spawns, and must be defeated to claim the
prize, (which now that there would be a limit to how many can be done in a day,
would give somewhat increased rewards). S ranks would require some kind of
specific mechanic in order to trigger, but as long as the S rank hunt is currently
underway and the party is together, the mechanic would be readily available to
trigger.

I feel this to be a suitable replacement for the current way hunts work, for the
following reasons.

1- No more inclusive Hunt LS's, which, let's be honest, for the most part (because
not all are unfriendly) are kept only to inform other players of Hunt locations and
the occasional party invite. I feel that a lot of players actually just keep them
or try to find "active ones" only to respond when a call is made, but won't
actively hunt themselves.

2- No more early pull drama. Due to each A and S rank being semi-instanced to the
party, and no other player being able to attack their Hunt, we no longer have to
have the issue, which is obviously causing a massive number of players to have a
distasteful experience with the game.

3- No more having to drop what you're doing to respond to a Hunt. We can now do A
and S ranks on our own time, and the teamwork element is now highlighted as a major
factor.

4- No more players speeding ahead in terms of gear progression. As it is, if a
player wanted to hunt all day, they can, and will get plenty of Law and Centurion's
and will gear themselves faster than anyone who didn't get to participate in the
hunt. These players "may" (I stress may, because not everyone is elitist) go on to
set the standard for new content thanks to their gear that anyone not geared on
their level is lesser and may exclude them from content clears.

5- Gets rid of the lingering leecher mentality. A lot of players do not actively
hunt, but still want the rewards from the Hunt, hence they respond to shouts, but
will also complain when the hunt was killed early or if they didn't get there in
time to gain credit. With this new system, everyone pulls thier own weight.

6- Hunt monsters can be challenging again. A and S ranks can be adjusted in order
to be harder for a party to handle, but not impossible, as opposed to a quarter of
the server banging on an A and S ranks as they are now and killing it within
seconds, bypassing most intended mechanics.

TL;DR, make A and S ranks acceptable on the hunt board by formed parties only and
levequestize" the encounters for the party in question in order to facilitate the
better execution of the Hunt.

or just take the seals out of hunts and put it somewhere else. like pvp for example. You can still have hunts for seals, but have it give less, then put the bulk into pvp

This is like the 3rd time for hunts and it hasn't really changed much. I don't think SE really cares at this point.

Doing the daily hunt bills gives a decent amount of seals so it isn't completely terrible.

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Originally Posted by Kyomagi

or just take the seals out of hunts and put it somewhere else. like pvp for example. You can still have hunts for seals, but have it give less, then put the bulk into pvp

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I like the OPs idea better. Semi forced PvP should never happen.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

This is like the 3rd time for hunts and it hasn't really changed much. I don't think SE really cares at this point.

Doing the daily hunt bills gives a decent amount of seals so it isn't completely terrible.

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It also awards experience to level alts which is a nice addition. You're right that nothing has changed. This is nothing new and they know that in a few weeks the fervor will die down as everyone gets to cap and gets their main geared.

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Originally Posted by Kyomagi

or just take the seals out of hunts and put it somewhere else. like pvp for example. You can still have hunts for seals, but have it give less, then put the bulk into pvp

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Because when I think of things less toxic than the hunt zerg, I think of PVP. /sarcasm off.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vaer

This is like the 3rd time for hunts and it hasn't really changed much. I don't think SE really cares at this point.

Doing the daily hunt bills gives a decent amount of seals so it isn't completely terrible.

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This is what has changed and it's the single most important change they could have made. The big problem with 2.2 and 2.4 hunt zergs was that daily hunts gave a pittance of seals while you needed a minimum of 500 seals to even upgrade an accessory. It would take long into the next major content patch to even upgrade half of your equipment only doing the dailies, not to mention that half of your daily seals were locked behind FATEs that could take hours to spawn. Now daily hunts give 110 seals and a weekly bonus of 100 seals, are easily completed without waiting on FATEs, and the required seals are vastly lower. Under the new system you could never touch an A or an S rank mob and still fully gear a class in i180 in 3 weeks. As long as this doesn't drastically change for any esoterics gear, hunts are a working system now.

That being said, while hunts aren't the same horror that they once were, I personally would like to see the A and S ranks go more towards a BCNM style from FFXI. By killing mobs in the overworld, you have a chance at a rare drop for beastmen seals (for A ranks - 4 mans) from weaker mobs or Kindred Seals (for S ranks - 8 mans) from more difficult mobs (of course the names could be changed, I'm just using the old names to draw parallels). You can then pick up special bills from the hunt board with these seals which would allow you to access an instanced fight for the hunt with just you and your party. This is very similar to the OPs suggestion but I feel it should be gated behind something more than just a daily/weekly allowance.

I really like the idea of hunts, but trying to get into the right instance zone and seeing a mob die right before I can smack it sucks.

I think next week hunting won't be nearly as bad, once players are doing Alex.

Unfortunately since they implemented hunts they didn't seem to pay attention to any modifications ideas to the hunt system...

Hunts are fine they way they are, HUNTS should feel like you need to get there fast or they are gone. It adds an awesome layer of competitive spirit to the game. If they dumb down the hunts that'd be a sad day.

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Originally Posted by Lee-Akira

Hunts are fine they way they are, HUNTS should feel like you need to get there fast or they are gone. It adds an awesome layer of competitive spirit to the game. If they dumb down the hunts that'd be a sad day.

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While I like the concept, I have to disagree with needing to feel like you have to get them fast. I understand that as they are, they feel kinda like a bounty hunter system, where everyone is a hunter trying to kill their mark. But it isn't a competition if all the LS's are helping other players possibly kill the mark faster, which is rather inviting competition to give you less of a chance of winning yourself per se, as opposed to it naturally being built around the concept of a competition. If that were the case, the Hunt would be soloed by and credit locked behind the first person to tag it, because they "hunted" it, they "found" it, so naturally it's their win.

To the posters about PVP, PVP is another beast entirely that also needs a lot of adjusting. I would not want to force players to have to do it though as it is a very different dynamic to the rest of the game's content. (Not to mention all the pvp abilities to add to bars ><)

Also, I enjoy daily hunts now. More than anything, my post was made to try and end the vileness I feel from the community when A and S's spawn.

I don't mind the way they are. If you actually go out and find them yourself with a group and kill them it's fairly simple and easy. Usually if I'm hunting I don't use a LS. We group up, search, find it and kill it. No drama. No 100s of people porting in asking for holds and stuff. Just find the things yourself and go to town.

On the flip side I don't expect anyone to hold a hunt for me that I didn't find.

Just remove RAID gear/incentives. Make hunts fun for people who want to hunt. Give them appropriate awards.

When it becomes a convenient gearing path is when it turns absolutely unbearable to be around.

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Originally Posted by Dement

you have a chance at a rare drop for beastmen seals

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Forget that nonsense. The only thing you need to do to increase the toxicity of the hunts is make it so that there are rare drops that people complain about "hunting the mob 100 times and never getting it"

Hunts need one of two things to fix them:
1) Either scale the HP by participation, or scale it by the number of people in the zone and announce it to the zone so that everyone has a good 60 second warning that the monster has appeared to get to it.
2) or Remove the seals entirely from it, thus neutering the hunt.

The simplest solutions are usually the best short-term fixes, but long-term it would make more sense to stop creating "hunt" content when the players are not playing it as designed and rectify that solution.

eg
a) Scaling HP favoring fuller parties (eg monster has more HP if it's 50 single players than 7 parties of 7 and an odd man out or 5 parties of 8 and one party of 2)
b) Scaling reward by party size (eg 20% bonus for a full party)
c) Scaling reward by party contribution (eg 100% bonus to party contributing the most damage, 50% to second party, 25% to third party)

Those three ensure that players who actually want to do the hunt form parties, and leeches will just be left to form their own parties and not get bonuses.

And as for fairness
d) Announce in the zone when either the monster spawns, is discovered, or is engaged. Give a cooldown before it actually can take damage.
or
e) Drop some kind of token from FATE's in the zone that indicate when the next S rank hunt monster will appear if it will appear in the next hour.

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Originally Posted by Dement

As long as this doesn't drastically change for any esoterics gear, hunts are a working system now.
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Well the current upgrade items aren't highest tier like the twine or sand of time. This upgraded gear is at the bottom-mid of the tier. I can easily see them making the upgrade items for new weekly tome gear around the same amount of seals as before or more if they keep the weathered - unweathered system for tome.

Just stop with the upgrade items being available through the most braindead way possible and make people earn their fully upgraded gear.

Hunts are basicly just the same as F.A.T.E, its the same content type. difference is the icon.

As stated previously hunts where ment to be fought by smaller party to give some challenge, there is no challenge in 100 ppl steamrolling 1 npc all desperatly trying to get their one hit in.

So hunts are in its current form horrendous, the seals and whole hunt reward system should just be moved into the boss F.A.T.E for each zone. So that the "hunters" can still steamroll their seals.

And if they want to implement acctual hunts they need to up the difficulty, add tagging. And a far more complicated system then there is now for spawning them.
But that would make them Notorius monsters, and people would cry it is to difficult.

Or we can just keep Hunts as they are, there are alot of ppl that percive it as a very engaging challenge to hunt them down and roll them with an overwhelming amount of ppl, or they could just make an npc in ishgard for those players to talk to and get free seals since its the same difficulty.

The whole upgrade fad is bad design anyway, rather then having us upgrade the same gear. They should spend time designing new end game content raids etc for new gear of higher ilvl.

In Reference to the BS/KS BCNM idea...they could also take a cue from XI's eventual Abyssea and Land King changes. Farm rare drops from local targets and/or repeatable quests that you use to spawn an NM (either the stationary spawn point, randomn location, or an actual arena instance). This could also open the door to tiered spawns as well---lower tiered ones could drop the items to pop the higher tiered target.

Just as an example, S rank could require a specific drop from an A, or maybe a set from any combination of A, B, and local mobs. Same could be done for A--need to farm drop(s) from B's and/or locals to pop the A's. This way people can farm some items solo and then team up to kill the NM's in a <hopefully> somewhat more organized fashion.

Top level gear upgrades should be exclusive to desynth of untradeable big fish 30 ilvls above desynth cap.

No need for such convoluted changes. Hunts can be very easily band-aid fixed by just scaling their HP with the number of players fighting them so the "early pull" hate is eliminated.

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Originally Posted by Dement

Because when I think of things less toxic than the hunt zerg, I think of PVP. /sarcasm off.

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how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

HOWEVER, hunts are working as intended and nobody should ever be mad that they missed a hunt. Hunters are meant to be soloed by a small group or raid depending on rank, not the whole server. And dont give me the "but lets respect everyone else" crap either, if the devs wanted the whole server to show up, S ranks would have the same HP/mechanics and bemo and odin

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Forget that nonsense. The only thing you need to do to increase the toxicity of the hunts is make it so that there are rare drops that people complain about "hunting the mob 100 times and never getting it"

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The seals or whatever pop items would not drop off of the hunts themselves, they'd drop off of normal monsters. No competition, when you've farmed up enough seals you can pop a hunt, join a party where everyone can pop a hunt and you got 8 back to back guaranteed hunts with no competition.

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Originally Posted by Takfloyd

No need for such convoluted changes. Hunts can be very easily band-aid fixed by just scaling their HP with the number of players fighting them so the "early pull" hate is eliminated.

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That is a solution and it would help to insure that everyone gets credit for a hunt mob but that doesn't change the other major problem with hunts - they're boring. At present the most exciting thing about hunts is the early pullers: can I make it before some ass pulls the thing. Their attacks are largely unnoticed unless they reflect damage and even then people barely pay attention, you zerg them down with little to no thought in under 20 seconds to a minute if they have increased HP. For being "elite" monsters, they're hardly a fight thanks to the sheer power of the zerg.

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Originally Posted by Raist

In Reference to the BS/KS BCNM idea...they could also take a cue from XI's eventual Abyssea and Land King changes. Farm rare drops from local targets and/or repeatable quests that you use to spawn an NM (either the stationary spawn point, randomn location, or an actual arena instance). This could also open the door to tiered spawns as well---lower tiered ones could drop the items to pop the higher tiered target.

Just as an example, S rank could require a specific drop from an A, or maybe a set from any combination of A, B, and local mobs. Same could be done for A--need to farm drop(s) from B's and/or locals to pop the A's. This way people can farm some items solo and then team up to kill the NM's in a <hopefully> somewhat more organized fashion.

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This is also a good idea, similar to the ZNMs, sky or sea. A lot of the pop tiers that FFXI had were really good systems when you were guaranteed a pop for the next tier.

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Originally Posted by Kyomagi

how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

HOWEVER, hunts are working as intended and nobody should ever be mad that they missed a hunt. Hunters are meant to be soloed by a small group or raid depending on rank, not the whole server. And dont give me the "but lets respect everyone else" crap either, if the devs wanted the whole server to show up, S ranks would have the same HP/mechanics and bemo and odin

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I'm not saying PVP is more toxic than hunts right now but if you put in seals as a reward for PVP, and there is even MORE competition than just getting to a mob before someone pulls it, the toxicity is going to shoot through the roof. Yes, if you put seals or something to upgrade PVE gear in hunts, you will absolutely have public shaming, name calling, /ignore user, people claiming others are cheating, and outright trolling/flamebaiting on a colossal scale. Especially factoring in that now people who don't like to PVP are going to be forced to PVP. PVP needs plenty of work and does need incentives to boost it but making the hunt rewards a part of PVP isn't going to do anything good for the toxicity of the community regarding the content.

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Originally Posted by Kyomagi

how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

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PVP in this game is no more toxic than anything else in the game and incentivizing PVP is a good thing. Incentivizing it by making it a good way to gear for PVE isn't and will just make it (PVP) more toxic and ultimately will just push people back into dungeon grinds/hunts/whatever is 2nd best.

one thing I ask is why do the hunts even give 3 tiers of reward? it seems pointless and utterly unfair to the masses that struggle to get anything other than bottom reward-- if that at all.
Why not just reward players who took the time to find or go to a hunt with the full amount if they get any aggro? Sure that'd mean there will be players who just hit once and walk away, but it also means that it'd cut down on the drama as you don't need to rush into a party and to the location.

Hunts are far better now they're completely optional.

You need roughly 2500 seals to upgrade a job from i170 to i180 and you can earn 870 in a week. Three weeks and you can be fully geared.

Considering that most A Ranks only give 15 Centurio Seals and 10 Law, they're not gearing up *that* much faster than you.

Any fix I can think of would be to remove the tiered reward system. One hit = full reward. That stops the "inv pls" spam as groups become irrelevant and it should stop ninja pulling, as theoretically, the more people in a zone the less likely you are to get full rewards.

Just make

A.) The hunts scale with the amount of people attending it, making sure that they can never be killed in 5s as it's ridiculous as it is. A HP buffer is a necessity.

B.) Make the person to pull it get a debuff that lasts 24h. Getting more than a single stack will result in a hunt ban for a day. That way no single prick can always do the pre-pulling and it would never be an issue with the amount of people who can pull. Not sure if it's possible/easy to script it.

Adapting these two changes would make hunts work.

On that note....they could add new hunt bills. A daily one that lists all the A's, and a weekly that lists all the S's. No rewards without a bill.

May not have a major impact, but it could put the brakes on it a bit since you could only kill them once a day/week for credit.

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Originally Posted by Dement

That being said, while hunts aren't the same horror that they once were, I personally would like to see the A and S ranks go more towards a BCNM style from FFXI. By killing mobs in the overworld, you have a chance at a rare drop for beastmen seals (for A ranks - 4 mans) from weaker mobs or Kindred Seals (for S ranks - 8 mans) from more difficult mobs (of course the names could be changed, I'm just using the old names to draw parallels). You can then pick up special bills from the hunt board with these seals which would allow you to access an instanced fight for the hunt with just you and your party. This is very similar to the OPs suggestion but I feel it should be gated behind something more than just a daily/weekly allowance.

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My fc was also talking earlier this week to why hunts weren't designed more like bcnm from XI. Will be interesting to see if SE does anything about the current hunt situation. As of right now, I don't participate in any A or S rank hunts. I don't enjoy zerging a monster to death. There are no mechanics to it and its hit or miss if you will get the contribute sometimes.

My fix for this Hunts would be that they work like Levequests do. This way only people in the group who activated it can do it so no more "OMG Ninja pull" and such.
A hunts costs certain amount and S hunts costs more and you are allowed to hunt x amounts of each per week.

This way hunts could be more tailored for a certain sized group, A hunts for small party and S hunts for Full Party. The hunts could feel like real mini bosses, and if your party dies, you will have to start a new hunt. This way the hunts would feel more dangerous and exciting, well, in my opinion atleast.

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Originally Posted by Lee-Akira

Hunts are fine they way they are, HUNTS should feel like you need to get there fast or they are gone. It adds an awesome layer of competitive spirit to the game. If they dumb down the hunts that'd be a sad day.

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... Hunting is not about speed and rushing the kill. Hunting is about patience and understanding when and how to strike your target. If speed is determined to be necessary to kill a target successfully, which would have been found through the patience of learning, then that's how it is, but that's not how ANY Hunt target works through design. There's no competition to how The Hunt works in this game, since all you're doing is rushing to be sure you get credit, not competing with anything worthy of mention. A competition for something like this would be about who can successfully claim a target before others, meaning even the small groups would be able to steal the glory away from the zerg of the Hunt LS.

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Originally Posted by ShaneDawn

-snip-

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I can tell you why its wrong and hunts will never change

SE has already said that hunts are designed as intended. They are meant to be killed by a small group for A ranks and a large group for S ranks. Not 100 players from across the server.

And what if the person pulling the hunt actually sits and waits for people to show up? So you are going to punish him for waiting, even tho he is not required to do so?


I dont get why people are suggesting these changes. its working as intended, if se wanted to change it, they would have changed it after the second peak hunts