An idea to improve hunts and make them more rewarding and worthwhile

So I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I had an idea I'd like to share with the community as far as hunts are concerned.

Right now you've got two camps:
1) The people who actively hunt and spawn these monsters and shout in their linkshells and
2) People who are doing other things when a hunt spawns and are either lucky enough to get there in time before it dies, or not.

At their core, hunts are sort of mindless - you fly around zones like a drone looking for A ranks. Then the server goes into full-blown zergfest mode, the creature dies, and the salt flies.

What if hunts were more instanced and required more preparation ahead of time -- like an actual hunt?

So for example, let's say you have a creature like Stolas, the owl sorcerer that sleeps people. Clan Centurio tells you that he's weak to fire, he likes shiny things and hangs out in X location when there's a full moon. That's all they can tell you - now the rest is up to you and your team of 7 other members.

There's some preparation ahead of you. You'd need a goldsmith to craft the shiny charm that gets his attention, and the alchemist to craft the potions that you would all take during the fight to resist his sleep spell. You'd want a black mage or two on hand for fire spells, but the party makeup can be any combination.

Rather than him spawning out in the open where everyone and their brother can pull him, if the conditions were met, an instance gateway would appear (like what takes you to dungeons now). Like with POTD, you could go in with a fixed or matched group.

This way, people would better know what kind of conditions or tools they would need beforehand to be victorious, and you'd have more cooperation and less salt among players.

Every hunt mark would have its own conditions, so there wouldn't be a need to manage a "respawn timer" - if the condition happens in that location (like the lightning for Coeurlregina or Ixion), the gateway appears. This could be very well what they're planning for Eureka Forest, so for all I know these suggestions could already be in place. But it would certainly help give everyone more of a chance to participate in hunts without feeling like they need to be stapled to their screen 24/7 waiting for a mark to spawn.

So basically you want to destroy the hunt community to introduce a more convoluted replacement that seems to require larger investment for less reward, which will somehow make hunts more rewarding and worthwhile.

Are there better rewards in this version or...?

Hunts are fine. They poop out TVI materia like candy. That sounds like more hassle and frustration than anything.

People wouldn't touch hunts with a convoluted system akin to this. The whole reason people actively hunt is because they're mindless. You go and kill something for a reward; nice and simple. Necessitating certain roles just restricts players. If you don't have any Black Mages around, well, sucks to be you. On the flip side, if the fire weaknesses isn't enough to matter, no one cares about it. Hunts are mostly fine. The only change I think needs be made is scaling. Either have old ones scale to our level or vice versa.

Hunts are meant to be open world content. They are fine as is. Yes you have to be johnny on the spot to get there and get credit. Sometimes times I make it something mes i don't. Also most of the times the calls for the hunt mobs go out for a good 5 mins prior to the pull. Plenty of time to get there.

Hunts is a mess but that solution is too complicated.

Make S Rank spawns more common (reduce the reward for each kill), between all the zones there should be one window open every 2 hours or so.

Make A Ranks the Weekly Bill and B Ranks a Daily Bill.

This will get people out there but not actually zerging. You can tie guaranteed Cracked Clusters to the A Rank Bill and/or have a % from the B Rank Bills.

I wouldn't consider the current set up much of a community. It's more-so a small group of people that do all the heavy lifting, and a BUNCH of others who race to see who can get there and claim it the quickest. And mountains and mountains of salt. Is it really okay the way it is when there's thread after thread about how it's not? I don't care either way -- I was just trying to think of an alternative. This way, you'd be getting more people involved, including crafters, gatherers, different roles. More work than the current setup, yes, but there would be better rewards too.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to be able to invest in/contribute to something worthwhile in game over time that doesn't necessarily involve dropping what I'm doing, rushing to teleport and the thing dying before the zone loads. The current hunt setup, if they leave it as is, is just going to continue to fester. If they scaled the HP of the monsters accordingly, that would be a good start, but it seems like putting a bandage on a gaping wound. Why does everything have to be a mindless slaughterfest? Why can't people contribute in other ways?

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

I wouldn't consider the current set up much of a community. It's more-so a small group of people that do all the heavy lifting, and a BUNCH of others who race to see who can get there and claim it the quickest. And mountains and mountains of salt. Is it really okay the way it is when there's thread after thread about how it's not? I don't care either way -- I was just trying to think of an alternative. This way, you'd be getting more people involved, including crafters, gatherers, different roles. More work than the current setup, yes, but there would be better rewards too.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to be able to invest in/contribute to something worthwhile in game over time that doesn't necessarily involve dropping what I'm doing, rushing to teleport and the thing dying before the zone loads. The current hunt setup, if they leave it as is, is just going to continue to fester. If they scaled the HP of the monsters accordingly, that would be a good start, but it seems like putting a bandage on a gaping wound. Why does everything have to be a mindless slaughterfest? Why can't people contribute in other ways?

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The community mostly refers to that "small group of people that do all the heavy lifting," not the people who quietly sit in LS and only show up to collect the reward or who rush over when they read a shout and complain that nobody waited for them to finish what they were doing before pulling.

People just need to stop trying to "fix" hunts. They aren't broken. If you don't like them, feel free not to participate.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

Hunts is a mess but that solution is too complicated.

Make S Rank spawns more common (reduce the reward for each kill), between all the zones there should be one window open every 2 hours or so.

Make A Ranks the Weekly Bill and B Ranks a Daily Bill.

This will get people out there but not actually zerging. You can tie guaranteed Cracked Clusters to the A Rank Bill and/or have a % from the B Rank Bills.

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It would not achieve that. People zerg A ranks. Why wouldn't they zerg S ranks just because you make them more common and reduce their reward? If you struggle to get to hunts on time, then scout or spawn them yourself.

If anything I would love to see a way to summon any S hunt, something similar to Wildstar with their open world bosses. You have the regular timer and a way to summon it if you want.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

It would not achieve that. People zerg A ranks. Why wouldn't they zerg S ranks just because you make them more common and reduce their reward? If you struggle to get to hunts on time, then scout or spawn them yourself.

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Of course they would but S ranks are made for zerging by 100+ people, the purpose of the suggestion wasn't to make people not zerg S Ranks. it was to take A ranks out of the zerg yet still provide meaningful content. if you fight A Ranks with 4-8 people, which i've done in the early morning, they are actually pretty interesting.

Making A Ranks the weekly bill mob would mean people would have no reason to zerg them, but guaranteeing a Cracked Cluster would mean people would want to group up to do them similar to treasure maps and WT. and B ranks would be solo'd daily. the volume of B ranks being killed now does not make sense.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

People just need to stop trying to "fix" hunts. They aren't broken. If you don't like them, feel free not to participate.

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if a large portion of the playerbase doesn't like it, it's broken.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

Of course they would but S ranks are made for zerging by 100+ people, the purpose of the suggestion wasn't to make people not zerg S Ranks. it was to take A ranks out of the zerg yet still provide meaningful content. if you fight A Ranks with 4-8 people, which i've done in the early morning, they are actually pretty interesting.

Making A Ranks the weekly bill mob would mean people would have no reason to zerg them, but guaranteeing a Cracked Cluster would mean people would want to group up to do them similar to treasure maps and WT. and B ranks would be solo'd daily. the volume of B ranks being killed now does not make sense.

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So basically take the hunt away from the people who actually do it to give it to the people who can't be bothered, but still want the rewards and complain anytime something in this game wasn't designed specifically for them.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

if a large portion of the playerbase doesn't like it, it's broken.

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That would require a rather blatant redefinition of "broken" to be true.

If they added to the system like fc license board were you make a fc party only to go out and hunt and its a mob that only you can engage after finding it and it scales to current number of members I'd consider doing hunt. The zerq fest it is doesn't interest me at all the could structure a new reward system as well for this and keep the current hunt as a bonus for doing it /shrug that my two cents meh...

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

So basically take the hunt away from the people who actually do it to give it to the people who can't be bothered, but still want the rewards and complain anytime something in this game wasn't designed specifically for them.

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it doesn't do that at all, the increased S Ranks make up for it. how are people who do hunt bills people who can't be bothered?

i'm simply splitting up the ranks for how they were actually designed.

S Rank - unlimited zerg number of players
A Rank - multiple but limited number of players
B Rank - solo/duo.

A Ranks are not built for how the playerbase is currently dealing with them.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

That would require a rather blatant redefinition of "broken" to be true.

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yea Diadem 1.0 was so great.

Well Hunts weren't supposed to be zerged by the whole server, they were supposed to be like NMs in FFXI. And that would be perfect... if it wasn't for the fact that people ruin everything good that we get by cheating. As unexciting as they feel right now, I rather have the whole server down them than have players botting to claim/find them like in FFXI... Or they could implement a system like the Zeni NMs. But yeah Hunts are kinda meh right now. They could definetely be more exciting.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

it doesn't do that at all, the increased S Ranks make up for it. how are people who do hunt bills people who can't be bothered?

i'm simply splitting up the ranks for how they were actually designed.

S Rank - unlimited zerg number of players
A Rank - multiple but limited number of players
B Rank - solo/duo.

A Ranks are not built for how the playerbase is currently dealing with them.



yea Diadem 1.0 was so great.

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Increasing S rank spawns and decreasing their rewards while basically removing A ranks entirely by making them a weekly kill is not going to make up for the loss.

I never did the original Diadem, but being able to potentially point out something that was broken and also widely unpopular does not mean that being widely unpopular makes it broken per se. Rather, a connection between the two may exist because broken things tend to be unpopular, not because either state is sufficient for the other per se.

Again, stop trying to "fix" things that aren't broken. If you don't like the Hunt, feel free not to participate. Don't try to get SE to take the content away from the people who are enjoying it now just because you won't be satisfied unless everything in this game is tailored to your personal preferences.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Increasing S rank spawns and decreasing their rewards while basically removing A ranks entirely by making them a weekly kill is not going to make up for the loss.

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that's just flat out wrong. you can math out exactly how much you can increase their spawn rate so that there's no actual loss.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

I never did the original Diadem, but being able to potentially point out something that was broken and also widely unpopular does not mean that being widely unpopular makes it broken per se. Rather, a connection between the two may exist because broken things tend to be unpopular, not because either state is sufficient for the other per se.

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that is correct, but A Ranks are indeed broken because the playerbase treats them exactly like S Ranks and that should not be the case. they are not the same.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Again, stop trying to "fix" things that aren't broken. If you don't like the Hunt, feel free not to participate. Don't try to get SE to take the content away from the people who are enjoying it now just because you won't be satisfied unless everything in this game is tailored to your personal preferences.

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i do like the hunt, just a different aspect of it then you do.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

that's just flat out wrong. you can math out exactly how much you can increase their spawn rate so that there's no actual loss.

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Not really. Yes, you can determine some theoretical number people would have to kill in order to achieve the same or greater reward as the current system, but by essentially removing A ranks and replacing them with S ranks, which have more health and require deliberate effort to spawn and are technically already inefficient for anyone other than the people who show up to leech a kill, it's virtually guaranteed you wouldn't be getting the same amount of reward for time spent if you both increase their frequency and decrease their reward per kill. That is a move to make killing S ranks less efficient than they currently are. This is a really basic consideration and you didn't even manage to account for that. Why do you think your suggestion should be taken seriously?

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

that is correct, but A Ranks are indeed broken because the playerbase treats them exactly like S Ranks and that should not be the case. they are not the same.

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Says who? You? Well who are you that anyone should care? You're not a developer. Your ought statements are utterly meaningless. According to the developers, the people whose opinion of whether it's broken or not actually matters, the Hunt is supposed to be competitive to begin with. That anyone made it a cooperative endeavor as they did was unexpected and unintended, though not a problem. That people zerg hunts down is not a problem and that you personally can't make it to them or whatever is likewise not a problem.

All I'd want in terms of improvements is upping the Centurio Seal limit past 1000, and also allow players to gain Allied Seals from any hunts in future content (Heavensward and Stormblood). Granted there isn't any must gets with the seals, but occasionally you can barely get any when a mob of players are en route to a hunt and the reward contribution is then greatly lowered.