Move A & S Rank Timers from Server to Players.

There's multiple threads asking for bandaid fixes to the system, like excluding cross-world players outright, invuln timers, more health, witch-hunting people, etc.

When there's a simpler method to make hunts more accessible to interested players:
Move the current timers from the server, to the players.

Add a list of all S & A ranks, sorted by expansion or area (similar to aethercurrent & shared fates menu),
with a timer next to the name, similar to how the maps cooldown is displayed.
We still have a few rows in the timers menu we can put this list in.
(please do critique my terrible image editing skills :p)
https://i.imgur.com/LQVzVZQ.png

At the moment, the spawns are on a random cooldown similar to housing,
so SE would have to decide on a specific timer per target,
or give out random timers per person / group to keep it the same as the status quo.

This timer should only apply on rewards for the kill:
nuts, centurio, allied seals, achievement progress, tomes, etc.

This should not make people ineligible to spawn or damage hunt targets.
Nor should they change how s ranks are spawned.

So if you have fun throwing yourself off the cliffs in coerthas to spawn the s rank, have fun falling down those cliffs.

Benefits over current system:

• 3rd party tools would no longer be the meta to keep track if a s rank can even be spawned
• heavily simplify trains, as targets may only move, not become unavailable completely so keeping track of them at all times is less of an issue & people killing them ahead of time wouldn't impact them.
• possibility for s rank trains
• cwls & discords no longer primary tool of getting there first, but of getting together to hunt
• leveling the playing field for low-end & hdd users, which have to pray that people aren't killing stuff asap

Only thing that would be lost, unless it's a per world timer,
would be hunting the same target over multiple worlds.
A per world timer *could* bloat the data too much,
and we already get denied more cosmetic space due to that.
However, with the planned cross-dc travel,
I fear the current system would only worsen w/ dc travel as people not only try to get multiple a & s ranks on their own dc,
but try to catch the other dc spawns as well.

I love how many hunt related threads and dramas are based around people trying to demand fixes to problems they, themselves, created.

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Originally Posted by Dewslam

I love how many hunt related threads and dramas are based around people trying to demand fixes to problems they, themselves, created.

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you can't deny that the current system sparks quite some conflict of interest.
my suggestion tries to not take away too much, you still have the same scarcity (one could argue even more if no per world cd), while not cutting anyone off - one couldn't blame others anymore for "pulling early", not announcing they spawned/kill s rank etc.

The current system is, imo, weird for a mmo - it's encouraging selfish behaviour than social - "gotta get there before anyone else or I miss out".
the system may have worked fine before, but with growing numbers I feel demand has far outweighed the system's capability for supply.

I don't have problems with moving Rank A and S to a daily/weekly hunt bill system so players only get rewards if they haven't cleared it on their bill for the day/week. But that in turn could cause problems for players if not enough will show up when they want to kill something at the end of the reset week.

You have a strange definition of what social behavior is. Hunt groups are very social by nature. They relay hunt information so others can be included. No social group can be all inclusive for every event. It's not realistic or practical.

What's selfish is expecting everyone else to wait on you. If 100 other players were able to get there before the pull, why didn't you? The hunt was not designed for everyone to make every hunt. That was just as true in the past when things weren't so crowded as they are now. Sometimes you missed out.

The real solution is for players to:

- know how long it takes to get to the map location and then go to it promptly when the relay first goes out instead of 5 minutes later. If you're not going to get there within a couple of minutes, do the smart thing and skip it.

- get over their fear of missing out. Hunts are not one time events. They will all respawn eventually. If you miss one, there will be another opportunity later.

- take a more active role in their hunt community. Help to spawn, help to scout, help to conduct, help to relay. Those of us who do those things try to make sure the others who also do those things are getting notified quickly.

Too many players treat us like we're retail/food service employees and we take a lot of verbal abuse over things we cannot control. It's almost a daily occurrence in the data center hunt discord to see some Karen going "you should fire so-and-so because they aren't doing things the way I want them to be done". None of us are employees. We aren't getting paid to spawn or conduct. If you don't like how we do things, do them yourself.

Quite frankly, if all someone is going to do is complain we don't want them in our hunt social groups. They make things unpleasant without contributing anything beneficial. The hunts will be dying just fine without their negative presence.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What's selfish is expecting everyone else to wait on you. If 100 other players were able to get there before the pull, why didn't you? The hunt was not designed for everyone to make every hunt. That was just as true in the past when things weren't so crowded as they are now. Sometimes you missed out.

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One single word: Congestion.

Hunts were designed for never designed for the current active population. It's virtually up to luck to with the congestion roulettew - that's why the vast majority of people wait, to give people chance to get through congestion.

As you play on Crystal, you are on the data center least affected by congestion. On EU it's signficantly worse, and we also have the added "benefit" of having less world to travel to (aka 12 s rank spawn less per cycle).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dewslam

I love how many hunt related threads and dramas are based around people trying to demand fixes to problems they, themselves, created.

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This thread seems pretty reasonable? They're asking for UI improvements, not for SE to ban "early pullers" or other such nonsense.

Going to bold your key point

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

One single word: Congestion.

Hunts were designed for never designed for the current active population. It's virtually up to luck to with the congestion roulettew - that's why the vast majority of people wait, to give people chance to get through congestion.

As you play on Crystal, you are on the data center least affected by congestion. On EU it's signficantly worse, and we also have the added "benefit" of having less world to travel to (aka 12 s rank spawn less per cycle).

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Why are we trying to force a system to accommodate something it was not designed to handle?

Have players forgotten there is a lot of other content that reward tomestones and materia? That daily hunt bills also reward nuts?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Going to bold your key point


Why are we trying to force a system to accommodate something it was not designed to handle?

Have players forgotten there is a lot of other content that reward tomestones and materia? That daily hunt bills also reward nuts?

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That is exactly the point. The never-changed system can no longer properly do what it was designed for.

In ARR hunts were as easy as "hunt spawns" -> "player ports into zone".
Now hunts are "hunt spawns" -> "player travels world" (involves waiting time + loading screen) -> "player teleports to zone (involves waiting time + loading screen) " -> "player has to travel to instance (involves waiting time + loading screen) " -> "player has to win congestion (involves teleport time on single instance".

Tomestones, materia and nuts aren't the only issue (for me). The 1000 S-Rank kill achievement is the problem. If you get 10% of all spawns (no instances), you need 3.4 years to complete this achievement on EU, and 2.6 years on NA, and 2 years on JP - at the same time, EU is the most congested region, so in practice, your chance of getting hunts on EU worlds is probably lower then for e.g. crystal worlds.

In my opinion they should never have restricted those achiements to hunts of the respective expansion because it seems that they clearly had in mind that people have to server travel for this.

Honestly, a UI to see the status of a hunt would be a nice QoL feature.
-A countdown to when the hunt window starts.
-If the window is open.
-If the hunt has spawned.

Hunters would still have to find and kill it by whatever means they want but this would take the guesswork out of if its been sniped or just hasn't spawned yet. It eliminates the need for a third party website or spreadsheet to figure it out but maintains the core of what hunts are.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

That is exactly the point. The never-changed system can no longer properly do what it was designed for.

In ARR hunts were as easy as "hunt spawns" -> "player ports into zone".
Now hunts are "hunt spawns" -> "player travels world" (involves waiting time + loading screen) -> "player teleports to zone (involves waiting time + loading screen) " -> "player has to travel to instance (involves waiting time + loading screen) " -> "player has to win congestion (involves teleport time on single instance".

Tomestones, materia and nuts aren't the only issue (for me). The 1000 S-Rank kill achievement is the problem. If you get 10% of all spawns (no instances), you need 3.4 years to complete this achievement on EU, and 2.6 years on NA, and 2 years on JP - at the same time, EU is the most congested region, so in practice, your chance of getting hunts on EU worlds is probably lower then for e.g. crystal worlds.

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But the player doesn't have to do any of that. Hunt trains aren't part of the game. They're entirely manufactured and the devs shouldn't alter the game to accommodate a segment of the playerbase who have, continually, tried to bully the rest of the playerbase into playing by their made up rules.