Suggestions for updating/improving the Hunt

I'm not sure where to put this since it's in-game content/gameplay related and not forum/site related, but myself among others are really enjoying the Hunt but would like to suggest a few improvements especially with 7.0 and (most likely) increase on level cap to 100 on the horizon. At present any level 50/60 S-ranks can be solo'd quite easily which has led to conflicts when someone who did not work hard to spawn the mark engages the s-rank and kills it before the spawner even gets a chance. I also have suggestions for individual/specific s-ranks spawn conditions.

General suggestions:

• 3-4m Invincibility timer on older s-ranks like ARR or HW level since these will die very quickly, gives time for the people who spawn it to find the rank and gather friends. Stops individuals from griefing spawners by killing it before the spawner(s) have a chance.
  
  
• Rework s-rank hunts to work like FATEs, players must sync down to x level. Allows for more “OG” experience of level 50 s ranks instead of dying in .5 seconds.

[*] Additional Aetheryte for: The Sea of Clouds, Azys LLya

Specific S-rank related:

• Treasure Map based ranks like Agrippa the Mighty and Pale Rider need to be guaranteed spawns when ready, these zones are not as active especially for maps.
  
  
• Reduce the # of “Cerf’s Up” FATEs needed to spawn Senmurv or make “Special Tarsque Force” FATE solo-able or not share the same FATE slot as “Cerf’s Up” (makes it take 4 hours on average to spawn Senmurv currently)
  
  
• increase drop rate for tiny troll/alternate method to get the minion so more people can spawn Burfurlur the Canny
  
  
• Increase spawn chance % for: any fishing-related s-ranks, Safat, any mining/harvesting chance s-ranks.
  
  
• Reduce requirement to spawn Nunyunuwi from 1 hour to 30-45m of FATEs

Ya'll free to suggest any others

They could prevent a lot of griefing just by making the Marks personal in a way. So once you have killed it you cannot engage it again in fairly long set amount of time, it will respawn for other people until some hours have gone.

Scaling the hp a lot harder based on nearby players would also help with older ones.

As much as I like hunts...

No limitations withstanding,

I would turn S Ranks into Critical Engagements that occur much more frequently, with tuned-down rewards to compensate for the lower respawn timer. I would retain spawn conditions, and then after a certain elapsed maximum timer, the mark would automatically spawn. Them also being critical engagements could also allow for more creative design with them and what they can do. Granted, I do also understand this proposal probably wouldn't be feasible, at least not for a while.

I love hunts, but it would be nice if there were an excuse for the general players to be out in the zone rather than just those scouting and/or triggering spawns. If they occur more frequently, my hope is that people would be in the open world more frequently rather than just waiting.

Then again, if I were to be more in-depth with it, to compensate for this change to S Ranks being critical engagements, I would have A ranks on a more frequent spawn timer, and in addition to this, I would like to see multiple A Ranks in a zone simultaneously so multiple groups can do them separately.

I know this proposal will likely trigger some people but... Again, whilst hunts are nice, it would be nice for them to feel like hunts, and not just trains, for example. -- Granted, the option always exists for me to group up with people and kill them separately on a train and actually 'hunt' them, I just think it isn't really viable from a wider community perspective when the general 'etiquette' is to go for trains.

I would like hunts to be more on-demand friendly. Right now other than the daily hunt bills a player has no way to just go do hunts when it suits them. Dungeons/raids you can queue up and get almost immediately. You can make party finder groups for harder instanced content, or go collect maps to do treasure hunts. But A /S hunts you have to just be in the right place at the right time to find them. I know they have groups that organize “trains” to go kill a bunch at once but some of us don’t have time to play when these happen or even know they are happening at all because we are focusing on other content we can control. Same with the rare spawn fates.

They could bring back battle levees and tie them to hunts and we could spawn them for a party/raid like treasure maps. And this could lock the monster to the group that spawned it and prevent kill stealing. Or else make a duty finder instanced content like bosdja or Eureka where all hunts from different expansions can be found and not have to run around to 30 different zones.

Mao does hunts trains regularly. A-class hunts trains happen 3 times per day. To find out when and where, try to get into one of the hunts trains link shells. Once in, gets regular announcements.

Make all hunts spawn more often and have free reign to appear and wander where ever they please on the map instead of making them appear at a specific location.

a few more suggestions from fellow hunters in some groups i'm in:

- Give the lore NPCs more use by adding in lines such as "Fortunately, this mark hasn't been seen for some time and things are safe" or "It's on the loose again!" to indicate if a mark is ready to be spawned or not (in-game feature to tell if a mark is ready to spawn/has spawned/still on cooldown basically)

- Re-examination of the s-ranks that require "kill # of groups of monsters"

- Some zones can be difficult to find the s-rank in depending on weather (i.e. Laideronnette spawning in the dark and rainy weather, Safat in blizzards at night, Wulgaru at night) while it is great these marks are visible clear across the map, having a "you sense your mark to the x" like with the weekly B-rank hunt mark would really help in these cases

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Originally Posted by slifertheskydragon

- Re-examination of the s-ranks that require "kill # of groups of monsters"

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Why this one? KCs aren't that bad as long as you're not trying to do them solo (and still aren't too bad even if you are). There are other spawns that are a lot more annoying.

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Originally Posted by slifertheskydragon

make “Special Tarsque Force” FATE solo-able

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It is soloable. Grab blue mage and use perpetual ray, the boss goes into a permastun mode where it tries to cast its aoe, gets stunned, tries to cast again, repeat.

You should only be able to participate in hunts on your home world.

I am also suggesting increasing the instance limit as certain times "your destination is congested" makes it impossible to zone into the area where an S-Rank has spawned

But also reinforcing the "invincibility timer" as 7.0 and the level increase to 100 is coming

I would like to see S ranks become more of a big deal like GW2 activities / world bosses (critical engagements is heading that direction I suppose). So a universal 'no touchy' timer might not be needed when they could have a variety of 'warning' signs and build ups.

Like King Behemoth you start to get weather across the zone that will occasionally drop an AoE lightning (or meteors..) near you (you see the circle, can dodge), and then you get DoL / DoH mission to fortify the fighting ring while DoW / M protect, bullet hell phase, and then Behemoth comes out of the sky pushing everyone back and it leads into a great big world boss fight, including things like firing rampart chain cannons, potentially providing team support and buffs with unique crafts, etc. The server would know of the event about 20 minutes before he even touches down due to the build up. Each having their own grand ordeal, and .. add a lot of them :)



My personal aside on hunts is that I wish we had a hunt log, tracking hunts killed, first time bonuses, which rewards are in demand, refreshing rewards, maybe a hunt train / party finder link with auto party generator based on a few prompts, and perhaps adjusting B and A ranks a little. Where B ranks become more personal spawned, and more dynamic.

Fighting in a FATE and a predator B rank comes at you, fishing too much at the pirate sea and a B rank comes out of the water (does not aggro instantly so you can choose to run away), get a ticket from the NPC and you can force pop them, when they appear whether ticket based or not they tend to be worth it (good bonus exp, cute poetic and secondary tome boost, etc).

Then A ranks might drop pyreflyes on death where you can interact for a dynamically scaled fight, with more monster hunter like fight mechanics (more skill based than stat based), with perhaps a difficultly scaler to the dynamic element that deteriorates as the pyreflies are older (meaning a more decayed aether mass is weaker, a notice-able but non-hyper punishing different in rewards based on challenge level), being sure to leave the current "alive" balance for the current hunt train mechanics but also allowing players to trek through the zones and purify locations (can only kill them while alive or pyre mode once every X time, so you can't double up on the kill lol).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I would like to see S ranks become more of a big deal like GW2 activities / world bosses (critical engagements is heading that direction I suppose). So a universal 'no touchy' timer might not be needed when they could have a variety of 'warning' signs and build ups.

Like King Behemoth you start to get weather across the zone that will occasionally drop an AoE lightning (or meteors..) near you (you see the circle, can dodge), and then you get DoL / DoH mission to fortify the fighting ring while DoW / M protect, bullet hell phase, and then Behemoth comes out of the sky pushing everyone back and it leads into a great big world boss fight, including things like firing rampart chain cannons, potentially providing team support and buffs with unique crafts, etc. The server would know of the event about 20 minutes before he even touches down due to the build up. Each having their own grand ordeal, and .. add a lot of them :)

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FATEs are actually better for that sort of thing. They can do animations and NPC movements ages in advance like that and alter weather, as well as having build-up FATEs. They even do this sort of thing in certain ARR areas which have fortress invasions which different sides can win, it's just ridiculously easy to win now.

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My personal aside on hunts is that I wish we had a hunt log, tracking hunts killed

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That's only relevant for the initial achievements for killing 1 of each rank in each area. It's not that hard to just kill them all again if you forget which ones you killed. Once you've killed more than 1 of each there's no point to a hunt log.

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refreshing rewards

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Well the tomestones do change on a regular basis.

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maybe a hunt train / party finder link with auto party generator based on a few prompts

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Party Finder can do all of these things. Every single part of what you said.

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perhaps adjusting B and A ranks a little. Where B ranks become more personal spawned, and more dynamic.

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It would be good if B ranks could be like the ones in FF16. Actually fun and threatening and jumping around, instead of standing there, telegraphing everything. Although most of them are very easy, a few of them are challenging enough that they can kill you, but only at the minimum item level that you quickly grow out of, so they should sync you as well.

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get a ticket from the NPC and you can force pop them

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If they really want the hunt system to not be congested, the solution is to make it similar to maps, where you get a hunt bill from somewhere and then it allows you to spawn B, A and S ranks exclusively for you or your party.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

FATEs are actually better for that sort of thing. They can do animations and NPC movements ages in advance like that and alter weather, as well as having build-up FATEs. They even do this sort of thing in certain ARR areas which have fortress invasions which different sides can win, it's just ridiculously easy to win now.

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Not sure what you mean. By FATEs as in due to the sync'ing? Could be FATEs then. I honestly don't care which system it's labeled just that they're a bigger deal lol. Comparatively speaking our FATEs/Critical Engagements, S ranks, etc, are not 'big deals' when you look at a system that goes more all out (as I was trying to example, or just literally trying GW2 lol).

My favorite cake would be less ability sync though and some sort of intelligent stat sync. I don't really love losing abilities in my kit :/.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

That's only relevant for the initial achievements for killing 1 of each rank in each area. It's not that hard to just kill them all again if you forget which ones you killed. Once you've killed more than 1 of each there's no point to a hunt log.

Well the tomestones do change on a regular basis.

Party Finder can do all of these things. Every single part of what you said.

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1 / 2) Refreshing rewards as in sometimes you get a new hit list (obviously B ranks has this, but with the hunt log being revamped it would be a concept all together). List not even being "kill bob, again" but like "rainbow week" and you get a variety of locations or "rain culler" and you get a bunch of water element, etc. Could even have morphs to them, like on rain week new water based elemental attacks are added (so the B ranks are being mixed up). A ranks would have to follow a more shared concept since you can't have each person brining their own morph in a pack of 20 players lol. I didn't list every single reason why I want the system because I didn't really want to make a massive wall in another's post, but it wasn't just because I wanted to track them easier.

Tracking hunts is just plain ugly and hilariously annoying if I was sincerely hunting these to hear the suggestion be "kill them all again" when you see a hunt once a month at best. Unless I missed a spot that tracks where what is killed, in which case please tell because I am curious. Assuming there isn't then you've no idea if you needed a specific hunt or not because who knows "might as well schedule my entire life to the kill schedule". Rather than be like "oh I missed Bob?" and check when bob was last killed so you can plan around one rather than 25 different potentials. Not that having one kill tracker is the pure reason, the other reason being a better sorting of hunts (master UI that covers all the hunt objectives rather than a new 3 key items every single expansion).

3) Yeah.. I used the word party finder... :p .. I just said that it would facilitate generating and helping maintain hunt trains (via the party finder). A bit akin to the Blue Mage thing. Just attempts to make it more seamless.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It would be good if B ranks could be like the ones in FF16. Actually fun and threatening and jumping around, instead of standing there, telegraphing everything. Although most of them are very easy, a few of them are challenging enough that they can kill you, but only at the minimum item level that you quickly grow out of, so they should sync you as well.

If they really want the hunt system to not be congested, the solution is to make it similar to maps, where you get a hunt bill from somewhere and then it allows you to spawn B, A and S ranks exclusively for you or your party.

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Personally suggested B ranks can just appear on purpose to avoid too much rigidity (on some sort of in built timer), again using the new Hunt UI potentially to help limit this factor, and so you might get like B ranks a day/week. B ranks might be more akin to easier to fish out S ranks, with a bit more dynamic / ease of access. Their purpose to bringing more livelyness to the open world specific to that player (not really a group content).

I'm fine with like a ticket a week giving you a forced B rank pop, welcome it, but I was intentionally suggesting a more dynamic approach for the dynamic element specifically. So you have less "I know exactly what is going to happen when I get to that zone, like.. EXACTLY".

FF16 NMs were fun. Going back to the sync, I would be okay seeing some sort of sync system, especially if the fights were directed more towards the monster hunter like vibe where skill play is more important than stats. I would encourage a dynamic sync that doesn't really do level as much as it does some sort of on the fly stat calculation to the monster to adjust them to be fun. So more the monster syncs to you, then you sync to the monster, but some clever player adjustments could be made if needed-- I just would like to avoid going back in time and having a level 50 kit when I'm a level 100 player lol.

I'd also be cool with A rank tickets, to encourage people to create hunt parties even more (like treasure parties). Maybe you can sometimes earn tickets from fates in the zone? Though one key point of the pyre idea was to help with the idea that when a cross server lawn mower comes through, and you miss it by a minute, or can never seem to be on when people are doing it, that you could enjoy an element of it- while the hunt aspect isn't actually removed (still encouraged to do it live, still encouraged to make a train, but hey if you stumbled upon a monster pyre you might kindle their flame to purify the area and get yourself a cool content fight).

I feel S ranks tickets could be a thing too, just more rare. Though again when I was making the first part of the post I was thinking 'big ordeal' like Lavos 10 phase boss fight. That whole FFXI tree event where everyone on the server is trying to kill it lol. (Or GW2 as an example since I think they do a great job with big chaotic group fights).

Remove level cap tomestones as a reward. Congestion issues solved since the majority are only showing up for the quick and easy level cap tomestones and not because they're interested in the Hunt as content.

Change the A Rank respawn timer from 4-6 hours to 3-8 hours. If respawns are staggered more, players are more likely to engage them when found instead of waiting up to 5 hours for a conductor to start a train. More spontaneous kill parties being formed also means reduced congestion since fewer players will show up.

Remove the ability for third party plug ins to detect S rank locations from anywhere in a zone before it is pulled. Continue to broadcast the "you sense the presence of a powerful mark" for those in the zone where a S rank is present. The spawning community is good with sharing information about spawn locations and what spots have been eliminated through A and B Rank spawns. The inability to see the S rank from across the zone will only be minor inconvenience as long as there continues to be the zone broadcast saying it has spawned. It will be a bigger inconvenience for those who have come to rely on their third party plug-ins for alerts before the general community gets relays.

Reduce the number of kills required for the expansion level achievements that reward mounts. The high counts also prolong the periods of congestion for hunts. Players should be able to earn these rewards during that expansion by playing a sane and healthy number of hours per week on their home worlds instead of playing a degenerate number of hours and/or constantly world hopping to add to queue and zone congestion. Looking at the math shows the problem.

Depending on how many of the expansion zones are instanced there are 6 to 18 S ranks (not counting the SS since that doesn't appear often enough) that can be spawned roughly twice each week. If we assume across the course of an expansion there will always be one zone that is instanced, per world that's 832 possible kills a year or 1664 across the course of a 2 year expansion.

While that's more than the 1000 S rank kills required for the expansion mount achievements, it would also mean that a player would need to play about 15 hours a day every day to get enough kills to complete the achievement before the next expansion was released if they only killed S ranks on their home world. That's not realistic and so players resort to clogging up world visit and data center travel to also kill S ranks on other worlds, increasing congestion.

Personally I'm a fan of having some achievements that require a long period of time to complete but I think SE has missed the mark in applying that to the expansion level hunt achievements. The counts for the expansion level achievements should be half what they are even with world visit. We still have the Centurio Tiger grind that applies across all expansion kills and that's more appropriate for a long grind achievement.

one sugg please do not reuse old marks. yilan is sum from stormblood. The other one is also from stormblood. A flan really??? Seems like no thought went into these marks.

Mao likes the hunts trains lead by conductors. Is funs mini event!

I am praying they do not increase number of kill count S ranks even further in 7.0 because they've been both bloating the number of them and increasing the number of kills needed to spawn them.

ARR had one S rank with 100 kills of a single enemy type.

HW had one S rank with 50 kills of three enemy types.

SB had two S ranks that took 100 kills of two enemy types.

SHB had one S rank that takes 100 kills of three enemy types.

EW has two S ranks that take 100 kills of three enemy types.

They're consistently the most unfun hunts to spawn in each expansion and I'd much prefer they throw in more unique spawn conditions like using emotes, crafting, etc then more tedious grinds (Cause we have enough of those from other content/achievements as is).

I am once again asking the devs to please re-work the Hunt especially with cross-continental DC on the horizon we're having issues with just regular DC players travelling to purposely grief players who worked hard (sometimes for hours, or by killing hundreds of mobs) to spawn the S-ranks which will be even worse for the hunt community not only with the continental DC travel but also level 100 increase

I am speaking as a player who has all the S-rank achievements and genuinely enjoys the Hunt as content but not enjoying the unsportsmanlike conduct

I agree with the more frequent spawn rates at least so itll alleviate congestion or the new tome incentive as well (tho I do enjoy it)

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Mao likes the hunts trains lead by conductors. Is funs mini event!

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Me too! Especially the ones where the conductor tells a story or animal facts or something like that. :D