Make S ranks hunts more engaging and "fair"

I have been participating in The Hunt for a while now and I love that kind of content, the idea that up to hundreds of people engange an overworld mob is just very appealing to me. But over time I have identified some areas that could be improved to get more people involved and on an equal footing. But also reduce the possibility and effect of griefing or gatekeeping for this type of game content but at the same time making it more engaging.

While this post was inspired by a recent surge of hunt "drama" on the light data center I feel like the ideas here transcend the drama and hopefully make the Hunt itself a better experience AND provide less opportunitys for griefing.

This will be quite a long list of points but I thought I post them together (even if it makes the post actually 3 posts long) instead of making a series of posts because I think having them all together provides a more coherent picture of what I think could be done to improve The Hunt.


Equal playing field
===

When an S rank spawned in your area you get a message "You sense the presence of a powerful mark..." but you don't know where it is and have to go looking for it. That's the theory.
But the reality is: people use plugins (that show them in-game where the S rank spawned), or 3rd party websites (you see an image where the s rank spawned in your discord/browser/app), or are in the "right" linkshells (with in-game flag). People without those resources have a significant disadvantage.

There are two approaches that come to my mind how to give people an equal chance to participate in the hunt:

1.) Make it impossible for plugins to extract the coordinates for the S rank from the game client. This would at least reduce the inquality between plugin users and no plugin users.

However this solution suffers from a few drawbacks. The first is that the render distance for S ranks is map-wide, that means the information where the S rank is has to be somewhere in the client for it to render on the map. So it seems like the render distance probably has to become smaller or this will just be a cat-and-mouse game.

It also doesn't address that to be a really active hunter you need some 3rd party websites/apps or be in the right linkshells to get notifications about spawned S ranks that someone wants to share with other people. If we're sticking with the idea that we want to promote in-game tools for this purpose we probably need significant increases in linkshell capacity (currently ls 128/ cwls 64). Just thinking out loud a capacity of 256 or 512 (for both kinds of linkshells) could make sense.

2.) If we're stuck with the fact that plugins will be able to get the coordinates across the whole map and we cannot have a meaningful increase in linkshell members: Could it be a solution that if you're on the map that you see an icon on the map (similar to FATEs) - or at least a direction in the mini-map (similar to unspoiled/legendary nodes)? Furthermore it could also be useful if the whole world gets a chat notification (opt-in or opt-out like system messages, etc.) that an S rank spawned and on which map.

This would give people without external resources or plugins the means to more easily participate in the Hunt.

It would also be nice for A ranks/B ranks that when you're in close proximity to get a visual indicator on the map. Like with those rare FATEs in newer expansions that get only visible if you're actually very close.


Old expansion hunt marks are getting stomped
===

The A ranks and S ranks for older expansion just have too few HP and don't do any significant damage. A small group or even a single person can easily kill those by themself. This will get more pronounced every time the level or item level increases. As I've understood the Hunt: the B ranks should be something you can do solo, A ranks require a few people, and S ranks require a few groups.

One idea that comes to mind is to handle them similar to FATEs, that you have to do synced. For the hunt marks I would think that an item level sync (without a level sync) would be ideal. You can use the full range of spells and abilities but your stats aren't totally over the stats of the S rank. That makes for more interesting and engaging fights. And personally I would love to have a real fight against some of those older A and S ranks!

An out of pocket idea would be to use the item level of the x.0 patch of the next expansion (still a meaningful advantage over the S rank, but you cannot stomp it anymore) except for those of the current expansion which sync to the item level of their x.0 patch. That would be:

A Realm Reborn: item level 160
Heavensward: item level 300
Stormblood: item level 430
Shadowbringer: item level 560
Endwalker: item level 560

One downside with the suggestion is that the item level sync would have to be either like for FATEs (a bit annoying) or automatic when you're in close proximity (could be surprising). I have no good idea what would feel good and be easily usable.

This item level sync could be complemented by an additional HP upscaling for A ranks and S ranks when a lot of players (say above 100) are in close proximity (or on the map). I think eureka zones Notorious monsters have a similar system. Seeing a hunt mark die in a few seconds makes the Hunt feel a brain-dead boring event instead of an actual engaging encounter.

Jumpy hunt marks
===

There are some marks (looking at you Ophioneus) that like to reset themselves when they do a dash/jump. I fail to believe that this is actually "working as intended" and I think there need to be some changes so these hunt marks don't jump themselves to full HP. Or if that's not possible please don't add more S ranks that do these kind of jumps.


SS rank minions
===

Remove the fact that you can fail the SS rank spawn by resetting a minion. This has lead to occurences of intentionally griefing but also for unintentional accident. There is currently a time limit in which the minions have to be engaged otherwise the event fails, why not build upon that and make the event fail in case the 4 minions haven't been slain within 5/7/10 minutes but remove the "reset fails the event" condition.

Killed S ranks
===

The playerbase theory crafted the respawn timers and the respawn windows for the S ranks. This allows for educated guesses when attempting to spawn an S rank. However this requires knowing when the S rank was last killed and this is information is not available in-game. I think it would be a very handy addition if the hunt NPCs in the region actually would indicate if the S rank in the area is currently on cooldown (for example: "The hunt mark was defeated recently, it's probably recovering right know and biding it's time before it will strike again").
The intent of that message shouldn't be that the S rank will garantueed spawn, the message should just be present when the hunt mark is actually impossible to spawn (this could be some random amount of time: e.g. 24h, 48h or the full 84h for current expansion S ranks). That would give people some indication that it may be worth it to attempt a spawn, especially with some of the more time-consuming spawns (e.g. kill 300 mobs) this would be very useful information.


World travel queue
===
This is a more general point, it is a secondary issue that is probably less impactful (*if* some of the aforementioned points were integrated). But it could be something that would make it a better (or at least less frustrating) experience at the moment.

Most of the time people "miss" S ranks because they are stuck in queue or have long loading times (PS4 *cough*). I'm not saying that people are entitled to getting to the S rank. But if more people could switch worlds more quickly the time spent in world transfer doesn't feel quite as bad. Waiting for 3-5 minutes in world transfer just to see the S rank die before you get there feels like a lot of time wasted and is just a bad experience.
I don't know how many people can swap worlds in a certain timeframe currently, but my best guess would be it's like 4 players each 10s. Is there no way to improve that?

---

Wow, you stuck around till the end? Do you think there might be some merit to (some of) the ideas? I would welcome your feedback!

(tip for the future: you can put everything into a single post by editing it after posting an initial part within the character limit. There's no character limit on the edits)

The Hunt already is "fair" beyond what SE intended for the content. They aren't especially pleased by the extent the community has chosen to organize by the content but they don't seem to be interested in interfering with it either.

There's nothing stopping you from joining Discords and linkshells to get relays. There's also nothing stopping you from signing up with the 2 tracking websites most commonly used. The purpose of the community using these tools is to try to get information about spawns shared with as many players as possible, not to give anyone an unfair advantage.

The third party tools are a slightly different situation, of course. They were originally designed to give only their users an unfair advantage. To counter that, reports from one of those tools has been added to what's probably the largest Hunt Discord for the game so that information gets shared more widely instead of being limited to just users of the tool.

If people feel disadvantaged, it's because they're refusing to use the community based tools available to them. That's their choice. Some don't like doing their Hunts as part of a larger community. They want to go solo and there is nothing stopping them from doing that.

On your individual points:

1- Likely can't be done without taking away map coordinate function from all players for all content that relies on it. If it could be done without disrupting intended use, SE probably would have already done so. Imagine trying to make it in time to a S rank without any coordinates to navigate by other than "it's east of Tomra".

SE could go ahead and remove the long distance detection for S ranks (already true of the other hunt elites that aren't engaged) but it's not going to change things from your perspective. The players who do the spawning on a regular basis will already know where it will spawn in most cases (spawners generally call it "mapping", some Faloop members call it "sciencing" trying to make it sound more difficult than it is). There's no illicit tools needed to accomplish that, only a willingness to spend a few hours chasing B ranks around a zone to eliminate what spawn points the S rank cannot spawn at.

On the subject of increasing cwl capacity, join the club. The Hunt community has been asking for that since cwls were added. Until such time as SE is able to increase the member limit, Discord remains the best tool for the community to reach the largest number of players though we'll still continue to use linkshells and cwls.

The other modification we'd like to see is for cwls to have an indicator of when a member was last online. We sort of get that information for the world based linkshells via the search information but we have nothing similar to use for cwls. If we knew which cwl members were inactive and could be removed, that would create more room for new hunters in the established cwls with dependable relayers.

It would also help if more of the active members of the hunt community would assist in the ls/cwl relays. Relays can't be sent out by people not online, visiting another data center, in cutscenes, etc.

2 - you're trying to remove the "hunt" part of the Hunt. Might as well not have the content at all.

People without the external resources have the same opportunity to participate in the content as those of us who are doing the hunting and manually feeding the information to those external resources in the first place. While there is a small percentage of hunters that rely on a plug-in, most of us dislike them and don't use them. The one plug-in that shares info on the Discord is tolerated only because it is sharing the info with the wider hunt community and any user identified as being disruptive to the hunt community gets banned from using it.

==========

Old hunts getting stomped by solo players - did you know that the newest hunts also get stomped by solo players on occasion? Mechanics aren't difficult and tanks have plenty of self-healing so all that is required is patience and time. One player on Materia even solo'd Ophioneus last year. Obviously it's much easier to do with the older hunts but it's nothing new and not something SE is interested in changing.

The community has suggested switching hunts to a FATE style system but SE has said it would take too much time away from other content development to be worth it. It would also effectively remove The Hunt from the game just to add more FATEs that the player base tends to ignore.

If you want the older hunts to feel more challenging, you can always get a group of friends together and equip gear of the appropriate level for the hunt mark instead of using your highest level gear.

=======

Resets - that's easy to solve. Don't be standing at a great distance from the spawn point. Don't be standing on a ledge that would force the hunt mark to run a long distance to get to you. Don't briefly attack a hunt mark then run away to do something else before it's dead. Some hunts will target the farthest player for the "jump" mechanics. If I see a hunt getting pulled too far from it's spawn point, I place the spawn point between me and it so the next time it goes to jump, it's more likely to target me and won't reset.

Causing a hunt mark that's already engaged by other players to reset can lead to a temporary ban of your account (or even permanent if you're a repeat offender) if the GMs have reason to believe it's been done intentionally. Please do report it if you see it happen and something was said that makes you think it was intentional.

======

SS minions - the community pointed out the problem when the SS rank was added in Shadowbringers. I don't think we ever got a direct response from SE but our guess is that since the SS spawn is intended to be rare, the chance for the minions to despawn is intentional and won't be changing. Some local communities organize minion squads to protect against resets.

Again if you encounter someone that you believe has intentionally reset a minion so the SS spawn doesn't happen, please report it.

=====

Timers - is it really that hard to check one of the 2 trackers commonly used by the community to see when something is due to respawn? Few people like to see time wasted that could have gone to better use and the trackers help the community make better use of their time (assuming the last kill was reported to one of the trackers - they aren't always).

That's the community working together to problem solve, which is part of what makes a MMORPG feel like a MMO and not just a RPG.

======

World travel queues - SE never intended for every player to be present at every kill on their home world, let alone on their data center or their entire region. No one is owed the right to be present at a kill, not even the spawner.

Accept that sometimes you're going to miss out. No one wants to sit around waiting 20 minutes for a 20 second kill and for some S ranks the spawners have already put in an hour or more of their time to get it to spawn. There are more hunts out there waiting to be killed.

Be aware of what the relay is for and how long it's likely for you to get there. Sometimes it's just not worth trying. If you want to be part of as many kills as possible, then turn the hunt into your primary end game and help with the spawning, scouting and/or conducting.

Some interesting points, as Marco mentioned some issues come not from regular players engaging with Hunts freely as open game content, but from a few specific players choosing to grief others for whatever reason.
A small, organized team of 2 or 3 players can now quickly kill ARR/HW S ranks before the dozens of people on the way arrive. If done repeatedly and on the entire DC, it can deny content to interested players. Particularly to PS4/HDD players, or people who moved away from the Limsa aetheryte for a second. This is not a hypothetical: it has happened.

Some proposals like level sync, or HP buffs depending on the people in the map, not only aim to combat the quick kills, but more importantly, to make the Hunt content more interesting. All A/S ranks reward uncapped tomes, and EW marks capped tomes too, making them always relevant. Even more so with the current EW relic system. Quick kills trivialize this. Making players actually fight the marks instead of killing it with tomahawks only would help balance this part of the game.

Extra linkshell/cwls member slots are greatly needed, or at least being able to check when a member was last online. I can understand if making linkshells visible DC wide is complicated to code, but there is no excuse for the small number of member slots.

On the issue of resets/minion resets, the comment above suggested reporting them. Currently on the Light DC, and I assume Chaos too, reports are completely useless. Some griefers have been reported by dozens of people for repeatedly resetting marks just before they are killed, or purposefully resetting minions, with witnesses, with no result whatsoever. So we would like some clarification by the GMs or SE on this. If repeated resets/minion resets are not against ToS, please say so and we can stop wasting everyone's time with reports. If they are against ToS, then why the inaction? The GMs have said they cannot act without proving the intention to grief, which seems fair on the surface. But if they can only prove intention through chat messages, then the griefer only needs to not say anything, and they are good. That's an absurd situation. If SE is, understandably, not willing to overpolice the game, it should at least be designed to minimize griefing.

Anyway, we are always told to post suggestions like this on the official forums. At some point, we would like to see a response.

You will never see a response because the dev's response is and always will be that the hunt is a free for all.

There are no rules.

The only "rules" are the ones that the player community has placed upon itself. And the devs can't plan appropriate responses around that so they don't.

I am not talking about any community rules here. Repeated resets/minion resets are nominally against ToS (using enmity related actions against players, killing players on purpose/making them lose credit and interfere with gameplay). My question is if it's ever enforced, and if so, how can players report it effectively.

"The Hunt is free for all" until a small group of organized players make it impossible for a sizeable amount of interested players to participate in it. By quick or unreported kills, for example. The suggestions above would help to balance the issues, in my opinion.

Using your example, "reporting kills" is a player imposed thing. The game doesn't record this data anywhere accessible in game which is intentional. Just because people are "interested" in it doesn't make it fall under some kind of "we must make it easier to manage" kind of rule.

Not sure how much hiding the times of death is intentional or just an oversight, since ARR Hunt marks have a much quicker respawn rate than expansion marks. But that's not the issue here.

Consider Eureka NMs. From the moment they are defeated, they can be farmed again immediately. And once their hidden timer comes up again a couple of hours later, they will spawn. So in this case having the ToD is less relevant: just farm for a while and wait it out. Your effort still counts.
But that's not the case for S ranks. Once killed, you have to wait days to attempt a new spawn. Some are trivial to spawn (Tyger, Safat,...), others take hours (Nunyunuwi, Senmurv) or a lot of resources (Agrippa, Pale Rider). If any of those were recently killed without a community report, your effort is completely wasted. And there is no way for you to know before trying.
Having a vague indication that the mark won't spawn soon serves to balance this part of the game with similar content.

Eureka NM's are completely different than the Hunt though. You are not supposed to know what the status is before trying to spawn them, that's the point of the Hunt. It doesn't need any "balancing".

"You are not supposed to know" I believe that was true for ARR S rank conditions, as many can spawn via random player actions. But let's be honest, that is not true for many expansion S rank conditions. Most modern marks require specific, coordinated actions. Players *have* to share information of the correct spawn spots for Armstrong/Burfulur etc, try for hours on killcount spawns and even get 10 friends for Narrow Rift. We are supposed to know some of that information, even if it's on the community side.

Also, you don't know what the Eureka NMs status is before trying. The point is, it doesn't matter! Your effort still counts! But it doesn't for S ranks already killed.

@Jojoya Thanks for the edit tip!

Regarding your points:

You mentioned that the purpose of these trackers (discord/websites) is to share the information with as many people as possible is a good thing. But on the other hand you think that having world-wide chat notifications about spawned S ranks and where to find them would remove "the hunt from the hunt". It seems like having the information gated behind another app/website is somehow more appropriate than having the information in the game. I can't follow this line of reasoning. Wouldn't making the information available to more players with less barriers be "better"? On the other hand it seems we agree on the fact that ls/cwls are too limited and that tools that extract the locations are "bad", although it seems you have resigned to the status quo.

I have also heard of people killing current expansion S ranks solo or with small groups, but that's not what I would call stomped (what I heard that seemed like 20-30 minutes of hard work). But I didn't know that FATE style hunts have already been suggested and denied - do you happen to know where I can read more about their reasoning? However my idea of having engaging fights wasn't just for "a group of friends that equip level appropriate gear", I was thinking that very old S ranks (ARR/HW) are just brain-dead content, there's no challenge, it's just ticking a "one s rank less until i reach achievement x". In generally in boils down to 1 minute to get to the location, 1-2 minutes of waiting and 10-20s of hitting the target dum ... I mean S rank. If you believe that's interesting and engaging we just have different opinions - which is fine with me. :)

You also mentioned that resets are reportable. But wouldn't it be better if the system would be more robust against griefing than just reporting the griefer and hoping a GM will warn/ban them for their behavior (on the light datacenter that rarely happens even if the person is a multi-offender)? The game can facilitate good or bad behavior ... shouldn't they make it easier to do the good behavior and harder to break the rules in the first place?

For the timers: Yes, it's easy to check the apps, but why do we need this information hidden? I'm not saying the game should tell you when an S rank is coming off cooldown, just when it would be a waste of time to attempt to spawn it. The apps could serve as a more in-depth and accurate (provided most people participate with them) picture while the Hunt NPC could give you some rough ideas, this is already true for the spawn conditions, the hunt NPC gives hints, the apps tell you what exactly you need to do.

Regarding the world-travel queues: It seems like you're not in favor of the suggestion but would faster world-travel (higher player throughput) be a bad thing in your opinion? I think wasting a few minutes in the queue is bad independent if you get the S rank reward or not. Even though it feels worse for those that don't get there in time.

Sorry i haven't had the time to address all of your points and also don't want to side-track on singular points too much. And even though it seems like we disagree on a few points I really appreciate your response and the different point of view!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarcoZorn

snip for character limit

---

It just dawned on me that you're EU and so you're probably being impacted by Faloop hierarchy and Early Access versus Public Access BS.

Seeing things from that perspective, your idea then seems like a better solution because it takes notification control out of Faloop's hands and puts it back into hands of anyone who wants to hunt, not just Faloop's favored and privileged children.

Regarding engaging fights, depending on what you consider "engaging" hunts may never reach that level. Even the SS ranks have a small number of mechanics that aren't difficult to learn. A level sync isn't going to make them all that much more engaging once the mechanics are known. They'll still just be target dummies with higher HP pools in the long run. Most of the fun comes from being part of the "flash mob" that appears to kill them.

Trying to "make the system more robust against griefing" would also remove part of the challenge to getting the SS to spawn. You would effectively create a "can't fail system" instead of a system where there is still some risk of failure. SE has to balance any proactive anti-griefing tools they would create against how it impacts the intent of the content.

What SE's exact reasoning is for the hidden timers I can't say. If I were asked to guess, I suspect it's because they're prefer to not have large crowds of players camping zones for hours at a time when there are other players using those zones for reasons other than the Hunt. Players are far more likely to act when the information is freely given to them than if they have to make the effort to seek out the information. Again, that's just what I would guess.

I don't have any problem with world travel being quicker if SE has the ability and desire to do it. My problem is with players who think that other players owe them time and should have to wait excessive periods so they and more random players from other worlds can take their time and still get credit.

I'm glad for the discussion. SE needs the broader overview of how different members of the community see the content if they are considering possible changes. If SE did decide that change is needed, either I'll adapt or I'll quit the Hunt. Nothing lasts forever.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

A small, organized team of 2 or 3 players can now quickly kill ARR/HW S ranks before the dozens of people on the way arrive. If done repeatedly and on the entire DC, it can deny content to interested players. Particularly to PS4/HDD players, or people who moved away from the Limsa aetheryte for a second. This is not a hypothetical: it has happened

---

Those 2-3 players would be well within their rights to do so. Hunts are a free for all. Waiting around for other players to show up to the kill is a purely community created courtesy. In any other MMO the only rule would be "you snooze you lose." I think it's great that people wait for others to show up to S rank kills but a small group that chooses to take one out on their own isn't doing anything wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarcoZorn

You mentioned that the purpose of these trackers (discord/websites) is to share the information with as many people as possible is a good thing. But on the other hand you think that having world-wide chat notifications about spawned S ranks and where to find them would remove "the hunt from the hunt". It seems like having the information gated behind another app/website is somehow more appropriate than having the information in the game. I can't follow this line of reasoning. Wouldn't making the information available to more players with less barriers be "better"? On the other hand it seems we agree on the fact that ls/cwls are too limited and that tools that extract the locations are "bad", although it seems you have resigned to the status quo.

---

In my opinion, the thing that still makes The Hunt a hunt is that the game doesn't automate this; players are doing it. There are specific activities that need to be accomplished for A- and S-ranks to spawn, and players do that manually. When S-ranks spawn, or when all the A-ranks for an expansion are available, players announce the "event" on hunt linkshells; this shares that information with players who have actively joined such linkshells. The players gather together and kill the targets together. All of these acts — spawning, spreading knowledge, joining and listening to linkshells, and travelling to the targets to kill them are manual and intentional activities that players engage in. The more of these the game does for you, the less of a hunt it is.

And honestly, I think it's beautiful. I've played other games where similar activities were highly contested, first-come-first-serve. But in FF14, players have banded together and generally speaking try to make sure that everyone who wants to can get to Hunts and reap the rewards. The devs didn't make this happen, the community made it happen. We made the decision that to the best of our ability, nobody will get left behind when Hunting. I know it's just a video game, but that kind of compassion and community-minded spirit genuinely gives me hope for humanity.

OP has made some very good points and suggestions.

IMO, the things SE should consider improving:

1. S ranks from older expansions can be killed too fast.
Right now, no lv50 players will do lv50 hunts, no lv60 players will do lv60 hunts... etc, everything are blasted down by lv90 players in seconds. This is probably not the hunt SE devs intended. JellaW said S ranks on the whole DC can be blocked by 2-3 people. If this is actually happening with malicious intent, it should be fixed. People have already proposed good solutions.

2. Discouraging use of plugins that give people advantage.
Surely SE is aware of this, and probably hard to do anything against it.

Things that are not really SE's fault:
1. Antisocial behaviours on EU Light (pulling, resetting, despawning SS etc)
Faloop organises hunts on both EU Light and Chaos. Light is full of drama but Chaos it's very pleasant. There must be some system that Chaos admins are using to keep griefers out, and it's missing on Light. IMO this is not SE's fault - Faloop admins on Light should ask Chaos admins how they regulate their community.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Those 2-3 players would be well within their rights to do so. Hunts are a free for all. Waiting around for other players to show up to the kill is a purely community created courtesy. In any other MMO the only rule would be "you snooze you lose." I think it's great that people wait for others to show up to S rank kills but a small group that chooses to take one out on their own isn't doing anything wrong.

---

Players are indeed within their rights to do so, the issue comes from how easy it is to grief other players this way. And it will only get worse with gear creep. The suggestions in this thread don't impede players to engage with content however they like, just to make it more difficult to grief and deny gameplay to others on purpose.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by forksapien

Things that are not really SE's fault:
1. Antisocial behaviours on EU Light (pulling, resetting, despawning SS etc)
Faloop organises hunts on both EU Light and Chaos. Light is full of drama but Chaos it's very pleasant. There must be some system that Chaos admins are using to keep griefers out, and it's missing on Light. IMO this is not SE's fault - Faloop admins on Light should ask Chaos admins how they regulate their community.

---

Having witnessed some of this myself, all DCs regularly have issues with antisocial behaviour. Chaos DC did have its own share of drama in the past, when cross world visit rocked established communities. Light alternates months of peaceful hunts with some weeks of instapulls/snipes. And the culture is different in each DC: in Chaos it is frowned upon to use/rely on 3rd party tools for Hunts, in Light they are much more common. Perhaps the abundance of 3rd party tools makes people more individualistic and antisocial, instead of coordinating within the community for Hunts. And no admin can do anything about it, while SE has a laissez-faire policy for 3rd party tools.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarcoZorn

@Jojoya Thanks for the edit tip!

Regarding your points:

You mentioned that the purpose of these trackers (discord/websites) is to share the information with as many people as possible is a good thing. But on the other hand you think that having world-wide chat notifications about spawned S ranks and where to find them would remove "the hunt from the hunt".

---

I was thinking in terms of the notifications that you mentioned that would tell a player when a hunt was nearby, not just in terms of S ranks. If you're only thinking in terms of S ranks after they've been spawned, I'm fine with that.

I want to say the Q&A that included the question about converting hunts to a FATE style system happened sometime during Stormblood. I don't have a direct link, just the memory that the question was asked and the response was "we're very unlikely to make this change due to the effort required to convert the old hunts".

There is no way to make the system more robust against griefing without removing the challenge intended. We're not intended to have a free pass resetting minions to keep them engaged until we can get more players to show up. Those who want to grief will continue to find ways to do so unless they get banned.

SE made the choice to hide the spawn windows. By doing so, they've encouraged the community to cooperate and share information with others. The more information that SE makes available to players at a basic game level, the less reason there is for the community to interact.

The hunt system was never designed with world visit or data center travel in mind. I'm sure if SE could speed up queue times without risking some sort of instability in the system, they would. But speeding up queue times just means more players arriving faster and those at the tail end of the queue still miss out when the hunt is pulled before they arrive.

QoL is always nice but too much promotes a sense of entitlement to rewards without effort. The more convenient SE makes The Hunt, the more players who currently ignore it will start to participate. The hunt community has already created the proverbial double-edged sword with the relay system. Those getting a relay feel entitled to participate even if that means a couple of hundred other players sitting around several minutes waiting for them to decide to show up. Then there's the anger, insults and sometimes harassment when people choose not to wait.

SE makes the final decision about what they want the content to be. So far, they've shown no sign they want to change things. Considering the current problems within the hunt community, I doubt they're going to increase convenience and make it worse.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

Players are indeed within their rights to do so, the issue comes from how easy it is to grief other players this way. And it will only get worse with gear creep. The suggestions in this thread don't impede players to engage with content however they like, just to make it more difficult to grief and deny gameplay to others on purpose.

---

You cannot grief anyone by killing an S rank because there is no wrong time to kill an S rank. The only instance where this is the case is intentionally resetting SS hunt minions to despawn the event, which the GMs do take action on if reported.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CidHeiral

You cannot grief anyone by killing an S rank because there is no wrong time to kill an S rank. The only instance where this is the case is intentionally resetting SS hunt minions to despawn the event, which the GMs do take action on if reported.

---

Not quite. The automated response by the GMs is that, even if "early pulls" are not necessarily against ToS, they can take action if they determine it was done with malicious intent. Those are their words. The issue is proving it, and SE has provided no guidance to do so. That's one of my requests: to clarify what counts as malicious and how to prove it.
For example, if someone repeatedly pulls and quickly kills older expansion S ranks despite being aware several people are on the way and being told so.
On SS minions despawns, we have reported several cases on the Light DC over the years, with no change.

My overall point is: Hunts are in a strange position in the game. They provide relevant rewards for current content: uncapped tomestones (all A/S ranks) and capped tomes (EW A/S ranks). With the EW relic grind being fully about uncapped tomes. And yet it's content that can be fully trivialized. ARR/HW marks can be killed too easily, and if a lot of players gather for EW marks, they die so fast they never get to cast mechanics. While almost all other sources of lv90 tomestones require some form of synced duty effort, Hunts give them for little effort to the average player. That is a clear imbalance. Changes like level sync or HP boosts would force players to actually engage with the content, and promote cooperation in an mmo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

My overall point is: Hunts are in a strange position in the game. They provide relevant rewards for current content: uncapped tomestones (all A/S ranks) and capped tomes (EW A/S ranks). With the EW relic grind being fully about uncapped tomes. And yet it's content that can be fully trivialized. ARR/HW marks can be killed too easily, and if a lot of players gather for EW marks, they die so fast they never get to cast mechanics. While almost all other sources of lv90 tomestones require some form of synced duty effort, Hunts give them for little effort to the average player. That is a clear imbalance. Changes like level sync or HP boosts would force players to actually engage with the content, and promote cooperation in an mmo.

---

The imbalance occurs because of the rewards. Remove the endgame tomestones from all hunts and you massively reduce the interest in participating.

That's far easier for SE to do than to redesign hunts. Players would still get Poetics, hunt currency and appropriate credit toward any hunt achievement they might be working on.

Also, there aren't nearly as many level synced sources for the endgame tomestones as you make it sound. You've got prior expansion hunts for Causality and a few daily roulette bonuses for Causality and Comedy. That's it. Any other prior expansion content rewards Poetics at best even when synced.

SE could remove the Causality from older hunts but I don't think that's going to accomplish much.

They could set hunts to only credit players on their home world. That would fix many of the complaints but would add new ones.

They've told us they have no plans to spend time and effort converting old hunts to a new system when the time and effort could go toward creating more content. That doesn't necessarily rule out revising future hunt content.

They also have no desire to change HP or other stats on old hunts. They want them to continue to be accessible to groups of players of the intended level (even if that rarely happens in practice).

This is a sample of the community making their own problem by trying to be too nice to those that are only interested in the reward and not the content itself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

The imbalance occurs because of the rewards. Remove the endgame tomestones from all hunts and you massively reduce the interest in participating.

---

Solving a problem by making the content less interesting would be a terrible solution.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

Also, there aren't nearly as many level synced sources for the endgame tomestones as you make it sound. You've got prior expansion hunts for Causality and a few daily roulette bonuses for Causality and Comedy. That's it. Any other prior expansion content rewards Poetics at best even when synced.

---

Pvp, roulettes, current savage and the Khloe weekly book can give relevant tomestones. All of them require some form of level sync effort, even if modest (the Khloe book usually forces you to do at least lv80/90/synced content to complete it). That effort doesn't exist for hunts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

They also have no desire to change HP or other stats on old hunts. They want them to continue to be accessible to groups of players of the intended level (even if that rarely happens in practice).

This is a sample of the community making their own problem by trying to be too nice to those that are only interested in the reward and not the content itself.

---

Gear powercreep will only make hunts less accesible to players, if small, determined groups go and quickly kill them before people arrive. This already happens.
This imbalance, both on the rewards and the powercreep will only get worse with time. Eventually SE will have to address it, and not only on hunts.
Finally, I appreciate your responses but I don't understand the last part. Many players are interested in hunts, and would like to enjoy them more. The rewards would be more satisfying if the players had to make a modest effort to get the kill.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

Solving a problem by making the content less interesting would be a terrible solution.

---

There's already a problem if removing some rewards makes the content less interesting.

Wondrous Tails doesn't require level sync to be completed. You just need to have second chance points, which are easy to come by if you help fill unsynced parties doing first time completion in PF. Current Savage is not level synced because you already have to be max level to step into it. PvP I don't do so I can't confirm on level sync but my understanding is that it doesn't reward tomestones, only PvP currency unless you're doing the PvP roulette.

You're ignoring the fact that small determined groups killing the hunt marks as they're found is the way that SE has always intended the hunt to be done.

The imbalance is coming from players insisting they must be included in the kills without participating in the actual hunt part. The community has created the problem by engaging with the hunt in a way that SE never intended.

Many hunters have been around long enough to understand what I'm talking about. Trains didn't exist in ARR or Heavensward. They were a community construct that began in Stormblood.

Most players aren't interested in the hunt. They're interested in the easy rewards. Make the rewards less easy to get and general interest would die out rapidly, leaving participants to those who actually like the Hunt.

All you have to do to see just how much interest there is in the actual hunt is to try to gather players together to help spawn the more effort intensive S ranks. I've put up PFs a number of times with the description "Spawning party - come help!" People will join the group and I'll say "can you help with this part?" then they go "oh I thought you had spawned something already, I'll be back when it's up" and they leave the party. That's not someone interested in the hunt - that's someone who's just out for the easy reward. If people do join to help, it's usually those who already belong to the spawning linkshells that are doing 99% of the spawns that aren't weather triggered.

The last thing we need is better rewards to make the hunt "more interesting" when the current problems is the oversaturation of players showing up just to get easy rewards on the back on other players' efforts in the first place. I don't think the average player "interested in hunts" has any idea of the work hunters are going to in the background to make those trains and S ranks happen. That's work that those with an interest in the Hunt and not the rewards put in many hours a day.

There's already plenty of room for players who are interested in the hunt to enjoy them more - come help us do the real hunting. On Crystal, we're always happy to welcome more spawners and more conductors to the community. If you were on a NA world, I'd invite you to come join us and learn what the Hunt really is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

The last thing we need is better rewards to make the hunt "more interesting" when the current problems is the oversaturation of players showing up just to get easy rewards on the back on other players' efforts in the first place. I don't think the average player "interested in hunts" has any idea of the work hunters are going to in the background to make those trains and S ranks happen. That's work that those with an interest in the Hunt and not the rewards put in many hours a day.

There's already plenty of room for players who are interested in the hunt to enjoy them more - come help us do the real hunting. On Crystal, we're always happy to welcome more spawners and more conductors to the community. If you were on a NA world, I'd invite you to come join us and learn what the Hunt really is.

---

Thank you for the offer! I have spawned hundreds of S ranks, conducted trains and mentored several new people into Hunts, so I believe I also have an idea about what the Hunt "really" is. Which is why I'm invested in making it a better system.

A few things you mentioned:

"The way SE intended for Hunts" was probably true during ARR/HW, but that intention went right out the window when both 1) cross-world visit was introduced and 2) the playerbase increased dramatically. And the possible global travel will only increase that deviation. We *cannot* blame a community of invested players for wishing to engage this part of the game. Be it for rewards, achievements or just fun. SE has already adjusted content in the past to better suit the player's interests, and will do so in the future, if they want this game to last another 10 years.

On few people willing to help with spawning: well, of course. Most S rank conditions require only one person to try a spawn, maybe 3 for killcounts. The only exception is Narrow Rift requiring 10 people. Some people may leave your party, but they just don't know how to help, or even if they can help. I still see new people interested in spawning everyday, which is great! But I also see people disheartened by its problems, and stopping.
How many players are willing to help spawning is irrelevant here: there are many people interested in killing the marks, but find an obsolete system that assumes there are less players and with worse level/gear.

The solution to this *cannot* be to ask players to stop doing content. And if SE keeps expanding player accessibility to new datacenters, that desire to engage with Hunts will only increase. That desire will remain unless SE restricts hunts, which isn't a good solution. Making it a more balanced system where players feel invested in the content would be a good step. Ignoring the issue wouldn't be a good sign for a game that intends to last at least 10 more years.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

"The way SE intended for Hunts" was probably true during ARR/HW, but that intention went right out the window when both 1) cross-world visit was introduced and 2) the playerbase increased dramatically. And the possible global travel will only increase that deviation. We *cannot* blame a community of invested players for wishing to engage this part of the game. Be it for rewards, achievements or just fun. SE has already adjusted content in the past to better suit the player's interests, and will do so in the future, if they want this game to last another 10 years.

---

Yet it is still their intent and they've made no sign they want to change things. They may not even be aware of what things are like on the NA and EU worlds with the way they tend to focus on what's happening on the JP worlds with their much lower populations.

It's not a community of players invested in the Hunt that's the problem. It's the community of players invested in the easy rewards that is. There's plenty of other content to earn tomestones for players to choose from - they chose the Hunt because it's way too time efficient for the reward received. Reduce the time efficiency below that of other content and they would lose interest in the Hunt. Those invested in the Hunt would stay because it's the content they enjoy.

If you want to see the impact of changing the time efficiency for rewards, talk to those who are organizing hunts on Materia and Dynamis. I was running late night trains on Dynamis for a while - players lost interest when only 4-6 players would show up so the train would take over 2 hours and they actually had to do mechanics (those complaints were funny to listen to). S ranks aren't much better late at night. Sometimes you can get a decent sized group of 30-40 to show up and sometimes it's only a dozen. Those who are invested in the Hunt stay - those who aren't go do other things.

The number actually invested in the Hunt is pretty small compared to those only interested in the easy rewards.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

Yet it is still their intent and they've made no sign they want to change things. They may not even be aware of what things are like on the NA and EU worlds with the way they tend to focus on what's happening on the JP worlds with their much lower populations.

---

That's why we are here then: to raise awareness and offer possible changes. Past intent means nothing if the system is obsolete, and SE has changed their intent in the past on multiple fronts. Admitting defeat from the start is bizarre when this is an ever evolving game, with us as paying costumers.

I am very familiar with low attendance during the night, hunting in Light at late hours sometimes with very few people. I'd say people enjoy it more since they have to put in the effort to kill the mark. Personally I really enjoyed one time we killed the SS minions and SS rank with just 12 people during the early morning.

Of course some people are only in for the easy rewards - that's what they are used to! But it's not a balanced system as we explained, and people would adapt to any change.

If I see an S rank I'll /shout for help and then kill it. I don't care about some Discord server I don't even know exists.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

If I see an S rank I'll /shout for help and then kill it. I don't care about some Discord server I don't even know exists.

---

I think you're talking about A ranks, there aren't too many S ranks that you just "see" (most require some form of action to be performed). Or I misunderstood your comment and the shout for help is "lfg".

Also no one is suggesting that you should care about some discord. Most of them facilitate the experience or the efficiency of a part of the game. If you want that: great, if the Hunt is just side content you do when you accidentally walk into some Hunt mob: also great. But that's not really the topic here (at least not from my PoV)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JellaW

That's why we are here then: to raise awareness and offer possible changes. Past intent means nothing if the system is obsolete, and SE has changed their intent in the past on multiple fronts. Admitting defeat from the start is bizarre when this is an ever evolving game, with us as paying costumers.

I am very familiar with low attendance during the night, hunting in Light at late hours sometimes with very few people. I'd say people enjoy it more since they have to put in the effort to kill the mark. Personally I really enjoyed one time we killed the SS minions and SS rank with just 12 people during the early morning.

Of course some people are only in for the easy rewards - that's what they are used to! But it's not a balanced system as we explained, and people would adapt to any change.

---

For me it's not admitting defeat. It's not wanting content I currently enjoy to experience a fundamental design change in how the content works (I'm fine with the rewards getting adjusted).

From SE's side, there are technical reasons why it is bad to have 200+ players descend on the same location within an open world zone (not to mention the temporary congestion it causes with the data center travel system, which world visit is a part of).

From the player side, there are technical reasons why it is bad to have 200+ players descend on the same location within an open world zone. Player clients start experiencing extreme latency and FPS issues. Players are delayed from being able to enter the zone or perhaps prevented entirely. Players are stuck waiting out the congestion in the data center travel system. These things are affecting players who are trying to do other content or travel to other worlds for reasons other than the Hunt.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarcoZorn

I think you're talking about A ranks, there aren't too many S ranks that you just "see" (most require some form of action to be performed). Or I misunderstood your comment and the shout for help is "lfg".

Also no one is suggesting that you should care about some discord. Most of them facilitate the experience or the efficiency of a part of the game. If you want that: great, if the Hunt is just side content you do when you accidentally walk into some Hunt mob: also great. But that's not really the topic here (at least not from my PoV)

---

I hope we've been mostly trying to stick to your original topic. There have been a lot of requests over the years to change the Hunt to make it easier for more players to participate but there are also downsides to be considered, mostly technology limits.

Many of us enjoy the effort involved in spawning (including locating the spawn point for the next appearance) and we would hate to lose it as game play. A lot of the suggestions made would effectively remove the Hunt as we know it and replace with more FATEs or more battle leves or more instanced trials.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

I hope we've been mostly trying to stick to your original topic.

---

Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea to respond to the comment that I think wasn't about the topic here because it got 2 upvotes. That part of my comment was only directed at this one post by Payadopa (sorry if that wasn't clear).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

There have been a lot of requests over the years to change the Hunt to make it easier for more players to participate but there are also downsides to be considered, mostly technology limits.

---

But is it our responsibility to consider the technology limits? If you're a FFXIV developer an argument about such limits carries a lot of weight. However as players we can just assume/hope. It's in the hands of the developers to gauge the limits and optimize the experience (server and players), if possible, appropriately. There has been so many incidents where people and devs assumed something was impossible until there was enough interest and support for some idea that the game team made it possible. So the idea in my thread is just what I wish would happen. The discussion what is possible or feasible (from a business perspective) should happen later and by the people that are responsible for the game.

On the other hand: If your argument is that you would wish them not to change anything about the Hunt because you would like the FFXIV team to focus their time and energy on other parts of the game. I wouldn't like that (because I would love to see changes to the Hunt) but I could totally acknowledge and respect that!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

Many of us enjoy the effort involved in spawning (including locating the spawn point for the next appearance) and we would hate to lose it as game play. A lot of the suggestions made would effectively remove the Hunt as we know it and replace with more FATEs or more battle leves or more instanced trials.

---

I totally agree on the first part and the only part I would change about that is if the hunt NPC in the area gave an indication if the S rank was killed recently. But I don't quite get why this would end the Hunt as we know it. I agree that changing it to a FATE style boss makes it (in some cases a lot more) challenging but I don't see suggestions that would push it more in the direction of leves or instanced trials. Maybe that would be a consequence because of assumed technical limitations but I'm unsure if that's your point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MarcoZorn

I totally agree on the first part and the only part I would change about that is if the hunt NPC in the area gave an indication if the S rank was killed recently. But I don't quite get why this would end the Hunt as we know it. I agree that changing it to a FATE style boss makes it (in some cases a lot more) challenging but I don't see suggestions that would push it more in the direction of leves or instanced trials. Maybe that would be a consequence because of assumed technical limitations but I'm unsure if that's your point.

---

A vague hint by the Hunt Scholar for the zone regarding respawn would be fine. Other suggestions start removing some of the game play.

As for players worrying about the technological limits, not much use setting our sights on something that developers have told us they can't do because of limits or will not do because they feel the effort won't improve things. Keep in mind that some of the technological limits are not game server side but client side. Game servers are usually capable of handling more; we don't get that more because most player clients aren't yet capable.