/signed

I actually agree with every single point you make here, except that cheaters exist in both the raiding and non raiding camps. I have nothing against sands/oils being awarded to non raiders (as this was the case in 2.1) but when these are freely handed out without any sort of cap further assisted by third party programs which SE seems to turn a blind eye to even though it violates their own TOS just reeks of hypocrisy.

Some people already have 5-6 sands since the patch was released when some people in my static have not even gotten one even though we have cleared t8 for 6 weeks now. How is this even fair? Sure, I can join farm parties and use the radar app or whatever but forgive me if I don't want to run around like a headless chicken being mind controlled by our SE overlords just to kill an "elite" mob that dies in 5 seconds. Hardly anyone wants to do Ramuh Ex or coil anymore, why should they when you can get the best gear from "hunting"?

But you know what's the worst thing? Remember the atma fiasco when it first released? One of the biggest complains was that fates were no fun because its basically running around killing level 3 mobs. Well guess what, this is exactly the same because the elite mobs literally die in seconds, a minute or so if its S rank. I wonder where these people are now, probably happily farming their sands I presume. How quickly stories can change when end game gear is involved. And I thought we "hardcores" were the ones to care about gear progression. The irony.

This whole hunt thing has really left a sour taste in my mouth. I previously praised SE for many of their game decisions but this one is one of the worst decisions I have seen implemented in any mmos. Its really sad because everything else in 2.3 has been a blast, but this one thing has left me with little motivation to log into the game since doing hunts seem like the only productive thing left to. The rest is just fodder.