Hunts: What's Really Wrong With Them

[Donjo]

I have to agree with Shake0615 on this. SE is completely to blame for making the ridiculous incentives. Fastest tome collecting (which is what the relic half of people play for), fastest way to upgrade to end-game raid gear (what the raid half plays for) ...

Exactly. This is literally the only flaw with the system. Since this is a single part of the system, it cannot be said that the entire system is "broken".

all of that text and you come to such an incorrect conclusion.

don't design a system that will be universally used incorrectly. that is totally SE's fault. this cannot be a player problem if it happens on every server.

If the system encourages people to use it the "wrong" way, then it's a badly designed system. It's human nature, the nature of life itself even, to take the path of least resistance. It's completely SE's fault.

Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly. A system cannot encourage misuse of itself. Only the users of a system can encourage other users to try a method of effective misuse that they found. When legitimate glitches are found that can be exploited, what does SE say? "We're working on a fix. For now, please don't exploit this." Perhaps SE loves their rose tinted glasses a little too much, but that is irrelevant. The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take. A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system. A hole, glitch, or flaw may as well not exist if players make the correct decision of not exploiting it. Therefore, it is entirely the fault of the player for ruining what is otherwise a well designed system by completely circumventing it's intended execution.

Now, here's the real irony of the second half of your statement. You claim that swamping the hunts is the path of least resistance. This is certainly true in respect to the ability of the Mark itself to defend against players. However, the clear truth coming out of this situation is that the source of greatest resistance is not the monster you're trying to kill... but the other players who want to kill it first. Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

[TheUltimate3]

Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

[SendohJin]

Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

I can, the other path to Sands of Time is Turn 8 and Turn 9 clear. and once you clear it there are no other paths besides Hunts, so Hunts are at the same time the path of least and greatest resistance since it's the only path for anyone to acquire more than 2 Sands of Time a week.

[SendohJin]

Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly.

The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take.

unintended is not incorrect.

A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system.

A prudent developer would see that something will clearly go wrong when they put the most desirable item in the game into this event and perhaps they shouldn't have put that item in as a reward when their intentions was not to create a system that can support the demand.