the hunts made me hate this community now

[Dark-Saviour]

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

[DefendPopPunk]

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

Yeah I'm with you here. I just don't want to have to go back to grinding dungeons. While I don't necessarily do hunts very often, it's cool that there is content outside of dungeons that you can do to progress.

[ispano]

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

Most of the sane ones don't care if you get the items from a raid, coil or something else. It's the lack of effort that bothers them.

[blowfin]

Hunts have kind of turned me off to the community as well.
Though rather than the people pissing and moaning about early pulls and all that jazz (though the vitriol in chat is annoying), it is more the chunk of the community that flips out over 'top tier' rewards being available to non-raiders and those that want to try and funnel everyone back into grinding instances that are wearing me down.

That's really only something that's manifested in the forums, it's a pretty isolated section of raiders who think their time is more valuable than other peoples, I've found that you don't see it at all in game.

As for "early pulls", people need to realise that their information might not be first hand and they might actually suck at taking shortcuts. Then they can move onto the next stage of grief. Acceptance or something like that.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

First of all: top-end gear does not mean top-end skill. Being full ilvl 110 does not guarantee you are a proper player. I'd take an ilvl 90 player with Second Coil achievements rather than an ilvl 110 shining player who geared up via hunts.

And second: people who whine about others not waiting are usually the leechers - hunts are supposed to be an ACTIVE business: if you sit semi-afk in town waiting for someone to spam a mark in your linkshells, you have no right to ask to wait.

[LalaRu]

I think the implementation of the hunts is providing negative influence to the game.

It is quite the opposite: the community was as is even before the hunt.

The only thing you can attribute to the hunt itself, is that the mechanic have drove (some of) the community to show off their best behavior.

[Ryel]

It is quite the opposite: the community was as is even before the hunt.

The only thing you can attribute to the hunt itself, is that the mechanic have drove (some of) the community to show off their best behavior.

I'm not sure i would blame the Hunt for this to be honest.

While the implementation of the system isn't ideal (major props to those on Excalibur btw who have been able to make the most of this, seriously awesome cooperation guys)

This is yet another symptom of weekly lockout + vertical gear progression without enough alternate routes / not enough equal endgame content to round out rewards = unsatisfied players

If enough endgame dungeons / content had been offered as viable gearing alternatives to coil from the beginning you wouldn't have the starved population essentially frothing at the mouths to rush out and do Hunts to this degree.

This applies to both the groups who are doing coil and are getting shafted on drops and can't go for the rest of the week, and to those who aren't going at all because of static woes etc. The Hunt rewards are simply too good to pass up for what they are due to the lack of viable alternatives elsewhere.

Btw, this also throws out the tired old "Well if people could spam Coil they'll just burn out and quit the game!" argument you keep seeing on the forums.

The rewards offered by the Hunt have proven infinitely more detrimental than any removal of lockout would have been.

[Vandesaan]

This is exactly what is wrong with The Hunt and why many of us resist (and resent) the Horde mentality.

You are gaining a HUGE benefit from being able to get at hunts with the Excalibur system, which has been proven to be a complete disaster on other servers with bribes and whatnot in order to even get into linkshells that track the marks. As part of such, we will advise you to the better role to be playing as FOR YOUR BENEFIT when running as part of the horde so that you and your party may gain the most from participating. We're not demanding it of you in any way, we recommend you do so because we know that while we're getting at every hunt target, being damage dealing class may or may not allow you to gain the maximum reward for participating. Anyone telling you and/or forcing you to do what is recommended by the permanent hunt leaders is driving their own party in a way which we do not condone, but we can not control individual groups even if we don't like what they are doing and demanding of the members of their group as a party leader. I would recommend running your own party with no restrictions of this kind and having fun with it this way. I can't guarantee that you will get maximum benefit this way, but you will be able to have fun the way you want to.

We will however ask you to remove your pet simply because they are sadly designed in such a way from Square Enix' side that they provide you zero benefit, which is just ridiculous, and as such they are an extra entity in the world which will unnecessarily add to the culling effect when near a hunt target and the horde's gotten too big. Same thing goes for minions. Note that we will only ask and say please, you are not going to be kicked or pointed fingers at or anything of the sort for not doing it. Anyone who's starting a witch hunt for pets and minions are told to stop, meanwhile we continue to ask nicely to help everyone's issues with the culling that happens since we run with so many for each target.

As for hunting targets on your own and killing them on your own, well done! Finding marks before the horde is a feat in itself that I back in the day was very good at myself and was also why most of Excalibur initially hated me and my free company until I decided to join arms with the horde and share information. Nothing's stopping you from doing so and nobody's claiming ownership of the hunt marks just because we're so organized in the horde. There might be some zealous misfits that think otherwise and will shout at you, but those are immediately told to shut up and instead offer a warm welcome to any outsider that we don't currently see in the horde and extend an invitation to hunt with us.

I firmly believe our way of doing the hunts is to the great benefit of everyone on the server and instead of causing friction, we are bringing the server together and surely finding new friends to play with outside of hunts.

But please do continue doing hunts in your own way, nobody's stopping you. I am merely offering the most efficient way to do it where everyone can reap the benefits.

[PixelPirate]

Skogs Fru... Not a hard hunt in the least. I've trio'd it during off-hours. So the other day it's called out at say.. 3:00 ET. We get to the spawn point and wait 'til 4:00 ET. At this point a couple people say "My group is inbound, please wait". At 5:00 ET I /shout "Pulling @ 5:30 ET" and nobody in the zone objects. 5:30 ET rolls around and I promptly pull.

So... what happens next? I'm a douche bag who needs to die in a fire. How is waiting from 3:00 to 5:30 ET not enough??? I was called out in /shouts for being the idiot who pulled early.

The hunt system is crap.

[Iriadysa]

The complete game has been devalued by Hunts. This was a step in the wrong direction in every single aspect and while the damage is already done one can only hope SE realizes this and does not repeat this mistake in future content.

This damage is permanent for the current iteration (2.3x), but due to this game's fast self-obsolescence cycle it's possible to fix it by the next big patch (2.4). This may or may not cause SE to change plans to ensure that hunts are no longer not only the most sought out content but also the only relevant one.

But there's a problem here. Hunts may not actually be the mistake some of us firmly believe it is, when you look at it in perspective.

There's certainly many people happy with this system. It gives easy top tier gear, requires no skill whatsoever or understanding of game mechanics, it's perfect for horde mentality guilds where a handful of people know what's happening and the rest follow on command (i.e. 4-5 leaders know the ToDs and where to look for the spawns while the rest of the FC waits till they are told where to go) and gives around-the-clock activities for the whole FC.

On the side of the people that complain about the hunts, there's two clearly opposed arguments:

- "Hunts suck because they make the game pointless" and
- "Hunts suck because I cannot get the credits I want"

While it may seem we are both on the same side ("Hunts suck!"), the problem is we most definitely are not even close. You often see "hunt defenders" argue back that people not liking hunts are jealous because they cannot get the stuff they want. While aggressive and juvenile, this is in a way true. The second group would be perfectly happy with the hunts if they could get the rewards they want from it.

This is a big problem because it means that there may be few people (relative to the mass of players) that believe that hunts are fundamentally flawed, not because we cannot get the rewards we want but because it makes everything else in the game pointless.

I firmly suspect that the player base that believes hunts are fundamentally wrong is rather small and it makes me wonder about the future of this game and the genre as a whole. This is a worry that has been going on for a while and as time goes by my expectations are met.

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Disclaimer: I have no problem getting the hunt credits I want in the most cases. I do believe the hunts have ruined most of everything else the game has to offer by trivializing it and replacing it with a Skinner's box style system: press button for (chance of) reward.