the hunts made me hate this community now

[JustPlainLucas]

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.

Even then, if you're in another zone looking for a mark and some other group finds one in another zone, you have no right to ask to wait since you weren't the one who found it.

[Jakeson]

you have no right to ask to wait since you weren't the one who found it.

I tend to agree, nobody is entitled to a mark simply because they're alive. But to flip the coin, what about the other members of your party, they didn't find it so do they have a right to the rewards? It's a group effort, everyone on the server has the same goal, and the only competition is between you and the environment ("competition"... let's face it, you could smash your face into the keyboard and be successful at hunts)

Basically, SE has created a system with mega-rewards, that isn't instanced, and therefore open to griefing. If everyone worked together, there wouldn't be grief. But attitudes like "you don't deserve it, you didn't find it" are nothing but corrosive to a healthy community, in my opinion.

That's half the problem with MMO's and the reason instances were created. Back in the day, you could have open world content in games like Everquest and everything generally went well. Along came WoW and suddenly you had to instance everything so people could actually accomplish something without kids on summer break ruining their experience. So now some people want more open world content. Well, now that MMOs are mainstream, you're getting a lot more people. Chances are a higher percentage are jerks, or there are just more of them.

It isn't like it used to be, you can't just trust a community anymore because more and more people could give even less craps about the other people around them. Need / greed loot systems and instances weren't in the first MMOs because you didn't need them. Can you imagine if coil loot dropped to a random player you had to trust to pass it out after you typed in /random?? It wouldn't last a day.

This is the monster we've created and allowed to flourish as a community, because after all: playing the game is generally free-market. Within reason you can play however you like. But think about how your actions affect the community before you do something like force hunts to become instanced just so people can participate.

TL;DR: don't be a jerk

[AldoVonAlexandros]

the only bad thing i see on this and that's because i'm doing it, it's that now when i log in, i just find a hunt party/ls and i just do that, i dont do any more dungeons or raids, just when is necesary, i'm not a bad player, but theres a lot of people doing the same

[Fendred]

If they wanted to do something more interesting for combat, they should try a Dragon Age 2 approach. Less elites, more group tactics.

This is the combat walkthrough the devs created prior to the game's release. While it still generally follows the holy trinity, because enemies are non-elite it allows for deviations from the norm, and makes each class feel more like its contributing to the overall goal of ending the encounter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJYtLOSPMnw

When a game makes too much use of elite monsters, the strategy devolves into tank turtle, healer spam, and damage dealers doing all the real killing. The gameplay becomes all about the numbers instead of executing a carefully planned strategy. It also doesn't leave much for end game encounters besides long scripted bosses, which are far more stressful than fun.

[Thayos]

TL;DR: don't be a jerk

Your whole post is spot-on.

[Fendred]

To be honest, its not the hunts, but the people that are a problem. There isn't much we can do to punish players who repeatedly attack marks on sight except to blacklist them enmasse (which is a good idea, but it could be abused). It isn't a crime to kill marks on sight, but it still remains socially unacceptable to do so because it is in everyone's interest to work together on these.

My idea? Do something like commendations for over world stuff, but allow players to mark someone down as well as up. Could it lead to tyranny of the masses? Possibly, but it would incentivize being kind to others.

[Eggnook24]

I think the rush of end gameing elitists are slowly coming to an end. I've seen a lot more position calls for sharing, offers for hunt linkshells, and I've even stumbled upon the Ash one and the wyvern type one (sorry, don't do well with names) and hollered out coordinates. A massive amount of people showed up, and since I saw them first, I got the pull. Wasn't even in party, got full credit. I actually think at this point in the game, it's becoming a more social and open world friendly place. Sure, you still have Dbags, but lately it's been great.

[Fynlar]

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"

Why are these opposed? I'm of both crowds.

There isn't much we can do to punish players who repeatedly attack marks on sight except to blacklist them enmasse (which is a good idea, but it could be abused).

There's people who attack marks "on sight" because they're tired of getting screwed out of any credit due to massive crowds showing. I'm one of them. (For me, "on sight" basically means "when I think there's enough people to reasonably kill it without the mob melting in 10 seconds")

Frankly, I don't care if that makes people blacklist me. It means they're so petty that I don't want to interact with them anyway, so honestly they're doing me a favor.

[Yumi_umi]

Take out hunts = ppl will rage due to it not being there anymore.
Make a longer spawn time = ppl QQing about how long it now takes ( i.e atma fates lool )
Leave hunts the way it is = ppl as of now going on and on about it killing future patches/ content with the same ilvl rewards (true doe)
Nerf hunt rewards = ppl bitching about how its unfair tht ppl got it so easy before the nerf.

Only way to fix this mess imo is to severly nerf it to the ground in 2.4 patch and make other options in obtaining allied seals ( add them to duty roulette )

That way, higher ilvl gear will outshine the old hunt rewards.
And hopefully SE will not fck it up in 2.4 and be more weary of their generous givings in 2.3.

[JustPlainLucas]

snip

My party is my party, a group of people I invited or let join via PF. The server is not my party. I owe my party the mark, because we're the party, not the server. I owe the server nothing. I don't expect someone to hold an A or even an S just because it took me too long to get out of my craft, switch to my SMN and teleport and THEN hope I get in a full party to get credit, so nor should anyone expect me to share something I found. Personally, though, I give at least 30 ET minutes for everyone to get there, but the zerg gets mighty packed mighty quickly. At roughly 50 or so people, that's good, and I'll pull when I announce it, but I don't wait for 100 people to gather, because then I'd have to wait for 200, and then 300 and honestly, I just don't like seeing that many people kill one thing. I really don't enjoy that, and like you said, so many people aren't even looking for the mobs when they get the news there is one.

As an aside, I killed Stinging Sophie all by myself last night (no one cared, as Melt spawned just before I found SS). It was very rare to find a mark (if only a B) that no one else was on, so I attacked it. It felt GOOD to actually kill a B mark the way SE designed it, by myself. If someone wants to call me greedy for not sharing it, I guess I'm greedy. But it genuinely felt good to have something to myself for once.