How to fix A and S rank Hunts

[Kyomagi]

Because when I think of things less toxic than the hunt zerg, I think of PVP. /sarcasm off.

how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

HOWEVER, hunts are working as intended and nobody should ever be mad that they missed a hunt. Hunters are meant to be soloed by a small group or raid depending on rank, not the whole server. And dont give me the "but lets respect everyone else" crap either, if the devs wanted the whole server to show up, S ranks would have the same HP/mechanics and bemo and odin

[Dement]

Forget that nonsense. The only thing you need to do to increase the toxicity of the hunts is make it so that there are rare drops that people complain about "hunting the mob 100 times and never getting it"

The seals or whatever pop items would not drop off of the hunts themselves, they'd drop off of normal monsters. No competition, when you've farmed up enough seals you can pop a hunt, join a party where everyone can pop a hunt and you got 8 back to back guaranteed hunts with no competition.

No need for such convoluted changes. Hunts can be very easily band-aid fixed by just scaling their HP with the number of players fighting them so the "early pull" hate is eliminated.

That is a solution and it would help to insure that everyone gets credit for a hunt mob but that doesn't change the other major problem with hunts - they're boring. At present the most exciting thing about hunts is the early pullers: can I make it before some ass pulls the thing. Their attacks are largely unnoticed unless they reflect damage and even then people barely pay attention, you zerg them down with little to no thought in under 20 seconds to a minute if they have increased HP. For being "elite" monsters, they're hardly a fight thanks to the sheer power of the zerg.

In Reference to the BS/KS BCNM idea...they could also take a cue from XI's eventual Abyssea and Land King changes. Farm rare drops from local targets and/or repeatable quests that you use to spawn an NM (either the stationary spawn point, randomn location, or an actual arena instance). This could also open the door to tiered spawns as well---lower tiered ones could drop the items to pop the higher tiered target.

Just as an example, S rank could require a specific drop from an A, or maybe a set from any combination of A, B, and local mobs. Same could be done for A--need to farm drop(s) from B's and/or locals to pop the A's. This way people can farm some items solo and then team up to kill the NM's in a <hopefully> somewhat more organized fashion.

This is also a good idea, similar to the ZNMs, sky or sea. A lot of the pop tiers that FFXI had were really good systems when you were guaranteed a pop for the next tier.

how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

HOWEVER, hunts are working as intended and nobody should ever be mad that they missed a hunt. Hunters are meant to be soloed by a small group or raid depending on rank, not the whole server. And dont give me the "but lets respect everyone else" crap either, if the devs wanted the whole server to show up, S ranks would have the same HP/mechanics and bemo and odin

I'm not saying PVP is more toxic than hunts right now but if you put in seals as a reward for PVP, and there is even MORE competition than just getting to a mob before someone pulls it, the toxicity is going to shoot through the roof. Yes, if you put seals or something to upgrade PVE gear in hunts, you will absolutely have public shaming, name calling, /ignore user, people claiming others are cheating, and outright trolling/flamebaiting on a colossal scale. Especially factoring in that now people who don't like to PVP are going to be forced to PVP. PVP needs plenty of work and does need incentives to boost it but making the hunt rewards a part of PVP isn't going to do anything good for the toxicity of the community regarding the content.

[Teryaani]

how is pvp toxic? You think pvp is more toxic than hunts? Do you think pvp will have public shaming, name calling and "/ignore this user because blah blah blah"?

PVP sucks in this game, this is make more people actually take the time and do it.

PVP in this game is no more toxic than anything else in the game and incentivizing PVP is a good thing. Incentivizing it by making it a good way to gear for PVE isn't and will just make it (PVP) more toxic and ultimately will just push people back into dungeon grinds/hunts/whatever is 2nd best.

[Bamadeus]

one thing I ask is why do the hunts even give 3 tiers of reward? it seems pointless and utterly unfair to the masses that struggle to get anything other than bottom reward-- if that at all.
Why not just reward players who took the time to find or go to a hunt with the full amount if they get any aggro? Sure that'd mean there will be players who just hit once and walk away, but it also means that it'd cut down on the drama as you don't need to rush into a party and to the location.

[Jon_00]

Hunts are far better now they're completely optional.

You need roughly 2500 seals to upgrade a job from i170 to i180 and you can earn 870 in a week. Three weeks and you can be fully geared.

Considering that most A Ranks only give 15 Centurio Seals and 10 Law, they're not gearing up *that* much faster than you.

Any fix I can think of would be to remove the tiered reward system. One hit = full reward. That stops the "inv pls" spam as groups become irrelevant and it should stop ninja pulling, as theoretically, the more people in a zone the less likely you are to get full rewards.

[ShaneDawn]

Just make

A.) The hunts scale with the amount of people attending it, making sure that they can never be killed in 5s as it's ridiculous as it is. A HP buffer is a necessity.

B.) Make the person to pull it get a debuff that lasts 24h. Getting more than a single stack will result in a hunt ban for a day. That way no single prick can always do the pre-pulling and it would never be an issue with the amount of people who can pull. Not sure if it's possible/easy to script it.

Adapting these two changes would make hunts work.

[Raist]

On that note....they could add new hunt bills. A daily one that lists all the A's, and a weekly that lists all the S's. No rewards without a bill.

May not have a major impact, but it could put the brakes on it a bit since you could only kill them once a day/week for credit.

[Luso]

That being said, while hunts aren't the same horror that they once were, I personally would like to see the A and S ranks go more towards a BCNM style from FFXI. By killing mobs in the overworld, you have a chance at a rare drop for beastmen seals (for A ranks - 4 mans) from weaker mobs or Kindred Seals (for S ranks - 8 mans) from more difficult mobs (of course the names could be changed, I'm just using the old names to draw parallels). You can then pick up special bills from the hunt board with these seals which would allow you to access an instanced fight for the hunt with just you and your party. This is very similar to the OPs suggestion but I feel it should be gated behind something more than just a daily/weekly allowance.

My fc was also talking earlier this week to why hunts weren't designed more like bcnm from XI. Will be interesting to see if SE does anything about the current hunt situation. As of right now, I don't participate in any A or S rank hunts. I don't enjoy zerging a monster to death. There are no mechanics to it and its hit or miss if you will get the contribute sometimes.

[Evergrey]

My fix for this Hunts would be that they work like Levequests do. This way only people in the group who activated it can do it so no more "OMG Ninja pull" and such.
A hunts costs certain amount and S hunts costs more and you are allowed to hunt x amounts of each per week.

This way hunts could be more tailored for a certain sized group, A hunts for small party and S hunts for Full Party. The hunts could feel like real mini bosses, and if your party dies, you will have to start a new hunt. This way the hunts would feel more dangerous and exciting, well, in my opinion atleast.

[Welsper59]

Hunts are fine they way they are, HUNTS should feel like you need to get there fast or they are gone. It adds an awesome layer of competitive spirit to the game. If they dumb down the hunts that'd be a sad day.

... Hunting is not about speed and rushing the kill. Hunting is about patience and understanding when and how to strike your target. If speed is determined to be necessary to kill a target successfully, which would have been found through the patience of learning, then that's how it is, but that's not how ANY Hunt target works through design. There's no competition to how The Hunt works in this game, since all you're doing is rushing to be sure you get credit, not competing with anything worthy of mention. A competition for something like this would be about who can successfully claim a target before others, meaning even the small groups would be able to steal the glory away from the zerg of the Hunt LS.