Ideal versus Real

[Alberel]

The playerbase absolutely ruined Hunts. When they died down, some friends and I tackled hunts the way they were meant to be done and we had a blast. So yes, the onus -is- on the playerbase for ruining what could have been an enjoyable experience. And that's the funny part about all the complaints on the forums. "The game is boring and not fun!!" -- Well, that's because people are dumb and choose the boring and not fun way to play the game.

Requiring almost no one to be doing hunts for them to work properly only serves to highlight how poorly they were implemented.

The hunts here in FFXIV honestly should have functioned like ZNMs in FFXI. Instead of having roaming creatures they should have been triggered spawns for single groups with players able to progress to harder and harder marks by killing them in sequence.

When a developer makes content in an MMO they MUST bear in mind how the players will use it. If the content causes a situation where the community is regularly turning on each other and becoming toxic then that is something the devs need to adjust the content to prevent.

With regards to the OP:

The sad thing for me isn't the things that didn't meet expectations; that's kinda normal in game development. What I find depressing is that the devs have subsequently just started pretending the issues don't exist.

* Hunts were implemented in 3.0 with the exact same flaws as in 2.0 despite the playerbase making it clear they wanted changes to prevent the toxicity the system encouraged in the community.
* The personal housing system is simply unfit for purpose and yet the devs have never addressed this fact. Instead they occasionally tease more wards to be released at some unknown time in the future... and they've been teasing the next set for almost a year now with nothing new.
* The Gold Saucer was mostly a huge flop due to the absurd limitations on when and where you could participate in the content. Requiring players to lock themselves in a room to be able to queue for chocobo racing was ridiculous and precisely why no one bothers with it any more, and yet here we are a year later and LoV has the exact same problem.

Not meeting expectations is one thing, but when they do so repeatedly despite the community being quite vocal about the issues... that's rather concerning.

[Ryel]

The playerbase absolutely ruined Hunts. When they died down, some friends and I tackled hunts the way they were meant to be done and we had a blast. So yes, the onus -is- on the playerbase for ruining what could have been an enjoyable experience. And that's the funny part about all the complaints on the forums. "The game is boring and not fun!!" -- Well, that's because people are dumb and choose the boring and not fun way to play the game.

You still aren't understanding.

The fundamental issue with your statement is "When Hunts died down my friends and i tried it and it was fun!" which is a massive, massive issue.

If content only becomes enjoyable and playable the way the developers designed it because the majority of players are no longer doing the content there's an issue. The idea behind designing content is to do so in a way that it doesn't matter if 100 people or 10 people are doing it at the same time, if anything in MMO design the rule is that the fun and experience of the content should rise in direct proportion to the number of players taking part not the inverse.

You cant say "This content is only fun when nobody else is doing it!!!!!" when it comes to an MMO because the community can't come out and say "Hey guys can you not do this major patch release content so that my friends can do it instead!?" it's bad design pure and simple.

The Devs don't get a pass because players playing the game breaks the game.

[TheCurls]

You're not understanding. The point is, it was never meant to be a 150 person zerg-fest. It was meant to have parties spread out killing them in smaller, adventurous groups. The fact that players banded together by the dozens and then ultimately hated the content is not SE's fault. It's their fault for playing that way.

SE cannot control how players will play the game. They can, however, have the expectation that players are going to play in a way that is fun and entertaining for them. Because why else are we playing video games?

At some point players are going to have to realize that they have to accept some of the responsibility for how they're receiving this game.

[Ryel]

You're not understanding. The point is, it was never meant to be a 150 person zerg-fest. It was meant to have parties spread out killing them in smaller, adventurous groups. The fact that players banded together by the dozens and then ultimately hated the content is not SE's fault. It's their fault for playing that way.

SE cannot control how players will play the game. They can, however, have the expectation that players are going to play in a way that is fun and entertaining for them. Because why else are we playing video games?

At some point players are going to have to realize that they have to accept some of the responsibility for how they're receiving this game.

This is not how game development works, it never has and it never will.

It makes no difference what the development team "intended" what matters is what actually happens.

The player side has zero ability to balance the game as they cannot dictate how content is delivered, the developers however can and do. Even if the developers come out and say "We expect the content to be handled X way" if the playerbase decides that "Y" way is better they will continue to approach content using the "Y" method instead of the the "X" method until the developers make them completely unable to do it any other way than the X method AKA the intended way which is exactly what they didn't do with hunts.

You need look no further than the Devs saying things like "Please don't win trade" or "We didn't intend for players to use the enrage method for T2" to see that players commonly do things against developer intention and at it's core it is a development problem; it's what feedback, patches and hotfixes exist for because it's routinely the case that the playerbase will do things that the developers didn't intend or didn't foresee happening. When the developers fail to act on that feedback though and continue to repeat the same content releases expecting a different result from a playerbase that has already proven which way they'll approach it, then yeah they can be called out on the issue and they have been by the playerbase.

SE cannot fully control how players play the game, but they can react to and change how the players approach content by making adjustments based on the feedback they receive thus curbing or eliminating certain issues.

[Critical-Limit]

The most fun I had with hunts is when I solo'd Mahees the cat that petrifies you in drybone on MnK. And that's because I'm paralyzed like 70% of the time and I had to time my silence with his petrify move. One miss and I died. All of this while maintaining a good dPS rotation.

Mahees challenged me because I was forced to fight alone cuz no one wanted it. They should make hunts spawn when you meet conditions only see-able by your hunt group. And it should be a monster with interesting reactio airy mechanics. So we don't have hunt stealing and it's challenging instead of Zerg fest, hunt kills w/o waiting.

[Austherus]

At some point players are going to have to realize that they have to accept some of the responsibility for how they're receiving this game.

I agree that players should have some kind of responsibility for ruining content for others, but that's just not going to happen. How do you even do that? The term "players" doesn't refer to a single entity easily accountable for it's wrongdoings, it is just a loose term for a group of very different people with only one thing in common: being players of the same game. Most players are just looking for the easy way out; if they see someone turning left they'll also turn left, even if they don't know why. SE has to deal with that, and the only way they can is by designing content more carefully.

[Austherus]

The most fun I had with hunts is when I solo'd Mahees the cat that petrifies you in drybone on MnK. And that's because I'm paralyzed like 70% of the time and I had to time my silence with his petrify move. One miss and I died. All of this while maintaining a good dPS rotation.

Mahees challenged me because I was forced to fight alone cuz no one wanted it.

I've had the same experience with hunts as you. We usually tackle marks we find randomly when treasure hunting with the FC, but it's only fun when hunts are not "important" anymore.

They should make hunts spawn when you meet conditions only see-able by your hunt group. And it should be a monster with interesting reactio airy mechanics. So we don't have hunt stealing and it's challenging instead of Zerg fest, hunt kills w/o waiting.

That's pretty much what I expected when I first heard about hunts.