Let's talk about Hunts - a detailed rundown of their assumed mechanics

[Dimagasa]

The bot on Gilgamesh has disappeared for 10 hours now. Originally we thought it had a few hours off cause being active across 24+ hours is an obvious red flag but now we're starting to get hope. Tying into the segway it appears the bot ran off ariyala (and maybe garland for specific windows) for S ranks and A ranks as well. The existence of ariyala or any hunt tracker / public spreadsheet is because a server's hunt community is willing to work together so as many people can get tomes/seals/achieves. Whether it's a bot or a group/FCs that want to "go it alone" 99-to-1 they aren't just segregating themselves they're still looking at and taking advantage of the community's information while declaring they won't participate with them. Kills any moral or amoral argument right there and puts them squarely in the selfish drain on society category.

edit: hope dashed. Bot showed back up and ran an automated loop until Nandi showed and instant pulled

[MirageSniper]

Holy balls, stay the eff away from my server.......... wow. WOW.

oh i have my alt there on midgar. dont worry, i dont call out hunts so i wont "disrupt" your gameplay. Also, i do it with my own group so i don't need YOUR help. thank you.

[Sarteck]

Honestly, I feel Mirage has the right of it here.

Personally, I tend to wait for everyone. I get more fun out of actually doing the hunting than I do out of the slaying. Finding the darned things is what it's mostly about for me. With that being said, I typically don't mind if a (HUMAN) player "pulls early" (I can't imagine the nightmare on Gilgamesh right now, sorry you guys are going through that).

Let me ask you guys something... Are you at every single Hunt? Do no Hunts ever escape your notice? Are there never any Hunts that happen without you being aware of them? Since some of them happen without the entire server being there, does that mean someone "pulled early?" Is it a "dick move" for them to participate in Hunts without you?

Of course the answer to all of these is "no."

With you being there for the "early pulling," at least you get a chance.

Honestly, it all just depends on how you like to Hunt, and what you're in it for. If Hunts were intended to be shared by everyone, all the time, they probably wouldn't be any fun for me.

If you don't want it to be like that, well, then know the people you are Hunting with, and don't call out the Hunts to re-linking shells. Do it with your FC. With your friends. By yourself. With people you know and can trust not to be "early pullers." Either that, or shout it out for the whole server and deal with early pulling.

(I do the latter, and yes, I deal with the early pulling that occasionally ensues.)

[And yep, I'm back to Hunting again.]


EDIT:

Whether it's a bot or a group/FCs that want to "go it alone" 99-to-1 they aren't just segregating themselves they're still looking at and taking advantage of the community's information while declaring they won't participate with them. Kills any moral or amoral argument right there and puts them squarely in the selfish drain on society category.

I completely disagree.

1) If they report it to Ariyala, then they contribute. Period.
2) Are people that only link to certain shells a "selfish drain?" 'Course not.

The only argument you could possibly make is "if they use Ariyala but don't mark when they kill Hunts." If they've marked it, that's quite a bit more than many others do, even those who you would not call "early pullers" or "go-it-aloners."

[NoboruSouma]

Also, they can say 'that's not how it was intended' all they want, that's just burying their heads in the sand and willingly ignoring how things ended up working.

There's nothing else to say except that it seems they don't want to listen to the dedicated hunting community that there needs to be a system revamp.

Since some of them happen without the entire server being there, does that mean someone "pulled early"?

Yes, and you fer sure know that early pulls can happen all the time, even with just a few people on the way. Specially in the night or the early morning where just a few are on the way - they port right into the zone after the shouts, even when it's just ten seconds and someone pulls.

Of course the answer to all of these is "no."

Just proved you wrong.

If you don't want it to be like that, well, then know the people you are Hunting with, and don't call out the Hunts to re-linking shells. Do it with your FC. With your friends. By yourself. With people you know and can trust not to be "early pullers." Either that, or shout it out for the whole server and deal with early pulling.

That's no answer to an existing problem and you should know that it just needs common sense to not interfere with the game experience of other players.

1) If they report it to Ariyala, then they contribute. Period.
2) Are people that only link to certain shells a "selfish drain?" 'Course not.

1) That was not the point of the argument. We, the hunting community, do most of the work with figuring out spawns, timers, contributing to the trackers etc. Lazy people even violate against the ToS while using third party software to hunt which is absolutely no contribution. People even do fake reports on trackers just to interfere with the right reports.
2) Of course they are. Just adapt it to the real world - it just means and gives the feeling of "We are privileged, you are not.". And again, this is just common sense. I would've given you a thumbs up if you said: "You can only have x amount of hunting linkshells and not everyone can be in every existing linkshell, not all people re-report, there are many leechers [...]" and so on.

All you showed was that you approve a system that's outdated with this amount of players and that's okay that this hunting system makes players violate the ToS:

3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of Square Enix's computers and servers.

[Sarteck]

Yes, and you fer sure know that early pulls can happen all the time, even with just a few people on the way. Specially in the night or the early morning where just a few are on the way - they port right into the zone after the shouts, even when it's just ten seconds and someone pulls.

This makes no sense in the context of what I was saying. Are you saying that if you are not at every Hunt before it's pulled, that's an "early pull?"

If so, you just gotta get over it.

1) That was not the point of the argument. We, the hunting community, do most of the work with figuring out spawns, timers, contributing to the trackers etc. Lazy people even violate against the ToS while using third party software to hunt which is absolutely no contribution. People even do fake reports on trackers just to interfere with the right reports.

"We, the hunting community do most of the work."
Like it or not, those so-called "early pullers" are part of "the Hunting community." And to further drive your point to dust, the Hunting community is the one that uses third-party software to cheat. 'Course not everyone, but if they're not Hunting, they wouldn't even be using that software. It's common sense.

2) Of course they are. Just adapt it to the real world - it just means and gives the feeling of "We are privileged, you are not.". And again, this is just common sense. I would've given you a thumbs up if you said: "You can only have x amount of hunting linkshells and not everyone can be in every existing linkshell, not all people re-report, there are many leechers [...]" and so on.

You're not going to link to every shell, because you can't. So what of the shells and other places your call doesn't reach? I'm not een sure what argument you are attempting to make here, if any, tbh.

Blah blah not disrupt in any way

Yeah, if you'e going to apply this to every aspect of gaming in every way, well hell, we're all violating the ToS according to someone else. "Oh noes, they're not wearing the kind of outfit that meshes with the game! I'm so triggered! My experience is ruined!"

Seriously, interpret that any more broadly and you'll even end up having to report yourself.

[SuperZay]

You can solo hunts, but in the long run you'll benefit more by waiting for others and sharing. You'll get more hunts if you'll not be kicked from every hunt linkshell. Meaning more marks and kill credits toward the tiger. You'll never kill as much hunts solo as if you'd followed relinks.
It's simply not profitable to be selfish.

[Sarteck]

You can solo hunts, but in the long run you'll benefit more by waiting for others and sharing. You'll get more hunts if you'll not be kicked from every hunt linkshell. Meaning more marks and kill credits toward the tiger. You'll never kill as much hunts solo as if you'd followed relinks.
It's simply not profitable to be selfish.

Agreed. I just take issue with those here implying that it's against the rules, or implying that the rules should be changed so that it is against the rules.

[Unease_Lemming]

Agreed. I just take issue with those here implying that it's against the rules, or implying that the rules should be changed so that it is against the rules.

I do have a hard time thinking that going to an area full well knowing a hunt is possible to spawn, doing nothing but sit there, wait until someone else puts in the work and spawns it, using 3rd party tools to be informed of the spawn, running up to and pulling the hunt instantly is what was intended for hunts.

I wish kicking people from linkshells would do anything but frankly, as long as pc has access to any of these tools that will never work. Cheaters will find a way, and do. S ranks on my server are in shambles right now all due to ruthless people using every underhanded tactic in the book to prevent others from hearing about hunts.

[Sarteck]

I do have a hard time thinking that going to an area full well knowing a hunt is possible to spawn, doing nothing but sit there, wait until someone else puts in the work and spawns it, using 3rd party tools to be informed of the spawn, running up to and pulling the hunt instantly is what was intended for hunts.

I hear what you're saying. However, again (as has been mentioned several times in this thread on the subject), by the same token, Hunts weren't intended for the entire server to come participate in.

Furthermore (at least on Exodus), the people that cheat tend to be the ones also doing the Hunting; not as you say people just "sitting around waiting for someone else to spawn it." I don't know why this keeps getting brought up over and over again, so maybe it's different on other servers, but on mine, it's the Hunting Community itself that cheats, and that certainly is not what was intended for Hunts.

And how long does someone have to wait, anyways? A minute? Two? Five? 20? What hard limit would you even set for labeling someone as an "early puller?"

I'm not talking from nowhere on this--I've worked hard myself to spawn S-Ranks, and a few times while I was waiting for the word to spread through linkshells, they did get pulled early. (Once I wasn't even able to get ANY credit, because I was having a hard time targeting Chernobog in that teensy cave.) And yes, it did irk me. The alternative is to not post to places you know contain early pullers, or (if you are certain they are cheating) to report them to a GM (they have a category specifically for reports of suspected cheating).

I wish kicking people from linkshells would do anything but frankly, as long as pc has access to any of these tools that will never work. Cheaters will find a way, and do. S ranks on my server are in shambles right now all due to ruthless people using every underhanded tactic in the book to prevent others from hearing about hunts.

My server is quite the opposite--Hunts are announced all over the place, Ariyala is kept really tidy (especially with S-Ranks) and up-to-date, and people often do wait five, ten minutes before charging in. Even still, every single time, someone who heard about it later than others will complain about there being an "early pull." I do wonder if that might not be the case in a lot of these complaints, to be quite honest.

[Commander_Justitia]

the people that cheat tend to be the ones also doing the Hunting

Why do you differ between people using 3rd party tools being active hunter or not active hunter? They both still undermine/cheat the current system, it is kinda the same for me.

Because SE won't go after people using 3rd party software for these kind of things, they have
option1: ignore it or
option2: make a new system that makes the use of 3rd party tools&tracker websites redundant (essentially giving all the information of next respawn times and "it spawned" ingame)
option 2 wont happen unless community gets louder