Resurgence of people using third-party programs to find hunt marks?

[KageTokage]

I wasn't around back when hunts were first released, but I heard there was a rather persistent issue with people using some manner of program to locate S ranks the instant they spawned and get to them before anyone else.

I hadn't really noticed this being a thing on Cactaur up until about a month ago, where a whole mess of strangers started showing up at S ranks my LS spawns, despite us not giving any in-game indication of one being present by creating a PF or calling it in a different linkshell (I suspect somebody in the LS is secretly using the program, which supposedly will automatically inform anyone else who's using the thing of when a hunt spawns...). There's also been people immediately (Like, within seconds of the thing spawning) linking the location of S rank spawns despite them not even being in the zone.

There's always been people using something to know when a S rank spawns if they're present in the zone, but not where.

It's getting rather annoying, particularly because some of these individuals spend most of their time botting and only stop when they're alerted to a S rank spawn.

[Vahlnir]

I mean, it's possible, but most marks are on timers that can generally be relied on. People are able to keep track of said timers either through memory or using certain sites. (FFXIVHUNT.com for example) Those sites don't help find them, just give an approximate spawn time to go by. You may not have heard or seen anyone else, but chances are if someone was looking for it they were in the general area. They then saw it and told their LS or FC. Word spreads like wildfire with those things.

[KageTokage]

You know something is up when people are calling/relaying S ranks the second they get spawned when they're not even in the zone.

This includes even proximity-spawned ones like Nandi where I can confirm that nobody else was in the vicinity when they appeared.

[Metalwrath]

I wont say the FC's name but lets just say there is an FC on Odin thats known by the entire server as grief pullers for the last year or so.
As in they spend the entire day pulling any s rank and a rank as soon as humanly possible to try prevent any players getting credit for the kills.
But they are at nearly every S rank spawn and at every A rank spawn too.They are banned from most if not all hunt linkshells.But are magically at every hunt before most hunt linkshells even get there.
I suspect thy are useing 3rd party tools to detect hunt spawns.
On top of that they also troll all the s rank and a rank report sites to hide spawn times so they can try prevent players from killing them.

[hynaku]

Best way to find hunts the novice network. Its better than a hunt LS. If find a hunt I always tell them first.

[Deceptus]

But to hear them say it, the Hunters are just simply better than everyone else.

They're hypocrites.

They're using timers and 3rd party software.

[Bernkastelx]

All s ranks usually have a specific thing to spawn them and a ranks aren't really that hard to find if you track their timers so really doubting the 3rd party software. Its not hard to fly over zones and eventually after hunting for so long you start to mesmerize the most popular spots they spawn in.

[Metalwrath]

All s ranks usually have a specific thing to spawn them and a ranks aren't really that hard to find if you track their timers so really doubting the 3rd party software. Its not hard to fly over zones and eventually after hunting for so long you start to mesmerize the most popular spots they spawn in.

Thats not really an explanation for why some are always there faster than everyone else.Either is as someone said they are just better than everyone else at hunting.It's nonsense.
While some of the hunts can be predicted to spawn at a certain time (Ie Moonflayer and Croakadile for example) the majority of them have variable time windows between when is the earliest possible respawn and the longest.Spawning half of them comes down to luck with the timers.

[Mwynn]

Thats not really an explanation for why some are always there faster than everyone else.Either is as someone said they are just better than everyone else at hunting.It's nonsense.
While some of the hunts can be predicted to spawn at a certain time (Ie Moonflayer and Croakadile for example) the majority of them have variable time windows between when is the earliest possible respawn and the longest.Spawning half of them comes down to luck with the timers.

The term you look for is called "Radar".

Simply said S Ranks and several FATEs have a extremely huge draw Distance, so if you stand on the edge of the Zone Map, you still will see the S Rank being on the other side of the Map.
Now what those Tools do is basically scanning the Memory ID of the S Ranks / FATEs and poof.

There are certain "Radars" that will fetch the Hunts and share it with the other Players also running that Program and Report on the Site, be surprised, those Sites are used by 99% of the Hunting Community.
In some cases, this is not the case and a different standalone Program will just tell the Player alone and not the others.

Even then as Bernkastelx said, finding A Ranks isn't that much of a Problem, now when it comes to S Ranks with hard Conditions such as the Azys Lla S Rank, you never basically know if the requirement is done.

Thats basically the Point of the OP, tho now comes the Question ...

How do you prove someone running such a Program? If you can't Report someone using a Parser, if that Person doesn't say they do so, how else could you?

If People never talk about it or don't even mention it, you're basically out of Luck and it may be even harder compared to Reporting Bots.

[KageTokage]

It would be nice if the information from XIV's servers such as S rank/FATE/gathering node coordinates was more...secure, because both hunt detectors and bots are dependent on getting that information in order to function.

I'm mostly annoyed by the sudden prevalence of this hunt radar because my main linkshell is comprised strictly of players who actively try to spawn S ranks, and we call hunts there before anywhere else to try to ensure that the people who are actually putting in work get kill credit. We've missed out on kills because of radar users instantly calling hunts (Some of them will just sit AFK and tabbed out in a zone with an open spawn window while they wait for someone else to spawn it) while some of the folks in my linkshell were busy trying to spawn something somewhere else.

Sadly, it's entirely on SE to do something about this, which given their track record with handling hackers and bots, isn't likely to happen. They did actually break the original hunt detecting program at some point (Though whether it was intentional or accidental is another matter entirely), but I noticed people starting to popularize a new one not long after SB released, which incidentally, is when I first started running into these strange instances of people calling hunts seconds after they spawn (I saw someone call a spawned Okina in shout and linkshell the moment they loaded into the zone next to me, and there weren't any other players next to the thing when we arrived at it).