Please consider revising the Hunt system and / or buffing Elite Marks

[Shougun]

I don't think it would be fair to buff the low level monsters to the power of the latest expansion, since then it's pretty much taking content away from people who are living in those expansions, and messes with that wonder of coming across a monster and thinking you could get a group together to take it. From level 50 guy going around seeing a rank A and maybe soloing it (duo/trio more likely), having a party together for an S rank, from that and definitely doing it to a level 50 guy getting rofl stomped so hard it strips their echo.

I had thought of a system to hopefully disseminate the train into smaller pieces (ideally a few groups run around trying to find and spawn them and at a lower pressure many other groups run around and find their remains to fight a sort of avatar created by your echo).

Perhaps you can add bite back into lower tier NMs with a mechanic added onto what I was thinking before (nms leave remains on death). Here there is a new item, some sort of void aether perhaps a void incense burner - when used at the remains it will create the fight anew much stronger than before (maybe slightly stronger than current tier S- leveled up and made more aggressive and the rewards items will be the original + current tier S rank monsters). Like a Dark Souls bonfire mechanic, I guess. Can fiddle with the mechanics and rewards to make it fit, like it's public and changes the zone weather and takes 15 minutes to complete infusion but is even longer and stronger with better rewards (only can be infused once of course), or down to a BCNM fight balanced to be really hard to a group of players (rather than alliance).

System (missing what I just added above) sort of described here:

But on the many train issues.. Something I was considering compiling into another thread.. (theme on open world), but.. I've been thinking after reading all the "early pull" vs wait for the "community to overload the map" posts that perhaps we can fell some of those issues in a system like:

When an A or S rank dies they collapse to the ground in a large heap (corpse). These corpse will last for a certain amount of time till they pass, or are interacted with (some % amount of time they decay before respawn is up).

Now when you kill a hunt live you will gain one extra roll chance, that roll can be for either items, tomes, or seals. This bonus roll may have a slightly modified loot table for balance like you get 40 Mendacity and the bonus roll went tomes which then nets you a bonus 20 Mendacity, but still it's something note worthy. Then the monster will fall to the ground on your screen and fancily fade away like a classic FF boss (pyrefly like effect).

IF you didn't get to be part of the fight, didn't get credit that is or weren't there, the boss collapses to the ground when killed and stays there. This includes people who weren't in the zone when the monster died. When you approach the corpse it will give you some immersive sort of dialog that gives you a hint at how long ago it died and will allow you to use your Echo power to attempt to generate a "like" fight (you may also optionally clean it up, from your client side, just in case it is blocking a quest objective or something). These fights will shatter with the classic FF transition (or screen swirl) and you'll be in an arena of some sort (like a BCNM from FFXI), where you will fight and be rewarded according to the monster strength. The monster will decay in three tiers (thirds), each one equally split in time, each tier will take away one roll reward (first stage all rolls remain except the fresh bonus mini roll, second stage items no longer drop, last stage only seals drop and not tomes). The monster will also become weaker at each step. These tiers can also be part of the immersive tip at how old the body is, like lets say since Rank A take about 4 to 6 hours to respawn the body will decay fully an hour at least before respawn. So if it says the remains are fresh then you know it's in the first third of the ~4-5 hour decay period, while the most decayed form (last third) would be about an hour or less until gone (and then about another hour or so till respawn). After fighting the remains in an echo fight they will disappear (or at least you can't spam fight them).

The strength of an echo fought NM will be lesser than in the open even at the first tier, and you may opt for weaker forms even when it's still a fresh body. So you can get the normal 3 rolls for a while after death, and it'll take about a 4 person party not being silly but not as hard as it would be in the open (or a very skilled over geared player, and probably only certain jobs with strong self sustain). While the most decayed variant that only drops seals (which you can opt for even if still fresh) could be solo'd on any job, so long as you actually press your buttons and not eat all the orange. Achievements would bet set to require fresh or alive (to not make it too cheesy to get).

If you've already killed the NM alive and someone in you party comes in late to the zone / joins late they can still start the BCNM (personal fight) but the player who earned the fresh reward will get rolls for the lower tier seals and tomes only (so poetics and allied seals instead). If they normally drop poetics and allied seals then they drop GC instead. Such that it's not a waste of your time to stick around and help out stragglers even though you got in fast and got the credit. Or consider any other reward, perhaps free teleports for the next 15 to 30 minutes or some other blessing/buff.

This could mean a lot for people who have slower machines and can't get into zones fast enough or can't handle too many players up at once, those that feel stressed that it's just not worth their time until they spend real money to upgrade (I think these issues exacerbate on larger servers, I hear on small servers it's not as bad sometimes). This also means that while you might lose out on an extra small roll (which is quite nice) you didn't miss out on the majority if still on good time, so people who pull early are fine to do so. There WILL still be people complaining about early pulls but I believe with a system like this that the community at large would feel it's not an issue anymore and the community fights would be a lot shorter and more one sided.

This system also allows players to sort of recreate the kill times on hunts and begin to actively hunt them, so hiding the info in a super active group is not as much of a thing anymore (sometimes a group silently kills the whole list and then no one knows if they're up soon or not). There will still be some vagueness though, like if the corpse decays you can guess it'll respawn in about an hour or two tops for A ranks but for S ranks it'd probably be two to six hours. Not sure about the special FATE NMs... perhaps they don't get included in this system, or they decay in 30 minutes to an hour after death even though they have very long respawns (not sure about them).

Beyond, I think, killing a lot of the momentum / salt mines of early pulls vs waiting for way too many people (that some don't get credit because too many), and beyond lower expansion NMs being mowed down before people who could use that content can play them, or small servers being hit by waves of big server groups (server hoping).., beyond that I also think the system could be neat because these epic monsters leave a footprint in the game world. You can be a new person to the game and come upon this great corpse and just wonder.. what.. what happened here? Then you touch it.. and it beckons you to a challenging fight (assuming new person in lower gear). I believe that might be interesting.

Could do some other goofy things with the corpses like a relic / monster hunter weapon / armor quest or new trophy system (approach the beast with appropriate tool (maybe even have DoL do something to it lol) and bring home raw material that a crafter can turn into something nice to put up).

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4980963