Petion to add a 7min invincibility to S Ranks upon their spawn.

[Liam_Harper]

From a recent Q and A:

Q. Could there be a way to confirm when hunters have killed S ranks?

Yoshida: This way it would become content that can be done in a detached way, when what we want is for players to exchange information. It’s a joint endeavor of players using external sites to track S rank spawns, so we don’t want to make it too convenient.

While I don't necessarily agree with the answer here, this shows the devs are aware of external websites and intend for players to exchange information via such methods. This almost certainly includes Hunt trains and sharing S spawns too.

[Amon-ster]

Hunts seem to be one of the last vestiges of actual mass cooperation and player engagement left in this game, so it makes sense why the team is hands off when it comes to Hunts.

Hunts are things tracked and regulated by the community, and it should probably stay that way. 3rd party programs will pretty much always exist in an MMO -- we are simply too good with the internet and whatnot for that to not be a thing. Not only that, but it's as Yoshi said with ACT: its a pain to draw that line. Some people say that a bot program that pings a hunt shouldn't be allowed, but a fanmade website that has user-speculated and entered data is okay. Some don't even like the website. You could get really extreme and say that hunt Discords shouldn't be allowed cause it's 3rd party.

[hynaku]

Just make S Ranks so hard that takes over 100 to kill one. That will fix the problem and force them to wait or wipe.

[KageTokage]

Hunts seem to be one of the last vestiges of actual mass cooperation and player engagement left in this game, so it makes sense why the team is hands off when it comes to Hunts.

Hunts are things tracked and regulated by the community, and it should probably stay that way. 3rd party programs will pretty much always exist in an MMO -- we are simply too good with the internet and whatnot for that to not be a thing. Not only that, but it's as Yoshi said with ACT: its a pain to draw that line. Some people say that a bot program that pings a hunt shouldn't be allowed, but a fanmade website that has user-speculated and entered data is okay. Some don't even like the website. You could get really extreme and say that hunt Discords shouldn't be allowed cause it's 3rd party.

The problem with the bot is that it's pinging people instantly by datamining the game client to immediately isolate where a S rank is the moment it spawns. In a system the devs feels should be "first come first serve" it very much falls into the territory of cheating and providing an unfair advantage. It's made more aggravating by the fact that the bulk of relays being collected by this program are coming from actual gathering bots that happen to present in the zone when a hunt spawns; something I try to mitigate by specifically waiting until no ephemeral/legendary nodes are active to attempt spawn triggers.

A significant number of the dedicated hunters hate it, but have basically been forced to bite the bullet and rely on second-hand relays from said program because being actively involved in trying to spawn hunts or having connections with other spawners via linkshells/discord no longer gives you a leg up over the "everyone else" crowd who'd rather just AFK by aetherytes waiting for relays to go out.

Just make S Ranks so hard that takes over 100 to kill one. That will fix the problem and force them to wait or wipe.

There are some definite scaling issues with HP pools on EW hunts because the S ranks apparently have only around 10% more HP then the ShB ones despite the DPS of a level 90 being much higher and due to keep getting higher as new raid tiers release.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to give them at least 50% more comparatively which would help ensure they're at least able to get through one cycle of their mechanics before they die because some like Ruminator and Ker have a noticeable ramp-up time before their mechanics start getting especially dangerous and racking up a significant head count.

[Bellsong]

From a recent Q and A:



While I don't necessarily agree with the answer here, this shows the devs are aware of external websites and intend for players to exchange information via such methods. This almost certainly includes Hunt trains and sharing S spawns too.

It sounds like he knows about trains, but not about the program which just track hunts within the visible range of your client, which automates hunting in a way which he clearly doesn't want. I feel like the knowledge of that might prompt him to order the team make some hunt changes, like no crossworld hunting to help with congestion at least or higher HP values for the actual hunt mobs.

I can dream anyways I guess. Maybe one day hunting will be great again, for now it's just sitting around waiting for a program to relay a hunt and hope you can make it there as a homeworlder before crossworlders take all the spots.