Another rant about S ranks

[Jojoya]

They're more or less fine as they are, and if you want to have much say in how your server handles them, join the groups that organize the content.

That is misleading and has led to some of the current problems.

It is open world content open to all who are interested in participating. No one has to join a group to spawn a S rank and kill it, nor do those groups own the content and have any control over it.

If a map party is out in the world and stumbles across a Rank A hunt, they're free to kill that hunt if they want. They are under no obligation to ignore it so it can be part of a later train.

While most of us like to share doing the content with other players, which is why we formed groups and set up relays to inform other players, not everyone does for reasons that become quickly apparent when you attend the current trains and S ranks. The whining and entitlement displayed gets to be a turn-off.

I do not blame those hunters who have separated themselves from the organized community. Sometimes I find myself wanting to join them, though I don't because being part of the community also has its appeal if I ignore those who are always complaining because they think everyone should be waiting on them.

Those who want to take part in the Hunt need to remember a few things:

The content is designed to be Kill on Sight. Don't expect others to wait for you. Drop what you're doing and get there now.

Don't assume the relay you got was sent the moment the S rank was spawned. Spawners sometimes delay relays slightly if they're coordinating things with other spawners. If you're relying on Centurio Hunts and the relay was generated by FiloBot, that only gets sent when someone using the associated mod enters the zone. There have been times when I've spawned things and manually relayed the spawn to Centurio Hunts (which is after I send out notifications to my in-game linkshells and cwls) and the bot doesn't pick it up until 3-4 minutes later. Faloop is completely reliant on manual input - if the spawner or someone else with reporting permissions forgets to report the spawn right away, those relying on Faloop may be getting delayed notification. That leads to:

Early pulls are not always early. There have been times I've waited 6-7 minutes to pull something I spawned and there would still be someone complaining about an early pull. Even if the hunt is pulled before the wait time the community usually prefers, that is acceptable under the game's rules since the content is meant to be Kill On Sight. Don't bother wasting time reporting early pulls to the GMs. They aren't going to do anything.

Accept that players are not intended to make it to every hunt kill. If you miss out on some, there will be more spawning in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months ahead. Don't respond with "but muh achieves". Those achievements are intended to be long term grinds lasting the length of the expansion or longer depending on how much you play and how much of your time played is devoted to the Hunt.