Another rant about S ranks

[Wilford111]

People not waiting a set amount time before pulling an S rank has been making people upset since as far as Heavensward, what do you think is the likelyhood of SE changing this now? What data has changed for them to want to make a decision now?

Who cares if anything changed? They should have changed it back in Heavensward. If enough people make their voices heard they might just change it.

[Jojoya]

The fact is that pulling an S-rank mob earlier than what the community is used to creates a massive amount of toxicity, which is evidence that SE needs to update the hunt system. I'm a firm believer in "don't hate the player, hate the game". It's true that "early pullers" aren't breaking any rules, but it really, really sucks when they do pull before most people can reasonably arrive.

A hunt being pulled before most have arrived isn't a problem. No one has to be there before it is pulled to get credit. They just need to get a hit in before it dies.

That's why the community should focus on is whether it is dead before most have arrived. The community has some power to prevent that from happening by not assisting those who attack immediately.

I genuinely doubt that most S ranks are dying before most players have arrived outside of the squishier ARR and HW S ranks. There will always be those few who show up too late for whatever reason but most get there in time.

We need more oneshot donuts and far-reaching cleaves centered on the player with the highest aggro.
"Resetting" hunt mobs is often more toxic than the act of "early pulling" is.

Intentionally resetting mobs that have already been pulled is a violation of ToS and has led to player bans when reported.

It's one thing if it was a face pull and those already there are fine with the reset. It's another if some players were intentionally attacking it. Again, the community has the option to not attack if they want to give others more time to arrive.

That one Yak Tel S rank on Shadow, if any data can be pointed at.
Players were crashing due to the sheer number of players (2k+) in the instance because they were waiting for everyone to get there.

Which is a large part of the problem with waiting an excessive amount of time. The more that show up, the more players that start experiencing severe latency/disconnects and the greater the potential to crash the server. There are only so many players a zone is intended to hold at one time before technical chaos steps in.

Who cares if anything changed? They should have changed it back in Heavensward. If enough people make their voices heard they might just change it.

SE didn't change anything in the first place so there was nothing to "change back".

Players have been making complaints about the hunt for years. SE's response has always been the content is what they intend it to be and they have no interest in investing resources to change it. If anything, they're unhappy with how the community tries to run the hunt. They've already said they do not like hunt trains but for now they're content to let the community run them.

If SE does eventually make changes, I doubt very much they're going to be what most are hoping for.

[Wilford111]

SE didn't change anything in the first place so there was nothing to "change back".

Well first off I think you misunderstood what I said I meant they should have changed the system way back in Heavensward if there was a problem, but they didn't. It's never too late, is my point.

Players have been making complaints about the hunt for years. SE's response has always been the content is what they intend it to be and they have no interest in investing resources to change it. If anything, they're unhappy with how the community tries to run the hunt. They've already said they do not like hunt trains but for now they're content to let the community run them.

If SE does eventually make changes, I doubt very much they're going to be what most are hoping for.

I just don't understand SE's logic. Their design philosophy in all of their other content has been to make the game feel more like you're working together with players, not against them (obvious exception being pvp). With S-Rank hunts, it feels like another pvp. And those with mods have a major advantage over those that don't. This is a glaring issue and there's no way you can convince me that it isn't.

[LibitIncarne]

With S-Rank hunts, it feels like another pvp. And those with mods have a major advantage over those that don't. This is a glaring issue and there's no way you can convince me that it isn't.

This is the case for literally every piece of content (yes, even ERP) in the game, including PvP.
Be thankful that players can share the open-source information with you through linkshells rather than hoarding the knowledge to themselves like Faloop does. Sonar is essentially just one big CWLS hunt relay and the only reason to get mad at it is if you aren't in a hunt CWLS or you're a Faloop Admin.

[EponaTBHSMH]

I just don't understand SE's logic. Their design philosophy in all of their other content has been to make the game feel more like you're working together with players, not against them (obvious exception being pvp). With S-Rank hunts, it feels like another pvp. And those with mods have a major advantage over those that don't. This is a glaring issue and there's no way you can convince me that it isn't.

SE's logic is no secret, it's always been kill on sight for hunt unlike the other content you are mentioning, they leave the teamwork up to the community

Thats why S rank pull time hasn't been an issue to them, whether 3rd party tools are involved or not, and regardless of the improvement of said 3rd party tools over the years (we also know their gray area stance on those)

It's also why they're cringing at trains cuz A Ranks really did use to be also called out in linkshells and killed on sight a long time ago, and they would rather it stays that way, but the community has decided to handle them differently

[Besame]

SE's logic is no secret, it's always been kill on sight for hunt unlike the other content you are mentioning, they leave the teamwork up to the community

Thats why S rank pull time hasn't been an issue to them, whether 3rd party tools are involved or not, and regardless of the improvement of said 3rd party tools over the years (we also know their gray area stance on those)

It's also why they're cringing at trains cuz A Ranks really did use to be also called out in linkshells and killed on sight a long time ago, and they would rather it stays that way, but the community has decided to handle them differently

I miss the old ways. It became a problem when world visits allowed people to join every train that is posted in DC and now so many use mods and trackers. You know something is up when you port to your next train aether, hit the instance number that is next and see 144 ppl already over there. After you port in with no lag and see them already killing the next boss on the map, you arrive to maybe get in 1 hit...or maybe NOT hehe.

[Jojoya]

Well first off I think you misunderstood what I said I meant they should have changed the system way back in Heavensward if there was a problem, but they didn't. It's never too late, is my point.



I just don't understand SE's logic. Their design philosophy in all of their other content has been to make the game feel more like you're working together with players, not against them (obvious exception being pvp). With S-Rank hunts, it feels like another pvp. And those with mods have a major advantage over those that don't. This is a glaring issue and there's no way you can convince me that it isn't.

We're still working with other players when it comes to the hunt. To be working against them, the old "tap" mechanic from older MMOs would have to be introduced (only the party that initially attacks gets credit even if others also attack).

If we were working against other players instead of with them, relays to the greater community would not exist. Linkshells/cwls would be private between hunt friends instead of generally open to all interested (up to the member limit). Hunt Discords would be highly selective about who was allowed to join.

If I stop to think about it, probably the big source of contention is that the hunt has become fast paced and not everyone wants/is able to move that fast. The faster one S rank is killed, the faster the spawner can get to spawning the next one and others can get to killing it.

It wasn't so bad prior to the introduction of world visit. Everyone was limited to what could spawn on their home world. That's only 29 S ranks with half of those taking a minimum of 84 hours to respawn. Players could take their time because chances were good it would be a while before another would be ready to spawn. Players tended to be more patient because who wanted to miss out on a relatively rare kill.

Then world visit came along shortly before Shadowbringers launch and that 29 suddenly turned into 145 to 232, depending on your data center (and if new worlds were being added). Shadowbringers, Endwalker and now Dawntrail have each added an additional 36 to 48 per data center. Data center hopping for S ranks is not practical with the possible exception of heading to Dynamis in off peak hours so I won't bother to extend the numbers to region.

That means we've gone from the 29 S ranks players had access to in Stormblood to as many as 376 today and they all are respawning at least once every 132 hours (a few could respawn up to 3 times in that period). Achievement hounds are rushing around data centers trying to get to every single one for achievement completions.

On top of that, hunts were far more niche content back in Stormblood. They weren't that well known. But during COVID, content creators started talking about hunts a lot more and that increased their popularity. Coupled with the player base effectively doubling in size between COVID and the WoW Exodus, we've got a lot more players going to a lot more hunts.

Players need to readjust their expectations when it comes to hunts. They've gotten unrealistic because the number of hunts they have access to has increased so greatly and the number of players trying to join in has increased even more.

Should SE step in to protect players from themselves? That's never a good idea. Should they make changes to the hunt to reflect the content popularity as it is today versus as it had been in ARR? I don't know if there are any changes that could be made that wouldn't introduce new problems/complaints or change the nature of the content completely, or both.


Edit: to get an idea of the player base increase in size, I check the Lucky Bancho census. Back in Feb 2019, Coeurl had about 5900 level cap characters. In the last census done just before Dawntrail launch, Coeurl had about 17,000 level cap characters.

That's almost 3 times as many on a single world. Not all are interested in the hunt, of course. But between the relatively low interest in the hunt back in Stormblood versus today's popularity, I'd guess that the hunt community has increased in size by about 400%.

That sort of popularity increase to open world content is definitely going to take its toll.

It's also why they're cringing at trains cuz A Ranks really did use to be also called out in linkshells and killed on sight a long time ago, and they would rather it stays that way, but the community has decided to handle them differently

That's one thing that SE could easily fix if they wanted. They just need to increase the length of the respawn window. If it was 2 to 8 hours instead of 4-6, you'd end up with about the same number of spawns over time but trains wouldn't be realistic. The longer they sit out in the open, the more likely a group of players will come along to kill them instead of going "oh, there will be a train in an hour, it can wait".

[Besame]

Jojo makes good points and has been doing "The Hunt" at least as long as myself. The smaller S ranks are np for me and I do not expect ppl to wait to pull just so so I can get a tiger mount. The issue for me is Trains. I only do enough trains to fill my weekly so I am not one of those train hogs that ppl call us. The problem for me would be solved if Conducters and riders would wait a mere 30 secs or so before take off from the loading group so we could all participate in the tomes, nuts and fun. When I arrive at a boss that has some life left I hit 1 or 2x then back it off to allow others time to get credit. Being a 1-hit wonder is a good thing in these badly orchestrated by SE hunts. I think that is the only way to solve the issue. Now, will people be kind enough to others to wait till the Conductor says go and makes the new post??? That is a story for another day.

[Wilford111]

(we also know their gray area stance on those)

3rd party mods are not a gray area and they never have been.

Be thankful that players can share the open-source information with you through linkshells rather than hoarding the knowledge to themselves like Faloop does.

The reason why this content is so contentious is because people use their 3rd party mod information to world transfer earlier than anyone else, making them have an advantage. Then they go and pull the S-rank before anyone else can possibly arrive, making this content extremely frustrating for console players and those that want to follow TOS.

[ACE135]

I just don't understand SE's logic. Their design philosophy in all of their other content has been to make the game feel more like you're working together with players, not against them (obvious exception being pvp). With S-Rank hunts, it feels like another pvp. And those with mods have a major advantage over those that don't. This is a glaring issue and there's no way you can convince me that it isn't.

The thing is, the vast majority isn't working (together) in any way. They are just there to reap the rewards of the few spawner's work.