Discussion on Solutions to the Current Issues of Elite Marks

[HorizonTsu]

The only real way to fix the problems with Hunts in the short term is ,as many people have said, to limit the amount of marks a player can earn each week to (lets say) 500 a week, that's what 2.5 alexandrites, 1 Oil of time or 2/3rds of a Sands of Time. Or just allow Hunts to only provide Allied Seals so players when they finished with Enhancement items go back to dungeons for Tomestones

A better but longer term change would be (IMO) to link it to the Leve Allowances that players get each day to something like this. (please bar with me a sec)

Player gets 6 Allowances a day, they arrange can then try to arrange a party
they then go to the leaders Grand Company hunt board
From here they can chose which level of Mark Bill they want (B's costing 1, A's cost 2, S cost all 6 leves) that is chosen by the server at random and every member in the party pays the Leve cost
They then can go to the Zone and talk to the Hunter Scholar who gives them a Clue (i,e a general location clue)
Party can then follow the clue to the area and look for a Party Specific "Clue" (i.e. a footprint say) that they can activate for the fight
for rewards keep the Allied Seals the same just Lower (or as above remove) the amount of Myth/Sold you get

This way players who cannot (or will not) organize a party can get a fair reward per day (30 AS), while players willing to go that little bit further can earn more (say 60 if they do 2 A ranks, or 100 if they chose to do a S rank)

[Myrhn]

Rather have them change the claim system of the NM. As SE tell us in the hot fix they intended B to be solo, A to be light party/full party and S to be an alliance or more people. They change it so B be light party, A full party and S multiple alliance or a lot of people(Not so true since they just add more HP but the dmg still the same). I would be please if they change B and A claim method and have them locked to the first party that pull it. Thay way only that party can attack it and is actually a challange involve on those hunts. As for S i think they are fine the way they are just that right now a lot of people are doing it and that cause the vanish on those mobs and is annoying. Maybe change S in the future when we can make alliance outside on CT/ST change it to only the alliance that pull can attack it. Call me all fashion or go play XI but that is just how I see hunts. I see them as a solo/party "event" rather that a server "event" like Odin.

[TomTom1968]

Just make it like they do it with the beast tribe quests. When you need a FATE where an item drops, 1 hit is enough to get the item. It is about participation, not landing a good portion of the over all damage. Hunt mobs should be the same. Right now it favors full groups (which have a favor anyways because they can spread out and inform the rest) and people who don't care for others.

[LineageRazor]

To make weekly hunts less of a joke:
- B-ranked mobs give no Allied Notes, Soldiery, or Myth, UNLESS you are in possession of the weekly hunt bill targeting that mob.
- B-ranked mobs respawn five minutes after death.

This, I believe, would solve pretty nearly all the complaints people have about weekly hunts. There would be no competition from note-horders. If someone gets to the mob ahead of you, you just have to wait a few minutes for the repop knowing that the folks that made it ahead of you will be done after their kill.

A positive side-note of this is that, on occasion, hunt mobs will be roaming around freely without anyone trying to kill them, menacing the players in the area. It adds a bit of spice and danger, knowing that there's an actually DANGEROUS mob mixed in with all the low-level riffraff whose greatest threat is weighing you down with a lucky hit. The overworld is in sore need of a little danger, even if B-ranks aren't that nasty.

[RexenRemlap]

One thing that I think would be really good for the system, and kind of what I was hoping it would be when I first heard about it, would be to make it into another Log, where it was kind of a cross between how sightseeing works and challenge log.

At the weekly reset everyone's logs would be cleared (like the challenge log), and players would have to go talk to the Hunter-Scholars to fill in the pages (giving hints akin to how the sightseeing log works) and using those hints each person can spawn the Mark. Each player could only get the credits once per week from the marks, which would effectively put a cap on the seals, but wouldn't make players feel so restricted. This means that players could go around farming the B ranks on their own (as was intended), team up with a few friends to kill A ranks, and to kill the S ranks you would have to shout for a group or work together within your linkshell to make them spawn and get the kill.

I think it would stop with the horrible shouts that I'm sure most here have seen, let the casual players work for their rewards at a reasonable pace, and let the more hardcore players grind it out as fast a they desire. Would also increase the community spirit a bit more if people would join groups to actively work together to spawn an S rank. Also, they could add a little more background information when you get the kill and make it almost into a bestiary.

[Mamakat]

People keep saying "wait till things calm down" and I don't think they will. With being able to get sands from it + glam. GC gear, these will be hot for a while. As for a solution, a Tiered pop NM system like XI's ZNM would be great imo. Maybe make it so you can only kill each one once a week maybe, then it will be easier and accessible for all but not able to be spammed.

They want this to be a way to bring the community together to work toward common goals and take down big NMs and it's really having the opposite effect bringing out the worst in people. From majorly overreacting to mistakes (I've been waiting to pull Marberry before, and it was kinda under that ledge, and some poor soul accidently ran off the cliff not realizing it was there and aggrod it), to parties harassing everyone in shout that they killed it before anyone could get there just to be rude to people being secretive and covetous with ToDs or spawns even with friends or LS. It's really sad.

Just my $0.02~

[AlrikRouge]

Here's my input:

Ideally, everyone level 50 should be able to participate in local hunts. Daily hunts should be striven for due to the nature of hunting and the rewards for the time and gill invested.

Hunt marks and rewards are much more popular than anticipated, for the most part.

Cheaters, people taking advantage of 3rd party applications do fight against this; but even so, if those weren't there, problems would still arise.

Weekly marks are great; still not TOO rewarding though and still bumps into the above.

Daily marks are a great idea but having very little return reward towards the investment of time and gill to get them done.

"A" rank rewards are great. S rank rewards are excellent. But they both still fall under the original problem mentioned at the start - zerg fest by cheaters or 3rd party apps and those who join them. So not everyone can participate in the hunt.

So my idea to work towards the goal of hunts being able to be participated by a lot of people without fear of the excellent rewards being missed out on by a mark dying in 20 seconds, weekly hunts being worthwhile and rewarding and daily hunts as well worthwhile and rewarding would be as follows:

1. Daily hunt mark rewards to be changed to 5 seals per kill. Other rewards stay the same. If 5 too high, at least 4.

2. B rank weekly hunt mark reward to 40 seals

3. B rank hunt marks HP goes to 10 million HP. Want to solo it with your Choco or just by yourself? Doable but takes forever. Rewards boosted to 10 seals. Other rewards the same.

4. A rank hunt marks - HP boosted to 60 million. Rewards stay the same. Mark in roaming status for 7 minutes after the spawn thus cannot be targeted or attacked, engaged or otherwise messed with for at least 7 minutes.

5. S rank hunt marks - HP boosted to 140m - 150m; varies. Some are 140m, some are 150m. Roaming status upon spawn for 12 minutes - untouchable during this time. All S rank hunt marks have level 50 adds that show up at 80%, 70%, 30% health intervals.

6. Full credit for the hunt for those who hit it 3 times (or however you want to measure this amount of engagement). Zero credit if mark is no longer on your aggro list before it dies. This will handle anyone who hits three times and leaves. Also keeps the reward for those participating but themselves die in the fight yet stay put or get ressed.

7. Spawn times for S rank stay the same (whatever they are). A rank the same. B rank to vary between 1-2 hours.

8. No caps on anything

9. Evaluate the above once in play and check server stress, player participation and reward distribution as well as gear procurement and change as needed.

--------

Hunts could be an excellent pass-time, or aggressively used to get excellent rewards.

For the casual (which Yoshi-P did specifically use the word), daily hunts should be rewarding due to the time consuming nature of them and the investment of gill for traveling. But not over-rewarding to supplant the big marks that are truly causing problems for Eorzea and it's citizens. Yet still something that is encouraging to get done.

Otherwise, I outlined my reasons and such above. And then, even if people still use the radar or other 3rd party type applications, it takes away a LOT of the advantages. I'd like to see 50 people take on a mark with 150m HP and try and zerg it within a few seconds. Or even 100 people.

[Zarzak]

snip

Your 1st point is about the "weekly mark" from your GC.... Reality is your wasting your time if your trying to hunt down that mark specifically. 20 seals is less than 10 minutes of simply "following the crowd" The reward from the weekly is worthless.

Your 2nd. There is no amount of power they can give these mobs that would make them anything besides a zerg event. The only difference is people would corpse cannon it more if it was capable of causing serious damage (see Behemoth/Odin). Or even less people would be able ot see it because they would wait for more people to show up.

[Keewee]

We just finished day 3 on the new patch, wait and see how many people are still at those hunts 2 weeks from now.

Hmm? You said? :-D

Slightly getting better on Bs, I guess.

[Thayos]

Step 1: Put a weekly cap on seals. Even if it's a high cap, like 1,000. Any cap would help.

Step 2: I'm totally opposed to making everything forced-spawn, so how about this:

A-rank and B-rank mob HP is lowered drastically, and A-rank mobs are made way more dangerous. Spawn times are doubled. Rather than drop seals and whatnot, these mobs drop the pop items for the "forced" marks that have rewards.

That way, we keep the open-world element and don't just lock everything being ???s on the ground.