Proposal for a Moderate Revamp of Hunts to encourage participation AND competition

[Kenji1134]

Since the advent of 2.3, the world of Eorzea has become enraptured with Hunts... And subsequently grown to hate both them, and each other in the process.
The reasons for this have already been stated and discussed. Here, I wish to propose a solution to some of the general problems that have arisen due to the implementation of Hunts, in order to encourage participation and competition for the entire playerbase.

As a foreword, as people have repeatedly and blatantly pointed out, the reason why Hunts are such a heated topic are that rewards are good and the fights are WAY too easy.
But honestly even with the sheer amount of rage, angst, and just bitching that this has created among the playerbase... we're actually being rather nice to eachother... for the moment.

Imagine if people DIDNT make LS's for hunts, they just made 8 man groups from their friends or FC, and mindlessly wandered around 1-2 zones, maybe just Coerthas since its so massive, and "hoped" that they'd eventually walk into a Mark like it was some damn streetpost.
Then as soon as someone finds it, they tag it FIRST, have their party come over, and kill it. No announcements in FC, LS, Shout, no waiting 2-3-5 minutes or until some douchebag pulls... No, EVERYONE would be the douchebag in a true free-for-all-screw-the-rest Hunting Extravaganza!
It seems that THIS is what a lot of people think of when they hear "Open World Content". You find it, you kill it. You can't kill it? Wait for your friends. Someone else brought their friends first? Sucks to be you... This kind of TRUE competitive hunting spirit would effectively lock 95-99% of the playerbase out of Hunts... CAUSE THEY'D ALL BE DEAD AS SOON AS THEY ARE FOUND!!!

When I thought about Hunts, I pictured someone similar to the Levequests where you go around a set of destinations, get ambushed by mobs, and eventually track down your target.
Why not do that, but scale it up to group content difficulty.

So I propose the following structure:

Rank B Hunts
No longer open world. These would be an INSTANCED group daily quest. To access this quest, you need to buy "Information on the recent whereabouts of X" using GC seals. Using this information, you basically have a levequest style scenario where you go to various destinations, fight mobs (which give 1 Allied Mark per encounter), and eventually find your target, which would be scaled to 4 man difficulty.
Each person is limited to "killing" 6 of these per day... Not just buying 6 sets of info, 6 kills, per person, per day... But you get to participate.

Rank A Hunts
Remain Open World. 1 Hour Respawn. Zone-Wide Announcement for when it spawns. Once it is engaged, it appears on the map for all to see.
A Rank A Elite Mark should take 5 minutes to kill.
To enforce this, create an encounter area around the Mark, with a 50y radius. Every player (and chocobo) will give a stacking buff to the Mark. This buff will decrease the amount of incoming damage based on the # of people there, I will explain this later.
Rank A and S Hunts are immune to CC, and Provoke.
Finally, IF YOU ARE ON THE MOB'S HATE LIST WHEN IT DIES, YOU GET FULL CREDIT. So if you are just healing people, full credit. Tagged the mark to begin with, full credit. Got there 10 seconds before it died and landed a Scathe, full credit... ya lazy bum.
And to make it "fair" - the person/group which tags it, gets 2x Allied Seals and a 2x chance at a Bloody Log... so be in a group and go HUNTING!

Rank S Hunts
Pretty much the same as A. Roughly 4 Hour Respawn, with CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS SUMMONING CONDITIONS...
*Originally proposed 18 hour, but I agree that would limit people based on timezone. 4 hour with a LIMIT on the # of BOOKS obtainable per day off S ranks would work better. Say 1 book per day, but keep killing them for AS.*
Same type of damage reducing mechanism to control fight duration.
Same reward structure and tagging bonus as A.

Now for this damage reducing mechanism.
Its simple. Make a 50y radius circle around the Mark. Any player or chocobo companion in that circle counts as a stack, lets just call it N.
Then a simple line of code...
Damage = 1 / (1+0.95*(N-1))

So 1 person fighting the boss, 1/(1+.95*(1-1) = 1x damage, from 1 person = 1x damage.
10 people, 1/(1+.95*(10-1) = .1047x damage, from 10 people = 1.047x damage.
50 people, 1/(1+.95*(50-1) = .02103x damage, from 50 people = 1.052x damage.
100 people, 1/(1+.95*(100-1) = .0105x damage, from 100 people = 1.052x damage...
Basically SE would pick how much "mitigation" the mob gains per player, and as the # of players increases, the total damage approaches 1/"mitigation increase"... so .95 -> 1.053x, .8 -> 1.25x, .5 -> 2x... etc.

Of course Rank A and S HP would have to be adjusted to suit the desired fight time... But the player->mitigation mechanic would ensure that if they want a Rank S to take 15 minutes to beat, it WILL take ~15 minutes to beat, whether there are 8 people, or 400 people fighting it... And EVERYONE gets credit... even the lazy bums. Still, the more people that come to help, the faster the mob goes down, to a point.
This, combined with a zone-wide announcement and BIG ASS indicator on the map saying "HEY! I'm Open World Content! Participate!" Would help to keep the competitive nature of Hunts, while letting more people participate freely, without any douchebag pulls, and just the general nastiness that seems to follow Hunts lately.

[Sephirox]

What this guy said

[Issac]

No thanks on the instanced hunts. We have enough instance content.

[ChriZirhC]

18hour respawn timer on rank S seems a bit too much as it could gate out most of the casuals as this would affect their availability. Also it wont be any different to Odin and Behemoth.

[TeganLaron]

One problem, this wouldn't encourage participation. People participate at the moment because it is an extremely imbalanced way of gaining large amounts of myth and seals/high end gear. If that component goes away, it just becomes yet another daily to add to the list.

[Kenji1134]

One problem, this wouldn't encourage participation. People participate at the moment because it is an extremely imbalanced way of gaining large amounts of myth and seals/high end gear. If that component goes away, it just becomes yet another daily to add to the list.

That's why it's not "just" a daily.
B's are designed to be soloed, but when the entire server is looking for them, some idiot pulls, and the thing dies in <5 seconds... That is bad design.
Either give Bs 10-50x more hp, or make them a readily available solo/small group fight, with "decent" rewards.

A's and S's, which would have a special mechanic to counter the horde of eager Hunters, would remain contested content, with an incentive to BE the person/group to find and tag the Mark. But once the bonus incentive has been established, everyone is INVITED to come over and kill the Mark. which will go down slightly faster as more and more people come to help.
So you can still go around hunting for Marks, and get 2x AS and a higher chance at a Bloody Log if you find it first, but if you don't have the time to wait and chase Marks across the world, you can STILL participate in the content and rewards that come from it via the 6 Daily B Hunts.

As far as respawn times and rewards, if respawn times are cut, then rewards will have to be cut as well, especially if we increase the availability of the content.
So make B's give nothing, have the 6 daily Hunts give a reward of 5 AS, 25 days to get a Sand.
Have A's give 15 AS, 5% chance to get a Bloody Log, and have them spawn every hour after death.
S's give 30, 10% chance to get a Bloody Log, and have them spawn every 3 hours after death.

Something like that... The key thing is that we want to make the content accessible to more people, not just those who have nothing better to do than run around a zone, hoping to run into a Mark.
And if/when this "more accessible" version of Hunts causes people to get Sands too quickly, then go and raise the cost of Sands to 900, and Daily Rewards to 6/B, or make Sand 1000 and Dailies give 7. (24 days to get a Sand)

[TeganLaron]

snip

Yeah, I just don't get or like that idea at all. You get nothing for a B (so why do it.) And even with A and S ranks on a respawn timer, considering how many of them there are they will still be zergfests.

[Marxam]

People will just split into different zones and tag mobs. The only clear cut solution that I see is to:

a) Increase the daily hunt rewards so its comparable to just straight grinding for an hour
b) Make allied seals drop else where like Frontlines or GC leves
c) Nerf the rewards given for killing A and S mobs. Currently these two mobs alone completely replaced dungeon grinding altogether since you can easily get 100 myths in just 10 mins plus you can spiritbind, earn seals and logs for sands.
d) Any combination of a, b, c.

The main reason people are doing this is because of the Sands of Time. I fear that SE will look at this and no longer provide it to CT in a later patch, which imo should have been there since a weekly lockout of sands seems reasonable. To put it in perspective, my buddy in my static focused 90% of his time doing hunts since launch and has attained 5 sand of time and and extra 500 allied by the 3rd day. If that isn't "broken" or "unbalanced" than it's clearly supporting elitism. I was lucky enough to get one sands prior to patch and that was my first and probably last day doing hunts until this gets fixed.

TL;DR The current system creates an atmosphere of exclusion and promotes early pullers thus leading to more toxicity. FYI the only reason people are angry is because the rewards for doing this is too good. IT would be very different if Sands dropped in CT and wasn't farmable.

[MageBlack]

Problem is, this is almost exactly what people have been asking for, the only way it would be closer to what they were wanting is to have the claiming system in place once someone tags the mob.

I think the only good "solution" would be to make it so if you have the hunt quest, you use an item to spawn it (or some mechanism to force pop) that way you will get some credit and if you have the quest, you can actually complete it.

[Gerolan]

Sadly I can only see four possible outcomes for this.
1) most likely- nerf rewards to to the ground and just make it for glamour or minions, to stop those using 3rd party apps, as they wouldn't have a reason too.
2) make it a forced pop , where you have to accept the bill then use an item to get the mark to spawn, possible, as that's what I thought it would be originally anyway
3) give all marks a mega buff to their current state to allow more to participate, but that's just a band aid affect, would not stop the third party users.
4) removing the entire system till they can find a solution