Hunts: What's Really Wrong With Them

[Jacost]

If the system encourages people to use it the "wrong" way, then it's a badly designed system. It's human nature, the nature of life itself even, to take the path of least resistance. It's completely SE's fault.

[Eekiki]

I haven't actually done hunts myself yet (semi-retired). But that solution would compound the issues at hand. The issue isn't players swarming A + S rank - in fact, according to the post, that is the intended design. The issue is players swamping B + A ranks.

This right here. Go to Coerthas and you'll see Naul getting swarmed, while Safat is almost ignored.

[Shougun]

Appreciate the long and thought out post, but imo the design of content in respect to what players will do is part of SE's job duty (honestly only your first sentence hits on that point, so still thought out.. just my imo on your preface :P lol).

Certainly players will figure out that one way you didn't think of doing, and make it special (or broken), but what happaned here was obviously what has happened previously. Its not impossible to add open world content without zerging fast dying messes, it is impossible with a basic fate system and a good reward for doing it. (Removing rewards from a system just makes that system useless, so thats bad XD). If they wanted a FATE system I think they should have started out with player spawned and then moved to FATEs over time, like 1-2 months in.

I think adding more hp is the easiest most efficient "hot patch" and they should do that as soon as they get in, then figure out a longer term plan (I'm fairly certain they can modify hp on the fly without shutting the server down, which is why I said this is probably the most efficient fix till they know what they want to do next).

Mark spawning sounds nice, for the weekly marks I hope then the reward wouldn't be turned into a pittance.

[Donjo]

I have to agree with Shake0615 on this. SE is completely to blame for making the ridiculous incentives. Fastest tome collecting (which is what the relic half of people play for), fastest way to upgrade to end-game raid gear (what the raid half plays for) ...

Exactly. This is literally the only flaw with the system. Since this is a single part of the system, it cannot be said that the entire system is "broken".

all of that text and you come to such an incorrect conclusion.

don't design a system that will be universally used incorrectly. that is totally SE's fault. this cannot be a player problem if it happens on every server.

If the system encourages people to use it the "wrong" way, then it's a badly designed system. It's human nature, the nature of life itself even, to take the path of least resistance. It's completely SE's fault.

Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly. A system cannot encourage misuse of itself. Only the users of a system can encourage other users to try a method of effective misuse that they found. When legitimate glitches are found that can be exploited, what does SE say? "We're working on a fix. For now, please don't exploit this." Perhaps SE loves their rose tinted glasses a little too much, but that is irrelevant. The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take. A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system. A hole, glitch, or flaw may as well not exist if players make the correct decision of not exploiting it. Therefore, it is entirely the fault of the player for ruining what is otherwise a well designed system by completely circumventing it's intended execution.

Now, here's the real irony of the second half of your statement. You claim that swamping the hunts is the path of least resistance. This is certainly true in respect to the ability of the Mark itself to defend against players. However, the clear truth coming out of this situation is that the source of greatest resistance is not the monster you're trying to kill... but the other players who want to kill it first. Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

[TheUltimate3]

Attempting to fight against an entire server of players to get credit on a Mark actually the path of greatest resistance.

Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Sorry but this thread is almost a justification to SE mistakes at the time of make hunts.


Hunts should be a forced spawn for each party, with the very same times lockouts as any other kind of content such as maps or leve-allowances. Players outside the party should be able to participate of other`s Hunts but for a reduced rewards, so they are just incentivated to help if they are just passing by. And thats it!

Hunts should have always been party content in open world, not zergfest like FATE bosses. The raid rewards should just become something of increased cost. Besides, is only natural for a game with vertical progression that "exclusive" gear today becomes "common" tomorrow. 3 months passed for everyone to have the "exclusive" oil/sand weapons and armors, now, the time has come for them to become mainstream, next patch they will be as common as the ilvl90 gear is now, and in 3 more updates they will be drops of dungeons not even in the expert roulette but in the hard one, just as darklight is now.

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The whole hunt system is a big mess up from SE, saying that "is players playing incorrectly" is terrible, and is a mistake, because players by nature (and is what gaming is about really) work in a way they always find the "path of least resistance". That behavior is what beats games and archive objectives. The whole idea behind hunts design was bad, it was obvious that players will gather arround by thousands at marks. It was obvious it would show up serveral engine issues. It was obvious that this community is not a collaborative one, the ingame health of /sh channel is the proof, you already saw insults and everything because of the FATE farming and FATE requisites of atma/animus weapons. Is like... What was SE expecting to happen?

The only solution for hunts is them to become party content in open world. Each player has 5 daily B marks, 1 daily A mark, 1 weekly S mark. They can group up to 8 and go for those when they please and thats it, done. Marks should be like allowances, but with diferent time lockouts.

[SendohJin]

Please tell me where a Hunt NPC, a Hunter Scholar, or some other element of the system actively tells players to use it incorrectly.

The fact is that players have found a way to completely flip the Hunt over into a configuration that it was never intended to take.

unintended is not incorrect.

A prudent player would see that something is clearly wrong here and that perhaps they shouldn't be doing this with the system.

A prudent developer would see that something will clearly go wrong when they put the most desirable item in the game into this event and perhaps they shouldn't have put that item in as a reward when their intentions was not to create a system that can support the demand.

[SendohJin]

Well damn I can't really find anything to fault that logic.

I can, the other path to Sands of Time is Turn 8 and Turn 9 clear. and once you clear it there are no other paths besides Hunts, so Hunts are at the same time the path of least and greatest resistance since it's the only path for anyone to acquire more than 2 Sands of Time a week.