While I believe you can't please everyone all of the time, if SE were to go back and redesign the hunts to be all instanced rather than open world (which is what the title of your thread is suggesting), they would lose FAAAAAR more players than if they were to keep the open world hunts. A descent alternative may be to balance the tome rewards a little bit better while adding the instanced NMs you suggest. But just like FFXI, that takes time to develop; they weren't all added at launch.