I think alot of the resentment stems from the fact that Hunts don't drop gear. Instead, you pick a Hunt from the bounty board and hunt it down for seals that you then use to buy the gear that people likely expected to be drops. The reason they went with seals instead of drops is the same reason people hated camping NMs in XI, the drops wound up becoming a source of strife between players. People all tying to out-camp eachother for the slim hope of getting the drop. People already complain about the atmas, imagine if you had to deal with that on a single mob on an hourly respawn schedule. The Hunt system tries to alleviate that by awarding seals and it's the seals that handle the rest of what NMs would have offered. There's also the fact you have to earn hundreds of seals, further appeasing the people complaining that gear's being handed out like candy (which it never was, but it's futile trying to tell them that).