The fundamental problem with hunts

[Krr]

How is it too late to balance the rewards from here on out?

Let me explain.

As Item Level 110 gear becomes proliferated throughout the community, what you will see - and are already seeing, if your server has groups - throughout party finder and even in static groups - is an inflation of minimum average item level. This is *especially* true for DPS because DPS are valued almost entirely on well...the number they spit out and their ability to not get killed. Hunts, right now, are the only way to get gear of this level without breaking into the content that people have and will begin requiring it to do.

By nerfing the reward value of hunts, such as removing sands or making them take impossibly long to get - you will stratify players into an "in group" that exploited the system and now gets to play, and an "out group" that didn't, and now faces pandemic exclusion from game content because their characters are just plain worse.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But gear doesn't make the player!" And that's a very true statement if you belong to a group of friends or have existing membership in a raiding FC. People will know your attitude and how you play. For people who are the new guy on the block - having the best gear you can get is one of the few ways you can stand out as desirable in a PF or static that's digging around in pubbies for new members.

Item level inflation, however, in of itself isn't damage unless it is exclusory to letting people play, or vastly overwhelms the existing serious content. Any perceived 'damage' from proliferating i110 will be reversed in 2.4 anyway when the cap goes up and S-E has the encounters balanced around the latest level of gear anyway, so what's wrong with disseminating the playerbase to other forms of content with equivalent rewards to the modern Hunt? What's wrong with making Sands a (uncommon, or even rare) drop from Ramuh or ST or some other alternative form of play? Players will seek rewards doing whatever they think is fun, but the imbalance in favor of current hunts is a chokehold on the community that forces them to do it to keep up - you fix this by loosening the grip on the playerbase, not breaking the necks of everyone who was too little, too late for three months.

The only argument I can see here is that it will make T9 'too easy' - but look, that fight is downed by everyone who cared about getting it first, and 2.3 is supposed to be a bridge gap for casual players anyway. Your average joe is *not* gonna master the mechanics of that fight in any less attempts just because he has a slightly larger margin of error thanks to HP or DPS check throughput.

And, regarding the long-term health of the game - do we really want the community to adopt a mindset that says that exploiting broken things should be done as much and as fast as possible before S-E takes their toys away? That will only make the next Hunt-like incident even worse.

That's why I believe improving other forms of content that are going under-utilized - Syrcus Tower, Ramuh, even Frontlines - is important. It empowers the community to have choices in how they play the game rather than feeling blackmailed into doing things like this the next time they come up.