The fundamental problem with hunts

[Moqi]

Not really. It's just an added bonus. People are clearly after sands/oils.

So why aren't they capped once a week, like ST/Coil? Granted it wouldn't solve the problem, but it's a start.

[ChiefCurrahee]

People that are on the path of upgrading to animus and novus require myth to purchase books (animus) and alexandrite (novus) the fastest way to amass myth is by hunts, this goes for soldiery as well.

It might not be the #1 reason to do hunts (bloody hunting logs = sands/oil). Basically you kill 3 birds with 1 stone. it's:

UNBALANCED.

this is the reason why you see 100+ people zerging from zone to zone. You get allied seals, myth and soldiery all in 1 shot.

If people aren't doing hunts for myth and soldiery (I don't mean solely for myth/soldiery) then what is the harm in removing it?

oh wait.....

that means people will have to do something else for main/alternate gear progression....

Take away myth and soldiery, and people will have to at some point move over to other content to obtain the gear to actually use their sands/oil on.

[Black91CRX]

So why aren't they capped once a week, like ST/Coil? Granted it wouldn't solve the problem, but it's a start.

You're exactly right. They should have been capped. Otherwise the fuss over hunts wouldn't be so widespread.

[giantslayer]

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.

You brought up a lot of great points that I had not considered. Ultimately, for hunts to function as intended, their reward level must be equal to or lower than other content. Raising rewards for other stuff will do that and also reduce or prevent that stratification. I think a comprehensive solution is to do both: reduce rewards of hunts and raise rewards / ease limits on other content. It shouldn't be as easy as hunts made it, but easier than it used to be, now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, with i110 equipment from hunts.

[RakaMaimhov]

I really liked your analogy to Black Friday, OP.

Sometimes when I see the "zerg rush" train of hunters flowing past, it is somewhat reminiscent of Black Friday stampedes.

I personally feel that nerfing the rewards given by individual hunt marks is NOT the solution we need. That won't change anything. People will still zerg and spam to death, and it will take even longer. Hunts were intended to be uncapped content and changing this would not only be against its original vision but it would be unfair to players who have yet to try hunts for themselves. Reducing (allied seals) rewards will only make things worse, as players will spend even more time on hunts to get what they want, eschewing other content since hunts are "easy". I actually do agree that the mythology and soldiery rewards could be reduced and nobody would cry over it. People are already having to "dump" myth far too much while on the hunt as it is.

The proper solution is to balance daily mark bills so that they are considerably more rewarding. That way players won't feel as though their only option for seals (myth, sold etc.) is to hunt all day, every day.

I also don't know what it is like on other servers, but on my server we have an open to the public teamspeak channel that players can join to get in on hunts. Nobody is excluded for any reason that I'm aware of (except maybe if you are a notorious troll who likes to face pull before the designated pull time you might be blackballed from the parties). I understand this does exclude some console players who lack a computer or phone which can run the TS app, but even they can usually get in a group if they ask politely (or shout in a zone when they see a rush). I have seen a good deal of teamwork on a more massive scale than I have EVER seen in a MMO, ever since the advent of the hunt system. That is something that should be praised, not cried about. Players have been very inventive and have shown an unprecedented ability to work together in very large numbers to the benefit of everyone who is participating.

While our server's solution is very helpful, it does highlight the fact that the hunts are definitely not working as they were originally envisioned, as the player community literally had to come up with a way to make it work for as many people as possible, without any aid from the game's developers.

Again, I will reiterate that I personally don't feel that nerfing (reducing) the rewards from felling hunt marks would be the most ideal fix to the problem at hand. I feel that increasing daily hunt rewards would be a better way to approach this problem, at least before any more drastic action is taken.

We must also take into consideration that within a month or three, all the current BiS gear will have been replaced anyway, and everyone will have moved onto the next treadmill.


Edit:

After further consideration, I feel that perhaps a good solution would be to CAP the books obtained through purchase with allied seals to 5 per week would be fair. This would be in balance with coil to some extent, while still leaving hunt content mostly uncapped. Without the ability to endlessly purchase books for sands/oils, players would not spend so much time doing only one thing, allowing room for other players to participate instead.

Leaving S ranks alone would still allow for the "chance" to obtain additional books through luck.

[Roris]

Hunts are mostly fine, if you want the best of the current best you still have to do Coil because some Soldiery pieces are pretty bad even upgraded, who cares if non raiders get gear when next patch the vertical progression will continue. There's plenty of info about respawn timers now too to form your own parties and there are also plenty of PF parties at least on my server, if anything Allied Marks should drop from more content especially GC related content like Frontlines, I mean it doesn't even give GC seals. Maybe once new GC ranks are implemented marks will start dropping from other content just like seals don't drop from FATEs until you join a GC, Allied Marks might even be required to rank up, who knows.

They really should fix the display priority and maybe add more HP to them though or raise their difficulty even though zerg rushes would minimize it in the end. Weekly caps would just do more bad than good, there's finally some sort of semblance of open world content that can be done freely and without waiting for a queue to pop, limiting it with caps would just relegate them to yet another thing to cap on the first days of the weekly reset and then have nothing else to do.

Having mobs show up on the mini map would help too and would lower the use of third party tools, 1.0 had that feature and NMs even had a special icon but I guess the flimsy servers can't handle it anymore. They've also mentioned they're looking into increasing daily hunt rewards so that will help too, we'll see what they'll do next week, though seeing how it mentions NA/EU specifically it might just be updating the Hunter Scholar descriptions so they're more accurate to the original Japanese text.

[PixelPirate]

UNBALANCED.

And ridiculous.

It's as if nobody in Square Enix tested this content or put any serious thought into it. Oh and it reintroduced the type of abuse and manipulation by third party software we've been trying to avoid since 2002 in FFXI. It was a giant step backwards and yes, I'm holding my breath for this patch, but if history serves -- I stand a good chance of being disappointed. This has totally blown the doors off of myth and oils, while at the same time alienating a huge portion of the fan base who thought we were all past this kind of archaic game design.

[SarcasmMisser]

Right now, hunts are basically Walmart Black Friday sales for gear. For any Japanese people who will (hopefully) read this and don't know what I mean, on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day in the US, Walmart will offer a limited amount of highly desired items (like HD TVs) at a very low price. This creates huge mobs of frenzied customers who compete for the items. Almost every year, the mobs will literally trample someone to death.

I love the implication in this post that there are only 2 nations of people playing this game and reading these forums and that's the US and Japan. Not that I don't know what black friday is, it's an analogy that most english speakers who have spent time on youtube can relate with. It's a pet peeve of mine since it's really the history of games that these two markets are the only ones people think of and the rest is an afterthought if a thought at all.

[HumsterMKX]

......They've also mentioned they're looking into increasing daily hunt rewards so that will help too, we'll see what they'll do next week, though seeing how it mentions NA/EU specifically it might just be updating the Hunter Scholar descriptions so they're more accurate to the original Japanese text.

They increase daily hunt rewards..... from the look of things even if they increase it by 20fold, the horde will still not be under control.

[Korban]

I'd like to share my recent experience with hunts, as I haven't done many of them. I'm out in the world doing my thing, when suddenly a wild Bloody Mary (b rank hunt) appears! It's 2:30am here, but I wait 5 minutes to see if anyone else is going to show up before engaging the hunt on my own. I fight for another 3-5 minutes and have the thing down to about half health, when suddenly the area gets laggy and glitchy and 30+ players all show up at once.


They watch me for a moment, then a few of their tanks engage the mob and all start using their high hate abilities. This monster that I located, claimed, and engaged after a fair waiting period suddenly stops attacking me and focuses on one of these new tanks who then proceeds to run away (with the hunt following him) so the fight gets reset. As soon as it resets, all 30+ players immediately engage the monster and proceed to kill it in 5-10 seconds. I got a couple of casts off on it, but only walked away with 1 allied seal because it didn't count the previous 5 minutes I spent getting it to half health. 2:30 in the morning, I'm the only person in sight, and somehow 30+ players all know to show up at once and the system is working as intended? Fix this, now.

I've run second coil for a few months now as a white mage, and due to tanks and DPS being higher priority for drops I have yet to obtain a sand of time. Yet, I'm told that by running with one of these cheating, game-breaking linkshell or teamspeak groups you can farm enough allied seals for a sand of time in about 8 hours. Fix this, now.