The fundamental problem with hunts

[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.

[Lamentations]

I have to agree with Krr on this one, reducing rewards for hunts now would simply segregate portions of the community based on how much time they have had to grind hunts or not.

If they reduce them now those have not's will scream even louder over being left behind and relegated to a lower class status than people have already screamed about hunts.

The balance needs to be found another way, in another direction.

Capping rewards is one thing, reducing them at this point will just cause more rage.

If they do reduce zerg-hunt rewards "and" buff daily bills this will probably only shift focus to those targets, yea they are gated per day, but at prime time in whatever time zone your in several dozen people waiting for those 3 snowstorm goobs to spawn sounds even worse to me.

I still say they simply need to bury Elites as party claim force pop NM's inside leves, they can keep the weekly lockout on them as elites if they increase the rewards for them and limit them to one per week, this would in effect "cap" elite rewards anyway, plus slightly raise rewards on bill kills at the same time for people who cant or wont party hunt.

[Kinseykinz]

Fix this, now.

I'm with you. I don't like how the hunt system and its rewards work at all. Why SE decided to not only over-reward these hunts (seriously, SE they only need to drop Allied Seals, keep the Myth/Sold tomes OUT of hunts) AND then make it so the hunts=damn good gear upgrades without any actual player skill is beyond me. If nothing else, I hope they remove the myth/sold tomes from the rewards. The damage has been done with the Allied Marks=sand/oils...but at least make them earn the gear for said oils elsewhere.

Because, another very bad thing is happening due to the 'low hanging fruit' picking that is hunts. DF queues for everything, suck...even for me on WHM.

So for people like me, purposefully avoiding Hunts w/ the Hoarde, even doing other tasks have become difficult:

Frontlines Queue: 'over 30 minutes'
ST: 5-10 minutes (healer)
EX Roulette: 5-10 minutes (healer)
Hardmode Roulette: +35 minutes (Monk, hubby gave up at this point, logged out and played a console game)
Primals: 5-10 minutes (healer).

EVERY QUEUE I select I wait 2-3 times longer now than I did 3 weeks ago.


And to me, this is the bigger problem. The Hunts, which were designed as side/incidental content(meaning SE's intent wasn't that the average gamer dedicated the majority of their game time towards finding and slaying hunts) is now making the actual bread and butter content harder to queue for/impossible to get in. When this happens, something must be done to address the in-balance. Because unless SE plans on basing the entire game around zerging a bunny to death w/ 100's of your closest friends, it is a broken system, with inflated rewards than needs to be fixed.


As to the 'have vs. have not' gear problem in fixing it:

If they 'nerf' the rewards from hunts, I will be one of the folk who will have 'missed out' And you know what, I'll still be the same player I was before it. Currently, there is no content in game that I cannot heal in my current gear that I can enter (waiting on my friends to catch up to me so we can start T6). Oils/Sands would yes, improve my gear....but for what? I'm have more than enough gear to get me through the next step in my content ladder. If people want to do PF: ilvl 110 only parties and not include me, really that's their loss. All the Hunt system did is make ilvl110 meaningless. Before hunts, to have that gear score implied you had personally bested some of the hardest content currently in game....now all it means is you cast Medica II over and over while eating a sandwich.


...Anyway, since this content made people stop queuing for the content I actually like doing, I guess the next 3 months are my 'DOL' grind months....again....because I didn't do enough of that in 1.0. Or I can do like my husband, and just outright play something else. He actually asked me to change his subscription from 6mo billing to monthly as he's unsure atm if he's enjoying this. A month ago, he loved this game...but now, he can't get into a dungeon w/o me queueing with him.

[Lamentations]

[QUOTE=Kinseykinz;2305710]I'm with you. I don't like how the hunt system and its rewards work at all.

You wouldn't rage about myth/soldiery being removed from the rewards, nor would I, again had they done this in say the first 3-5 days ok, it is too late now.

More incentive needs to be patched to do the content now "not" being done, SE has backed themselves into a corner with these lavish casual rewards and they need to now extend them to that content as well.

Simply changing those numerical rewards is also probably the very easiest approach of all the suggestions I have seen in now many threads on this issue.

Taking stuff away from players who aren't glued in their chair 12 hours a day and simply haven't had time to do whatever yet in an MMO is always a very bad idea, and it will not end well.

Reducing or deleting rewards from hunts at this point is "not" a viable option, if you think the hunt rage is volatile now, watch what happens if they do this now.

The only way they can fix this well is to increase the raid rewards to get hardcore raiders back to those "and" increase the rewards to daily hunts for casuals who don't have time for raids.

They do "not" need to buff daily bill kill rewards by more than a factor of 3, taking six weeks say to get that 1000 seal GC piece isn't grind imo, this isn't xi, and most dailies (hunts and tribes) don't require more than say 2 hrs of play time tops.

Better yet I would just as soon see them unlock the tribal dailies and let us do 3 for all 4 instead of just two tribes per day, that would double the rewards right there, it isn't 3x, but I can live with it.

Chief's idea about simply balancing rewards across content so people could choose what they want to do or refocus attention to dungeon content will work only if those rewards are raised to make that option attractive.

Reducing or deleting rewards already existing is again a "very bad idea".

Hunts are out of control, they need to be party force pop claim, and limited to one elite per week at 7 times full credit reward per bill, after that you hunt dailies, or raid, the other NM ranks should also be force pop and have similar 7X reward buffs while also being 1 offs per week.

This effectively "reduces" and or "caps" hunt rewards anyway, while also "reducing" the zergfest and community rage by magnitudes.

Inb4 someone states that hunts would no longer be open world content, with the mess this is now, I can handle that.

[Wulfyn]

If you remember any of the tanks names you should report them for griefing, apparently thats how the GM's term that kind of behavior.