The Hunt - a game breaking feature

[Verun]

There is no forum for "the Hunt", so I'll post it here.

The Hunt is not killing the game.
The game is already dead.

Found this really good description:
http://gamerescape.com/2014/07/16/ff...with-the-hunt/

It's much worse than the guy describes though. He's a veteran player that focuses on those Coil-rewards. But all the rewards are completely off the hook. I was able to get from iLv 75 to 95 in 3-4 hours. I'd have needed weeks for that using the old style.

I can get 100 retainer ventures in 1-2 hours, maximize my weekly soldiery tomes and even equip my secondary job classes with iLv 90 gear extremely quickly without running a single dungeon.

And that directly leads to...

[Verun]

The worst problem is mentioned in that article: People are not playing the game anymore. Just zerging and harrassing. The Zerg takes sizes that are so huge, that you cannot even see the hunting targets anymore as the game client won't display that many moving objects at once.
Roulette queue times take like... 30 times longer to pop up now as seemingly no one does dungeons anymore.

The marks need a weekly limit. In the current state I'd even be okay with them rolling back everything 3 weeks lol (which won't happen ofc - just giving an example on how bad it actually is).

People who are against this, ask yourselves:
Do you really want to play a game in such an easy way as to be able to obtain literally everything you need to get to the endgame content without using any skill? You don't need any kind of playing skill to zerg down a mob.

[Verun]

Most of my guild quit the game already. I'm shortly before it. I do not care if there are any kids who like it the easiest possible way. Square-Enix always propagated the game as hard and says they didn't want to change that.

Now it's come down to one big fail zerg that brings out the worst in the people (just watch the certainly coming troll answers below).


PS: The limit for words is annoying as hell and doesn't belong in a forum.

[Ferth]

If you edit a post you no longer have the character limit.

[Riepah]

The game doesn't look dead to me.

[Verun]

The game doesn't look dead to me.

Yes of course I over exaggerated a bit. The ZERG lives! Only the other means of playing the game are pretty much dead now.
Right before I wrote the above, I was in Coerthas. There was no hunt at the time - only some people searching around. But guess what: the usual Coerthas FATE leveling group consisted of three people - not 30. And this was at prime time!
This was also the case three days ago, but I thought the announced patch would finally fix this cheat-like system.

Fact is: hunt marks need to be limited the same way as soldiery and myth tomes are.
This stays fact even if you do not agree with The Hunt having the game breaking impact, that this without any doubt has.

The Hunt is the same as a /givemeall command: a quick way of getting all while really missing all the challenging fun. And thus its exactly the opposite one wants in an MMORPG.

[Mags]

I've already cancelled my sub.

I cannot stand to see the community acting this way day in and day out in each zone I am in. And it is always... ALWAYS... the same. Someone pulled something before others showed up and the next 30 minutes is nothing but name calling and whatnot. I think they over did it with the rewards here. I understand they want people to play their new feature but giving away rewards one could only obtain in the hardest teir of raiding FASTER than raiding is just insane. No wonder queue times are in the toliet. This on top of the "community"... just disgusting, in my opinion. This is not what I wanted the game to be, this is not what the game was in Alpha and beta tests. This wasn't the game at launch.

I'll keep my ears open for the changes made to this system, but I doubt now even 2.4 can pull me back into the game as it is. Shame, I was really enjoying it.

[AerysDarkstrike]

I cannot understand why the devs do not see how making hunts the single best and fastest way to advance ruins the rest of the game content.

[rejaan]

well i had a run through on this with Amitaya Lumireis and some FC members last night ,i can honestly say this is one of the most broken systems ever and i truly cannot believe that yoshida will let all the hard work that he and his team have done til now just be ruined by such a stupid mistake

the zone where wen went was just swamped with players the enemy lasted about 20 seconds which i was told was quite a long time ,an utter waste of time and all the great features and systems this game has is all undone through 1 bad decision

[Geist]

IMHO, the game isn't dead yet, and the Hunt does actually have potential - as a proper Hunt.
However, these concerns need to be addressed, both in terms of game mechanics and community building.

I'm sure the Devs are taking into account all the feedback that's flowing in during these first few weeks (both Yoshi-P and Komoto seemed to be aware of it during the last Live Letter).

Aside from rebalancing seal/gear drops, the chances for zerg rushing might be lessened by adding situational factors. Someone mentioned initial invulnerability, others instancing, I would add licensing (a finite number of times per week) and prerequisites (completing intermediate objectives to unlock the actual mark).

Lastly, we need the elite Marks to be smarter. I'm thinking back to FFXII; there was always a situational factor or an attack pattern to surprise you. Top Marks required good planning and some luck; another thing FFXII did right was that you would always gather fragments of lore along the way.