What's with the Early Pull Brigade?

[Ashkendor]

The history of human civilization disagrees with you, as do most wolves.

The difference being that every wolf in a given area isn't in one huge pack. There's competition there.

The same goes for human beings. If there's one thing we do well, it's compete with each other.

The purpose of cooperating while hunting is to make things easier. Waiting for too many people makes things harder (like the mark completely disappearing on some people, which wasn't changed for A ranks for some reason).

So much this. I wait for some people to show up, but I'm not going to wait for the entire damn server.

That's the reason it can't be all sunshine and rainbows and cooperate so everyone can show up.

Any way you slice it, you have people that don't get credit for any given mark.

[Thayos]

That's the reason it can't be all sunshine and rainbows and cooperate so everyone can show up.

I agree... at a certain point, a pull has to happen. On my server, when hunts are extremely busy, people tend to wait until the point when the mob first starts disappearing... then we charge in and kill, and people rarely ever complain.

During off hours, we tend to just wait until it looks like people aren't arriving in large numbers anymore, and then we pull. Again, few people complain. There will always people who hear about hunt NMs late, and they may say something dumb when they arrive in the zone, but these people wouldn't be so late if they were actively hunting with a group.

Also, there is competition between hunt groups, at least on Hyperion... you want your group to get there first to maximize your chances of getting credit. However, hunt groups don't pull just for the sake of keeping seals away from other groups. Only trolls do that.

[Ashkendor]

During off hours, we tend to just wait until it looks like people aren't arriving in large numbers anymore, and then we pull. Again, few people complain. There will always people who hear about hunt NMs late, and they may say something dumb when they arrive in the zone, but these people wouldn't be so late if they were actively hunting with a group.

Right? I hate lazy people that sit in my party and expect to leech, and I kick them as soon as I notice.

Also, there is competition between hunt groups, at least on Hyperion... you want your group to get there first to maximize your chances of getting credit. However, hunt groups don't pull just for the sake of keeping seals away from other groups. Only trolls do that.

Nah, I don't pull for the sake of keeping seals away from other groups. I like sharing within reason and I appreciate people that share, again within reason. What I don't like is the people that flip absolute shit and have a tantrum over shout berating everyone in the area because they missed out on an A rank mark. Seriously, it'll spawn again later.

[Exstal]

If it's A rank, and I can guesstimate 60 people, I take the liberty to pull.　S ranks on the other hand, unless there is like 100+, I won't be touching that.

[Tolmos]

They get full credit. Just like in fates. Anything that is 'red' and not 'purple' gets you full credit regardless of what you do to it.

Always pull early. Hunts are meant to be competitive.

So basically, people designate someone in their own party as the "designated puller" to guarantee their own credit, and then rage/send angry tells/blacklist because someone else gets that cookie, instead, by pulling?

Yay entitlement!

[TheRogueX]

The moment a Hunt mob is pulled most people (myself included) think of themself first and try to get as much Contribution as fast as they can.

The fact that you can go all-out on a hunt mob and get almost no reward sometimes is why this happens, and it's where the problem lies.

[Gramul]

Some people just lack proper perspective I guess.

There are some decent people though. Once I was absent mindedly running through a zone and pulled a Hunt boss who killed me in 3 hits. Someone was nice enough to raise me and invite me into his party to help with the hunt.

[Trell]

I think that expecting people to engage in hunts the way some individualists think SE intended is even more unreasonable than expecting every group on top of a mark to wait forever for every straggler to get there. The way hunts are played is the way most players have decided to play them. I am sorry; I don't think that is going to change unless SE completely changes the system. I can see why people vent about it and think SE should redesign hunts, but as the hunts are now, no one reasonable will suddenly decide that you are right and stop using the means available to them to get as many seals in as little time as possible. You could say the system is being exploited and not meant to be used that way, but that's just MMOs for you! Players will generally opt for any way to mitigate the repetitive grind developers bake into their games and it's a little odd to blame players for it.

As for credit, I've been in parties pulling marks among huge groups a great many times, and we've never not had full credit. Groups pulling marks and losing credit are definitely doing something wrong. Maybe you get petrified and lose credit, but that can happen to anyone in a large group.

Hypocrites in this thread and many others will go through every possible pretext to justify doing whatever they want in this social context. They will hide begin the TOS. They will regurgitate ad nauseum that this large group hunting strategy is not what SE wanted, or that it is not how hunts should work - Every pretext to avoid taking personal responsibility for their actions towards others. Anything to ignore and quell the fact that they are actually grieving others in a sense.

Consequently, there will be players who pull marks as soon as they get to them, disrupting the group effort under some supposedly principled pretense that this is the way it should be done, and that people are selfish for wanting to make them wait (I always find that backward logic disturbing). I found that it often has nothing to do with principles. It's always rather reprehensible people who simply crave notoriety and like the idea of affecting so many other people negatively and especially, anonymously behind an avatar. They're usually easy to identify because people are constantly complaining about them. When someone like that is around, you may not have the right to verbally berate them, but you have every right to decide that you do not want them in any circle you’re involved with. You have every right to have a forum to warn like-minded people of these types of players. SE may govern the game and this forum, but that is about it.

All that said, although organized hunting LS’ have created fair and inclusive methods which allow more people to progress with seals, it doesn't help people who are semi afk and not actively hunting - leeching, so to speak. It doesn't help people who don't bother joining hunting LS' or FCs. It doesn't help people who don't yet know all the maps and the best shortcuts to get to places quickly (ex: Mark in Mid to Northern LLN? Use Upper Decks --> Tempest Gate). This means there will always be stragglers who may complain because they couldn't get to the mark in a reasonable time, while blaming it on early pulls. It is impossible to include and please every single person in a fight, but we can make an effort to include a reasonable amount of people by calling reasonable pull times, therefore at least setting people’s expectations. It does work and I don't see how that hurts anyone.

As for the hard fought over definition of hunting: so large group hunting may not be what some of you think hunting should be like, but it is still hunting. It is still "Search and kill". It just happens to be a large coordinated group effort. Getting frustrated and disruptive because you'd like to see 8 people kill A Rank marks instead of 60 won't make people any less pissed at you for pulling at unreasonable times.

So hunting in this manner is not fun or fulfilling for some of you and in your eyes, that may justify pulling whenever you want. SE and the TOS don’t say otherwise. Well it seems that many people disagree. Perhaps most people also happen to find fulfillment in progressing their characters faster too. In all of this, the kicker is that this isn't even a zero sum game! Playing inclusively insures that everyone gets their seals and yet people are finding fault with that and trying to force it into a zero sum game even if it doesn't have to be! Just wow...

[ispano]

-snip-

Except they're right. This is not what SE intended, and you can see that in recent interviews and changes to the system. You can see it in the descriptions they've given. Does that mean you HAVE to play it that way? No.

If a group of 4 wants to pull an A rank without shouting for everyone and their brother to come, they've done absolutely NOTHING wrong. If a bit larger group spawns and finds an S rank and decides to take it down right then, again, they've done NOTHING wrong.

Some people might feel that being cooperative and helping more people get top end gear faster is a good thing. It's not, well if you ask them they will say it is, because they want it. But it's not. There are reasons we have lockouts on content that gives top end gear. There are reasons we have caps.

You can claim majority all you want, but until you bring back proof, it's just words. It could very well be the majority wants nothing to do with your zergs. Even at a few hundred people on a server, that's nowhere near a majority.

Lastly, what right do you have to call people playing the way THEY want unreasonable, when you want them to play the way YOU want. Yes, that's what you're doing. You're trying to say they're wrong and should play the way you feel is right, not the way they feel is right.

[Dhex]

-

You say all these things - and yet I've never seen you do any of it. Are you just playing devil's advocate here or do you really believe all this stuff you constantly circle back to?