Quote Originally Posted by Alberel View Post

Pretty much every case of an 'early' pull I've ever seen is actually just a case of people thinking the report they saw was the first call when in fact they got that report 3+ minutes after the actual first call. People need to stop assuming their linkshell is the only one and understand that other players may have been waiting at the taregt for a fair few minutes already. It's not their fault if you got the memo late.
This IMO, is why the zone should just broadcast the fact that a Rank S has spawned and give it a small cooldown before it's vulnerable. The only reason not to is below...

Like in one game I won't name (I've played many) when the World Boss was introduced, there is no way at level 1 you'll get an award because you contribute ZERO overall damage. You get the booby prize, usually a pot or some non-rare material. On the other hand if you're the very first person to see it, the fact that you're the first person to touch it (eg the puller) gives you the best reward. So people would regularly leave "bots" or "mules" just standing in the areas waiting for the announcement, usually at all the known spawn points. (This is what I referred to as cheating in the first response in this thread, albeit I'm not certain people are wasting subs doing this, it's likely free trial accounts in this game, because none of the bosses are "vicious monsters.") Players figured out the spawn locations and timing so well that they could flip through every instance of the zone on the server and kill the world boss no less than 5 times before it despawned. Solo.

In the same game, the gear creep isn't quite awful (given all heavy armor had the same stats unless dropped from the world boss,) or at least it wasn't until "reforges" which was basically a cash shop RNG to add random bonuses to gear. The durabilty of gear however in that game was horrendous and shops would regularly destroy gear with RNG. Rage-quit inducing to say the least. Though it gave people incentive to keep doing the world boss fights to farm for rares.

So back to the topic itself:

It can be fixed three ways:
1. No BiS gear in hunts - devalues the hunt, but removes the stress of having the "50+ people camping the spawn point because it's due to pop"
2. Scale the HP - As long as it isn't an exponential rise. For example, the maximum HP could be 2.0 Tanks, 1.0 Healers, and 3.0 DPS, so if there is a full party of 8 only (eg 1-2-5 configuration) there is a 19 * (base scale) at pull time , if there are no parties, just a mess of random players, then each player is a 4 * (base scale) at pull time. Thereby favoring forming parties before pulling. Anyone late who arrives before the boss has 10% HP left would add 5 * (base scale) to the boss HP and still get a reward if they do a 1.0's worth of damage. Simply hitting it once and then running off gives you nothing. The main problem with any kind of HP scaling is that people are generally insufferable and will complain no matter what and think they are being griefed by random players or bots.
3. Announce the Boss appearance in the zone (thereby giving everyone, including those not in Hunting FC/LS) a chance to find it.
4. Turn the S-Rank bosses into a (levelsynced) FATE once pulled.

While I think there are problems with any solution, no MMO can truely solve a "more players than the developer anticipated" issue and not take all the fun out of it.

For example, multiplying the HP may make players "figure out" the best DPS configuration that will kill it the fastest with the least players. Announcing the boss may over-subscribe world bosses that have spawn points too close to each other (Nice thing about HW, is that the areas are large enough that even "FATE grinding" is something difficult to accomplish, let camping hunt spawning locations.)