Can it not not be EXP : entertainment instead of EXP : time sometimes?

Not that hunting is the absolute pinnacle of fun, but it is more of a monotony breaker than fates and dungeons, and made fairly easy to ignore if wished. A slower but more sane way to fill some of the gaps that sidequests can't fill. You get reminded of a wider variety of content in a shorter time. Sometimes efficiency needs to be put aside for the possibility of difference or we'll never be able to climb out of the robotic "same time, same reward, same difficulty" trend that kills MMOs and the spirit of their playerbase even in PvE, turning every activity into the same activity, offering no gratification to the player besides those that can be quantified numerically.

It's the efficiency mindset why we don't have anything interesting happen during the trash phase of dungeons. It's upsetting that there are few players who wish to experience an emotional return from a game until all other avenues of progress are dried up, even at the top level. If efficiency was the most important thing in the case of hunting, they'd probably end up making all hunting logs identical past level 20 too.