[90k error incoming] The Hunt is back...

[whiskeybravo]

no, they didn't. that's for Thordan EX. Void Ark is like World of Darkness with higher iLv.

Yea I thought read that in the blue garter translation but when I went back couldn't find it except where they where talking about Thordan. My bad

[Mutemutt]

getting the upgrades is to make doing Savage easier, what kind of psycho leaves Savage to do more Hunts to get better gear so they can ditch more Savage?

and it is very optional. some people having OCD doesn't make the system compel everyone to do it.

You only need to complete a savage turn once and you're good to go for the week. Hunts will come and go while the windows are up. If you can clear the particular alex savage floor in very little time, it makes sense to join in on a hunt that you'll be able to do repeatedly to get more overall.

It's like ok, ditch alex savage for a min get, 500 seals, or whatever, come back get savage clear for the week. The other option is not ditch savage, but get savage clear for the week.

Anyway, with hunts being an uncapped thing, this all looks like a priority checklist rather than a list of options. A system that encourages you to do everything rather than anything.

[SevenHeavens]

just move on and don't do them then

im personally going to hunt a lot

better than sitting around in empty Mist

[zosia]

Glad I don't need twines anymore. Hunts are the most ridiculous content in this game.

[Iagainsti]

Hunter X Hunter I & II LS Reborn!!!!

[Nalien]

to travel around the open world to look for them. that's the point of A and B Ranks.

Forced Pops are not hunts. might as well ask them to add a new level of Unhidden Maps that are much harder and drop the upgrade items.

Oh please, we both know that isn't how Hunts operate. Certainly not when they have the demand SE keeps giving them...

Perhaps a small group wanders around looking for them, but 99% of the people killing Hunts are waiting for shouts to go out, then running to the location to either melt the Hunt in 5 seconds and somehow get rewarded with some of the best gear for that, or they're running into the zone and b!tching about how someone pulled before they were ready...

Treasure Maps, now they have people travelling around the world looking for them...

hence my suggestion for A Rank Weekly and B Rank Daily Bills. how is that not better than Force Pops and still keep the general hunt system in place the way it's designed?

I... fail to see the relevance? Having daily B Rank Mark Bills and weekly A Rank Mark Bills doesn't really change anything... That's just "better" Mark Bills...

Obtaining Seals is not the issue, the issue is that Hunts are frankly terrible as is... I don't care if this is how SE designed it... SE designed 1.0 and look how that turned out... Please do tell me what is good about the current system, because right now the only time I've ever found Hunts to be remotely enjoyable is when nobody is doing them... Even then, tracking them down is just annoying, because there is no real means to track them down... They've never felt like I'm hunting them, they've felt like I've randomly found them... Either I randomly find them and the server calls in an orbital strike, or I get to enjoy them in a balanced manner because nobody cares about them anymore. Obviously the later is unlikely to happen come 3.1...

You know what would feel like hunting? Force pops. The Hunt NPCs could give you some fluff text, telling you where the Hunt was last sighted and what they were hunting, and that could tell you two things; What pop item you need, which could be obtained in a number of ways (open world trash or FATEs, for example), and where your current spawn location is for that Hunt. That feels more like hunting to me, you're preparing something to lure your target out, and you're given a clearly defined location to look for it in. That can also effectively act as an allowance, preventing you from spamming the same A Rank every day, for example. You could even go a step further, and have a "path", somewhat similar to Final Fantasy XIs Zeni NMs, where you do a specific B Rank in order to get the pop for a specific A Rank, and so on.

[SendohJin]

Treasure Maps, now they have people travelling around the world looking for them...

so stop asking them to change a system that's not a Force Pop into a Force Pop system and instead ask for more challenging content in the Force Pop system that already exists. there is no way they will spend the development cost to redesign hunts into a totally different system.

I... fail to see the relevance? Having daily B Rank Mark Bills and weekly A Rank Mark Bills doesn't really change anything... That's just "better" Mark Bills...

Mark Bills the way they've been implemented in 3.0 is good. it can be better. why don't you want "better" mark bills?

A Rank Weekly Mark bill means two things.
1) the entire server won't zerg them because there's no point in killing them if you don't have the bill
2) people who do have the weekly will group up to do them, probably in 4-8 man groups. as long as their seal reward is worth it and there are good things to buy like Twines and Coats of the highest tier.

Obtaining Seals is not the issue, the issue is that Hunts are frankly terrible as is... I don't care if this is how SE designed it...

they're not going to care about your high development cost request either so that evens out.

[Nalien]

why don't you want "better" mark bills?

It's not that I don't want them, it's that I don't care. Mark Bills are not the issue. Seals are not the issue. The issue is how ridiculous the community gets whenever Seals are worth something. The toxicity and general inability to do Hunts any way but the zergfest way is the issue. Changing Mark Bills doesn't really impact that at all.

A Rank Weekly Mark bill means two things.
1) the entire server won't zerg them because there's no point in killing them if you don't have the bill
2) people who do have the weekly will group up to do them, probably in 4-8 man groups. as long as their seal reward is worth it and there are good things to buy like Twines and Coats of the highest tier.

So you're suggesting doing the exact same thing to A Ranks that they did to B Ranks? So basically we either get more drama with A Ranks (I can picture Monday night, when people are frantically looking for their weekly A Rank before reset only for someone to have not waited...), or SE makes them instant spawn like they did with B Ranks, and S Ranks are kept exactly the same? Granted, that's an improvement over the current system, but I'd still not say it's ideal.

they're not going to care about your high development cost request either so that evens out.

Oh? I wasn't aware you spoke for the development team.

Is this all your argument is going to boil down too? Guess the entire forum should just shut up and cease to be, because absolutely every suggestion is going to have a development cost, no point making any when SE is apparently not interested in putting effort in to improve the game.

The whole point of suggestions, and thus these forums is to put forward a better alternative to generally improve the game. Force pops are more akin to actual hunting. They're much easier to balance, both the encounters and potential rewards. They have no real potential to cause drama. They let every player log on and enjoy the content how they want. On the flip side, currently Hunts are simply lazy. They're just random spawns. There is no real balance. They constantly cause drama whenever SE gives them significant rewards. The difference is black and white, if your only counter argument is "Well the developers would have to put effort in to implement that", then I would kindly ask that you go have a long hard think about what your subscription fee is meant to be paying for. Apathy is not a strong counter argument.

The guy in charge of making "hunts" needs to go play The Witcher 3.

Now there was a game where you actually hunted, and enjoyed the process.

Yep, although that probably would be an absolutely massive undertaking, since each hunt there was practically its own story. Can't imagine SE coming close to that any time soon...

I'd settle for something on the scale of XIs ZNMs. Shouldn't actually be too difficult to implement... Several pop items, add various ways to obtain them... Most of the work is already done, considering the NMs themselves already exist... Certainly can't see it being something with a "high" development cost, unless XIV is being staffed by only five people or something...

[SendohJin]

or SE makes them instant spawn like they did with B Ranks, and S Ranks are kept exactly the same? Granted, that's an improvement over the current system, but I'd still not say it's ideal.

yes, and it's an improvement over the current system that's a large benefit with very little work.

Oh? I wasn't aware you spoke for the development team.

Is this all your argument is going to boil down too? Guess the entire forum should just shut up and cease to be, because absolutely every suggestion is going to have a development cost, no point making any when SE is apparently not interested in putting effort in to improve the game.

the world isn't 1s and 0s. everything has a development cost but some things cost more than others. and some suggestions have greater benefit than others.

it's one thing to suggest
- add Twines and Coats to be purchased by Wolf Marks so that more people PVP (this is reasonable, the PVP content is already there, the items are already there, you just add an item to a menu, and a large playerbase that hasn't touched a section of content will be tempted to try it)
and another to suggest
- add new levels of Alexander every patch so that the game has more content (of course we want more content, but this is unreasonable, the dev cost is too high).

there's no reason to shutdown the forums if more people give sensible suggestions. when people give ridiculous suggestions, they should be told they are being ridiculous.

can you really not see my suggestion is a lot less work than yours? trying to get "the ideal" is not worth it, if it takes too much time. most of the times you try to get good enough.

Apathy is not a strong counter argument.

i'm not apathetic at all, i just curtail my expectations. when i ask for Red Mage to be added in the next expansion, i think of how it fits in the current game, i don't ask for them to design a new Support Role which the game doesn't have and i don't ask for them to add in a job that can be super overpowered that switch to all 3 roles like i've seen other people do. being realistic isn't being apathetic.

[Nalien]

- add new levels of Alexander every patch so that the game has more content (of course we want more content, but this is unreasonable, the dev cost is too high).

You're not really comparing adding force pops to Alexander, are you? The development cost that would go into taking existing assets and restructuring them in a way that is more convenient and enjoyable to the player is no where near the cost of producing entirely new maps and bosses for Alexander... Taking existing Hunts and just adjusting them to completely remove server drama, and effectively let people just log on and work towards a S Rank, should by no means be considered a massive undertaking... I'd imagine more work went into Lord of Verminion, than would potentially go into adjusting Hunts so they're not terrible... Even new dungeons require more effort...

can you really not see my suggestion is a lot less work than yours? trying to get "the ideal" is not worth it, if it takes too much time. most of the times you try to get good enough.

I have no problem with your suggestion, I just don't think it entirely solves the problem... I also don't really get what you think would be so difficult about making force pops... Your initial argument was that force pops defeats the purpose of Hunts, now you're saying force pops would have some massive development cost... I completely disagree with both of those arguments for reasons I've stated... Hunts should be content first and foremost, and everyone should get to enjoy them how they want. World spawns mean you will miss spawns, and you're potentially at the whim of the server. Force pops means you can work towards spawns at your own pace. The purpose of Hunts was just to be "endgame" level open world content, and force spawns retain that purpose. Development cost? Making the encounters is the main hurdle there, and it's already been done, the Hunts already exist... It's just a matter of changing how they're encountered to better suit multiple types of players... It isn't something which should requires a lot of resources...

One way to make the world hunts stay relevant would be that you can only do so many 'personal' hunts per day/week (costs x amount of allowance). This way there would be x turns of Force Pop hunts, while for the rest of the time there would be world hunts. Which you would have to wait for them to pop, like it's now.

Provided they strike the right balance, yeah. Other than Mark Bills just simply being lame, the main problem with them was how pathetic the rewards were in comparison to following the swarm for A Ranks...

Another thing to perhaps consider is drops... Hunts were meant to be XIVs answer to XI style NMs, but they missed the most important aspect; actual drops. Why? Because they were world spawns that the entire server could get credit for... Shift towards a more structured design for Hunts and there is potential for some actual drops to be involved... Proof? The Diadem... OK the drops are random aetherial stuff, but it's a step in the right direction IMO. Why is that possible? Because the Diadem isn't just some open world zone with random spawns, it's an actual structured event.

That's perhaps what Hunts is lacking, structure. Heck, XI didn't even have NMs like this... Sure, some NM were on timed spawns, but most of the ones I remember were force popped... Heck, eventually SE even realized how terrible timed spawns were, and started offering different means to get the rewards... Granted, Hunts are only worth it for the upgrade items these days, not really a lot of diversity in their use... Kind of a shame actually, as much as I hated 2.#s Hunts, at least it had plenty of rewards to offer... Why not throw some Temple Knight themed gear in for the new seals?