Proposed Hunt Fix

[aesteval]

Two or three weeks ago you could stand there and yell the location of a hunt and no one would be interested so you took on an A rank with a tank, a healer, and chocobos. You could start a party finder group and maybe get someone to join eventually.

Now? If you're not staring at the mob when the call goes out you're too late to participate. Too many people in too much of a rush to zerg because of relic.

[LaylaTsarra]

I belong to a hunt linkshell that specializes in spawning S ranks. To be honest I was starting to feel really bad for the spawners (and some are pretty difficult to spawn) when it was getting difficult to get a full party together to take them down. The rewards and relic have changed that to say the least.

Perhaps a concept like the OP is after would work pretty well in something like diadem. As it is now if your party doesn't do enough damage they don't get a chest. It might also prevent the mass zerging that takes place there. Diadem could have been a lot more than it is now and I thought the idea of higher difficulty hunts/mobs was the purpose of that duty to begin with. I know I didn't envision having an environment where 5 parties sat in one spot and did nothing but kill the same hunts.

[Darkstride]

Hunts are one of the few areas of the game that actually promote teamwork between groups and across the server. I don't think that changing the rewards to punish "sharing" the hunt would be a positive change.

I think the issue is that too many players play victim and and simply can't just accept hunts for what they are. If a hunt spawns and exists to target, then anyone who is able to kill it has a right to do so. No one has a specific claim to it. If you found it and didn't engage it, then you take the chance that someone else might. It is often a courtesy to call it out and allow some people to gather and share in the rewards. However, that courtesy has been twisted into an expectation and there is nearly always someone who will cry out "early pull" even if they showed up 10 minutes after the mob spawned.

Again I think this provides a good opportunity for region or server-wide teamwork, but in my experience the toxicity doesn't come as much from "early pullers" as it does from the countless victims who didn't make it in time - even though they may not have even been hunting in the first place. People should be happy that they hunt was shared at all, not upset because they weren't there for it.

No one will ever be 100% satisfied, unfortunately. I think Hunts work fine as is. The traffic fluctuates with the need for rewards. When the game introduces a need for seals or tomes (like relic), you'll see an increased flow of players.

[RiceisNice]

I'd like for them to stop using 2.x hunts be the best way to gain gear in current, 3.x content. Honestly, it's baffling that it rewarded centaruo seals at the release for 3.0 for law upgrades, and now making allied seals as a way to purchase the unID'd items for the current relic (while 3.x hunts do not reward allied seals, and centaruo seals cannot be used to purchase these items. And funny enough, 2.x hunts reward both these seals)

Hunts are one of the few areas of the game that actually promote teamwork between groups and across the server. I don't think that changing the rewards to punish "sharing" the hunt would be a positive change.

If the hunt was designed to be killed with a light party in 2.0, then the intent was not to encourage the server working together, that's just a by product.

but in my experience the toxicity doesn't come as much from "early pullers" as it does from the countless victims who didn't make it in time

It goes both ways. You should see some of the people in my server who will leech off calls, pull on their own, and straight up not make their own calls and solo claim it for themselves, esp the 2.0 hunts (combined with my perspective about them at the very time)

[Reinha]

I would like an improvement that promotes the "hunting" part.

1) Only give credit to the group that tagged the mob.
2) Allow an alliance of 24 to get credit on A and S ranks.
3) Tune A for 6-8 people and S to 12-16 people.
4) Increase spawn points A LOT. 50 per area should ensure that no one can camp a spot.
5) Reduce the time for respawn by 50%-70%.
6) Disable anyone without tag from being able to get aggro, do damage to the boss or take damage from the boss. This will prevent abuse.

These changes would encourage joining hunt groups and exploration. It would also make hunts a bit more challenging because the whole server doesn't run to your aid. It would also eliminate early pullers because anyone pulling with too few people will just wipe and reset the boss, allowing a better prepared group to get credit.

[Pence]

I don't think you thought this thread through. Edit and try again. Because it's all a bit......weird. It's weird. Your suggestions are weird and bad.

[Kaurie]

I don't think you thought this thread through. Edit and try again. Because it's all a bit......weird. It's weird. Your suggestions are weird and bad.

Care to actually provide something of substance with a little bit less unnecessarily insulting?

I think the issue is that too many players play victim and and simply can't just accept hunts for what they are. If a hunt spawns and exists to target, then anyone who is able to kill it has a right to do so. No one has a specific claim to it. If you found it and didn't engage it, then you take the chance that someone else might. It is often a courtesy to call it out and allow some people to gather and share in the rewards. However, that courtesy has been twisted into an expectation and there is nearly always someone who will cry out "early pull" even if they showed up 10 minutes after the mob spawned.

This may be happening, but I don't really see it. I do see people cry about 'early pulls', but there is no real definition of an early pull. I mean I may find something, spread it to my LS's wait 10 minutes, then it gets pulled and died and someone will still say it was an early pull. Because, in their eyes, it was pulled very shortly after they found out about it.

Again I think this provides a good opportunity for region or server-wide teamwork, but in my experience the toxicity doesn't come as much from "early pullers" as it does from the countless victims who didn't make it in time - even though they may not have even been hunting in the first place. People should be happy that they hunt was shared at all, not upset because they weren't there for it.

I think you and I like the same thing about hunts. I love the teamwork and the social atmosphere. I have a lot of fun going out and exploring, searching for the hunts. I just don't like the actual fight itself. There is no team work. People just spam a few skills to ensure they get credit without any realization of what the mechanics are. I've done countless hunts, and I don't know barely any of the mechanics. I only recently found out that Stolas actually causes people to sleep - because for the first few months that I did hunts, he died in less than 13 seconds.

No one will ever be 100% satisfied, unfortunately. I think Hunts work fine as is. The traffic fluctuates with the need for rewards. When the game introduces a need for seals or tomes (like relic), you'll see an increased flow of players.

I guess you are right, no one will ever be satisified. I had the understanding that most people felt hunts were faceroll, broken and poorly implemented (from feedback on the forums), and that they were boring and grindy from my friends in game.

The purpose of my 'fix' is to create a situation where you create a party and actually go and find the hunt yourself, and then kill it yourself with some degree of challenge. Rather than idle in Idyllshire, wait for linkshell to call it out, teleport in, maybe get kill, maybe cry about early pull, go back and idle in Idyllshire.

[Nalien]

I still maintain that the best fix for Hunts (and similarly Diadem) is to just add bleedin' force popped versions with the same claiming system Levequests/Treasure Maps utilize.

Add a hierarchy to things, similar to the current B > A > S Rank we have, but not as basic. So you purchase a pop item for forcing the first tier, that has a chance to drop the pop item for the next tier and so on... Have the pop locations be somewhat randomized, though for the love of god have some means of tracking them... I want to feel like I'm hunting something, not aimlessly flying around a zone looking for something... The whole thing could easily work like a Levequest to be honest, and it would be nice to have an "endgame" use for that Leve Allowance... You pick up a special Leve to hunt, I don't know, Bune. You go to the zone, activate it, start tracking him in an actual structured manner (which would take effort on the developers side to implement such a basic thing, so RIP this suggestion), hopefully get a drop which lets you do the same thing for Gandarewa, which does the same thing for some new Hunt mob, and so on until you spawn Pandemonium Warden (in case it wasn't obvious where this idea is coming from). Work the Leve similar to Temple Leves (the ones that cost 10 for no reason) and perhaps add a small seal cost, which would allow Mark Bills/Zerg fest A/S ranks to still maintain a purpose.

Same seal drops, could perhaps throw in some crappy gear to trade in, similar to Diadem (the whole system I've just detailed, in Diadem, would be infinitely more interesting as well, since I imagine the pop items wouldn't carry with you when you leave... So you have a race to reach the top of that pyramid of NMs, can even give gathering some import in the event by having them gather pop items...), but rather than an open world zergfest, you have an actual event. With structure. One where an encounter with Bune might actually be fun, rather than a pathetic zerg fest. One where the process of finding the target might actually feel like a hunt, rather than the server calling in an orbital strike...

Either way, options are always nice. I'd like the option to kill a Hunt mob with friends, rather than having to wait for the entire server to trivialize the encounter... You know, without all that "early pull" drama crap... Not going to happen though, because SE seemingly never intended for Hunts to be anything more than a highly flammable version of FATEs, why the keep adding fuel to the fire by keeping Hunts relevant I'll never know... Hunts work perfectly fine when they're worthless and exist only for a few glamour pieces (although 3.0s can't even deliver that for some reason... Imagine sets of Temple Knight Elite gear... Why do you have to keep disappointing me, Yoshida?), moment everyone and their grandmas cat "needs" Hunt Seals, we just get a colossal sh*t storm which I struggle to believe anyone actually finds fun (although I guess zerg rush was made efamous for a reason). It's a lazy piece of trash content that should either see a significant revamp, or just go forgotten at this point.

[Sylve]

I kinda want them to leave the Hunts as is, but add in a new kind of Hunt, where a Light or Full Party could accept a Hunt Quest and then have to, as a group, go out into the world and track it down using indicators in the world, like footprints or dead prey animals etc.
Set it up so its all randomly generated and only the Party on the 'Quest' can interact with it, kind of like a worldwide Leve. Maybe even randomly generate the name of the Target, give us random special skills from Dungeon bosses/mobs etc so its different every time.
Repeatable with no limit, but a reward in Poetics/Seals etc suitably scaled to the difficulty of the Target.

The current Hunt system would just be a thing you can partake in if it happens near you, but give us some actual Hunts where we need to track down the Target.

[MihaelB]

Hunts are fine now, if anything they need to increase the HP of the hunt or scale it to the number of hunters, especially A ranks because they die way too fast. Hunts have exploded on my server with so many doing them because of relic.

Agree they should so do this, make the Hunt's HP increase per person present within it's zone like a fate zone radius.