Proposed Hunt Fix

[Jacosta]

I think the rewards are fine and should stay where they are. However, I DO think that the difficulty of mob should be increased with the number of players killing it. ARR A-ranks are too easy to kill now when you have 40 or so people killing it. Last night, I was able to get in one shot only on most A ranks...some I didnt get any bc they died too fast.

[Whiteroom]

Hunt fix: put a mute on shout and say for 2 minutes after the hunt dies.

[Normalizer]

Just put a super stoneskin or reduce dmg taken buff on the hunt that ensure they can survive at least 5 mins after taken the first hit :P

[Brian_]

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.

The thing you described already exists. It's called treasure maps.

[actualcactus]

I've been pretty invested in scouting and hunting for a while, and I have to say that some of your ideas just wouldn't work out the way you may be intending them. If anything, they would severely harm the current positives in hunting, which to me personally is the encouragement of splitting the profits to as many people as possible, relaying coords, and promoting some level of community involvement (assuming people wait for others to arrive before pulling, which does happen sometimes!).

Dividing the reward would just mean even /more/ salt than we already have to occasionally deal with, as it would turn hunts into a selfish game of who can snipe the fastest. If the reward were split between groups, of course no one would want to share it. I know I wouldn't - to hell with sharing coordinates with anyone outside my own Linkshell or party in that case! It would absolutely wreck any semblance of community in hunting, and just make people hate each other.

The number and spawn rate of hunts seems fine to me as-is - in fact A ranks are extremely plentiful, especially if you're part of the groups who actively go out looking for them. There are almost always zones with active hunt marks to find, unless our group has been pretty successful in chain-hunting all the ARR A ranks at once, like after a maintenance period.

If anything, I think that hunts should be scaled in a way similar to FATE bosses - with higher HP and damage output relative to the number of people fighting it/number of people in the zone. At the moment, they are a pretty decent challenge for 2 people + chocobos (which happened often pre-relic/centurio logs), but when you have 50+ zerging down poor Bailarina, it's almost laughable just how quickly the hunt dies without anyone even lifting a finger. I don't think it would be a bad idea to give them a buff in that regard, especially since 98% of the people hunting will be at the new level cap and easily able to curb-stomp hunts, making it tougher for many others to make it there on time once it's been pulled.

[Kaurie]

I've been pretty invested in scouting and hunting for a while, and I have to say that some of your ideas just wouldn't work out the way you may be intending them. If anything, they would severely harm the current positives in hunting, which to me personally is the encouragement of splitting the profits to as many people as possible, relaying coords, and promoting some level of community involvement (assuming people wait for others to arrive before pulling, which does happen sometimes!).

Dividing the reward would just mean even /more/ salt than we already have to occasionally deal with, as it would turn hunts into a selfish game of who can snipe the fastest. If the reward were split between groups, of course no one would want to share it. I know I wouldn't - to hell with sharing coordinates with anyone outside my own Linkshell or party in that case! It would absolutely wreck any semblance of community in hunting, and just make people hate each other.

The number and spawn rate of hunts seems fine to me as-is - in fact A ranks are extremely plentiful, especially if you're part of the groups who actively go out looking for them. There are almost always zones with active hunt marks to find, unless our group has been pretty successful in chain-hunting all the ARR A ranks at once, like after a maintenance period.

If anything, I think that hunts should be scaled in a way similar to FATE bosses - with higher HP and damage output relative to the number of people fighting it/number of people in the zone. At the moment, they are a pretty decent challenge for 2 people + chocobos (which happened often pre-relic/centurio logs), but when you have 50+ zerging down poor Bailarina, it's almost laughable just how quickly the hunt dies without anyone even lifting a finger. I don't think it would be a bad idea to give them a buff in that regard, especially since 98% of the people hunting will be at the new level cap and easily able to curb-stomp hunts, making it tougher for many others to make it there on time once it's been pulled.

I think you may misunderstand my post. They are not separate ideas, but 1 idea that requires several things to work. I would not do step 1 without the other steps, or it would turn out quite poorly as you suggested. I feel that if fully implemented it would work out well. You would just focus on finding your own hunt, if someone got a hunt first you'd just move on to find the next. There would be enough hunts and or spawns that missing a hunt wouldn't be a problem.

This isn't the only solution, but it's the best I can think of. I'll clearly outline what I think the "problem" is below:

1. Very few to any one actually searches for hunts and only teleport in for the kill - this removes a large part of what a 'hunt' is to me.
2. Hunt fights are not challenging at all, and are often made up of spamming as many skills as you can. I know it was common as WHM to just spam aoe heals, even when no one was hurt. This doesn't promote good gameplay.
3. Because Hunts are not commonly found, and because people rarely search for them, everyone feels entitled to the kill and reward when it's reported. This leads to a lot of people complaining and shouting angrily over things such as 'early pulls'

The community around hunts is not that great. I personally love it and it's great when I can find some people that do, but the vast majority of it sucks. During hunting prime time today people were constantly early pulling, as a Hunter I had 0 problem getting to every pull, but I called out that we should wait a few seconds so people can arrive. I was vastly outnumbered by the people present that it's "hunt prime time yo" and other people can just suck it. It's not really promoting the great community that your implying.

Further to this, nearly every one I know in game that hunts doesn't actually like it. Most have out-right said how much they dislike hunts. They simply do it as the easiest and fastest reward. Again, I am not saying no one likes it (I do), it just seems more rare. This seems like a big problem to me.

For your suggestion on scaling, I am not against this idea entirely. However, I have seen it in Guild Wars 2 and it worked horribly. I'd like to see it done better here.