Suggestion: S Rank Scaling System

[Royeaux]

With the addition of the mounting scrolls to the Allied Seals Vendor and the Centurio Tiger mount to the 3000A/2000S achievements, S hunts have become more popular than ever.

This has exposed a glaring issue that is: ARR and HW S marks are too squishy and can be killed in seconds since most hunters are at level 70. The result of this is that early and solo pulling are easily performed.

It is frustrating to see an S mark dying in seconds right as you are rushing towards it to tag it.

As such, I'd like to propose that ARR and HW S marks are put into an invisible FATE zone to scale players down. This makes it such that the S marks will not be killed in seconds, and will allow all players close to and/or above level 50 to be able to participate equally.

While scaling the marks to level 70 is another possible solution, it makes it unfair for the lower level players as they might not be able to tag the mark at all due to accuracy issues or get one-shotted.

Benefits of S Mark Scaling:

1) Early pulling will be less detrimental because the S marks will take some time to be killed

2) Solo pulling will not be worth the time, allowing more players to come together to kill the S mark

3) ARR and HW S marks will be much more engaging and fun to kill, since as it is right now, it's just a burn fest as opposed to the SB S marks, where you actually need to pay attention to AOEs and telegraphs

Thank you very much for the time taken to read and consider my suggestion to make S marks hunts more enjoyable.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

You might be interested in this thread.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...t-difficulties

And you managed to consider an area I didn't: ARR S ranks. I was only thinking of expansion latest hunts so I missed the scenario of extreme disproportion in power.

[ExKage]

If they can't scale the ARR S ranks, they could at least add some way to convert Centurio Seals to Allied Seals.

[Royeaux]

@ExKage

The main reason to why I suggested making some changes to the S marks is because of the addition of the Centurio Tiger mount to the 3000 A mark and 2000 S mark achievements. 2000 S marks is a huge number and the long respawn timers of S marks make it already difficult enough to attain it.

With early pulls and S marks melting from 100 to 0 in seconds, it makes the achievement that much harder and discouraging to attempt.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

As such, I'd like to propose that ARR and HW S marks are scaled by a FATE zone for the ARR and HW S marks to scale players down.

How would this work? Correct me if I'm wrong. The S rank will be inside an invisible FATE zone (not put on maps) and we need to sync down for it? I'm all for that.

[Royeaux]

How would this work? Correct me if I'm wrong. The S rank will be inside an invisible FATE zone (not put on maps) and we need to sync down for it? I'm all for that.

Yes, that is the idea

[ElHeggunte]

3) S marks will be much more engaging and fun to kill

There is absolutely nothing engaging or fun about hitting a mountain of HP.

[Royeaux]

@ElHeggunte

Absolutely, I agree, there's absolutely no fun in killing meatbags. But allow me to bring your attention to the current SB S marks such as Salt & Light and Bone Crawler. They are actually engaging to fight because their attacks actually do something and you need to be on your toes or you will die.

Compare this to the ARR S marks where everybody is just standing in AOEs because they barely scratch them and the marks themselves are dying in 10s, that's not very engaging and fun either.

[Kuwaitum]

I am with re-scaling the S ranks in ARR & HW both, with all players ultimately reaching Lv.70. I won't be specific and trust the developers to come with a solution for this soon enough.
I do believe S ranks which takes +60 hours to respawn -and not to mention triggered- should deserve more than a 30-90 seconds fight!!

There is absolutely nothing engaging or fun about hitting a mountain of HP.

As if there is FUN killing an S rank Hunt in 20 seconds! I can't see that facetanking with your mighty iLevel raises any Adrenaline.

Also, where is the fun in killing a mob (S rank Lv.50) that does 'no damage' to you (Lv.70 i340)?! Unless you felt superior when you were Lv.25 and killwd Lv.3 Ladybugs outside Limsa Lominsa in 10 secs?

Not to mention, if some players really like killing those easy-to-kill-now S ranks fast before others get by. I think they have some personality/social problems feeding from trolling (I feel sad for them).

[ElHeggunte]

As if there is FUN killing an S rank Hunt in 20 seconds! I can't see that facetanking with your mighty iLevel raises any Adrenaline.

I never said it was? All I'm saying is simply juicing a Hunt's HP and/or damage while leaving them otherwise mechanically unchanged is the antithesis of fun. That's called fake difficulty and is something developers should avoid doing. That's exactly what SE did for overworld mobs at the start of HW and people hated it.

This is simply a case where old content shouldn't continually be shoehorned into relevance, especially not with a short-term solution like cramming Hunts into FATEs. It may work for now, but when players once again run out of carrots on sticks to chase and stop caring about Hunts it's just going to wind up making it harder to low-man or solo the Hunts later on.

It's already hard enough to get people to show up to SB A and S-ranks and that's without making them require a small army to kill.

I don't even bother to call ARR A-ranks anymore because no one ever shows up for them when I do. I call and wait or call and then go off to do what I was in the area for in the first place, only to come back ~10 minutes later to find the Hunt still sitting there wondering if I ignored him because he did something to offend me. So now I usually just kill them when I see them. The same thing is starting to happen with SB A-ranks, too though I still see the occasional announcement for those.

So the only thing forcing them into FATEs is bound to do is cause them to go to waste eventually because then they'd be impossible to solo, but you wouldn't be able to gather enough people for them either. Just like how no one really ever bothers with Odin or Behemoth anymore. Their FATEs used to crash severs and now the people who show up to them wouldn't even pack a LeBaron.

Also, where is the fun in killing a mob (S rank Lv.50) that does 'no damage' to you (Lv.70 i340)?! Unless you felt superior when you were Lv.25 and killwd Lv.3 Ladybugs outside Limsa Lominsa in 10 secs?

Again, I never said anything of the sort. You're reading a lot into a very clear, very specific 13-word sentence that I wrote in response to a very specific point made by the OP (that they've since edited for clarity).

Crazy concept, but it's possible that I find that neither scenario is fun. It's just far less fun hitting a mob that still poses very little threat to you except now it has 10x the HP it used to so it takes you 15 minutes to kill it. Putting them into FATEs and thus making them take longer to kill might help more people earn kill credit, but we're fooling ourselves if we think that'll make the Hunts any more "fun" than they are now.