Hunts bring down this game.

[Jojoya]

There are always A-Ranks walking about. Are they truly hunted only once per day?

I recently decided to shout the location of an A-Rank in Il-Mheg. A few people showed up and we asked around in our linkshells if anyone else would like to participate. As we waited, people started to drop off and leave without saying anything. I figured that they lost interest and just continued to do my daily hunts in the area. A few moments later, people started shouting at me to leave the A-Ranks alone and telling me that it's poachers like me that ruin the game experience and that every hunt linkshell was going to do something about it with me. I had no clue what they were talking about until I realized they meant the A-Rank.

I had not done A-Ranks since Storm Blood and it was common then to shout out those A-Ranks when you saw them. It gave people during any time of play to participate. The monsters respawned quick enough that they could be hunted at all times of the day. I later learned from some of my friends that these days, it was frowned upon to do hunts outside of hunt trains. I've done at most 2 A-Ranks in the Shadowbringer zone and 1 in the new Endwalker zones. I find this to be such a shame because the hunt trains only happen during the hours of the day convenient to some of the player base. I've resigned this to be game content that I just won't have access to.

Free hunting is fine. No player has the right to stop you from killing a hunt if you want to. You are not a poacher. Report anyone calling you a poacher (or making other derogatory comments) for harassment.

Trains are running infrequently enough right now that there's no reason for anyone to complain about free hunting. No one from Diabolos has relayed any trains to the data center hunt discord in the last 4 days (and the last couple before that were Endwalker only) so I can't tell if they haven't run one at all or if they're only relaying locally. It's not a big deal if a train only has 10 or 11 instead of all 12. Better that the hunts get killed as found (the way SE has intended it) than for them to be ignored expecting someone else to start a train just to have them despawn so no one benefits at all.

You may want to consider organizing trains yourself. We don't have enough players willing to conduct to keep trains running as frequently as they can be. Most of the conductors in the community are friendly and happy to give tips/advice.

One thing I will add is that if people did show up for the rank A you found then left, you were probably waiting too long to pull. No one is going to wait 10-15 minutes for a single rank A when most of a train could be run in the same amount of time. Once you have a couple of people present, go ahead and pull. Shadowbringers Rank As won't die so fast that others arriving late will miss out (unless they're arriving very late) and they can be solo'd by the right jobs.