Request to address A rank hunt mob culling

[Kazgrel]

For those of us who enjoy the Hunt, we've started running into an issue when it comes to the A rank hunts. These mobs have a tendency to simply disappear from sight whenever a set amount of players/objects are in vicinity of them. This in turn makes it difficult for players to receive credit for defeating the mobs since they aren't able to attack them.

Players have taken to the following to help as much as they can, but it's still not enough in some cases:

- Playing tank jobs and spamming as many enmity combos/abilities as possible
- Playing healer jobs, tagging the mob with a dot (at least 1 attack of some sort) then spamming AoE heals on their party to generate max enmity they can
- Dismissing minions and chocobos (although one cannot control other players, so there's a limit to that idea)

It can be hand-waved as a player-made problem, yes; it stems from the "hunt train" that (in my experience) developed over the course of Stormblood, since early on, the A ranks in SB areas were fairly durable/tough. Said "hunt trains" have continued up to this day, and with the advent of World Visit and being able to go to multiple servers for such trains, it's resulted in the aforementioned culling issue becoming more and more prevalent.

"Well A ranks weren't designed with 100+ people in mind"

Perhaps, but that's the sort of madness that goes on daily now. There's no written rule forbidding players from amassing in a pile as they have and frolicking through the zones to murderize all those hunts.

The only simple "solution" I have would be to grant the mobs culling similar to that of S rank hunts and Eureka NMs, but this lends itself to other potential problems.

I'm just pondering a way to help alleviate a lot of frustration for many folks. Thoughts/suggestions welcome!

[Eldre]

Another issue that has arisen from the 'disappearing' of the A rank is someone flying toward the A rank, not seeing where the mob is (as it hasn't loaded in yet), and face-pulling the mob because they walked into it, thus gaining its aggro, all because the game didn't load it in in time for them to see said mob to avoid it.

[Shougun]

I think the first step would be uh.. just making it so more things can appear on the screen / monster prioritization lol. Obviously easier said than done though (both client and server side things to consider). I mean that if it was so easy "just make the monsters appear first".. they'd have already done it (and in fact we've had them attempt to fix this a few times), so I don't think (for them) that it might be so simple.

But on the many train issues.. Something I was considering compiling into another thread.. (theme on open world), but.. I've been thinking after reading all the "early pull" vs wait for the "community to overload the map" posts that perhaps we can fell some of those issues in a system like:

When an A or S rank dies they collapse to the ground in a large heap (corpse). These corpse will last for a certain amount of time till they pass, or are interacted with (some % amount of time they decay before respawn is up).

Now when you kill a hunt live you will gain one extra roll chance, that roll can be for either items, tomes, or seals. This bonus roll may have a slightly modified loot table for balance like you get 40 Mendacity and the bonus roll went tomes which then nets you a bonus 20 Mendacity, but still it's something note worthy. Then the monster will fall to the ground on your screen and fancily fade away like a classic FF boss (pyrefly like effect).

IF you didn't get to be part of the fight, didn't get credit that is or weren't there, the boss collapses to the ground when killed and stays there. This includes people who weren't in the zone when the monster died. When you approach the corpse it will give you some immersive sort of dialog that gives you a hint at how long ago it died and will allow you to use your Echo power to attempt to generate a "like" fight (you may also optionally clean it up, from your client side, just in case it is blocking a quest objective or something). These fights will shatter with the classic FF transition (or screen swirl) and you'll be in an arena of some sort (like a BCNM from FFXI), where you will fight and be rewarded according to the monster strength. The monster will decay in three tiers (thirds), each one equally split in time, each tier will take away one roll reward (first stage all rolls remain except the fresh bonus mini roll, second stage items no longer drop, last stage only seals drop and not tomes). The monster will also become weaker at each step. These tiers can also be part of the immersive tip at how old the body is, like lets say since Rank A take about 4 to 6 hours to respawn the body will decay fully an hour at least before respawn. So if it says the remains are fresh then you know it's in the first third of the ~4-5 hour decay period, while the most decayed form (last third) would be about an hour or less until gone (and then about another hour or so till respawn). After fighting the remains in an echo fight they will disappear (or at least you can't spam fight them).

The strength of an echo fought NM will be lesser than in the open even at the first tier, and you may opt for weaker forms even when it's still a fresh body. So you can get the normal 3 rolls for a while after death, and it'll take about a 4 person party not being silly but not as hard as it would be in the open (or a very skilled over geared player, and probably only certain jobs with strong self sustain). While the most decayed variant that only drops seals (which you can opt for even if still fresh) could be solo'd on any job, so long as you actually press your buttons and not eat all the orange. Achievements would bet set to require fresh or alive (to not make it too cheesy to get).

If you've already killed the NM alive and someone in you party comes in late to the zone / joins late they can still start the BCNM (personal fight) but the player who earned the fresh reward will get rolls for the lower tier seals and tomes only (so poetics and allied seals instead). If they normally drop poetics and allied seals then they drop GC instead. Such that it's not a waste of your time to stick around and help out stragglers even though you got in fast and got the credit. Or consider any other reward, perhaps free teleports for the next 15 to 30 minutes or some other blessing/buff.

This could mean a lot for people who have slower machines and can't get into zones fast enough or can't handle too many players up at once, those that feel stressed that it's just not worth their time until they spend real money to upgrade (I think these issues exacerbate on larger servers, I hear on small servers it's not as bad sometimes). This also means that while you might lose out on an extra small roll (which is quite nice) you didn't miss out on the majority if still on good time, so people who pull early are fine to do so. There WILL still be people complaining about early pulls but I believe with a system like this that the community at large would feel it's not an issue anymore and the community fights would be a lot shorter and more one sided.

This system also allows players to sort of recreate the kill times on hunts and begin to actively hunt them, so hiding the info in a super active group is not as much of a thing anymore (sometimes a group silently kills the whole list and then no one knows if they're up soon or not). There will still be some vagueness though, like if the corpse decays you can guess it'll respawn in about an hour or two tops for A ranks but for S ranks it'd probably be two to six hours. Not sure about the special FATE NMs... perhaps they don't get included in this system, or they decay in 30 minutes to an hour after death even though they have very long respawns (not sure about them).

Beyond, I think, killing a lot of the momentum / salt mines of early pulls vs waiting for way too many people (that some don't get credit because too many), and beyond lower expansion NMs being mowed down before people who could use that content can play them, or small servers being hit by waves of big server groups (server hoping).., beyond that I also think the system could be neat because these epic monsters leave a footprint in the game world. You can be a new person to the game and come upon this great corpse and just wonder.. what.. what happened here? Then you touch it.. and it beckons you to a challenging fight (assuming new person in lower gear). I believe that might be interesting.

Could do some other goofy things with the corpses like a relic / monster hunter weapon / armor quest or new trophy system (approach the beast with appropriate tool (maybe even have DoL do something to it lol) and bring home raw material that a crafter can turn into something nice to put up).

[hynaku]

I have pc that's very old and A and S rank load up just fine for me. I have very slow internet with high ping to. Think most they fly into them is done on purpose. Last time did hunt train same guy did it 4 times in a row. flew low and right in front of it.

[Jeeqbit]

Is object loading set to maximum in your settings? There is still a hard cap on object loading but it will help you reach that cap before anything disappears.

The other thing you can do is get as close as you can to where you think the hunt is and it will usually keep the objects closest to you loaded.

Once it's loaded, you could try making it your focus target so the game has a harder time unloading it. I'm not sure if that helps but it's something to try.

[KageTokage]

I'm not sure why they can't just make the occlusion culling prioritize rendering hostile NPCs over anything else.

[Rongway]

I'm not sure why they can't just make the occlusion culling prioritize rendering hostile NPCs over anything else.

This, though. Our display priorities are completely wrong. Regardless of distance, the render priorities should be hostiles, party members, and the mob's current target. Everyone else should be a lower priority.

[Barraind]

Display priority for everything should be:

You
Special Enemy
Normal enemies
Your Party
People



Chocobos






minions

[Reimmi]

A simple fix is to make it so enemies have priority over players in the object limit
Makes sense, right?

[vaultie]

I'm no stranger to rendering issues and the resulting early pulls + arguements that spring up in shout chat, even before CW was implemented. Most of the time I load in and make it to hunts fine- I actually play on a laptop with very low settings, averaging 17fps and a notable wait time. I've attempted to resolve it on my own end by limiting rendering, and it works most of the time, but there is still the issue of the system prioritizing other players/chocobos/minions before the hunt mark itself.

I want to believe hunting has risen more issues lately not purely because of CW, but just the fact we are at the very end of the expansion and have a content lull. More players are turning to hunts to spend their time, which brings the issue of bigger trains. The more people, the more prone to accidents trains become. Despite efforts to control mob mentality and doing what we can to aleviate rendering issues, not everyone will listen- And we can't force them to listen. While I want to say most of whats been happening are unfortunate accidents, there are definitely some taking advantage of the confusion to purposefuly pull early. Again, not much we can do, witch hunts and reports don't work do much for a persisting problem like this.

While I would very much like to see the rendering issues actually addressed and adjusted, my advice for hunters at this time is to simply do what you can to help and not start drama if you miss hunts. As aggrivating as it is to miss tagging an S Rank by only a few seconds, it is what it is. If people care enough to make callouts in shout chat, they should also care enough to be trying to help spawn and being able to drop whatever it is they're doing the moment a hunt is relayed, as well as being ready to tag if the hunt is pulled early and shows no signs of a reset. And if they DO do all of those things and still miss it, its best just to move on.