FFXIV A-Ranks / Hunts / etc

[Jojoya]

I've been scouting and conducting on Coeurl for a couple of years now. Here's how trains tend to work, at least on the Crystal data center.

I don't control trains, I guide them. I've got no way of knowing what several dozen independent-minded players are going to choose to do. I can give a pull time for the first mark when the train is still gathering and players will generally honor it. After that, someone will pull on landing regardless of any pull time I shout so I don't bother. Everyone wants the train completed as fast as possible so they can go back to doing other things. The best I can do is wait for the dead to get a Raise then tell the train where to go next.

It's unrealistic to expect a train to keep stopping to wait for some random player who thinks their time is more valuable than that of everyone else in the train. It's not. If you want to be part of the kill, get there now not 5 minutes later. Miss a kill? Oh well. You can always join the train for the rest.

Unless it's a bullet train mowing everything down in under 30 seconds, there's usually enough time to get there if you're already in the zone. In off-peak hours, there's usually time even if you still need to teleport in. The important part is to get there right away instead of thinking everyone is going to wait on your pleasure because they're not.

Keep in mind this is just for Rank A trains. If that's a S rank you're looking at, there's no telling what's going to happen.

If you want to kill a Rank A outside of train, it's your choice. The organized hunt community does not own the marks no matter how much some people want to think so. You are not doing anything wrong by the rules of the game. Others can politely ask you to consider waiting but they have no right to stop you or harass you if you don't want to wait.

If you do get harassed by someone for killing a mark outside of train, report them. You have done nothing wrong.

I would highly recommend that you join hunt linkshells and the Crystal Hunts discord for train relays if you haven't already. Trains are far more time efficient than killing a mark with a small group. The Crystal data center conductors try to work together to minimize trains overlapping so if you miss the train on Goblin, chances are good there's one running or about to start on another world. World visit has made it much easier for players to join a train when it's convenient for them instead of needing to juggle your schedule to make your home world's train.

Also I have the feeling that the hunt trains aren't always running when all A-Ranks are respawned, so that seems not so dedicated to me when the A-Ranks are untouched for several hours.

Respawn windows are 4-6 hours. You might come across one that respawned as soon as its window opened but the rest won't be up for another hour and a half. Trains usually wait for everything to be respawned unless servers are about to go down for maintenance.

Right now trains are infrequent because it's the end of a very long patch and a lot of players have taken time away from the game (including many conductors). I'm not going to start a train at 4am Friday morning if only a dozen players will show up and it would take 10 minutes (or more) per kill. No one likes the 2 hour trains. I'll wait until 7am to start the train when a lot more players are online. If someone wants to get ambitious and try to form a kill group in the mean time, more power to them.

This likely will change starting August 4th. If SE follows their past pattern, the augments for the Allegory gear will be available for purchase at the Crystarium and Eulmore hunt vendors once 5.3 is released. Players are going to be capping the hunt currency prior to the patch release then once the patch is released they're going to be farming currency like crazy to buy their augments.

Expect trains to be extremely crowded and running regularly (even in off peak) until at least the end of August and probably a couple of weeks into September.