Hunts and Trains; please fix the Hunts!

[ItMe]

It melts my PS4.
I have to heal to contribute because the bosses never load in.
On PS4(not even an OG one) even TPing from one side of an area to another can take up to a full minute to load.
Not even TPing between areas, from the Ostal to Fort Jobb can take a minute to load.
Lately the hunt trains have been waiting a bit before shouting the coordinates of the mark, and it's been super helpful and they've been getting thanked like nuts.
If it weren't for the community being understanding this would be pretty impossible on console.

[ClaudeHerel]

The Hunt was a mistake

[Jojoya]

Unfortunately there's nothing that SE can really do at this point short of entirely changing how the Hunt works (at least with respect to current expansion Rank As). The only decent solution I can think of would be for SE to put a timer on how often a player can kill a specific Rank A (similar to how we can only gather one treasure map every 18 hours). That still gives players to go cross world to get credit if they missed the train on their own world (either due to timing or congestion) but takes away the incentive to do more than one train a day.

This congestion is normal for the first couple of a weeks when a major patch is released. This was true even before world visit was added. It will clear up as players get their augment tokens and go back to doing other things.

The congestion problem has been discussed by many of the conductors on Crystal. Many of us are affected just as badly as other members of the train. But we are at the mercy of spawn timers and conductor availability. We do our best but there's always going to be someone left unhappy.

As for trains being conducted by players from other Crystal worlds, that's usually happening either at the request of or with the consent of the main conducting teams from those worlds. Rin (most likely to be the off world conductor you'll run into) has been a huge help in making certain trains are getting run on a regular basis and always keeps other conductors up to date on what's been scouted and ready to run in the conductor cwl.

From experience the zone lets you in after 30 sec at most or so. Calling the aetheryte first gives everyone that bit of time to get in and barely extends the train more than a few minutes or so.

Either way, they got impatient and stopped calling aetherytes first on Light DC. I'm not sure why you'd take the time to scout a train, announce it on all your linkshells and share it with the community, then not let half of them in, but train conductor sets the rules so I'm not complaining.

Problem with calling the Aetheryte first is that you leave the train stuck right at the Aetheryte, causing congestion at that location and preventing players from loading in.

It's better to call a location a short distance from the Aetheryte so players move away and others are able to load in. That worked much better when I was using that system back in SB. There would always be those few players who already knew the mark location and would take off but generally people would manage to load in and make it to the kill (assuming instance capacity wasn't hit).

As for players not being able to get in at all because too many players know about a train, conductors can't control who gets the relays. Everyone has their own set of linkshells and cross world linkshells they relay to, then the members of those linkshells spread the word even more. There's not much that can be done under the current system.

[LaylaTsarra]

The Hunt was a mistake

There is nothing wrong with hunts other than they're too popular at the moment. People complain about one less dungeon but if you spend any time with hunts you'll see that many many of us cap our characters with hunt tomes and use other rewards for minions, mounts, materia and now upgrades. There is nothing special to running a dungeon after you've cleared and run it a few times. I think SE recognizes that and has adjusted the content accordingly. I cap my main and all my alts with A rank trains and run experts when friends are doing them and want company.

Many servers right now are going private and only letting local linkshells know about the trains during high pop times. This congestion will pass soon enough and then we'll be back to many trains not having enough people and taking much longer than some would like.

Locking one upgrade token a week to the Puppets Bunker and makiing you run Copied as well isn't helping when upgrade tokens have no limit when it comes to nuts.

[Liam_Harper]

Problem with calling the Aetheryte first is that you leave the train stuck right at the Aetheryte, causing congestion at that location and preventing players from loading in.

Ah, is the congestion localized? I always assumed it was a zone-wide limit, that explains a lot. In that case fair enough.

The conductors are generally doing a great job keeping a steady stream of trains going, whichever system they use, so props for that.

Cross world hunts were a mistake, in my opinion.

Agreed.

[Jojoya]

Ah, is the congestion localized? I always assumed it was a zone-wide limit, that explains a lot. In that case fair enough.

The conductors are generally doing a great job keeping a steady stream of trains going, whichever system they use, so props for that.



Agreed.

There's both, the zone wide limit of 300 but also the congestion right at the Aetheryte. Too many players sitting at the Aetheryte and the game won't allow more to load in until some move away. I had that happen a couple of times the other night with a relatively small train (about 70) when I delayed to Raise people. I had to wait several seconds before I could teleport and there were some other players waiting with me.

I don't have any problem with the cross world hunts in general. It gives players more flexibility in when they do the content, which is a plus for the community in my opinion. Get delayed in traffic coming home from work and miss your world's train by 15 minutes? Join the train on another world instead of being out of luck for the day.

What's missing is a throttle on the rewards. It's just too lucrative to pass up an opportunity to chain trains across a data center for the rewards. That only serves to add to the congestion, especially with many streamers encouraging their followers to join the trains. Every time we run 2-3 trains at the same time to try to split the load and ease the congestion per world, we get a bunch of complaints from those who wanted the rewards from every train.

The OP is right. It's not a problem that's going to go away without changing how the Hunt works. We'll see it ebb and flow with the patch cycles.

But if SE does change things, I think the community will end up even more unhappy. SE doesn't like the trains (cross world hunts may even have been set up in the hopes that search and destroy groups would break the trains). If they do make changes, it's going to be either to break up the ability to run trains or to greatly reduce the reward potential.

[Halobump]

The issue being is that hunts are not well designed when scaled with the number of people that attend them. There are plenty of stories of people not being able to see hunts; players not loading into the zones quickly; character and animation culling.

There's also the question I feel often gets overlooked: "Are Hunts actually fun?". Sure, you are rewarded quite well for your time, but I feel a good measure of a fun system in an MMO is would you go do it if there was little to no reward for doing so? Take the Hero's Gauntlet for example, the dungeon is exciting to do, so I've done it several times knowing it is not an efficient use of my time. I've played Rival Wings mainly because I find the game mode fun and accessible. Would you undertake a Hunt because it is entertaining though?

[DrWho2010]

it doesn't really matter if hunts are "fun". it has a reward for currency that people who can't run savage or are tired of doing so want (glaze/twine). and it's not weekly based locked out like savage or 24 man coins. this goes to show that something that can be acquired ad nauseum people will gorge themselves upon it. until that need gets satisfied, the situation is what it is.

also to answer your question re: would you do hunts if there was little to no reward for doing so? there's the hunt mount rewards, titles, and clusters, but if you've completely exhausted all avenues of compensation i'm not sure i would continue to hunt as it wouldn't be necessary other than an it being an alternate method to cap weekly tomes. there is a social aspect to hunting as well.

[Halobump]

it doesn't really matter if hunts are "fun".

And this is perhaps the problem. There appears to be a focus on doing what is easiest through game design that encourages a homeostatic approach, punishing variance.

[Tlamila]

Like others said, it's just a temporary thing, gotta deal with it. It will go back to normal soon.
As for hunts being fun? Actually they are for me, this week I've only done hunts and 0 expert roulette. Usually I prioritize roulette cause I can do it anytime while for trains I need to wait for one to be conducted, but lately so many are going on that I always find one.

Cross world hunts were a mistake, in my opinion. Way too many people in an area at once. If we had a more efficient way to filter who we see I suppose it'd be one thing, but we don't. A lot of MMOs have a setting that lets you choose the number of players you can see at any given time like 12, 20, 50, etc. FF XIV would benefit from such a feature, I think.

Uh there actually is an option where you can limit the number of players you see to max of 30, I always have it on.