It's Time To Reconsider Removing Crossworld Hunting

[Jojoya]

Also, I feel like something is being overlooked here; the overpopulation thing is a temporary issue, this happened at the beginning of Shadowbringers and we weathered it on Gilgamesh just fine, we made use of the instances on the new maps and did our train runs.

It feels like the thread is asking for a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Hunt attendance is better described as an intermittent problem rather than temporary problem. It happens with every major patch release, not just an expansion launch. It's a prolonged problem at the moment because of the increased weekly cap on Revelation and the ability to use nuts to get Cryptlurker augmented. Those not doing Savage will be working quite a while to get all that gear before EW is released.

There are also a lot of new players and many of them are joining the hunt community as they get to level cap. They're going to help keep hunts filled even as players who have been around most of the expansion start dropping out.

Hate to say it but with no word of new servers for NA to thin out population per world, overpopulation may stop being intermittent and turn into a permanent problem.

If it's possible to code it, they could treat it like FATEs you're too high for. You can't hit FATE targets until you level sync if you're over the level. So if they can code it so you can't hit Hunt targets unless you're from that server, they could still allow others to play with friends and experience the rest of the open world content together but put the power back into the server's hands on how they want to handle Hunts.

Reprogramming hunts to be like FATEs in general has already gotten a firm "No". YoshiP said the amount of time it would take to reprogram hunts to act like FATEs is time they'd rather use to create new content.

Can they even program hunts to recognize a player as being cross world and ineligible to participate? Have no idea but I suspect it would still get the same response as the FATE idea. Too much time that would be better spent on other content.

To be honest, how hunts were handled was never in the server's hands in the first place. Any attempt by a faction on a server to enforce its adopted rules on players who didn't want to follow them would be flirting with ToS violations and account bans. I know players who got bans because they harassed other players for killing outside of trains or reset hunt marks after someone pulled earlier than the announced pull time.

SE might have left it up to players to work out how they want to hunt, but they also left it open for everyone to do their own thing if that was what they preferred.

In the long run, players from other servers aren't an enemy. A community doesn't benefit by trying to turn them into one.

[Liam_Harper]

hunts were not designed to be killed by trains fullstop.

Then why do achievements for thousands of A and S ranks exist? Especially before crossworld, the only realistic way to complete these was by linkshell, relay, trains, and hunt communities. Why do current content A and S ranks have so much health that at the start of the expansion you require at least 50+ people? Why does the SS rank involve 4 high-health adds that must be found and killed within a time limit?

The idea that Hunts are intended to be occasionally found and killed by small 4-8 man parties or the handful of players in the zone at the time is a myth conjured by the playerbase. They are a community activity and have always been designed as such. It's not the players fault that we've just become way better at it than expected.

Personally I'd be ok with cross-world losing Hunt access. Sure easy tomes feels nice, but it's made other sources of tomes almost irrelevant, trivialized the mount achievements, caused congestion issues, made combat materia worthless and killed that sense of server community. I'm not going to lose sleep over it if it stays the way it is, but I liked hunting a lot more before cross-world.

[Kuroka]

The idea that Hunts are intended to be occasionally found and killed by small 4-8 man parties or the handful of players in the zone at the time is a myth conjured by the playerbase. They are a community activity and have always been designed as such. It's not the players fault that we've just become way better at it than expected.

Im on your side on many things but full stop, its more like, ppl used hacked tools to find and relay em even faster, you notice even more when you see some of them use the predesigned messages for ress etc that come with those hacked clients lol
-I didnt realize that and wondered how they could tell by marco how many sec exactly are left for some stills... and why some had exactly the same messages, it was only due a friend who told me about it.

[Rokke]

Then why do achievements for thousands of A and S ranks exist? Especially before crossworld, the only realistic way to complete these was by linkshell, relay, trains, and hunt communities. Why do current content A and S ranks have so much health that at the start of the expansion you require at least 50+ people? Why does the SS rank involve 4 high-health adds that must be found and killed within a time limit?

The idea that Hunts are intended to be occasionally found and killed by small 4-8 man parties or the handful of players in the zone at the time is a myth conjured by the playerbase. They are a community activity and have always been designed as such. It's not the players fault that we've just become way better at it than expected.

Trains =/= the end all be all to hunt communities or to hunting overall. The achievements are meant to be long term goals, they aren't limited or seasonal races. I was nearly at my 3000 A's before world visits and my server straight up did not do trains ^^;

There is no A that requires a massive train worth of people. Not at launch, and certainly not now. In the first few weeks of SHB we were bringing down the new A's with 2-3 parties of our server's hunters, the ones that actually enjoyed going out into the world and fighting mobs. Nowadays I can grab 5 FC members and we can bring them down with the only casualties being our chocobos.

S's do not spawn frequently enough to run a train on them. SS's are even less frequent. Both melt before the full horde of offworlders can make it over, if area chat bellyaching is anything to go by. I will not deny that current max level ones need more people, but I'm not against LSs as much as I am the train crowd trying to enforce rules onto hunting.

[ForteNightshade]

The idea that Hunts are intended to be occasionally found and killed by small 4-8 man parties or the handful of players in the zone at the time is a myth conjured by the playerbase. They are a community activity and have always been designed as such. It's not the players fault that we've just become way better at it than expected.

No, it isn't. Yoshida more or less admitted that was the intended design all along when asked about increasing the HP of ARR hunts. He specifically said that would make them impossible for at level players. If they were meant to be a community activity the entire server could partake in, then it'd make little sense to consider at level players since max level players will mow them do in seconds.

The community simply decided to treat them as server wide "events" because of their sheer efficiency.

Personally I'd be ok with cross-world losing Hunt access. Sure easy tomes feels nice, but it's made other sources of tomes almost irrelevant, trivialized the mount achievements, caused congestion issues, made combat materia worthless and killed that sense of server community. I'm not going to lose sleep over it if it stays the way it is, but I liked hunting a lot more before cross-world.

The problem is by doing this, you almost render hunts themselves irrelevant. A single Expert gives 90 relevant tomes. With A ranks on a per six hour cycle, you'll have to wait twelve hours to get 120 tomes. Combat materia was made worthless through Eureka and Bozja, though I'll admit, hunts are a little too generous. Then again, I don't actually mind that , personally because overmelding sucks enough as is.

[Liam_Harper]

No, it isn't. Yoshida more or less admitted that was the intended design all along when asked about increasing the HP of ARR hunts. He specifically said that would make them impossible for at level players. If they were meant to be a community activity the entire server could partake in, then it'd make little sense to consider at level players since max level players will mow them do in seconds.

Yoshida has said a lot of things in the past that just don't apply any more. Besides, he said that he had considered the idea of making S ranks similar to Fates or Eureka NM's, but it would just be too much developer work for now. SS ranks and the mount achievements are definitely designed with linkshells and community relay in mind. It's also a reason we get a zone message when an S rank spawns now, so players without addons aren't at a disadvantage. They aren't blind to how we operate hunts.

The problem is by doing this, you almost render hunts themselves irrelevant. A single Expert gives 90 relevant tomes. With A ranks on a per six hour cycle, you'll have to wait twelve hours to get 120 tomes. Combat materia was made worthless through Eureka and Bozja, though I'll admit, hunts are a little too generous. Then again, I don't actually mind that , personally because overmelding sucks enough as is.

I have no fears over this really. Stormblood A ranks were highly relevant and I both organized and joined Hunt trains constantly. Hunts drop older tomes, materia and Hunt currency which has multiple uses. Hunts would definitely be fine without cross-world.

[george357]

never been a fan of train hunts and never joined one ever been in game long before they ever started the only thing i would ask of square/enix sence i am a long time player would be to increase the nutty sacks you get from the solo nutty sack hunts if you could do that i would be very happy thank you for your time square/enix.

[Vahlnir]

I've believed all along that it was a bad idea. With the recent influx of new players it is only going to get worse, which I didn't think was possible. I think they need to either reinstate instances 1, 2 and 3 (maybe add a couple more) or remove the ability to participate cross server. For the sake of the game's balance, the latter would probably be more beneficial in my opinion.

[Neoyoshi]

The instances on maps seems like the logical solution without dismantling two entire systems before a large expansion ships.

Also, I feel like something is being overlooked here; the overpopulation thing is a temporary issue, this happened at the beginning of Shadowbringers and we weathered it on Gilgamesh just fine, we made use of the instances on the new maps and did our train runs.

It feels like the thread is asking for a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

[Mithina]

The instances on maps seems like the logical solution without dismantling two entire systems before a large expansion ships.

Also, I feel like something is being overlooked here; the overpopulation thing is a temporary issue, this happened at the beginning of Shadowbringers and we weathered it on Gilgamesh just fine, we made use of the instances on the new maps and did our train runs.

It feels like the thread is asking for a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Idk what it's like on other data centers, but on Primal this has been a persistent issue all throughout Shadowbringers, as I've described. The only time it hasn't been an issue really is around late at night.