It's Time To Reconsider Removing Crossworld Hunting

[Jojoya]

They really need to remove it. Now in the hunt train we sometimes can't even change zones because is full. They need to do like the restoration.

The Restoration is in its own separate zone. SE is not going to block off access to open world zones when the purpose of world visit is to allow players to play with friends and to help players move to less congested worlds to get content done.

hunts were not designed to be killed by trains fullstop.

Very true but as usual players worked out a "most efficient" method for doing content and they want to stick with it. SE would have to do a major overhaul of the Hunt system to get the communities to stop running trains. Every time the community has proposed changes to the Hunt, the response has been "we're not going to change it".

I've always wondered if they were hoping that cross world free hunters would break trains.

[Rokke]

Very true but as usual players worked out a "most efficient" method for doing content and they want to stick with it. SE would have to do a major overhaul of the Hunt system to get the communities to stop running trains. Every time the community has proposed changes to the Hunt, the response has been "we're not going to change it".

I've always wondered if they were hoping that cross world free hunters would break trains.

imo communities are completely fine to create trains. They're easy tomes, I don't fault players for working together for shortcuts. The issue is more that the community then tries to enforce rules that don't exist. No one needs to wait on stragglers. No one needs to call out what they found. Its nice to do those things...but its not necessary- if an S rank is killed by 3 fc mates and a chocobo then there were enough people there. Nothing needs to be changed when hunts work as SE intended them to work.

Balmung has never really been a train server, even now its often folks from other servers that lead them here. I'm kinda grateful I started back when I did cause the regulars beat the entitlement out of us haha. If you wanted guaranteed full credit you got out into the world and spawned/scouted for yourself.

[TaleraRistain]

The Restoration is in its own separate zone. SE is not going to block off access to open world zones when the purpose of world visit is to allow players to play with friends and to help players move to less congested worlds to get content done.

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.

[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.

[TaleraRistain]

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.

As a software engineer, I try to be careful making assumptions about what other teams could do since I don't know how they have their databases or their code set up. But they must have some sort of "home server" trigger because they were able to implement it for the Firmament. Hunts wouldn't need to work entirely like FATEs. Just use that trigger to determine who could hit them. And they do have some code that can determine who can hit a FATE target because they use that to not allow you to hit them if you aren't level synced. Of course, the caveat is how the code is set up. But the pieces do seem to be there if they can make the code work with them.

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

Maybe players from other servers shouldn't try to turn themselves into the enemy? I've seen plenty of fights in shout chat when I'm out gathering where an off-server conductor attacks a group of folks who got people together to take on a Hunt target, because our targets were "reserved" by the train for later.

Yes, we had train issues before cross-world, but at least that was us fighting among ourselves on our server and we could pass the word around about people being jerks.

[Jojoya]

Maybe players from other servers shouldn't try to turn themselves into the enemy? I've seen plenty of fights in shout chat when I'm out gathering where an off-server conductor attacks a group of folks who got people together to take on a Hunt target, because our targets were "reserved" by the train for later.

Yes, we had train issues before cross-world, but at least that was us fighting among ourselves on our server and we could pass the word around about people being jerks.

I have yet to see any fights between players from different worlds that weren't also happening as fights between players from the same world before world visit.

It's not a cross world problem. It's a personal problem.

Sorry, but you can't "reserve" hunts for a later train. Hunts are kill on sight by SE's design. SE not only never intended trains to exist, they dislike the trains immensely.

If someone finds a hunt now and wants to kill it now, they're doing nothing wrong. The moment you scream at another player for killing something outside of train is the moment that player can report you to SE for a 3.2 violation and you get yourself a ban. No group of players "owns" the hunts.

Why do we have relatively little hunt drama compared to Aether and Primal? Because we respect that both free hunts and trains have the right to exist. If 3 hunts get killed outside of the train, we don't throw temper tantrums and go on witch hunts. We simply run the train as 9/12. We're still getting 9 times the reward compared to the 1-3 times the reward the others got.

I miss the days when I found an A rank and some people would just up and we'd kill it.
Now its like a conveyer belt and it took all the fun out of it for me..
So I haven't been joining the trains at all, but I couldn't even if I wanted to because i'm still on PS4.
Everytime I gather something and the train is there everything turns into extreme lag its awful xD

If you get the chance to play during off peak hours for your data center, try a train at that time (as long as it's not reset day). I do most of my conducting off peak so those players also get their hunts in. Train size usually runs 16-30 players so it doesn't feel like a zerg fest, you get to see the mechanics, and people are more relaxed.

[TaleraRistain]

Sorry, but you can't "reserve" hunts for a later train. Hunts are kill on sight by SE's design. SE not only never intended trains to exist, they dislike the trains immensely.

If someone finds a hunt now and wants to kill it now, they're doing nothing wrong. The moment you scream at another player for killing something outside of train is the moment that player can report you to SE for a 3.2 violation and you get yourself a ban. No group of players "owns" the hunts.

I completely agree here. There's nothing right about doing this. But it's like having fights within a family. You can bicker all you want but the second an outsider does it then everyone jumps on them, whether they were just fighting or not.

We absolutely had these fights on Jenova among ourselves. But like a family, we can take measures. We can pass the word around the server about jerks trying to claim things and run people off. We can tell their FC they're being jerks. That's not as easy with some random mook from another server.

The lag issue is another good one that's been brought up. The area around the Hunt is just awful for anyone trying to do non-Hunt things there, but the zones themselves get bogged down as well even in places not around the Hunt when tons of people just port in. You could still get lag if a lot of people from the server showed up, but there is an upward limit of who is on the server at that time to keep that in check. And when someone complains, I've often seen them tell people to just deal with it, we'll be gone soon.