It's Time To Reconsider Removing Crossworld Hunting

[hydralus]

I wonder if it's going to get even worse with datacenter transfers coming in. All in all, I guess I don't really care about them aside from the nuts being used to upgrade gear. But honestly at this point I think I'd rather spend the time grinding out the nier raid for tokens rather than play a game of "Are my teleports/SSD fast enough" where I toss some ranged attacks for 1/50thor 1/75th of a new gear upgrade.

[technole]

People need to stop taking old comments the devs make like they are gospel and set in-stone forever. There was a time they said they would never add flying to ARR zones, and here we are in 2021. The world is different when they made some of those comments, and they never planned on a stat squish either.

If they really want to address it they'd adjust the HP pools, and they have a golden opportunity during the stat squish to do so since all enemies are getting adjustments as well for 6.0.

[KageTokage]

Seeing how they added dynamic scaling to the FATE enemies in Bozja, I feel like they could do something similar and make the A/S rank hunts gain a defense buff (As opposed to a damage taken debuff as the FATEs already have HP scaling) that changes based on both how many players are present as well as their levels if some of the players are above the hunt's level.

[Tranquilmelody7]

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.



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.

Yoshi P also initially said "We don't want to make S rank spawns any more obvious then they already are."
Indeed, now we have the "You sense the presence of a powerful mark..." message.

It's become quite clear with the implementation of SS ranks that SE views the hunt as a cooperative activity and not a competitive one.

[Tsumdere]

While something like a 5 minute invulnerability shield would be nice, it would instead create another problem for prime time current expansion S ranks and that is zone congestion. I'm assuming zones are still hard capped at 300 players total. A number of ShB S ranks during peak times have gotten extremely close or have hit that cap numerous times throughout Shadowbringers, especially when there was actually ample time for relays to go out in-game. A shield like that would cause the zone to hit congestion more often, and that's on top of the hunt population already increasing. And do we really need that many players at a single hunt?

Then the easiest solution would be to not put the invuln shield on the newest ranks, or lower it to at least 30 seconds so people who are spawning other side of the map can get there. I suppose that I had gotten ahead of myself and was thinking of hunt QoL changes and less about the zone congestion.

The servers are all individually bursting anyways with the influx of players, removing cross-world won't make the servers uncongested. Heck, even before cross-world I remember times when zones would get congested from S Ranks on Balmung. I've even seen trains that are mid-patch, mostly home world players and reaching the triple digits. And now every server has significantly higher populations. There isn't a single change they can make to make it uncongested at this point besides raising the player cap on zones.

A 5 minute invuln window isn't going to change anything. People are still going to complain they're missing out.

Players were never intended to be able to get to every kill. That's what a part of the community keeps failing to understand. If SE wanted the entire community to be able to get to the kills, the system would have been designed differently.

Keep in mind that what we're experiencing now is not going to be what we're experiencing with Endwalker hunts when Endwalker releases. There won't huge numbers of players at level cap for several weeks. The gear most players have will be the equivalent of the Ronkan gear at the start of Shadowbringer instead of far more powerful end of expansion end game gear. Things will be dying more slowly.

As a spawner/scouter, I have no sympathy for people who show up several minutes late and complain early pulling. This simply isn't about that. As the player base grows, mobs get weaker and weaker, more items are moved to be bought with exclusively hunt tokens (such as old glams), and the pool of older S Ranks/A Ranks that basically don't exist anymore because they are perma-dead grows, it becomes more and more apparent the hunt system needs to be readdressed.

5 min was a lot, I admit, but I was just shooting numbers. But there should be something to allow spawners to get their own kill... you know... since they were the ones who did the work. Right now, all the hunt does is reward cheaters with their radar bots and leechers.

I'm all for FATE ilvl syncing on them, or moving them into treasure map like spawns that 8-man parties can tackle like many others suggest.

[Jojoya]

But there should be something to allow spawners to get their own kill... you know... since they were the ones who did the work. Right now, all the hunt does is reward cheaters with their radar bots and leechers.

Considering the community has long since developed trackers (no bots involved, simple information tracking) that narrow down the possible spawn points to 1-2, it should be extremely rare for spawners to miss out on their own spawn now.

SE has said even spawners don't own what they spawn. It's still an open hunt. Will they change their stance on that at some point? Only time will tell.

I still thinking using a reduced vuln buff modified from what Trion uses for some of the world events in RIFT (or at least used to when I played) would be the best compromise. Any damage dealt over a certain amount appropriate for the intended level would be nullified while the mark's HP pool and damage would remain what it's always been. It remains accessible and a challenge for the players at the level intended but high level players won't be able to come along and smash it in 20 seconds, giving more players (not to mention the spawners) time to arrive and participate.

[Stepjam]

I've been seeing issues pop up with it second hand through my fc mate who was big into the hunt community. But I'm not sure exactly how they'd curb it. Only real solution I can think of is crossworlders can't target hunt monsters or something.

[MrPresident]

I would be ok with this. Cross world and hunt trains in general have definitely killed the fun of hunts. It used to be exciting going out and finding an A rank yourself (you know, actually hunting) or trying to spawn an S rank. Now I regularly pass A ranks and can’t do a thing to them, even if you try no one will come because they don’t want to get on the bad side of the cliques running the show. And don’t even think about spawning an S rank without their permission or you’ll be booted from every linkshell going.

[Jojoya]

I would be ok with this. Cross world and hunt trains in general have definitely killed the fun of hunts. It used to be exciting going out and finding an A rank yourself (you know, actually hunting) or trying to spawn an S rank. Now I regularly pass A ranks and can’t do a thing to them, even if you try no one will come because they don’t want to get on the bad side of the cliques running the show. And don’t even think about spawning an S rank without their permission or you’ll be booted from every linkshell going.

They can't stop you from viewing the online tracking sites to see when spawn windows are open.

They can't stop you from making spawn attempts if you want to put in the effort.

They don't control every linkshell. You can always start your own linkshells and invite people who are likewise sick of hearing "you can't do that" to organize your own free hunts.

If anyone harasses you for participating in open world content as the rules of the game allow, report them. They're violating the ToS.

Just make sure you don't cross the line so you end up repeating the same things they're doing.

[Erendis]

I would be ok with this. Cross world and hunt trains in general have definitely killed the fun of hunts. It used to be exciting going out and finding an A rank yourself (you know, actually hunting) or trying to spawn an S rank. Now I regularly pass A ranks and can’t do a thing to them, even if you try no one will come because they don’t want to get on the bad side of the cliques running the show. And don’t even think about spawning an S rank without their permission or you’ll be booted from every linkshell going.

The annoying part is not that other people are trying to spawn S ranks. It's when they spawn something and kill it quietly without linking it anywhere or marking kill and the timer is lost.

Also on Chaos there do not seem to be many app users as people heavily rely on Faloop which is croudsourced.