Feedback to improve the Hunts S ranks

[DragonBorn]

First, I want to preface that I like the basis for how the S ranks currently function, but I think there is some major room for improvement to make them a more engaging and less frustrating experience.

As it stands, I see 3 major problems with them
- Players can easily troll hunts, by resetting them over and over or killing them quickly so that players cannot arrive in time (this even happens with the SS rank adds, making the event fail, players also camp the spot that the SS rank spawns add, not aiding in defeating the adds in time)
- The time between a S rank being available to spawn is too long, making it particularly difficult to engage with if you are doing anything else in game or cannot play for a long period of time.
- When the instances are removed there are a lot less S ranks to become engaged with for the current expansion per server, going down from 18 to 6.

I think these issues can easily be fixed by these solutions:
Preventing trolling:
- Make it so the SS rank event cannot fail or at least the Minions cannot dissappear if all players engaged are defeated, this will alleviate some of the trolling going on. Most of the SS spawn events I have seen in the last month or so have failed due to this. (This is my biggest isssue currently with the Hunt)
- Make the SS rank adds A ranks and give rewards, this will entice players to go out and kill them instead of camping the SS rank spawn.
-Have the S ranks HP scale to the number of players in the zone (similar to Eureka) this will give players time to arrive and newer players and higher level players a chance to experience older S ranks.
- Increase the distance an S rank can travel before it resets, unless a troll is there very early on, they will likely have trouble keeping aggro while they must run a great distance to reset it.

Increasing the opportunities to engage with S ranks
- Reduce the time it takes for an S rank to cap on its spawn chance down to 3 hours. This will mean most players can always engage with spawning or attempting S ranks through the day, it will also reduce the feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) for those that miss an S rank as there will still be plenty more. This will reduce how “special” an S rank spawn will feel but the trade off to making this content the type anyone can more casually engage when they want to, I feel is a worthwhile trade off.

I have engaged with every type of content in FFXIV and its been great to see it change since ARR released, however I think this side of the Hunt needs to be urgently looked into as it produces drama and frustration within the community.
Let me know what you agree or disagree with or any other changes you want to see, hopefully the dev team can make some nice QoL changes for the Hunt based on what we put forth.

Edit: Remove the invun period, on further consideration I think just having more opportunities to spawn S ranks will offset the friction caused by missing them and the Invun period may cause congestion in the zone.

[Jojoya]

Let me know what you agree or disagree with or any other changes you want to see, hopefully the dev team can make some nice QoL changes for the Hunt based on what we put forth.

Going back through the many threads in this subforum giving feedback on this very subject will tell you whether players agree or not (and of course the opinions are very divided).

S ranks are intended to be rare. SE isn't going to increase the spawn rate after 4 expansions. The major achievements are long term goals intended to take a year or two to earn, not a couple of months.

Players can be reported for resetting S ranks already engaged by other players and have their accounts suspended/banned for doing so. It comes down to whether the GM getting the report believes the reset was intentional or accidental. Please do report them if you see it happen.

There should never be in invulnerability period. If I've just spent 45 minutes with a few other players trying to get one of the S ranks to spawn, I'm not interested in waiting around another 15 minutes for lazy entitled players to show up. I've got other things I'd like to be doing and I've already devoted enough time to the spawn. I'm willing to wait 3-4 minutes, which is more than enough time for relays to go out and other players to arrive, but that's it. If 100 other players have already shown up in those 3 minutes so the S rank is dead before you get there at minute 5, that is your problem. Be faster next time. Better yet, be one of the active spawners so you'll already be in the zone and won't miss out.

Players are already enticed to go to the SS minions (which are actually B ranks even if they feel closer to A in difficulty) because if they don't get killed there is no SS. All SE really needs to do is consider relocating spawn points because of the camping behavior so those killing the minions will be able to get to the SS before it dies. And having the event fail is fine. It shouldn't be a gimme or it stops being an event. The only thing that needs to be avoided is it failing due to troll resets of the minions as we've seen happen in the past.

It already is content anyone can engage with. No one can stop you from going out to spawn a S rank. There are public timers on the internet you can use to know if something has a chance to spawn to lessen the chance of your time being wasted.

The drama comes from the entitled players who expect others to wait on their pleasure so they can be spoon fed their tomestones and achievements. The drama will always exists because those types of players will never change.

[DragonBorn]

I do agree with you that the intention with the current S rank system is to make them feel rare and the achievements rewards linked to them is a long-term goal, however I don't think keeping the content as sparse for you to get engaged with it as it is, is currently not fun. Given that it only becomes realistic to attempt a spawn after its window becomes available after roughly 24 - 30 hours is that fun, yes you can say that you can attempt it as soon as the window is up and hope but that is just a fool’s errand to try to spawn an s rank that requires 300 mobs to be defeated with a 40% chance of spawning.

Changing the content to be something players can engage with reliably and constantly will of course make the S ranks less rare but it will also change how players approach the content and react to missing an S rank (Yes you can feel as though they are leeching however that does not change the experience the majority of players feel) The intention is clearly for this to be the current way that players will experience hunts, coming in when they are up as the S ranks would not have so much health otherwise but it does come with the frustrations players experience.

I do agree with you that waiting 3 - 4 minutes is more than enough time to wait to pull an S rank, as I usually wait till the 3rd minute to pull any S ranks I spawn once I report it on Faloop. However not all players stick to this, I constantly see those who did not work on spawning them, pulling them the moment they land, its especially a problem in ARR zones as they died very quickly. If the spawns were more frequent this likely would not be an issue as there would always be another to move onto so no Invun period or scaling would be required (Though the hunts scaling to the number of people would be nice for those on the free trial, so they get to experience and gain contribution)

The SS rank trolling is my biggest gripe, I don't know how it is on other data centres but on Light, I keep seeing players pull the SS rank adds the moment they appear, and die to them on purpose, (By Bolide or low lvl class or blue mage) as no other players are engage, the add disappears, failing the event (I have heard that each add killed increases the chance to spawn the SS rank by 25% but I don't know if this is true, either way this is an issue that needs to be addressed asap, regardless of everything else)
In my opinion, the drama from hunts is caused by game design, not from players. People react to the situation but ultimately it is the designers that create those situations, that is why I believe there needs to be some changes made.

[Jojoya]

The SS rank trolling is my biggest gripe, I don't know how it is on other data centres but on Light, I keep seeing players pull the SS rank adds the moment they appear, and die to them on purpose, (By Bolide or low lvl class or blue mage) as no other players are engage, the add disappears, failing the event (I have heard that each add killed increases the chance to spawn the SS rank by 25% but I don't know if this is true, either way this is an issue that needs to be addressed asap, regardless of everything else)

For the SS to spawn, all 4 minions must be killed within 5 minutes of appearing. If a single add is missed (or is reset to despawn), the SS will not spawn.

If you are watching someone intentionally die to a minion to cause it to despawn, report it. That is nuisance behavior interfering with the game play of others. The GMs do take those reports seriously and will investigate given enough information.

Players are absolutely the source of the drama. If it was the game design, every spawn and kill would be drama filled but they aren't. All that's needed to avoid the drama is a mature response when we miss out on a kill (we're not intended to make every kill). Because some players can't do that, we end up with the drama.

[Canadane]

- When a S rank is pulled, it should have a brief window where it does not take damage, (maybe include some kind of role play scene where it does something to explain why it does not take damage) during this time, have the S ranks HP scale to the number of players in the zone (similar to Eureka) this will give players time to arrive and newer players and higher level players a chance to experience older S ranks.

We need to stop shoving as many players into zones as possible, congesting them and blocking out players who aren't even trying to hunt. They do not need an invincibility window, nor do they need more HP. You get there for the hunt or you don't and you get the next one. It's not like there's a limited number of them. If you helped spawn it you'd be there already, if not then you rely on your network of fellow hunters to get there, which is the idea of hunting down a big mark. The entire data centre is not entitled to claim of every single spawn, and thinking this just slows things down and causes with hunts among players, all while encouraging players to basically block off zones from those who just wanna go catch a fish.


...I just wanted to catch a fish ;-;

[DragonBorn]

I actually agree with this now as you bring up a good point, a period of time where the hunt does not take damage would cause issues with how many people would be able get into a given zone (We seen how bad they get when there are over 600 people in one area) simply reducing the S rank spawn time, would be enough players not getting to the Hunt in time as there would be planty more.

[DragonBorn]

For the SS to spawn, all 4 minions must be killed within 5 minutes of appearing. If a single add is missed (or is reset to despawn), the SS will not spawn.

If you are watching someone intentionally die to a minion to cause it to despawn, report it. That is nuisance behavior interfering with the game play of others. The GMs do take those reports seriously and will investigate given enough information.

Players are absolutely the source of the drama. If it was the game design, every spawn and kill would be drama filled but they aren't. All that's needed to avoid the drama is a mature response when we miss out on a kill (we're not intended to make every kill). Because some players can't do that, we end up with the drama.

I agree with you that expecting to get to every S rank is ridiculous but that doesn’t mean that the way the content is designed cannot make players feel entitled to it, you cannot deny the number of people that start getting upset when they miss an S rank in shout chat, that happens (and will also happen even with more common S rank spawns but to a lesser degree), I personally see this as a cause of how the S ranks function (Which I don't want them to change how they work as I do like the current system, I just think certain elements need some tweaking to further the experience like they have done with almost every other game system in 14)

As for the SS rank trolling, the fact that 1 player can even ruin it for the 100 other people in the zone simply should not be possible. I understand that there should be some sort of system for the S rank failing to give the feeling of rushing to get them down (Maybe keep the 5-minute DPS Check) but the minions disappearing if they are reset, or a player intentionally dies? That should not happen, it should just go back to it spot with full health, saying just report them is not a long-term solution to this problem and just wastes a GM's time that could be spent somewhere else and that player could simply make another account and continue to troll, adjusting the system will take away the power from them.

[KageTokage]

Reporting people for minion trolling never worked for Aether during a similar event where some spiteful folk decided they'd dedicate themselves to despawning minions for a time strictly as payback towards a select few hunters they felt "wronged" by.

They really need to just make it so the minion only despawns if it is both not engaged by someone and its debuff timer has expired.

[geekgirl101]

Let's see how can SE improve on something they don't give 2 hoots about...

How many times has a certain player been reported for:

1) disrupting hunts other people have worked hard on spawning on scouting
2) changing his name and adding a spiteful comment in his player info that's deliberately aimed towards hunters
3) using external information including 3rd party software that mine data on hunt targets to rush to them first

ok let's look at 1). What this certain player does is clearly undermining other players and disrupting the game experience for others. I am still trying to get the achievement for a mount plus upgrades for my gear to raid with, but with his continued behaviour it's slowing me down a lot and is disrupting my gaming experience. Wait...isn't there a rule against this?

FINAL FANTASY® XIV
User Agreement
Last Updated: 12/24/2019

3. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES

3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of Square Enix's computers and servers.

Oh you may say that this doesn't actually count as a prohibited activity and that it means something else, but let's point out this bit of the text:

You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players.

I'd say that definitely justifies as disrupting my gaming experience as well as the gaming experience of hundreds if not thousands of other players across the entire data center who have angrily responded at him using all manner of media over the course of 2 years.

Now let's point out at 3). Apparently he's not being banned because he "isn't breaking any rules", but last I read using 3rd party software to mine data is against the rules:

FINAL FANTASY® XIV
User Agreement
Last Updated: 12/24/2019

2. LICENSE LIMITATIONS
Square Enix may update the list of License Limitations at https://sqex.to/ffxivnasupport at any time. The current License Limitations are as follows:

2.5 Data Mining. You may not intercept, mine or otherwise collect information from the Game using unauthorized third party software.

Violating these License Limitations may result in the suspension or permanent banning of your account.

He is clearly using 3rd party software or how else would he know exactly where to go long before anyone else does and even on other worlds that are not his own? This has even been included in reports yet he is still permitted to play because "engaging a hunt mark early is not against the game rules" yet somehow his usage of 3rd party software to gain an advantage is overlooked.

*sniffs in the hypocrisy*

Say what you want guys but until SE stops giving excuses to cheaters whilst banning everyone else who so much as admits to using a DPS parser then this argument will just keep on being repeated by more and more frustrated players and nothing will ever change. What I've learned over the past 2 years is that SE will not deal with trolls but they are threatened by you knowing your own DPS.

Now before this gets replied to by a wave of entitled people who want everything for themselves, lemme tell you a bit more about myself and before this particular person ruined hunts for me and so many others. I'm an introvert not by choice but because of my autism and almost 20 years of bullying and abuse. I crave for friendships but I have very few irl I trust enough to be friends and almost all of them I've now moved so far away from I no longer see in person. Of the friends I had in this game it helped me open up more, I became involved in active communities for fun and friendship and it helped me to destress any many ailments I had that preceeded me joining these communities had almost completely disappeared without me needing to micro manage my lifestyle and using medication to keep them under control. Participating in hunts got me actively involved in such a way as we would communicate our efforts together and be excited when a hunt target spawned and spread news around that it was there and waited patiently for others to arrive knowing we'd all get rewarded for it and left me feeling in a positive mood.

But since this guy has involved himself in a way to cause nothing but disruption, uncooperation, and has made cold remarks and taunted so many others ingame for his behaviour it's ruined most of that for me. I'm no longer in the active community that would spawn hunts together and thus a huge portion of the game has been lost to me. I've felt naught but stress not only at this guy's rude and selfish behaviour but also from the people who support him even though they are a minority who aren't even on our data center to know the type of character he is and why he is hated and disassociated by most and also by the lack of actions being taken against him. Just seeing his name makes me sick to my stomach and that has triggered many old stress-related illnesses that prior to his involvement were finally under control for the first time in nearly 30 years. I'm back to needing medication again so I don't suffering agonizing pain, sleepless nights and anxiety attacks every single day and I'm not exaggerating this at all. This 1 guy has undone within 2 years what has taken me almost 35 years to control.

[ACE135]

...

Well, cross world traveling and the hunt train community have disrupted the game experience for me. Who should I blame for this now?