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.