Are S-hunts spawn shield a necessity now?

[KageTokage]

The fact that you can seldom spawn a S rank without it immediately being detected and mass-relayed across the entire data center by a bot or player utilizing a hunt radar add-on is the main reason why I feel like there needs to be something that ensures any hunt spawns live for at least a few minutes.

If it was truly just a "first come, first serve" situation with no third party programs involved, then I'd probably feel differently because you have virtually no chance of missing out on your own hunt spawns under normal circumstances, but on multiple occasions I've spawned something then had a mob of 20+ people already waiting at it within the minute who could've easily blown it up before I got there.

[Deveryn]

Late arrivals at the same minute is something new.

Late arrivals in the same minute is all those people agreeing with the early puller rather than waiting for some kind of official call. One person can early pull and people can watch them die. They choose not to.

[RokkuEkkusu]

At least put a shield for a few minutes on the SS rank boss the moment it spawns. People who camp that area and do not help with beating the minions tend to pull immediately, thus screwing all of the other people who did contribute to spawning the SS rank in the first place.

[Bonus points and dishonorable mentions to those who complain when said SS rank boss does not spawn because the minions did not die on time or a complete wipe happened on a minion].

[Amarande]

At least after Savage hits for an Xpac, they definitely should have a shield (I actually noticed they do it for the primo rares in Zereth Mortis in the latest WoW patch and it works out really nicely there).

You could maybe let them go without a shield for latest expansion S ranks at launch, where everyone's still at relatively minimum gear (plus there letting them live longer might actually be problematic when the wave of players coming for the hunt collides with the wave of players already in the zone because of new xpac - I still remember when Shadowbringers came out getting DCed at least once when trying to do MSQ because I was taking my time and meanwhile the vanguard wave of 80s were already starting hunt trains and stampeded Rak'tika ...)

The alternative is probably to do away with contribution based credit for hunts, so that people are not incentivized to go ham as much as they do now, because right now the system forces them to to ensure a sufficient contribution share especially if they don't have a Full Party, or their group lacks enough Tanks; although for fairness if only one hit suffices to get full reward, there might need to be a nerf to the rewards as well. (FWIW, I've noticed a similar tendency of people to go ham on Zereth Mortis rares too, even though WoW does have the "One Hit" credit system, and I have to wonder if it's learned behavior due to FFXIV's system and a lot of people playing both, especially lately)

[Curisu]

They should just make A and S-ranks harder.

Like, balance them to the DMG you potentially do with the last savage gear of that expansion.

So early in a expansion when many people want to do them they have to wait with pulling because otherwise they just wipe.
And later when not so many play you got the gear to survive with a smaller group.

[Espon]

They should make it so you no longer get credit for killing them on different world and then reduce the number of kills required for the achievements. I never liked the idea of having the entire data center coming to kill hunts. They die far too quickly for something that's supposed to be a powerful world boss and it causes horrible congestion issues for people native to the server. The likelihood of someone pulling early, even accidentally, greatly increases when you're sitting there waiting for hundreds of people to come.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

They should make it so you no longer get credit for killing them on different world and then reduce the number of kills required for the achievements. I never liked the idea of having the entire data center coming to kill hunts. They die far too quickly for something that's supposed to be a powerful world boss and it causes horrible congestion issues for people native to the server. The likelihood of someone pulling early, even accidentally, greatly increases when you're sitting there waiting for hundreds of people to come.

Seriously underrated comment.

Hunting was a fun activity when it was server-wide, even if it meant that hunting was a bit limited (12 A-ranks per spawn window, S-ranks being a bit more limited). Instances didn't nearly explode in a hunt train, let alone S-rank or SS-rank spawns and the whole thing did not require Discord or size-reduced Cross-World Linkshells to organise properly. I worry that depending on how Datacenter Travel within logical datacenters (Chaos <--> Light) will work that it may further escalate some of the aspects of the current hunt culture, for better or worse depending on who you ask.

While it is true that it allows you to complete the corresponding achievements in a reasonable amount of time and you essentially have an absurd surplus of tomestones, hunt currency and clusters for Materia, it does strain instances a bit and is rather unviable for people with weaker hardware, especially in the currently popular "comes first serves first" mentality. I am currently unable to participate in hunt trains since the scale of the trains simply escalated past my physical limitations.

I want to stress that I see neither side as "wrong", I only wanted to again point out problems with either system.

[Erendis]

S rank hunts are not designed for everyone to be there.
Stop trying to clog up zones to the brim with people before pulling. Once there's a sizable group it's fine to pull imo. It's open world content, they shouldn't be gatekept on some virtue that doesn't really exist. Witch hunting people because they pulled an open world mob before someone else deemed they be ready is a terrible thing that happens.
Not to mention you may end up keeping people not hunting from even entering zones because most instances are gone now and look man, I gotta catch that big fish. S ranks are back up in a couple of days some of those fish take weeks to respawn.

tl;dr: early pulls don't exist, late arrivals do.

Imagine spawning Safat and it dying before you even manage to find it. Yes, early pulls do exist.

[Wolwosh]

I remember spawning an S rank a few years ago. We waited for 10 minutes and people still complained we early pulled.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I remember spawning an S rank a few years ago. We waited for 10 minutes and people still complained we early pulled.

The problem isn't really that we are never happy despite how long we wait, the problem is that we have no quantifiable data of "when was the first sighting" within the game client due to no actual timer (shield buff duration) being present. Taking the time required to relay hunt information into equation, someone who received the notification 5 minutes late will either "give the benefit of doubt" that their source was late or will think their source was fast on relaying, thus they feel like the hunt was early pulled.

If there was a visible timer about "when was this sighted", the amount of complaints of "early pulling" would dwindle into nothingness.