The Hunt - S ranks pull

[Glasshound]

Aether is suffering a repeated early puller, too. The Aether DC community at large shows a profound resiliance and sticks to the "tag and step back" method. It's disheartening to witness the mark dead while many are en-route. "Hug the Aetheryte" tactic, cross-world linkshells, and a web companion aids are not helpful enough to reach the mark on many occasions.

OP's proposal: The Spawner's Perogative

A veil, or some sort of limited buff giving the perogative to spawner would be a solution to the immediate problem. Of course it would expire within a fixed amount of time to prevent a lost opportunity for all. This solution would curb anti-social behavior in a normally collaborative endeavor. Hunts are one of the few casual endgame activities and shouldn't be competitive. OP's proposal would also solve the fast kills on Forgiven Rebellion, where spawners are forced to spread across the map, and often the furthest participants miss the kill. The developers have been so careful to avoid competing loot streams in most activities; yet, these S-Ranks are a limited resource. Equally, anyone can purchase a level-boost and solo lower-level S-Rank marks without skill or time invested. The barrier of entry is low for this anti-social behavior, intentional or unitnentional.

Another problem needing addressed involves mismatched levels in hunts. I have met a few players who have their early MSQ progress impeded by A-Ranks blocking quest NPCs.

[Jojoya]

Aether is suffering a repeated early puller, too. The Aether DC community at large shows a profound resiliance and sticks to the "tag and step back" method. It's disheartening to witness the mark dead while many are en-route. "Hug the Aetheryte" tactic, cross-world linkshells, and a web companion aids are not helpful enough to reach the mark on many occasions.

OP's proposal: The Spawner's Perogative

A veil, or some sort of limited buff giving the perogative to spawner would be a solution to the immediate problem. Of course it would expire within a fixed amount of time to prevent a lost opportunity for all. This solution would curb anti-social behavior in a normally collaborative endeavor. Hunts are one of the few casual endgame activities and shouldn't be competitive. OP's proposal would also solve the fast kills on Forgiven Rebellion, where spawners are forced to spread across the map, and often the furthest participants miss the kill. The developers have been so careful to avoid competing loot streams in most activities; yet, these S-Ranks are a limited resource. Equally, anyone can purchase a level-boost and solo lower-level S-Rank marks without skill or time invested. The barrier of entry is low for this anti-social behavior, intentional or unitnentional.

Another problem needing addressed involves mismatched levels in hunts. I have met a few players who have their early MSQ progress impeded by A-Ranks blocking quest NPCs.

What about those cases where more than one player was involved in the spawn? What determines who gets to be the designated spawner, especially on something like FR where half the players in the zone are going out after the minions (with the largest group all too frequently going to whatever spawn was closest to the S rank then immediately beelining to FR's spawn point) while the rest camp the spawn point? Or when you have multiple spawners hitting a node at the same time so it's hard to tell whose hit triggered the spawn?

S ranks may be a limited resource but they're also not the only source of tomestones and hunt currency. At most you miss out on a kill toward an achievement count but there will always be the missed kills on occasion.

What needs to be addressed is the attitude in the community that 100+ players, including the spawners that have already invested a considerable amount of their time so the community would have something to kill, need to be held up from doing the other things they want to be doing for the sake of the 2 or 3 entitled people who feel that others should wait for their convenience. The 5 minute pull standard was adopted because that's enough time to get to any S rank once the relays start going out (one minute for relays to get passed between linkshells, one minute to get to the zone, max travel time from Aetheryte to farthest spawn point is 110 seconds, an extra minute to help out with loading issues).

Re: A ranks interfering with MSQ progress. That's been part of the game all along. A quick shout to Novice Network or FC friends will usually take care of that A rank. Something that is helpful to share with new players is that A rank hunts aren't especially trigger happy (S ranks are less tolerant). As long as they're just talking to a NPC or interacting with a click object close to the A rank, they should be safe as long as no one else comes by and starts attacking it. Just make certain they approach the NPC or object in such a way that the A rank is on the opposite side of it.

[dspguy]

If SE could choose whether they want each S-rank to reward:
50,000 sacks of nuts
50,000 poetics
40,000 uncapped tomes
15,000 capped tomes
500 materia clusters
across 500 players

or

5,000 sacks of nuts
5,000 poetics
4,000 uncapped tomes
1,500 capped tomes
50 materia clusters
across 50 players

They would choose the latter to require players to spend more time earning these rewards and more time subscribed. If anything, the hunt community has always impressed me. Doing their best to maximize rewards for all. It is antithesis to most of what the MMO community has been for some time.

[Ezera_Alastar]

I'd like to suggest how I would reduce a majority of frustration (and by extension, harassment) involving S and SS ranks.
While not against ToS, the friction is caused by a minority of early/instant or accidental pullers appearing before a reasonable amount of time has passed to account for world-hopping congestion.
I'm not interested in a discussion about what is and how to deal with it, but what could be:

I believe if S and SS ranks spawned with a 5-min Invincibility buff it would act as a built-in pull timer and account for the early puller vs congestion conflict.
The 5 minute duration (the length can be debated) or nature of the buff (could be 90% mitigation) is arbitrary to me so long as a majority of people are able to strike the elite mob even should an instant-puller act.

[Canadane]

They're not going to put in a buff because it's overworld content and no single player can own that.
If anything we should encourage quicker kills instead of clogging up instances preventing players who don't even want to hunt from entering a zone.

[Jojoya]

I believe if S and SS ranks spawned with a 5-min Invincibility buff it would act as a built-in pull timer and account for the early puller vs congestion conflict.
The 5 minute duration (the length can be debated) or nature of the buff (could be 90% mitigation) is arbitrary to me so long as a majority of people are able to strike the elite mob even should an instant-puller act.

I have no strong feelings for or against a 5 min invuln period since that's more or less what tends to get followed voluntarily. While I don't like the idea of an invuln period in general, most S ranks are up for at least 5 minutes after spawn before they get pulled so it wouldn't be increasing the wait time in most cases.

I would be happy to bet that within one week of implementation, players would be demanding for it to be increased to 10 or 15 minutes because they'd be missing out just as much if not more than they were before it was implemented. Instead of those occasions where it's really getting pulled 7-8 minutes after spawning with the courtesy and cooperation of those already present, S ranks would start getting pulled the instant the invuln drops off and no one would be holding back for the sake of those still on the way.

So 5 minutes I wouldn't object to. Longer than that and I would. That's too much time wasted for too many players who have other things they would also like to be doing.

They're not going to put in a buff because it's overworld content and no single player can own that.
If anything we should encourage quicker kills instead of clogging up instances preventing players who don't even want to hunt from entering a zone.

A short invuln period takes away ownership, which is fine in my opinion. There are too many out there who act like they and their friends own the hunt as it is.

A 5 minutes invuln wouldn't cause zones to become any more congested than we're already seeing. The game already throttles how many can teleport into a zone each minute. More players wouldn't be able to enter the zone when the game won't let them in.

[Canadane]

A 5 minutes invuln wouldn't cause zones to become any more congested than we're already seeing. The game already throttles how many can teleport into a zone each minute. More players wouldn't be able to enter the zone when the game won't let them in.

Right and we need to avoid this.
By killing it asap.

If you've gotten to the zone limit, you've failed your fellow players.

[Rueby]

I'm thinking of a flat invul buff that is there only during certain times, like the release of an expansion where hunts are invul and unaggroable could be very helpful by giving people time to arrive. It doesn't need to be owned by anyone. I'm not sure if the instance limit can technically be expanded upon, so I can't think of much. It's abit more like the multi-instances and this buff can be removed after sometime.

I don't think it's possible for SE to have control over 'who spawned this' since this is open world content and anyone on the map could've been hitting the mob required to do it, or met the spawn requirements on accident.

I was a spawner for quite awhile and while I understand our desire to share the hunt we worked on with as many people, early pullers will unfortunately exist and while inconvenient, the majority of people usually wait. An invul and aggroable mob will be a disaster as trolls can just aggro the S rank and take it to where people are standing.

I feel like we'll just throw ideas into the void, I don't think SE will add anything like that.

[Tygari]

I feel an invulnerablily buff is a bad idea as it breaks kill on sight. A level down aura that weakens over time would be best. Weaker attacks slow down kill while still leaving teams to slay as intended.

[FiletMignon]

What they need to do is increase S ranks HP to at least double what it is now. This is 7.0 item level and S ranks live to about 45sec to 1 min unless there is a train in the zone which in that case they live about 30-45 sec. Same thing goes to A ranks. When 7.5 hits s ranks might as well just spawn dead at that point.