So nothing open world for like a year? lol

[Supersnow845]

I get you think the content is nothing, there are people that dismiss it as nothing for sure, but that doesn't mean it is.

There is a whole community around hunts and it's content I spend lots of time doing (with breaks). Lots of people fight them, on a regular basis, leaving bodies everywhere. They have lots of fun mechanics and I enjoy them a lot.

The distinction between B, A and S ranks is because they work very differently. B ranks, casual players go out and fight them each week in the open world. A ranks are fought pretty regularly, usually by hunt trains, every 6 hours or so. S ranks have spawn conditions people go out and attempt regularly and are a whole social rabbit hole in this game with long-term achievements tied to them. Since they all work very differently, they deserve separate bullet points.

And while there is FATE farming as a regular activity that is done for gemstone farming, the achievement FATEs are a bit of a separate attraction and really not quite as much of a pushover in many cases because they bring lots of people together to fight them, as such they again deserve separate bullet points in my opinion.

And Treasure Hunts are separate to hunts, so also deserve their own bullet point.
Not being iterated on as a concept doesn't mean it's not content. I'm not saying it shouldn't be iterated on or can't be though (I'd really like B ranks to work like the hunts in FF16).
True. I have thought that they could update it more frequently. But if I ask myself whether I actually get bored of them that quickly, tbh, the answer is no. I get bored of everything in the expansion after about 1.5 to 2 years, so at least their original timeframe for something new worked for me, but they have stretched it out to 2.5 years for the last two expansions to where even expert roulette is the same dungeons for almost a year.

The problem with hunts is not so much that they are nothing it’s that for 99.99% of players the content amounts to nothing. Sure you can point to trying to find s rank spawn conditions or scoping out marks but for 99.9% of players hunts basically amounts to a daily Zerg of the same bosses for tomestones. The spawn conditions system is opaque and never changes so it only needs to be solved once. And the system doesn’t lead itself to independent coordination, it leads itself exactly to “let the discord figure it out and follow”. That works for content with strange entry conditions and a lot of coordination like BA but it just artificially reduces the interaction of hunt design. Plus hints give no useful rewards besides tomestones

Maps don’t even really deserve a mention because it’s almost all done in an instance, finding the map location in the overworld barely counts as part of the content

[Jeeqbit]

Plus hints give no useful rewards besides tomestones

They do give materia though (indirectly) and are a good way to farm that, especially for pentamelding or making gil. During odd patches they also push the tomestone augments there and a lot of people do farm these (whether for augmenting alt classes or because of not raiding). Alliance Raids are really more efficient for getting the left side pieces while the right side pieces are being farmed from hunts.

Maps don’t even really deserve a mention because it’s almost all done in an instance, finding the map location in the overworld barely counts as part of the content

Maybe but they do at least get people to fly out into the map and fight things there. It may not be much since they die quick, but it does force people to actually visit the area, which is one of the complaints people have ("no reason to return"). I'm not saying they couldn't be better or do something else within the open world itself.

[mallleable]

It's genuinely sad that hunts have devolved into mindless zergfest because some of the A ranks, and S ranks in Dawntrail have some kinda fun, and actually threatening mechanics.

[Jeeqbit]

It's genuinely sad that hunts have devolved into mindless zergfest because some of the A ranks, and S ranks in Dawntrail have some kinda fun, and actually threatening mechanics.

I do always feel that way and I agree they have made them even better this expansion. Fortunately they do show through now that activity has slowed down, especially after reset days or at late/early hours. But even then, the last two zones at the bare minimum still manage to destroy lots of people. To me, that's when content is fun, when there's bodies everywhere. They are willing to make mechanics more threatening than they would in dungeons because of the amount of people that can rez. That's the sort of thing that made Field Operations good as well.

[AnimaAnimus]

The problem with hunts is not so much that they are nothing it’s that for 99.99% of players the content amounts to nothing. Sure you can point to trying to find s rank spawn conditions or scoping out marks but for 99.9% of players hunts basically amounts to a daily Zerg of the same bosses for tomestones. The spawn conditions system is opaque and never changes so it only needs to be solved once. And the system doesn’t lead itself to independent coordination, it leads itself exactly to “let the discord figure it out and follow”. That works for content with strange entry conditions and a lot of coordination like BA but it just artificially reduces the interaction of hunt design. Plus hints give no useful rewards besides tomestones

Maps don’t even really deserve a mention because it’s almost all done in an instance, finding the map location in the overworld barely counts as part of the content

You are trying to talk sense to someone who is a huge apologist for SE. There is absolutely no use wasting the time, he will defend this game, its devs, its content and everything so hard that I almost think he believes what he is saying is true and not just a white knight troll for the lulls. There is no critical thinking there.

[Jeeqbit]

There is no critical thinking there.

It's important to be critical of the criticism as well, to make sure it's not missing something. For example, a lot of critics simply don't do content and then pretend it doesn't exist, or just never really tried the content they are ignoring, or don't understand it as well as they think they do. In other cases, people come up with narrow statistics that don't really hold water next to all the other statistics that exist.

Then there are the times a lack of respect/consideration is shown - for example, for the fact developing things takes time, or for the fact SE is at least trying, or in another example, people who want more raid content always used to be like "who cares about story players and non-raiders, make more raids" as if other sections of the playerbase don't exist.

Without someone arguing against the negative posts, it becomes an echo chamber with no scrutiny.

[Reinha]

• B ranks (which you kill once a week solo) and daily hunt bills (which you can do for leveling)
• A ranks (which are fought very, very regularly by many players)
• S ranks which you can try to spawn (this is also done very, very regularly by many players)
• gathering (also done very regularly, obviously)
• treasure maps (popular endgame content for FCs and in PF that you see all the time if you fly around)
• achievement FATE bosses
• not quite as social but beast tribes and custom deliveries often draw people back for exp or ranking
• sightseeing logs and sidequests (one-off stuff, but still found in the open world tbh)

Not a single one of these activities offer gear and power progression to capped players.

[Jeeqbit]

Not a single one of these activities offer gear and power progression to capped players.

How about tome capping and augment farming (in odd patches) for alt classes? Also, Hunts (and I believe FATEs now) allows you to get materia which is relevant if you didn't have materia yet for that capped item level gear, which makes for a total of 3 things related to gear and power progression from hunts. For crafters/gatherers, the tribes and custom deliveries help in various ways with leveling and scrips.

Of course, the game doesn't have a means of power progression beyond the max item level and materia melding, but that's really something to suggest for the game generally. Those activities are offering what they can within the confines of what the game offers. The "gear and power progression" in this game is in and of itself just getting max level, max item level and materia as it stands so that's all these things can really do unless they implement Eureka, Bozja or Deep Dungeon-like systems into the rest of the game.

[Arzalis]

I think it's pretty obvious what they include for the expansion releases needs to change.

I think it was usually okay-ish in the past when we had 3 months or so before the x.1 patch, but with it being so long for a new patch now there's basically nothing to do. We're also seemingly not getting a ton this next patch either.

Something needs to change because sticking to the same general pattern they have for over a decade isn't working anymore with all the cuts and schedule changes they've made to the content we do get.

[AureliusIX]

• B ranks (which you kill once a week solo) and daily hunt bills (which you can do for leveling)
• A ranks (which are fought very, very regularly by many players)
• S ranks which you can try to spawn (this is also done very, very regularly by many players)
• gathering (also done very regularly, obviously)
• treasure maps (popular endgame content for FCs and in PF that you see all the time if you fly around)
• achievement FATE bosses
• not quite as social but beast tribes and custom deliveries often draw people back for exp or ranking
• sightseeing logs and sidequests (one-off stuff, but still found in the open world tbh)

I'll reply to this list with a post I saw on the Japanese side that I personally agree with.
For context this person was replying to a thread about YoshiP's comments on creating time consuming content for FFXIV.

"Please create content that is so interesting that you will forget about time, not content that takes a long time."

It's something I couldn't agree more with, your list though on the other hand is simply time consuming content that is not interesting anymore and after 10 years the formula is stale, repetitive and boring.