How will SE address hunts in this coming maintenance?Follow

The vocal minority always makes more noise. Meanwhile, hundreds of people hunt on each server at any given moment.

And no.. Sorry, but I didn't create the hunt community, especially not in this thread.

And yes, soloing was, and still is, less efficient on As and Ss. Whether you agree with that doesn't make it less true.

Uh no, warriors got buffed because they were CLEARLY inferior to paladins in terms of tanking. They had next to nothing in terms of damage mitigation, and a huge chunk of their skillset was completely useless or incredibly situational. They definitely went a little overboard with buffing them since they already destroyed pld in DPS, but there was a definite need for an update. I had war at 50 in about November and pld completely trumped it in a lot of fights because I had no way to mitigate enough damage to efficiently win (T1 snakes and Titan Table Flip come to mind).

Sometimes the people's whining isn't great for the game (a better example would have been the 2H buff in ffxi, where people whined to the point that SE just said ***** it and made them DPS gods), but in some cases, the people are absolutely correct. Just because SE designed the game doesn't mean their design decisions are great. I mean, does anyone honestly think that forcing players to cope with the horrid RNG for 12 atmas which seem to have a less than 5% chance to drop is good game design? No, it's nothing but a time sink, and a poorly implemented one at that.

Raylo, I agree. Heck, even I like having a way to get a super easy chunk of seals once per week. I did my dailies last night while in the queue for ST. Worked out well.

It is still a Nerf though. And it doesn't fix the negativity. It just gives people who don't want to deal with the negativity a different, less lucrative path to take.

Have you even looked at the OFs lately? Trust me... people who hunt are not the vocal minority.

I'm not even really making noise. You're trying very, very hard to stick to the narrative of "the big bad horde is being mean to solo players," which has always been a load of garbage. You should know this.

There are things about these changes I like, and things I don't like. And yes, SE failed to solve the biggest problem with hunts, which is the frustration and negativity surrounding A and S ranks. Although just about everyone (myself included) will use the option of getting an easy 12 seals/day and an extra 50/week (most people won't wait around for their FATE marks, guaranteed), many people will STILL remain on the sidelines for A and S ranks because 1) they're still being zerged and 2) there's still drama over early pulls. SE had a chance to fix this and bring more players to the potluck... instead, SE just yanked out B-rank mobs and set them on the kids' table.

Overall, it's a nerf. My friends who've been sitting on the sidelines because either they didn't want to take part in the zerg or didn't want to deal with the negativity will still be sitting on the sidelines for A and S ranks. They'll still earn less than 190 seals per week (and less if they don't play every day). Meanwhile, even with Bs made obsolete, I got 200 seals yesterday (and that's STILL nerfed).

Only players like you who only wanted to play solo will really, honestly benefit from this.

Everyone else -- not just people in hunt groups, but people who WANTED to join hunt groups, just without such heavy zerging or trigger-finger drama -- lost out. Even though many are now able to collect seals without being exposed to the negativity of A and S-rank pulls, they still can't get seals at the fast rate that I got them... even if they DID do A and S ranks now, they would STILL be nerfed. Nobody will ever gain seals as quickly as hunt groups did since the launch of the past.

If you look on the official forums, you'll see a lot of people who were clamoring for changes before are now frustrated because they feel the hunt groups "won" by benefiting from weeks of hunting before it was nerfed. I don't think that's a good way to look at things, but I understand why they feel that way. Don't you?

It is what it is, H.

Like I've already said, I've got all the seals I really needed, so I'm seriously not upset by these changes. When a few A-rank windows are open, I'll go get seals. When they're not, I won't. I don't mind collecting them at a slower pace now for my second and third jobs.

Still a nerf, though! Glad I got my seals beforehand.


Edited, Aug 20th 2014 8:02am by Thayos

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 8:03am by Thayos

You really should think before you post.

I never suggested a weekly cap of less than 500 seals. I even suggested it could be more, like 750 seals (enough for one sand), and still make a positive difference.

Instead, SE essentially capped soloers and people who don't want to zerg at less than 200 (more if you're willing to sit around waiting for those stupid fate bills) while nerfing everyone else... and WITHOUT solving the biggest problem!

Heck, I STILL think SE should put in a 750 weekly cap on seals. Players like you would never come close to hitting it, and players like me don't need more than one sands of time per week, anyway. And then the zerg would die down, and more people would be able to get more than a measly 200 seals/week.

EDIT: H, I think I see where you're confused, so let me clarify something: I don't care that the majority of hunters have been nerfed. I actually think it's a good thing. The rewards were very unbalanced, and this helps reign it in a bit. I also favor changes that will encourage more people to party up to fight A and S ranks, as developers intended in their design -- I want those people on the sidelines to feel like they're welcome to join in this content -- but SE didn't make any such changes. SE swung the nerf bat and totally whiffed on fixing the system nearly as much as they should have. A nerf is a nerf is a nerf, and if you're gonna nerf something, you should really make it count. SE whiffed. Just look at the official forums... it's not doom and gloom, but nobody's dancing in the streets, either. Soloers got a pacifier, and everyone else got nerfed. Very few people seem completely happy, and I understand why.

From what you're posting in here, you seem hyper-focused on soloing, and that's it... aren't you concerned about all the people who want to thrive in hunt groups, but their needs STILL haven't been met?

Trust me... there are more people who want to fight the biggest monsters and get the best rewards than there are people who just want to solo one B rank per week and a handful of regular mobs.

This patch did nothing to help those people get into that content.

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 9:19am by Thayos

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 9:20am by Thayos

I think the number of people who just want to solo is definitely a minority... but I think there are far more people sitting on the sidelines who want to party up and take on the A and S ranks, but they're completely turned off by how overburdened the content is.

So, yes, a ton of people have been unhappy with hunts... I totally get that... but SE's "fix" doesn't help most of those people as much as it should have. Rather than enable those people to take part in the best content, they've basically been relegated to the kids' table. Meanwhile, the upper-rank zergs/frustration continues.

As for "agree to disagree"... ugh. That's got to be my least-favorite phrase ever.

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 9:43am by Thayos

Oh, yeah, my bad! I did misunderstand.

If you're going to argue against this fix with the premise that people are complaining that they can't hit the same # of seals as before, please try to grasp that the same issue applies to your proposed "fix", regardless of what exact cap to the # of seals you were thinking of. 500, 750, 900, 1100... If it's below the # of seals you could get before, people will complain that they can't hit the similar numbers. It's not rocket science, please think before you post.

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 7:14pm by Hyanmen

This statement hits the nail on the head IMO. While any predictions on what the "majority" are feeling is obviously speculation, I would be extremely surprised if the massive rewards were not the source of hunts' popularity. I mean, even MMO newcomers likely recognize that progression content with low skill caps tend to become extremely popular regardless of how enjoyable they are. I think anyone would agree that it would be a massive stretch to say that there were constant Brayflox "first two boss" runs last patch because the first two bosses of Brayflox just happened to be a lot of fun to do over and over again. Likewise with players suddenly realizing how unbelievably enjoyable it is to run around zones doing FATEs for roughly 2% drop rate items 12 times in a row for relic upgrades. Strip the rewards from activities such as this, and would they remain popular? I think everyone knows the answer to that question.

Of course, it is possible to have activities that players really do find enjoyable enough to do on their own that just happen to also reward the player for their efforts (this is IMO, ideal), but you obviously cannot tell which events those are just by looking around the most rewarding activity in the game and saying "Gee, a lot of players are doing this, they must be really happy with the way things are." All we can really gather from that information is what most of us have known for years and some over a decade. That people like getting rewards in progression based MMOs.

Edit: On another note, I'd also like to point out that there is likely to be a decent chunk of players who don't necessarily just want to be able to solo the world for end game gear. I think that there would be many players who'd be perfectly happy letting hunters run around ganking mob after mob and being provided an alternate path to similar progress that they find enjoyable. I strongly believe the backlash wouldn't be nearly as large if it weren't for the fact that for one, hunt rewards are extremely good to the point of outclassing all of the other easily accessible content in the game, and secondly, that there are quite a few players that really, really dislike doing them. The end result is that players feel that their only options are to either stop progressing entirely, or put up with unenjoyable content.

Unlike with coil/primals where an argument could be made that "the best rewards should from the hardest content to give players incentive to do it," no such argument could be made here. Hunts are arguably some of the easiest content in the game due to the way players tackle them. Easier than low level dungeons, even easier than low level FATEs, if that is possible. The skill cap is absurdly low, and success depends more highly on factors such as either having good info or being in a group with someone else who has good info, having good loading time, and knowing how to twist the contribution system in your favor than it does about knowing anything about your enemy, your class, or how to play FFXIV in general. With that said, I really don't see any reason to open up end game progress to one and only one extremely easy and accessible event, while offering no such progress in other arguably much more challenging and engaging activities.

Edited, Aug 20th 2014 5:04pm by Susanoh

TL;DR version - Hunts aren't fixed until we can force Google Chrome on Lamia to stop being an *** about pulling early.

I'd much prefer this to what we have now. This would fix or at least has the potential to fix:

• Radar users having an advantage
• "Mob reset" removing your progress
• Disappearing mobs
• Extremely trivial 5 second fights
• Heavy focus on terrible "contribution" mechanics

I think hunts are meant to be open world content in the same vein that they were originally in FFXII. I don't participate in the drama llama pajama groups, so it doesn't really bother me either way, but I'm not opposed to the concept. I'm glad they're taking steps to make it more casual friendly since the bulk of the players are casual, and there's some significant rewards offered that you can't get except in hardcore circles.