How will SE address hunts in this coming maintenance?Follow

On Hyperion, often we'll pull right at that point the mob starts to disappear. For an A rank, it's pretty much perfect... the mob dies really fast at that point, but nobody ever complains about not being able to get the NM back on their screens as they run up to fight it.

It's the S ranks that are the real problem... those fights go on so much longer that the horde grows and grows until most people can't get the NM to reappear. I usually lose site of S ranks about midway through, and then I just stand in the middle of the crowd and spam flash until the fight is over.

Will be interesting to see how hunts are adjusted tonight.

I have a feeling that whatever SE does is going to be a big kick in the nuts to hunt linkshells, which would make me sad. This is the only content in the game so far that's encouraged the growth of a subcommunity that actually puts linkshells to good use. The game needs more content that does this, and I'd like to think Yoshi-P recognizes that.

Buffing daily hunts and adding sands to ST would go a long way toward alleviating stress on the system. That would also make farming UATs easier.

I'd love a seals caps in hunts, but for whatever reason, SE seems pretty dead-set against it.

Exactly, Bartel!

It just seems so backward. If I were in charge, I'd make ScOB have a loot cap ONLY (so people would have an easier time forming statics and progressing through content, which would eventually help more people farm for gear there) and hunts would have weekly seal caps.

I don't think caps are necessary. If Yoshi wants to make it casual friendly then the solution is simple: change the reward ratio. Make a daily hunt pay off big. A weekly hunt should pay off more, with a shared reward for those that help. And make random hunts pay off much, much less so that it's not impossible to do, but far less of a requirement to make progress unless you're really into that sort of thing.

If you do something like that you won't even need a cap. I think most people will just naturally ease their pace on their own.

We're on the same server, and honestly, my experience the last few days has been a bit different. Granted, I don't actively do hunts, I'll join up if I see one or someone shouts one out, so people that are in hunt LSs may have a different experience. Anyway, lately I've seen people shout out a target and then wait for people to show. People not in party, group up while waiting. Usually someone will announce a pull time and for the most part stick to it. If you get there in time, great, if not, the pull time was announced and you should have known if you could get there in time. Of course, people from GAF tend to **** up this pattern, but so far they're the only ones being **** I think if they weren't around, most people would be a lot happier. But, with open world content, competition is the name of the game, which is one reason why I don't care for open world content.

As to lag, I don't have a problem, but I'm running a fairly decent computer. Last night I was at the Rank A salamander in Mor Dhona and there were about a hundred people there. With absolutely no filters on I never lost sight of the mob. My temperatures spiked a bit though.

Edited, Aug 18th 2014 6:22pm by Turin

Yeah, I'm split on this.

On one hand, I like that I'll be able to tackle B ranks fairly casually.

On the other hand, this is a pretty substantial nerf for hunt groups. This past weekend, I spent several hours hunting to get the last of what I "needed" before these changes. I'd say B-rank kills made up at least 25 percent of the 1k seals I farmed. That's a pretty big nerf, when you think about it.

Also, I worry about whether this will make A and S rank pulls even more hostile. Demand for those marks will still be huge, only now you can't make up for early pulls by killing a few Bs. Trolling via early pulling could go off the charts.

I would have been much happier with a simple cap on seals.

If by "casually" you mean "once a week and no reason to even touch them otherwise", sure

Really confused by these changes. While nerfing the B ranks, it seems to me they just nerfed the hunt groups and social aspect of hunting. Since A's and S's aren't up as frequently, it will be much harder for hunt groups to stick together and just sit around twiddling their thumbs for half hour or an hour between pops, and when they do pop it's going to be even more of a mad rush to "cash in". This seems like kind of a half-***** solution if you ask me.

I guess it just seemed like a lot of people were enjoying the comraderie of joining a group of random players and just killing stuff for a couple hours and meeting some new people on the server. Now it seems more like people will just auto-invite for the kill, then immediately disband, which really does nothing for the social element of the game. Perhaps I'm just overthinking it. I guess only time will tell how this plays out.

Exactly, they just increased the pressure on A snd S marks...
Makes no sense.
They did nothing to help the situation just make it worse by doing that...




Agreed..




Well I do like the changes to the daily and weeklies and now the dailies are worth spending some times on.. That should help a little or maybe offset some of the damage of no more points for B marks..

Edited, Aug 19th 2014 10:35am by Nashred

Edited, Aug 19th 2014 10:35am by Nashred

The jury is out until we see results... but I'm guessing the pressure will be turned up.

I agree with Bartel that this is a swift kick in the nuts to the game's hunting community, which makes absolutely no sense. The hunt community is the best, strongest sub-community formed within the playerbase so far. It's not at all similar to things like treasure map groups (which barely exist) and frontlines parties (which are duty findered from people on different servers). Hunt groups actually allowed people on the same server to hang together for more than 15 to 30 minutes.

Thanks to hunts, I can tell you who some of the "bad" players on Hyperion are. I can also tell you who some of the good players are. I can feel the energy from a good, active group vs. a slower, stand-around group. It's awesome. For the first time since FFXI, hunts actually brought not just an open world feel, but also a "real server community" feel...

And yet a minority of players had to **** all over it, both in game and on the forums.

Welp, SE listened to those folks, and now the hunt community has taken a blow. Like I said above... jury is still out about how badly the community will be damaged... but the more I think about it, the more this "fix" baffles me. Not only might communities be damaged, but the zerg on A and S ranks will be less organized and more frenzied than before.

Seriously, all we needed was a weekly seals cap.

...And a huge buff to every other player out there, which I assure you is the majority of players. That makes perfect sense to me. Either you kick the minority (the hunting community) in the nuts or you kick the rest of the playerbase in the nuts (like they did with the first iteration of the event). It's not a tough call.



Why, when what we got today is so much better?