How will SE address hunts in this coming maintenance?Follow

Odin and Behemoth drop an exclusive currency that you can use to trade for vanity gear in Mor Dhona. They're very strong world bosses that get highly overcrowded, and it's very possible that if a group doesn't build up enough contribution during the fight, you won't get gold. Joining a party vastly increases your chances of getting gold (I'm not even sure if it would be possible to get gold without a party), just like it does with hunts.

I'm pretty sure every FATE in the game actually works this way to some degree. You may not really notice it as much because you can actually manage to get credit on FATEs solo, but the overcrowding magnifies the issue when it comes to hunts. If for example, you try to fight Roc in Coerthas, you can probably get credit right now solo. But if far more players than were intending to fight Roc were to do so, enough that you could only get one or two GCDs off before he died, you probably wouldn't even come close to getting gold, and due to the massive overcrowding you'd need to find other means of gaining contribution if you want any hope at full credit (joining a party would be the first step). This is the state that hunts are in now. It's not that the system just hates solo players no matter what. It's that the more people there are downing a mob, the more difficult it is to get your piece of the pie and the more you have to tailor your style to what the system deems worthy of receiving credit.

Edit: I also suspect that hunts may have less contribution to go around than FATEs if fought the way one would intend to fight them. I don't know every detail of the mechanics so I can't say with 100% certainty, but it did seem easier to build up to full solo while in FATEs compared to hunts, although being in a party meant instant gold every time for FATEs if your party was there, even if you didn't exploit the system with useless enmity building and overhealing.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2014 7:46pm by Susanoh

Players could "disable auto-group" which only really stopped people from joining with them if they're randomly out in the field. Said player could still join up with others when prompted, though. Overall, there was little incentive to not have it enabled, though. And while I can certainly get behind there actually being more difficult content out there, we need the zones built around that premise, too. On the other hand, I'm not too keen on sectioning zone sections off with nothing but elites. Too often these just become dead areas where people only partake in quest objectives then get out ASAP. And with Yoshi's RMT fears, this means making them good farming options is probably out, so that reality seems even more likely.

Not really. I spotted these issues early on Balmung - both the overcrowding on content and the polarized ideals when it came to use of mobs, and I steered clear.

You'd probably not like me either. If I spot a B ranked mob, I call my LS and engage as soon as I have a group capable of defeating it. It's not worth the risk of loss of participation points to shout, and the B ranks are up every hour anyways.

There needs to be a better overall solution than just raising the points on Daily hunts. That or the level of increase would have to be very, very significant.

I think it's also this behavior that unfortunately spurred on the early cheating. Not only do people get rewarded for using ApRadar, they get to troll others in the process.

I'll preface this by saying i'm not a regular hunter, and understand the frustration about early pulls.

Except that this happens about 75% of the time. I personally have shouted out all ranks, on different occasions, different zones, many times and then ask for party invite only to be met by silence from the horde that shows up. I've since stopped shouting for B and A ranks and just break out Titan until the zergfest shows up. I know people like to wait for pull times, but every time I have, I get 10-25% credit for it, since folks simply won't invite. It seems to be the only reliable way to get full credit since people ignore invite requests on a regular basis. That is not how the system should work, and I agree a public, open to all grouping mechanic is needed.

I don't forsee Hunts dying down for a significant amount of time, probably at least not until 2.4 has been out for awhile, so we need some solution to the grouping issue for credit.


Edited, Aug 7th 2014 5:18pm by Dallie

This is nothing new. People can get to 50 by fate grinding and have no clue how to play their job.

I remeber seeing threads about this when people zerged FATEs when ARR went live. Hell I remember seeing the argument when people were being afk power-levelled in 1.0. It's certainly not new.

Avoid Binding Coil and Extreme primal DFs..that's where they seem to thrive.

That sounds like every experience I've had with Titan Ex since my first stab at learning it.

I'm iLvl 96 BLM now, not quite "way overgeared" but competently geared, and I'm eyeing iLvl 100 next week if hunts go well over the weekend.

And I'll still have that darn quest on my hunt log!

Sadly most extreme fights are like this. If you don't get them over with on release, they become increasingly harder to complete with pugs. All the people who want something form them, spam them, win and never bother with it again. Titan Ex still remains ridiculous for most average players, Ifrit EX, good luck finding healer's to handle his spits. Levi EX is easy enough, but again, most people who needed weapons have moved on.

I'm in the same situation with Second Coil, I can probably easily breeze through T6 (I've made it to phase 3 several times and have had the tanks mess up), but no one wants people who have never won to join their group.

This is a simplification and just as harmful. Watching a video will show you how to do something correctly, and practice will let you learn what you've watched. Practice alone can be harmful if you're practicing incorrectly. Practice makes proficient, perfect practice makes perfect. If you don't know the right way to do something, you doing it wrong a bunch of times doesn't make you better. It just makes you better at doing it wrong.

It's no misconception. Watching a video will show you basic mechanics which means you're going in with SOME knowledge rather than trying to cheese your way through because certain content like Coils and Ramuh for example, it's extremely easy to see who knows nothing and is trying to cheese their way through.

It just won't happen unless you not only have the reflexes of a god but the mind of a psychic.

*sigh* I kind of miss the days when you could have the thrill of jumping into a boss fight for the first time not knowing what to expect and working out how to win by your scared wits. Now you're expected to "play" your games on YouTube before you get to try it yourself so there's no mystery at all. It's certainly a different world from when I grew up.