Final Fantasy XIV

[Duo Maxwell]

I have yet to found an Elite, though. Naul died way too fast before I could even reach him. Does killing the one not on your bill give your reward?

Dat Tamtara HM, though.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

I have yet to found an Elite, though. Naul died way too fast before I could even reach him. Does killing the one not on your bill give your reward?

Dat Tamtara HM, though.

You get a flat bonus for the bill one, while others simply reward you an amount based on mark rank and how much you did in it.

Spoiler for Tamtara HM:

That was one absurdly creepy and disrupting dungeon especially the notes, music, her smile, laugh, and cry during the final boss and then it's defeat, and the end of quest turn in. SE really went all out on the atmosphere of the dungeon, and I really felt it personally.

Other 2 new dungeons weren't bad, but compared to that dungeon didn't really feel significant. Stonevigil HM had some fun bosses at least.

Though what I really enjoyed most was

Spoiler for Syrus Tower:

The quest to unlock it, was such wow holy shit moment, and really gave so amazing huge information about the events of the world that let up to many of the current events of the game and about the Allagans in general, I really recommend everyone read(or reread) and pay attention to it, it's rare that we'll get that much history of things in the game again for quite some time.

While music and visuals inside of it were amazing, most of the boss fights are more chaotic than difficult, though that each had a few interesting mechanics to them.

Spoiler for Post Completion:

The events of CT clearly confirmed a there will indeed be a part three of Crystal Tower to look forward to.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

I don't think the reward is unfair, it take a lot of effort to hunt down that many S marks in a day and earn full credit since the hunts have a hidden ranking system similar to Fates. I heard you can get 100-300 on S hunts with max rank. (I've only gotten 50 from one yet)

A lot? No, the ones farming the hell out of it are in multiple hunt LS spread out over pretty much every region, as soon as one is spotted, the whole horde zergs the crap out of it. Unless you qualify effort as sitting around waiting for someone to call out where the next mark is, but it is not what I’d consider “effort”.

S rank gives 50 seals max btw.

To get 3 in a day like your friend you'd need to earn over 2000 allied seals, or 8 S rank hunts at max range.

Not quite, A and S rank marks can drop the book itself, and the drop rates aren’t all that low apparently, but yea, that’s how many people are farming it, and he’s far from the only one.

But S mobs have a lot of hp, it's just when a "lot" of hp becomes relatively trivial when you have easily over a 100 player show up to some of the S rank hunts.

And why are so many people showing up? Because the reward is disproportionately good. Nowhere else in the game will let you nab so many i110 gears in so little time, this is a fact.

And secondly upgraded soldiery gear is worse to high allagan in numerous slots for many jobs.

While itemizing secondary stats can be important to min-maxers, what’s BiS depends greatly on the job, the content you’re gearing for, as accuracy requirement will dictate what your best loadout is, and HA is far from being uniformly better than Gerolt gears. That being said, it is also fact that main stats utterly crushes secondary stats. You can debate which secondary is worth more in whatever build, but the difference is miniscule at best, as all items at same ilvl have the same main stats.

Besides the Sand and Oils already drop in ST, so people will be getting them without clearing coil anyways.

Only Oil and UAT, not Sands, and they’re also under the one-week lockout. The reason SE gave? “It would be too easy otherwise!” Oh the irony…

Besides no one thought Myth items being same ilvl as first part of coil was a crime and it lets more people attempt the brutal coil for titles if they want a real challenge .

And back then it took weeks to get enough myths to get those gear due to the cap. This system as it is right now invalidates/makes trivial almost every other progression content by its sheer time/reward ratio, and this breeds resentment and hostility – both between the people who participates in it (early pullers, people who doesn’t get enough credits, people who shout fake locations, or entire party/LS forcibly pulling and resetting marks in order to get their hits in), and those who don’t have hours and hours to mindlessly camp marks or find it not to their liking. You can say that those people have other options, but the caveat is that SE have already slapped a big, bright “This is a massively slower and inferior way of progression” sticker on everything else.

I don’t plan on farming the marks, frankly speaking in a treadmill game like this all these gears will be irrelevant soon anyway, I’d rather do something more productive both for my time and sanity than mindlessly camping mobs. Even then, it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth that SE has essentially relegated all other progression methods to the “inferior” dustbin.

SE needs to make up their mind about what kind of progression they want in their game (and hire some more play testers ffs, it boggles the mind they didn’t see how the zerg horde can develop) , you can’t have a time-gated progression system and then break it in the middle of the treadmill cycle by giving away virtually unlimited top tier gear while everything else is still time-gated.

[Kotohono]

And back then it took weeks to get enough myths to get those gear due to the cap. This system as it is right now invalidates/makes trivial almost every other progression content by its sheer time/reward ratio, and this breeds resentment and hostility – both between the people who participates in it (early pullers, people who doesn’t get enough credits, people who shout fake locations, or entire party/LS forcibly pulling and resetting marks in order to get their hits in), and those who don’t have hours and hours to mindlessly camp marks or find it not to their liking. You can say that those people have other options, but the caveat is that SE have already slapped a big, bright “This is a massively slower and inferior way of progression” sticker on everything else.

I don’t plan on farming the marks, frankly speaking in a treadmill game like this all these gears will be irrelevant soon anyway, I’d rather do something more productive both for my time and sanity than mindlessly camping mobs. Even then, it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth that SE has essentially relegated all other progression methods to the “inferior” dustbin.

SE needs to make up their mind about what kind of progression they want in their game (and hire some more play testers ffs, it boggles the mind they didn’t see how the zerg horde can develop) , you can’t have a time-gated progression system and then break it in the middle of the treadmill cycle by giving away virtually unlimited top tier gear while everything else is still time-gated.

It's the same with current gear and soldiery, but it has been many months now since this tier was released so people have already obtained a fair bit of the gear. The only non-time gated factor now is the ability to upgrade it. And hunts are gated to an extent most S rank hunts take quite a few hours to respawn I believe.

A lot? No, the ones farming the hell out of it are in multiple hunt LS spread out over pretty much every region, as soon as one is spotted, the whole horde zergs the crap out of it. Unless you qualify effort as sitting around waiting for someone to call out where the next mark is, but it is not what I’d consider “effort”.

More effort than the joke of the requirements on the current relic weapon system that are simply lottery, grind, and gilsink.

While itemizing secondary stats can be important to min-maxers, what’s BiS depends greatly on the job, the content you’re gearing for, as accuracy requirement will dictate what your best loadout is, and HA is far from being uniformly better than Gerolt gears. That being said, it is also fact that main stats utterly crushes secondary stats. You can debate which secondary is worth more in whatever build, but the difference is miniscule at best, as all items at same ilvl have the same main stats.

Maybe it's just my bias showing since for Dragoon HA is better than Gerolt gear in all but 3 slots due to most of Gerolt having poor secondary for it.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

It's the same with current gear and soldiery, but it has been many months now since this tier was released so people have already obtained a fair bit of the gear. The only non-time gated factor now is the ability to upgrade it.

2.2 came out at the end of March, it's been only three months, which is half the time that i90 was relevant for. Moreover, i90 gear remain time-gated until i100+ was released, what they're doing is akin to letting people obtain first coil gear in 2.1 by farming fates.

And hunts are gated to an extent most S rank hunts take quite a few hours to respawn I believe.

I'm sorry, but trying to paint the hunts as time gated because of hours long respawn timer when there are 50+ of them, in a game where the lockout on equivalent drop is a week long is weak at best.

fact is:

SCOB: 1/ sand per week, shared between 8 ppl
Hunt: up to 1-3 sands per DAY, per person.

More effort than the joke of the requirements on the current relic weapon system that are simply lottery, grind, and gilsink.

That IS effort. By orders of magnitudes more in fact.

You can't seriously be suggesting that sitting around waiting for people to call out spawns or for yours to show up (which btw, a good deal of people are using 3rd party radars to see the spawns) takes more effort than grinding out 12 items with a 1% drop rate, then farm 13,500 myths to buy the books, kill 900 mobs, do 45 dungeons and 45 rare fates, and that's not even going into Novus.

No, it's not even remotely close. It took people weeks and months to get their atma/animus, most are still working on Novus a month after it's out. Even the most hardcore grinders took a week to grind out their Novus.

These hunts? people are getting 1-3 sands per day since DAY ONE. It's like saying buying fastfood from McDonald down the street takes more effort than growing and cooking your own food, because stuff just comes out of the ground and you just need to cook them, it doesn't make any sense.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by kyp275

2.2 came out at the end of March, it's been only three months, which is half the time that i90 was relevant for. Moreover, i90 gear remain time-gated until i100+ was released, what they're doing is akin to letting people obtain first coil gear in 2.1 by farming fates.




I'm sorry, but trying to paint the hunts as time gated because of hours long respawn timer when there are 50+ of them, in a game where the lockout on equivalent drop is a week long is weak at best.

fact is:

SCOB: 1/ sand per week, shared between 8 ppl
Hunt: up to 1-3 sands per DAY, per person.

First off you get 2-7 pieces of ilvl110 gear (+ i115 weapon) + 1-2 sands, 1-2 oils, and 1 UTA between 8 people depending on how much coil you clear. You don't get just a sand for it. Meaning most groups who have been clearing at least 3 of the 4 turns should have most of their members already near full i110 anyways.

Secondly there are 51 hunt marks (1 of each rank per 17 world zones), 17 are B that reward 5 seals, and zero chance at the book. That leaves 34 for reasonable seals, and half are A that give 20 seals, and low chance of book, and that leave just a mere 17 S marks that give potentially 50 seals and a better chance at the book. So it's realistically 17 mobs or 34 if you count the lower chance, not the supposed "50+ hunt marks" that offer a chance at the book.

Thirdly fates are equally a joke in effort, it's just a test of patience since even the lowest of low level fates offer a chance at atma, unless you think idle autoing spamming low level skill in a group of 8 takes any "effort", the only effort here is putting up with the annoying RNG of the system.

Originally Posted by kyp275

That IS effort. By orders of magnitudes more in fact.

You can't seriously be suggesting that sitting around waiting for people to call out spawns or for yours to show up takes more effort than grinding out 12 items with a 1% drop rate, then farm 13,500 myths to buy the books, kill 900 mobs, do 45 dungeons and 45 rare fates, and that's not even going into Novus.

No, it's not even remotely close. It took people weeks and months to get their atma/animus, most are still working on Novus a month after it's out. Even the most hardcore grinders took a week to grind out their Novus.

These hunts? people are getting 1-3 sands per day since DAY ONE. It's like saying buying fastfood from McDonald down the street takes more effort than growing and cooking your own food, because stuff just comes out of the ground and you just need to cook them, it doesn't make any sense.

So you dismiss the 6685 soldiery (15 weeks) requirement for the full set of ilvl110 gear to be earned before the hunts taking 7250 allied seals (-250 per book of RNG), but you want to act like myth an equally infinite resource is meaningful of anything, when people spammed HM dungeons to earn 50 myth per 5-7 minutes?

Or that fates and RNG are somehow difficult or all that different from the hunts (Both involving you sitting in a random zone waiting for something to happen, then briefly doing combat for a few minutes at best ), plenty of people had friends or others call out to them when a fate they needed was up.

And the fact that you think soloing low level mobs is a challenge, or doing dungeons again that the vast majority of the level 50 player base could clear with complete ease is a meaningful challenge to players to earn that weapon is absurd to me, or is it ok in your mind because it's an additional time sink?

There is only real difference between Novus weapon and ilvl110 soldiery gear is the time sink of hunts vs timesink + gilsink of Novus weapons, unless you think gil should earn you gear, in which case why not just get a merc group to clear turn 9 for you . Which seems like a fair difference since getting to choice your secondary stats on a weapon is powerful thing.

Really it just seems like you're showing elitist that SE would dare offer a way for non-raid players without tons of gil to earn a way to upgrade the gear if they're willing to go for the grind, for gear that they are already spent 15 weeks to acquire, as overall the hunt gains are still restricted by amount of soldiery gear a person has.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Thirdly fates are equally a joke in effort, it's just a test of patience since even the lowest of low level fates offer a chance at atma, unless you think idle autoing spamming low level skill in a group of 8 takes any "effort", the only effort here is putting up with the annoying RNG of the system.

So what is it? is Hunt something that takes effort, or is it a "joke in effort" like you just said here? make up your mind.

So you dismiss the 6685 soldiery (15 weeks) requirement for the full set of ilvl110 gear to be earned before the hunts taking 7250 allied seals (-250 per book of RNG), but you want to act like myth an equally infinite resource is meaningful of anything, when people spammed HM dungeons to earn 50 myth per 5-7 minutes?

Dismiss? no, how does me pointing out you dismissing the effort required to get atma/animus/novus somehow equal to me dismissing getting the soldiery tomes? Stop thinking what you think I said, and actually read what I did say.

And no, I do not consider the soldiery tomes part of the debate at all, as we already received gear for the effort spent on those tomes - the i100 gears. The sand is purely for the 100>110 step. If you're gonna count the soldiery in with the hunts, then you'll have to include all the early steps with the relic too - going all the way back to the the HM primals (when they were hard), and the 3 week's worth of Myth tomes when they were capped at 300 etc. Eitherway, the equation is not in your favor.

Or that fates and RNG are somehow difficult or all that different from the hunts (Both involving you sitting in a random zone waiting for something to happen, then briefly doing combat for a few minutes at best )

Again, please make up your mind on whether Hunt takes effort or not, instead of claiming they do in one post, and then dismissing them in another one.

As for whether it's "difficult" or not, feel free to go tell some of my FC members, some of whom spent literally weeks trying to get a single Atma, that the people in Hunt LS waiting for calls and using radars atm are really spending more effort than they did in doing hundreds of fates.

And the fact that you think soloing low level mobs is a challenge, or doing dungeons again that the vast majority of the level 50 player base could clear with complete ease is a meaningful challenge to players to earn that weapon is absurd to me, or is it ok in your mind because it's an additional time sink?

I challenge you to quote the part of my post that says that, I guarantee you 100% you can't, because I didn't write it. YOU are the one that all of a sudden started with this "challenge" nonsense, of which there aren't too many in the game to begin with. The topic here is EFFORT, in case you've forgotten.

There is only real difference between Novus weapon and ilvl110 soldiery gear is the time sink of hunts vs timesink + gilsink of Novus weapons.

The part you failed to realize is just how unequitable those two timesinks are to each other.

Really it just seems like you're showing elitist that SE would dare offer a way for non-raid players without tons of gil to earn a way to upgrade the gear if they're willing to go for the grind, for gear that they are already spent 15 weeks to acquire, as overall the hunt gains are still restricted by amount of soldiery gear a person has.

Nothing like a mod starting ad hominem

And I would kindly suggest you stop trying to put words in my mouth. I have no problem if SE put in a method to upgrade weathered gear, the problem I have is that it's unlimited with no cap and is entirely way too easy, thus funneling a large chunk of playerbase into zerging a single piece of content, leading to said content being a farce of what it was intented to be.

Did you see me complain about UAT and Oil in Syrcus Tower? no, and I wouldn't mind if they finally decide to add Sands to ST either, provided they are behind the timed lockout as long as SCOB still is.


EDIT:

Oh, and just look at how "difficult" doing the hunt is these days:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ir-Take-a-look.

yea, totally hard

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Oh, and just look at how "difficult" doing the hunt is these days:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ir-Take-a-look.

yea, totally hard

Spoiler for quotes from the thread:

This is blatant cheating. It has made Hunts nearly impossible to participate in.

Somewhat has me wondering is hunting on my server futile.

I hope SE gives us an alternative method to spawn hunts that will allow everyone a fair chance at these mobs, but I'm not holding my breath.

But yeah, posting this is just going to make this content even less doable and even more retarded. Thanks alot. I'm personally not even gonna bother with it anymore.

More seriously, I was myself so hyped about the hunt the first 2 days then it suddently got impossible to even find something at a decent rate... Now I understand why

I give up, been trying to do the weekly only to no chance in finding it due to these radar users

the rest of us have no chance in hell.

It seems everyone that isn't a cheater thinks that it is so hard that it's flat out impossible.
Not a thing that SE should be proud of, but hey that's what the players wanted. Enjoy it.


Anyway Kyp I don't quite understand how this new system is any less time gated than the system that existed with the previous Myth/Allagan gear.

Even if we admit that you can get infinite sands, aren't sands by themselves useless? Don't you need a soldiery gear in the first place? And isn't soldiery gear still time gated?

In the worst (or best depending from your POV) case scenario it just makes things as if the soldiery gear was the same level of those you could obtain from coil from the very beginning. Which is exactly how things were when Myth\allagan were introduced.
And in both cases is 20 levels more than the alternative.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

It seems everyone that isn't a cheater thinks that it is so hard that it's flat out impossible.
Not a thing that SE should be proud of, but hey that's what the players wanted. Enjoy it.

Not sure how you get that's what players wanted, but it's sure as hell something the more unscrupulous players will take advantage of. So far I didn't address the cheating side of it because that's not really the fault of the system itself, but yea, there is definitely an "in" crowd to the hunts, ie. if you're not "in", you ain't seeing shit.

Anyway Kyp I don't quite understand how this new system is any less time gated than the system that existed with the previous Myth/Allagan gear.

Even if we admit that you can get infinite sands, aren't sands by themselves useless? Don't you need a soldiery gear in the first place? And isn't soldiery gear still time gated?

The difference is that we've had 3 month's worth of time to accumulate soldiery tomes, at this point in time when people have already moved on to gearing out secondary jobs with soldiery tomes, its usefulness as a time gate is negligible.

In the worst (or best depending from your POV) case scenario it just makes things as if the soldiery gear was the same level of those you could obtain from coil from the very beginning. Which is exactly how things were when Myth\allagan were introduced.
And in both cases is 20 levels more than the alternative.

You realize in that scenario you've just declared that joining the hunt zerg horde is now mandatory for everyone if they don't want to fall behind? Again, my problem isn't that other avenues of upgrade is available, but with the uncapped nature and the ease of obtaining it.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Not sure how you get that's what players wanted

Several people complained about the lack of the notorious monster system (which I always hated in FFXI), this seems to be SE's answer to their request.

Originally Posted by kyp275

The difference is that we've had 3 month's worth of time to accumulate soldiery tomes, at this point in time when people have already moved on to gearing out secondary jobs with soldiery tomes, its usefulness as a time gate is negligible.

From my perspective it's 3 months worth of time where a lot of people had basically no chance to get lv110 gear. The time gate issue is on the negative side, making sands more available can only even it out as it was during the myth/allagan period.

Basically there's been 3 months were the time gate was completely blocked, now at worst you'll get a sudden rush where the gear obtained in those 3 months will be rapidly converted. However you still don't get any more of that stuff than would you have gotten in a parallel universe where sands didn't exist to begin with and soldiery stuff was already 110.
And then at one point the time gate will work normally.

Originally Posted by kyp275

You realize in that scenario you've just declared that joining the hunt zerg horde is now mandatory for everyone if they don't want to fall behind? Again, my problem isn't that other avenues of upgrade is available, but with the uncapped nature and the ease of obtaining it.

Let's assume that hunting isn't broken (which is another issue) and let's just talk about the general problem of a system that makes sands easily available, the fact that that becomes mandatory to obtain level110 gear (or rather to improve to 110 gear what could have been 110 to begin with) would only be a problem if it would make pointless alternative systems.
Else you'd have to admit that before the patch it was a problem that Coil was mandatory for the same reason.

Now since the new Coil still drop High Allagan stuff and since Myths never made the old coil pointless, I can't see why it should be a problem now.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Several people complained about the lack of the notorious monster system (which I always hated in FFXI), this seems to be SE's answer to their request.

I see, though I think for the most part what people wanted was generally more open world content. That said, I doubt many were thinking of Fate marker-less Fates, which is what these hunts are.

From my perspective it's 3 months worth of time where a lot of people had basically no chance to get lv110 gear. The time gate issue is on the negative side, making sands more available can only even it out as it was during the myth/allagan period.

I wouldn't say no chance, after all SCOB was downed with i90 gear rather quickly. You're operating from the perspective that tome gear should = coil gear, something that is certainly debatable, but obviously not the route SE took with 2.2

Let's assume that hunting isn't broken (which is another issue) and let's just talk about the general problem of a system that makes sands easily available, the fact that that becomes mandatory to obtain level110 gear (or rather to improve to 110 gear what could have been 110 to begin with) would only be a problem if it would make pointless alternative systems.

Again, it's not the existence of a system that makes sands/oil available being the problem, as I've said repeatedly, I have no problem with UAT/Oil in Syrcus Tower, nor would I with Sand once it's added to ST. The problem I have is with how fast the Hunt is dispensing those Sands/Oil, which leads to all sorts of problems.

Else you'd have to admit that before the patch it was a problem that Coil was mandatory for the same reason.

It's mandatory if progression is one of your goal.

Now since the new Coil still drop High Allagan stuff and since Myths never made the old coil pointless, I can't see why it should be a problem now.

Read above, it's the SPEED and UNLIMITED nature that's making it a problem.

I mean, it's starting to sound like you guys wouldn't mind if there's a button on the login client that one can just push and get all the top gear in the game.

[Kotohono]

Read above, it's the SPEED and UNLIMITED nature that's making it a problem.

It isn't "UNLIMITED" it is gated soldiery cap. And I'd say it will most people over 2 to 3 weeks to actually get enough for their current gear to the grind, RNG, and waiting involved in hunts.

I mean, it's starting to sound like you guys wouldn't mind if there's a button on the login client that one can just push and get all the top gear in the game.

You are simply severely overestimating the ease of getting this stuff from hunts, because your friend got extremely luck with book drops and got an abnormal amount of it in day and acting like it will be the norm, I have yet to meet or hear of anyone else getting 3 in a single day. (It took one of my friends about 3 days to get 1 sand with getting 2 books even to get one because 250 seals takes awhile) Just as some people extremely lucky and finished their atmas within 6 hours and the rest of spent a week or more on it.

And I don't think the hunt system is anywhere near perfect. Personally I think it would be better if SE removed the drop chance of the book, since it feels like a fair grind for the upgrades outside of the current luck factor involved. But I don't think it's inherently flawed simply because it lacks an additional forced time gating system on top of soldiery's time gate.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Konakaga

It isn't "UNLIMITED" it is gated soldiery cap. And I'd say it will most people over 2 to 3 weeks to actually get enough for their current gear to the grind, RNG, and waiting involved in hunts.

It IS unlimited, as there is no cap to how many sands you can get, and as I've repeatedly said above, trying to use soldiery as a gate at this point is meaningless - this is the 16th week since patch 2.2, which means most people have already accumulated 7200 soldiery tomes, which is enough to fully kit out 1 1/2 jobs on i100, or their main job along with the weathered weapon.

You can't say something is a gate when people have already gotten everything behind said gate.

You are simply severely overestimating the ease of getting this stuff from hunts, because your friend got extremely luck with book drops and got an abnormal amount of it in day and acting like it will be the norm

Yes and no. For the most regular folks? they probably won't see shit for seals. For the hardcore grinders who group together and most likely are employing those radar themselves or working with people who are using them? They're swimming in seals.

I have yet to meet or hear of anyone else getting 3 in a single day.

Feel free to go on the official forum and wade through the threadnaught if you want, there are people whom have gotten 8 sands after 3 days. Oh, and don't forget the myths, there was one mention whom got over 8000 myths in a few days from the hunt, in addition to their seals.

(It took one of my friends about 3 days to get 1 sand with getting 2 books even to get one because 250 seals takes awhile) Just as some people extremely lucky and finished their atmas within 6 hours and the rest of spent a week or more on it.

One is purely RNG, which puts everyone on equal footing, the other, not so much.

And I don't think the hunt system is anywhere near perfect. Personally I think it would be better if SE removed the drop chance of the book, since it feels like a fair grind for the upgrades outside of the current luck factor involved. But I don't think it's inherently flawed simply because it lacks an additional forced time gating system on top of soldiery's time gate.

If the system functioned like the dev likely intended it to, I think it would've been fine too. But once again SE seems oblivious that if you put big enough of a carrot, players WILL find the shortest path to it.

Quoting good points from the forum:

"Having an unlimited source of these upgrade items completely spits in the face of what the lockout is there for and basically makes the other content obsolete unless you're one of the people who must have BiS gear."

/=1 drop of sand

Coil potential sand drops=//
ST potential sand drops=/
Hunts potential sand gains=//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////to infinity

Can you see the issue here now? Sure they made it cost 500/750 to gain but they also added said item drops to rank S mobs, maybe A I'm not sure but it still puts in such a heavy focus on how easy it is to gear up on i110 because of this, with nearly little to no effort compared to the amount of skill spent to obtain it via coil or ST. All it takes in hunts is time, and nagging people to hold mobs just because of the reward of an i110 drop.

Well, for starters you can trivially cap Soldiery via marks. Also A and S ranked marks can drop bloody mark logs. If you're grinding marks for the seals, the chances are reasonably good you could one or more books this way.

Syrcus Tower is definitively casual content, yet you can't get sands from it at all currently and if you could you would be restricted to one a week. It requires significantly less effort than SCoB but significantly more than zerging a mark, yet I've saw people as early as *Thursday* bragging that they had already gotten four Sands. As a casual player who a) hasn't cleared turn 5 and b) hasn't cleared Titan EX, even I can see something wrong with that.

The other issue here are players who raid who feel pressured into grinding marks even if they don't *have* to because the reward is simply too good. This is likely especially pronounced in groups who aren't fully clearing SCoB because it can provide a significant boost to their progression (where not capped by an inability to execute).

You can cap Myth AND Soldiery from doing nothing but hunts and you can do it relatively quickly if you're lucky enough to grab a lot of A and S Marks. Hunts have replaced everything in game currently unless the player specifically wants High Allagan gear or an i110 weapon that isn't a Novus, in which case you'd need to run Syrcus Tower and get an Unidentified Allagan Tomestone.

[kuroishinigami]

Ok, I agree with kyp now that this risky mob business is downright terrible . Yesterday, while walking around east thanalan I stumble upon A-rank risky mob. Being the usual kind person I'm trying to become, I kindly shout the location of the mob. After a little while, when there's around 3-4 people on the place, I decide to pull the mob to find out how strong it is and hopefully kill it for the full reward.

After around 3 minutes and half HP bar later, a zerg literally come to the place and kill the A-rank in less than 3 seconds What's even more amusing, some player basically rage on shout to not pull the mob when there's only 3 people around. No way I will wait around with that number of zerg rush

[Alchemist007]

Meh, HA is still bragging rights. I see people in full unweathered/weathered and it tells me how they got their gear. ilvl doesn't mean anything. That being said, I'm using these extra sands/oil for my alt. Just glamor some of the jewelry to HA and get recognized!

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Meh, HA is still bragging rights. I see people in full unweathered/weathered and it tells me how they got their gear. ilvl doesn't mean anything. That being said, I'm using these extra sands/oil for my alt. Just glamor some of the jewelry to HA and get recognized!

Not sure when epeen became the reason to progress in endgame content.

[Kismet-chan]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Not sure when epeen became the reason to progress in endgame content.

Not that I advocate the mindset, but that's simply the nature of MMOs for a lot of players. Complete endgame content to get cool stuff. The cool stuff is your bragging rights/epeen swinging platform. The players are not as much to blame as SE is for having gearchecks in the first place. But that's just game design for you.

[Om Nerabdator]

well lets hope the new fix will give everyone more of a chance to enjoy hunts


[NA] FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Hotfixes (Jul. 15, 2014)

In order for even more players to be able to participate in elite mark battles, the following adjustments have been made. Please note that further adjustments may be made once congestion has been eased.

The following adjustments have been made to “The Hunt”:

Elite marks maximum HP has been increased.
Rank B maximum HP has been raised from solo to light party level, Rank A maximum HP has been raised from light party to full party level.
Although the Rank S maximum HP level was already intended for multiple parties, we have further raised the necessary number to require even more parties.
Similar to Odin and Behemoth, because raising the maximum HP of Rank S means stressed server loads due to the concentration of players, we plan to make ongoing adjustments as we watch the server situation.
As the elite marks HP is increased, the amount of contribution points which affects the reward after defeating will be eased.
S rank elite marks will have top display priority.
Because the elite marks maximum HP have been changed to reflect the party numbers required, we are also looking into adjusting the amount from the “Regular mark bills” and “Elite mark bills” reward. We will continue to make careful content adjustments as we monitor player trends and server stress loads.



The following feature has been added to improve Frontline matchmaking:
(please note that this only applies to Frontline)

Party members will be added automatically if required once duty has commenced. Automatic member addition will take place upon the start of battle (when the gates open).

When registering for a Frontline campaign we recommend checking “Join Party in Progress,” which will make the matchmaking process smoother, and ask players to consider choosing this option whenever possible.


The following issues have been addressed:

An issue in “The Striking Tree (Hard)” and “The Striking Tree (Extreme)”, wherein the damage taken by pets was abnormally low.
An issue in “Syrcus Tower” wherein the ground would not illuminate when charging the matter field generator.
An issue wherein players were unable to use pet actions when a pet was casting a spell.
An issue wherein controls did not function properly when taking damage while in the process of trading event items to NPCs during a quest or FATE.
An issue wherein certain items would become inaccessible when players used the Sort subcommand with the Desynthesis window open.
An issue wherein the game client would become unresponsive when players enlisted in a free company that had not purchased housing used the View Room Details command in another player's estate.
An issue wherein players were withdrawn from a Duty when selecting Commence at the same time another player selected Withdraw.
An issue wherein using the ALT+L or ALT+Shift+L to cycle forward or backward would start from the first linkshell instead of the last selected linkshell when the chat mode was not set to linkshell.
An issue wherein the UI would occasionally blink when facing the camera toward a large crowd.
An issue wherein the text options More Items (DoH) and More Items (DoL) were reversed when talking to the NPC Talan.
An issue in “Syrcus Tower” wherein certain treasure chests did not display properly.
An issue in “The Striking Tree (Hard)” wherein the weather text displayed when hovering the cursor over the weather icon was in Japanese.
An issue in “The Second Coil of Bahamut” wherein targeting the entrance would display a macro error.

[Alchemist007]

Originally Posted by kyp275

Not sure when epeen became the reason to progress in endgame content.

I'm not entirely sure why else you would even pursue i110 gear. I guess some people do it for shits n' giggles but I'm gearing for the hardest content. If someone wants to join such a raiding group, I don't think a complete set of non-coil gear would be very convincing of ability in difficult content, but just grinding in general.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Om Nerabdator

well lets hope the new fix will give everyone more of a chance to enjoy hunts.

It was somewhat noticeable on S rank marks… barely.

B/A rank? Well, I suppose they may have lived an extra second or two.

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

I'm not entirely sure why else you would even pursue i110 gear. I guess some people do it for shits n' giggles but I'm gearing for the hardest content. If someone wants to join such a raiding group, I don't think a complete set of non-coil gear would be very convincing of ability in difficult content, but just grinding in general.

I’m not sure why you’re equating progression with epeen. It’s a MMORPG, it’s about building and progressing your character, neither I nor any of the people I play with give two **** about what some internet strangers think, much less about trying to impress them, which frankly is just downright sad and pathetic.

The problem with the Hunt system is that it gives entirely way too much reward too fast to the point where it obsoletes almost every other piece of content in the game.

Need myth? Go do Hunts
Need soldiery? Go do Hunts.
Need i110 pieces? Go do Hunts.

People can try to sugarcoat and cherry pick however they want, the fact is that there are many who have managed to acquire an insane amount of progression in a single week, often times dwarfing those who have actually been doing endgame content for months (healer and caster drops are a LIE!).

Some would say this is not a problem, that this is just for people to catch up – well, they’re wrong. Nevermind the fact that handing out top-tier gear while said gear is still relevant is hardly “catch up”, why is SCOB still on weekly lockouts then? Why is there no “catch up” for that content?

This pressures people to do hunts, whether it’s something they like to do or not, because otherwise they’re handicapping themselves. If the normal endgame progression is a well-paying job that requires college education, what SE did with the hunts is basically handing out offers to flip burgers while offering 10 times the pay.

Do you have to take the offer? No, but you’d feel like an idiot if you don’t.