Unique Lures: Can we move on from this failed idea?

oldbaldyone

TL:DR: Please remove the unique flag from lures and allow them to stack: 10 T-Rex fangs and 5 of each of the others seems reasonable. That, or increase the lure drop rate significantly.

Consider this for a moment - working as intended/designed (meaning not using the mailbox as storage, which was not intended), here is the process for Hunts in Chult, assuming someone with no VIP rank. This is just a 1 Star hunt:

1. Hunt for a rare beast until a lure drops.
2. Hunt for a t-rex till a fang drops.
3. Go back to Port (having to go all the way to the out of the way entrance from Chult) to get a lure.
4. Go back to the jungle, summon the hunt target and hope for a 2 star lure to drop.
5. Repeat 1-4 until 2 star lure drops.

Yes, you get some salvage stuff out of it so it's not a complete waste if you fail, but its time consuming for VIPs, and a huge time sink for non-VIPs.

If Neverwinter has taught us anything, the best option for making good progress is to farm/grind. The unique lures impede this dramatically, as you can only have 1 of each type of lure. If you should come across a second T-Rex in your travels....too bad.

Devs have stated that they made them unique to promote a certain "feel" for the hunts and that the mailbox use was not what they had in mind. You go out, and work towards a specific goal. No mass slaughter. I'm sorry, but that is not fun, that is not engaging, and after you've done something 2-3 times, the hunts just become another grind. Without VIP, Hunts are just insanely unfun. With VIP, they are workable but it feels VERY clunky - just like the ZAX is to move AD between toons. These "workarounds" becoming normal gameplay just scream "unpolished gameplay", and should be removed.

Please consider removing the unique flags and allow the lures to be farmed and stacked. That, or raise the drop rate significantly. I've heard tales of people farming for several hours with no lures. I've personally gone through about 10 1 star hunts without a 2 star lure dropping. i can't even imagine what that would be like for a non VIP who had to go all the way back to town after each try.

kemi1984

I couldn't agree more.

I'm not so much for the hunts myself, I mean I did try it few times and it was just "meh" from me.

Anyway, Gipsy said it all, please listen to the feedback and make Hunts a bit more fun.

tradolf

Totally agree with oldbaldyone, especially having trudged around Chult to get the items to make lures, to then only get a +1 ring from Dandar and the same again from Arcana (or whatever it's called) and yes I did thoroughly search the surrounding area to make sure I had not overlooked anything. I am now finding it so irksome to play the game that I no longer have as much interest in it, as I used to.

iandarksword

No tales, I have spent hours trying for a single rare lure component. Most days I walk away with nothing, which is actually like hunting IRL, except I didn't kill anything. In Chult, I've killed hundreds of tigers and dozens of Smilodons, 7 teeth total. Why not simply do other hunts? Because the gear I'm looking for is from the hunt I'm after, but to obtain that hunt I must follow the ladder. Once I've obtained that gear, then I'll look into other hunts. It is remarkably time consuming and very unfulfilling, at least thus far.

micky1p00

The whole unique item idea is counter productive to it's purpose, to make it social component. Instead of gathering lures, gathering friends and going to do them. People without ViP or those who exhausted the mail storage, are forced to them immediately as is, or stop trying to get trophies. Even with ViP it's just added tediousness, and useless inventory management. And does nothing to change my party habits.

wintermurloc

I'm really at a loss of words here , hunts suck miserably .. the end result as is with the current system is frustrating mostly for a lot of us unlucky folk. Now with respect to the unique status on these trophies , some of it may be my own undoing. I talked about split runs and loot in general w.r.t how i feel at the tong preview thread and how i ran with a lot of friends in game to get things done prior to mod 5. I found the auction house a total loss and the trade channel a much better option between us. It actually felt good too.

Now i feel somehow they implemented the worst part of that aspect and it totally affects solo players by a lot. I really could go into details about the hunt system, but a lot of it is covered by a lot of ppl at various threads to address the core issue. The system can still work dear devs, just allow all rare spawns to DROP A LURE similar to the T-Rex. Don't unnecessarily gate content on the open world. Adjust the drop rates on gear from hunts( lower it if needs be but allow us to access the content) and allow everyone to progress across this horrifying pyramid structure you implemented.

My biggest pain with this whole ordeal is i can't access the content at any steady pace because of this horrible layer of rng impelemented to accessing that hunt. It's totally counter productive and each time i progress i feel i'm dropped back right to square one. I spent as much of my time available dedicating to this hunting system to get something for my wife (i've bargained , got free lures from ym friends cause of the "i owe you" and everything else possibly to slime across this horrendous layer of rng). I think i've done about 6 Baccho's and that was it for me, my wife has probably done another 11 Baccho's counting on, She really is resilient and what all of it has done is pushed us together to the very start.

@asterdahl , @rgutscheradev , @nitocris83 .. Someone for the love of god, pls take a good hard look at this system. Hunting can be a much better experience if you remove this totally unnecessary layer of rng on accessing the content. It's so damn easy to gain a 500 item level gear from tong than trying to get something to use from hunts especially if what you are chasing is tied up all the way to the king of spines hunt, good grief .. to everyone who managed to get something out of it , wow .. i admire your resolve. Asterdahl , you stated earlier it's 480 ilvl gear from hunts awarded and you guys didn't feel ppl should be able to acquire it so easily, but i'm giving you my word on this.. This is absolutely the hardest thing to acquire esp if you have to go all the way to the king of spines hunt and not because any of the hunts are hard , NOPE .. It's too easy to solo all of this. A lot of ppl may have wanted to get a few friends in at the king of spines just to avoid the loss of a lure because of the enormous grind (not really , it's more tymora's luck) if anything goes wrong (server disconnects, etc) , but to get to the very end due to the rng nature of it is artificially made this so hard. I'm really hoping since rng was implemented to gate this content you know that the worst case scenario would be some unlucky sod would never get a lure (a totally minor probability) to even access the hunt before he/she tries to play another game of rng with the drops , but it can happen.

I understand most of you are busy polishing of stuff with the upcoming half mod but kindly take a look into hunting.

preechr

I really expected the hunt targets to be much harder
They should be, honestly
If you made them harder would you feel better about increasing the drop rate of the trophies... seems a little backward that the hardest part about hunting is fighting the RNG to get the trophies to make the lures

randomdigits

I have three more wishes.
The lures and trophies should also be tradeable on AH.
Consoles should have "leader decides" mode to make that hunt experience matching the PC.
And developers should check the console forums more often, somehow we only see them responding to Preview and PC forum threads...