I would love to get excited about hunting again, but how exactly that is to be achieved is anyone’s guess, even a massive overhaul to the system or loads of new features added might not interest me longer than a few days or a week.
What I can say for sure are the reasons it bores me now, and also the reasons why I still have an enjoyable hunt every now and then.
There is no challenge, whatsoever. Sure I can still get killed by a freak high speed wildstock headbutt into a block that I didn’t know I was standing next to even on a T3 or T4 planet. I can fall into a hole 3 blocks deep and take 35,000 points of damage and die. I can grapple myself at high speed into a wall, etc. What I mean is, the strategy doesn’t change, ever, no thinking required, death has no consequence, charge in, kill everything, loot everything, go to next meteor.
I also notice that the majority of hunts these days are held on T4 planets from platforms. The platforms were an ingenious idea, but they bore the living **** out of ME (just me) personally, and T4 hunting also is just another form of harvesting a farm for oort. I want the increased drops from mobs, I want to feel like bringing all the food, brews and forged slingbows/bombs isn’t just a complete waste of time. I want to feel like my presence is actually a help rather than feel like I would be just as useful standing AFK.
I don’t care if hunting by foot is less economical, I don’t care if I chew up valuable bows, potions, bombs and food hunting and dying on a higher level planet, I don’t care if the oortstone return is higher on a T3/T4. If I get 20% less oort on a T6 hunt that’s still better than getting no Oort because I can’t be bothered, that’s still better than getting 30 oort because I warped home after getting bored to death by the second platform.
Public hunts again, there is no community feeling, hopping from platform to platform, 90% of us saying nothing at all while a few people who are friends with one another emote back and forth. I miss the voice chats, jumping on to a new discord and making new friends, bantering with old ones.
When I do have a great time still, is hunting with friends on a voice chat, talking rubbish to one another. Or even with a new group, strangers, a guild I have never met and there is more discussion than just “east, west, INC, I got 12 Oort from that meteor”. I had a great hunt with just a friend the other day, wandering around Alnitans completely aimlessly, on my miner equipped with an AOE hammer, talking garbage and killing whatever we bothered to notice. 4 hours of hunting and I came home with 1 hopper core, 2 RR feathers, 5 oortstone!!! My most productive hunt in weeks, genuinely!
Other times I’ve enjoyed is with 5 or 6 people who are actually paying attention, come along with the right equipment for the situation and communicate with one another tearing up a T6/T7 planet. Those hunts feel rewarding not only for the loot but also for the sense of accomplishment at working cohesively together and achieving what 40 people do in a complete an utter chaotic mess.
Now most of these reasons are beyond a patch to fix, alot are my own fault for being a little anti social and are due to old friends having left game or in the same situation and can’t be bothered with the hunts. I don’t blame groups for hunting the way they do, Oort is priority to them. PersonallyI don’t care if the population runs out of Oort eventually, I know I can maintain a 1x2 portal to my local portal seekers indefinitely with a few solo meteors a month and I know those guys aren’t running out of Oort, they planned and prepared well for the Apocalypse and allow me to get to any planet I want.
So good luck, I’m not voting in this poll and I also have no problem with people voting whichever way they do as they all have their reasons which are equally valid. At the end of the day I don’t mind, hunting is such a small part of this game and I have 999 other ways to keep myself entertained in game and I know that changes will come in time, I have patience.
