So I have I have come to a conclusion about the issues surrounding hunts and a solution to solving all the issues in the community around them. I believe as a commity we can resolve this with some tweaks on how we do hunts. Because ultimately no one owns a time and if overlapping hunts truly is an issue, this is a good way to help keep the community from arguing over hunt times and overlaps.
Note, do not take this as attacking, accusing of being a mean/bad player or any other type of chastisement. Because, it is none of that. Rather it is a possible solution to a growing problem that I see getting worse if not addressed. So please no need to get upset or mean in responses.
My experience in getting a hunt time was complex and took lots of work! In some respects way more than it should have but alas we are a small community. I started out having to do our guild hunts at 1am usa est. Which really was a crappy time because everyone was either in bed, or just starting their day depending on where they were in the world. We did so for almost 2 months. Until, Many in our guild had time shifts with work for seasonal reasons and had it not been for the friendship I had made with @DJDancecraft I would have never achieved the Wednesday night 9pm hunt time slot. After talking to him and asking if we could have Wednesdays nights at 9pm est because of the guild members time shifts for seasonal work he said sure! Which was great and we appreciate him and C.O.R.E. for giving us the ability to have Wednesday night
However, others have not been so lucky and have accidentally broken the unspoken agreement of of the community to not overlap each others hunts. To that end they have been chastised for it and many hunt leaders have become frustrated, which is understandable especially when they have a standing for a regular schedule daily hunt and yes have worked their way to finally having a daily hunt time.
I will repeat we are a small community and we have more and more people these days wanting to run different types hunts. Sadly the calendar is all booked up by others that have been playing longer and running hunts for a good long while! Thus what has happened is now there are only the worst hours to do hunts left leaving these folks that want to run hunts too feeling like they can’t have a hunt. Trust me I know how that is and so does everyone else running a hunt because we have all been there.
3 things I think can fix all of this.
we centralize hunt times and links to the forums posts about said hunt to the calendar solution @xyberviri has come up with and that him and I are embedding in a website for ease of access and hunt time submissions.
We stop as a community monopolizing all the good times by having daily community hunts at a permanent fixed time. Instead of 7 days hunt at X time do only 2 or 3 days at X time. This will allow for others to run public community hunts that are wanting to and will open up times for people to share and get hunt times.
If anyone is dead set on having a hunt at an already scheduled time then make it a private guild hunt that you setup with your guild through discord or in game. So that it does not compete with the person’s hunt on the forums. Let the public hunt have its choice of planet and the guild hunt gets second choice so there isnt 2 hunts going on the same planet. That way you can still do a hunt everyday if you choose but I would hope that this wouldn’t become a thing to keep your guild members from attending the public hunt all the time.
This to me at least seems to be the fairest and most community forward way to deal with hunts. It would open up time slots during prime time/ peak hours for others to run hunts. Thus not leaving community members feeling like they cant have a hunt too. There are only 24 hours in a day and anything past midnight is a bust for anyone.
I am sure there will be dissent on this and some people may even be angered by the suggestion alone. But as a community member that believes in this game and the community I truly believe this could and would work best for everyone.
To start the ball rolling Twisted Dragon will only host 2 hunts a week Wednesdays at 9PM EST and The Vikings Hunt we Host on Saturdays at 9PM EST
If I may make one suggestion… Using Google drive make a calender using an Excel spreadsheet and having hunt leaders only access to edit and they can pencil in their time(s). Even setup a discord chat if possible to discuss what works best for everyone… once the calender is finalized for the week or month then post on the forum. This way everyone who wants to do a hunt can see when one is available and by whom and where. Hope this suggestion can help out with the community.
That is how @xyberviri has done the calendar. We are just offering an easy way to see it for everyone from a website and working out a seamless way to get hunt times added to the calendar in case some people don’t use google. So great minds think alike!
As far as the daily scedule hunts that people have done for a long time most of the hunt leaders are flexible. I know from hosting many hunts and at one time hunting 7 days a week after sometime it gets boring and repetitive. Im not sure if you use discord or not but there is a discord for hunt leaders to talk to each other about hunts and scheduling hunt times. I know not all hunt leaders are in it yet. Thats always an option. Im not very tech savvy with discord but maybe @Eggshaker or @baneslayer can send you an invite to it or anyone else that wants to hosts hunts.
Discord is an inefficient place for this as there are many hunt listing channels and not everyone can or does use discord. This an attempt to centralize all the hunt information and times so that everyone despite how they choose to communicate with the community can effectively organize hunts without having to join a bunch of discord channels which can be unruly speaking personal experience and confusing for those who are not that technically savvy. The fact we are still having issues around overlapping I believe shows that discord is not the complete solution to the problem. It can be used as an additive and I am part of the hunt leader channel. However some folks have spouses that do not want them to use discord or any chat program at all. This helps those people as well with their planning and scheduling.
Also while most are flexible there are those that are equally not flexible and unwilling to share time slots.
There are some out there, I know we are always looking for hunt leaders to help with our hunts, so people dont get burnt out on hunting and to give others a chance to host. We are from 4 different guilds but work together. I guess it depends on the players.
@cagian I can understand why some folks don’t want their spouses using discord. I don’t see it as an unhealthy relationship thing especially if it is safety based. Lets be honest many things have happened on many chat apps including cams being hacked so I get why some would feel this way.
Yea I get that, people could do the same that you did with Dj. Im not on the forums that often. Not everyone are greedy with their hunt times. Its all about working together as a team. That is what I enjoy about boundless. Being a team player.
as lorelie has mentioned, hunt leading does end up becoming a boring repetitive thing. i will gladly let others lead hunts during our time, but i normally do it most of the time just so other people dont get that burned out hunt leading feeling
EXACTLY which is what this feed is about, working together as a community to make the situation even more manageable and accessible to all despite whether they are on the forums, discord, or just in game. I work in computer programming so I am all about streamlining things to make it easier and better for all!
Or imo the best solution, 4. get the marketing division to somehow come up with a way to advertise this game so well that we get a big enough playerbase to run multiple hunts on different planets in the same timeslot…
I do think one of the reasons why the major hunt groups get a lot of people is because they do it reliably (mostly) everyday. Instead of people having to figure out where to go for today’s hunt, they can go to the same place at the same time as yesterday, as well as for future hunts on that time cause it probably will happen again reliably. But as you pointed out, I can see how this can become problematic for people trying to start their own hunts as it can seem those ‘hunt time slots’ are taken.
Also, it’s nice to see people trying to figure this out in a civilized way, I can already see people battling it out letting the participants decide which one is more successful in a survival of the fittest way in other games if things like these happened…
kokuma is correct, repetitive hunting same time same place every day is what helps most hunts become as big as they do, but it also prevents other hunt leaders from trying to start their own hunts because the desired time is already being hunted by another group same time every day
