Hunted Mode - An Inherently Flawed Concept (ft. slight 2.0 updates)

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Introduction​

Hunted Mode is particularly close to my heart. Starting from a revenge experiment on a person who didn't say hi back to me, evolving into me going after one individual after noticing his salt, ending up where I am today - making hunted montages and simply goofing around.

To anyone who's ever experienced hunted it's no secret that it has its downsides, people are quick to say Hunted is a bad gamemode but usually without stating the exact reasons. I dedicate this thread to the flaws of Hunted Mode and if I can, some ways to counteract them, though mostly speaking about flaws from personal experience.

The basics​

I think the best way to go about it is from the very bottom. Hunted Mode is unlocked after completing the final quest of the game at level 103, A Hunter's Calling. From this point on, you're able to toggle it on and off in towns every 15 minutes via right-clicking with soul points in hand while holding shift or typing /hunted - this only applies to classes that completed the quest. You can only access the mode at lower levels while creating the class, however, it stays on permanently and you have no way to turn it off.

While in Hunted Mode, you gain a passive 50% bonus to Gathering and Combat EXP (only from mobs) and as the name suggests, you open yourself to attacks from other Hunted players outside of safe zones (such as towns and dungeon entrances). You also risk losing your items, as long as they're tradable. Prior to the change of quest reward items, you could use them in Hunted builds as well. People unaware of it ended up losing some early on.


To ensure new players aren't instantly terrorized by overpowered endgames, there's a difference of ten combat levels maximum, which means you can get in combat only with a player 10 levels above or below you. For example, a level 30 player can attack or be attacked by level 20-40 players. This means that as a perma-hunted, your real threat should theoretically start from level 93.

Mechanical discouragements of Hunted​

It's no secret that the Hunted playerbase has decreased significantly since its release. The biggest reason for that is likely the risk vs reward factor, meaning that most of the time Hunted yields a larger risk than what you gain from taking such risk.

For instance, profession grinders stopped using Hunted for the most part because with the addition of Gathering EXP crafted gear it's generally better to keep it off, as to not risk losing it, as GXP of crafted gear is superior to that of Hunted mode. Sure, some players still continue using Hunted Mode in spite of possibly losing tradable gear, though most of the time they do it while complying to the general metagame of the mode, which I'll bring up just about now.

Meta of Hunted Mode​

According to previously mentioned information in basics, the handicap of Hunted is the risk of losing tradable items. That's why the main metagame of Hunted builds is filled entirely with items marked as untradable and mythics, as neither of these can drop upon death. Items that don't drop upon death also include healing potions, horses and emerald pouches. The contents of your pouch don't get lost either, same applies to Ironman. The difference is, Ironman players cannot pick up any Hunted loot nor have theirs taken.

The current meta of Hunted has changed a lot since 2.0 - poison fell off in its usability and Warrior as well as Archer became prominent classes, most notably because of their Battle Monk and Boltslinger archetypes respectively. Assassin was completely ruined in 2.0 (if it wasn't before) and Trickster is practically unusable for stealth attacks due to the clones giving you away.

Every other bit of Hunted that isn't meta builds taking over can be put under the same category - the major imbalance between the gear of the Hunter VS the Hunted. Assuming a usual profession grinder vs hunter scenario, the hunter has nothing to lose, while the profer is at constant risk of losing materials, armor, accessories or even tools. There is no perfect solution to this, as I'll discuss later.

Server-side and conceptual problems​

Besides the player-made meta, there are other issues at hand that make Hunted either too in favor of the hunter or the prey. Let's begin with the most widely known glaring issue - the current state of the friend system. To summarize how this works:

• You can add a player to your friend list anonymously as long as they're either offline or on a different world from you. The "x added you to their friends!" message pops up only if you're both on the same world.
• A player added to your friend list has a permanent green outline around their body, making it very easy to spot them from far away or through blocks.
• Adding a player to your friend list allows you to actively stalk what class they select and which world they're on (though that can also be done via /find).
• If the player adds you back, you cannot attack them. This means either you or the player need to manually remove the other person in order to fight again. It also means that only one person at a time has the friend outline advantage.
• If you're both friends, you gain the ability to see the player on the online map (map.wynncraft.com), making it hilariously easy to spot them, remove them from your friend list, and go to the approximate location for an unexpected kill.
• The visibility of joined servers also benefits the hunted, allowing them to simply leave every single server the hunter joins.

I don't think I need to explain how constantly running away to different worlds nullifies the purpose of a PvP gamemode and simply using it for your own benefit without any drawback. I'd like to emphasize on this as a hunter myself - it's very discouraging to need an alt just to kill someone because they're perfectly aware of you.

While this is less effective with professions, as there's still a 60s cooldown before you're allowed to collect materials from a node (30s with profession speed but let's be honest, if you leave that world you'll be likely unable to go back), this doesn't apply to mob grinding, as the player can simply /class every 60s. Why? Because similar to professions, there's a 60s cooldown before you're able to attack or be attacked in Hunted. So theoretically, you could play entirely without danger by doing /class every time. I had a person argue with me that using /class wasn't bypassing combat, because they /class'ed inside a safe zone. Just to enter an unsafe zone a moment after.

Despite it being punishable by the official server rules, it occurs sometimes that people still do it. For example, I had a run-in with a perma-hunted profer who constantly /class'ed whenever I joined the world or quickly switched to a Hunted build class whenever that occurred. This could be classified as abuse of both the friend system and Hunted cooldowns, as I'd have to wait 60s before being able to attack the guy. Though I can't blame the friend list use, Hunted experts either always use the friend system, or refuse to out of principle.

As for the rules part of the entire thing, it's stated by the mods that pursuing worlds is allowed in Hunted Mode specifically but under no other circumstance. Abusing /class for cooldowns is also disallowed and bannable, however, there's a good chance moderators call the first instance of it a "panic" reaction DESPITE baring witness to multiple church/scrap grind party videos of a hunter friend of mine who couldn't kill people blatantly abusing it. He couldn't get them banned either, as for some reason the report fell on deaf ears.

Speaking of bypassing combat - if you've ever gotten into a fight in Hunted, you may have noticed a message telling you that you cannot log off, else you'll face a penalty, right? Funny thing is, this message is entirely misleading, as combatlogging does absolutely nothing threatening to you, at least as far as I'm aware. If I'm incorrect, please tell me how it is the right way.

And finally, my biggest current concern. The sheer concept of Hunted. You opt-in for a PvP gamemode to gain PvE benefit, and you're put at a major disadvantage of being unaware of your surroundings, losing items unless having a proper build, and overall getting too little pay-off for it. Need I explain what's the issue here? With everything else already said about Wynncraft PvP, it's simply illogical to have something of this sort in the first place.

Don't call me a salty profer who got hunted while fishing; I myself uploaded over 25 minutes of just Hunted kills in form of montages or short clips, and I assume that Linnyflower, a Hunter with more of a veteran status in terms of assassinating people, has much more than that, including that which isn't uploaded or recorded to begin with.

Being able to turn on PvP for the sake of being ambushed makes no sense. If I were to suggest something regarding this, it'd be a major overhaul. there's no easy way to approach it.

The future (and 2.0 present) of Hunted Mode​

This section in the original thread was a massive prediction of how 2.0 would change hunted. And while it surely did - to a scale of making PvP even more busted - I can't deny I very much underestimated Warrior. Yes. It's my new main now.

Spoiler: Old section

I can surely say that Hunted has been on quite a downward slope since its release, mostly due to Wynn's bad balance of player versus player combat in general. While in the current state, partially attributing that to myself, the number of hunters has increased a bit, there's nothing to gain for the Hunter besides satisfaction, and the Hunted only benefits, as long as they run out of luck one day or abuse server issues.

The biggest storm that is about to hit Hunted is the 2.0 Spellbound update, which will massively overhaul the combat system and make an entire skill tree for every class. Keep in mind that Spellbound will be balanced around PvE, so it's likely that Hunted will suffer even more.

The current issues I can foresee coming from 2.0 include but aren't limited to:

Agility change - 90% damage reduction instead of complete damage nullification. This will make investing in agi absolutely worthless, especially since poison will always damage you on hit, instead of praying that you dodge it, as is in 1.20 currently.

The skill trees. Duh. Every class got some extremely flashy and busted abilities. This includeArcher's Crepuscular Ray (which can be described simply as "justice rains from above"), every Assassin archetype (each of them having extreme oneshot potential), Warrior's massive AoE attacks (capable of destroying everything in sight), Shaman getting additional beams via upgrade and minions spawning from the totem (with Toxoplasmosis, they could all apply poison, meaning you're basically TF2 Engineer). Mage surely has something as well, but the update absolutely destroys base Heal, making it no longer instant.

The entire update is overall just a contest of which class can handle powercreep better. With Hunted's nature of being generally oneshot, it will be much more based on the first strike than before.

Of all this, here's a bunch of suggestions I could come up with:

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  • Revamp the friend system. This is much easier said than done considering how long it's been there.
  • Make friend outlines and/or mapping disabled in Hunted for both players (make it impossible for the Hunted player to see friend outlines as well as have them).
    • This doesn't have to apply to party outlines, as players need to agree to be in party together.
  • Generally, balance Wynn PvP to not end so quickly and nerf poison's dominance (poison is the same in 2.0). Wynn PvP still needs some sort of length to it.
  • Make it so players can /class or leave on a Hunted class only in a safe zone, or force them to take a good while for the leave "request" to go through as a flashy animation plays, leaving them open to attacks.
    • While re-entering a Hunted Mode class, you're stuck in the safe zone until your cooldown expires. If you left outside of it and entered again, your cooldown is significantly shorter (or nonexistent).
  • Give external benefit to Hunted (like player rating), perhaps even disable the natural benefits entirely and have Hunted be a separate world. This is a very radical suggestion, so it'd have to come with proper requirements (the need for AHC to be completed) and good rewards (such as a passive increase of EXP for said world).
    • I got this concept from an MMORPG I once played. It had dedicated PvPvE zones where players at levels between 10-19, 20-29 etc. entered an entirely different area where they can kill mobs and team up and/or fight with other players. The rewards increased the longer you stayed in the area and the more mobs you killed.
  • While regular gear shouldn't just casually drop on the ground after dying, I think it'd be a bit too much to have a person dominate others with a crafted build. Not sure what to do with this, but there'd need to be a good balance.
  • Or, the easiest and least resource-needy solution. Simply remove Hunted Mode.

 

triflame spitting facts
i was gonna make something similar to this after seeing how busted abilities are in 2.0 but not gonna lie most of the stuff i saw in the trailer didn’t look actually too bad. id agree with some things being unbalanced

in terms of solutions i also pretty much agree. it’s fucking sad that a fix which would maybe take less than an hour of dev time (toggle outlines off in hunted) has gone unchanged for a year and a half. pretty much the same thing with hunted’s other issues. not to mention that everyone is spread out across 40 worlds. i’ve done entire hunted playthroughs without seeing a single other hunted person.

and i’ve also heard from the CT that they don’t want to do fun stuff with hunted until pvp is “fixed”, but really there’s a bunch of things making it unfun in the current system that could easily be changed.

that being said. i think it’s still somewhat too early to draw conclusions about the gamemode as a whole- it’s very possible no one wanted to balance it because the ct knew 2.0 was gonna fuck it up again. fair enough.

tldr, i pretty much agree with what was posted. friend outlines, cooldown timer, make the people in pvp closer together. add other incentives, maybe. make building less limited. it would be rather cool if someone was actually going to work on a pvp balance after the update drops and people can see what’s flawed etc.. but i’m not expecting it.

 

Really good and detailed thread. I think it does outline a lot of the issues with hunted currently.

Regarding the warning, as I was the one to issue that, it was directed towards another group of players who were also at scrapyard, after some other DM warnings, and had absolutely nothing to do with your own actions. I won't go into details regarding the case, but you were absolutely not a part of that situation. I apologize if you mistook that as me issuing punishment against you.

Anyway, I do think it's extremely hard to balance both pvp and pve when all of the items and abilities in the game are shared between the two, but balanced specifically around pve content. I think dedicated pvp items would take a bit too much work, but if there could be a different scale for skills and identifications against other players that could be interesting? I definitely think poison needs a nerf with hunted, but in pve it's pretty lackluster outside of mob grinding with toxo. The current system does not allow for equal power across both gamemodes and it is extremely flawed.

I also completely agree that the main idea of a pvp gamemode being that you get advantages in a pve setting is quite flawed as well. I feel like this was mostly done to encourage this pvp gamemode, but is not a good way to go about it. Like mentioned as well, the introduction of gxp armor has completely nullified any reason to use hunted for gxp, considering the gxp armor gives a significantly stronger bonus to efficiency.
I think it's worth seeing how the abilities change things in beta, and I don't think it's healthy to have the abilities changed for hunted balance alone, but something to alter them or their damage multipliers in pvp scenarios could be nice, nonetheless

 

I think hunted mode players should also get their own world that all hunted mode players are mandatory to go to. This makes finding people much easier in wynns big map. Also remove the ability for dropping gear you are wearing as it really discourages players from playing hunted mode. I think the start a new class with hunted challenge should have it but not the normal classes.

 

considering how underlooked hunted is, it's no surprise they wouldn't wanna bother with a fix that affects only a fraction of the playerbase, that being hunteds. still, it wouldn't harm to do a small thing as such.

i'd argue that since hunted was never balanced (for as long as you said, a year and a half) i would say it isn't too late. in some distant future some changes may or may not appear, but it's safe to say they won't happen recently, thus it's safe to say these things.

thanks for clarifying, glad you left your message high up so that people who read the thread can see it. i think i'll leave the message in there despite being out of context, as i heard there've been previous instances of hunted players getting warned for well, hunting. let this post be a clarification that you didn't mean it though.

 

Obviously we wouldn't remove Hunted, it has taken a bigger role than what it was at the start, it's more integral to the overall experience now. To me, when it was first introduced, it mainly felt like a gimmick, a way to just spice things up, but people really adopted it.

I can't give you a definitive answer on if those changes will happen (as usual) but what i can tell you is that we have a lot of recurring suggestions that we are aware of and also wish to dedicate time to in the long run, a lot of older mechanics that we think could benefit greatly from an update/changes which would in turn benefit things like Hunted mode.
Those game modes have a very dedicated following nowadays and would definitely benefit from getting the attention they deserve.
It will take time to define what those changes are exactly and how they will affect the game tho.

Concerning the player outlines, i personally definitely agree

With the new update coming, a lot of things are going to change and they will bring their own set of issues, we will need to see where we land, it feels like the sensible choice overall

 

sweet to hear! i hope you guys incorporate some smaller qol changes to hunted before a better revamp though.

 

As much as I would like to see Hunted Mode reworked/fixed rather than removed, I really do not see how to get around the balance issue of PvE vs. PvP. Novalescent got the closest to balancing PvP, but now abilities completely upend his suggestion because abilities are so complex and add so much utility that it is no longer only an issue of having too high damage or defense values. For example, a lot of abilities now introduce crazy movement perks, and you can't really change them too much without killing them entirely. Even games like OverWatch that entirely focus on PvP don't end up balanced all the time, so I don't see Wynncraft being able to somehow manage both at once. It's why the Nether was just removed entirely because it become simply impossible to focus on PvP and PvE at once.

 

horrible suggestion by someone who doesn't play hunted and as such will get bashed outta the room because of this

why not just halve or... fourth? poison damage, or nerf it even more than that
and have a cap on the damage you can take per hit or smth like that so it isn't just oneshot

for incentives, maybe grant you a sizable amount of emeralds every kill, however its decreased every consecutive time you kill that person
or just add that one bounty board idea thread

idk don't kill me triflame

 

i doubt hunted will be balanced yep. worth a try but would need extensive testing

people could try fitting well within the poison cap by wearing proper gear and making the rest up with a strong weapon. it would create a more diverse meta but would still be rather easy.
as for the damage cap, people would start making stupidly tanky builds and thus making fights last ages rather than be instant, as the damage cap will prevent people from going all out dps because it wouldn't work anymore. kill feeding would have to be well moderated

also, multi-hit spells, such as multihit, smoke bomb, arrow storm, war scream to an extent

 

*argument destroyed*
damage cap could increase in proportion to ehp?
kinda hard to code however

dunno about multi-hit spells though

 

in that case people would all use extremely glassy builds and be as much first-strike based as is now. multi-hit spells would have to calculate their damage prior to coming out but not sure if that'd work in real time

 

How about this? Instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, let's just make Hunted mode a PvE mode. But instead of players hunting each other, you have some sort of beast or creature that stalks the player the entire playthrough and cannot be permanently killed. It would of course be disabled during cutscenes, but it would essentially be like playing Tainted Jacob in the Binding of Isaac.

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The creature would only attack their respective Hunted player too btw.

 

scary idea..

 

As in scary good or bad? I could see it both ways. Maybe even have the creature grow stronger as the player levels up too so it doesn't become too predictable or cheesy.

 

spooky scary, i kinda like it tho, maybe not to replace hunted but a different game mode ^^

 

laughs in almost 2 dead gods

 

Well maybe not exactly like Tainted Jacob in that you die in one hit after you get hit once, especially not initial launch Tainted Jacob... That character alone has caused more trauma than Vietnam.

 

The Immortal Snail

 

I agree hunted mode should be revamped, but that doesnt fix the problem with pvp system, wynncraft as a game is made for pve not pvp, its hard to make a flawless pvp system around this. maybe it can change in 2.0 but i think ill still need to be reworked