Last Word On It All

I promised you I would get back to you on why certain hunts have banned decoys, so here it is.  I talked to the hunt organiser today and asked her why they had banned them from their hunts.

This is what they said:

"Well, we dont allow them because we find them an annoyance to hunters, we dont want hunters to be misrable and so ready to leave a store that they never come back."

"We had one store that did it on our first hunt and we had the most complaints about that store we decided to not allow it the next time. Our hunts are non-skipable though, like the way it was when hunts first started."

I responded that I also see the frustration from a vendor point of view and that I was not aware of the area search capablities of two of the viewers

This was the reply to that:

"Yes you're right, you can even buy a hud now that has an area search function built in just for hunt purposes."

I told them that I felt for the vendors on this point and could understand their frustration.

They replied:

"Those huds and area search can be confused by just renaming normal prims, for example a vendor can raname the pieces of the floor the same name as the hunt prim."  

I thought this seemed a great idea and I asked them what they thought about the new trend of loads of visible decoys and they came back with:

"There's nothing worse than spending a long time somewhere only to find a decoy, it just makes you pissed off."

I said that I had seen a couple of places with over 50 at least.

They said that one hunt encouraged them as they had the reputation of being the hardest hunt on the grid, but even they apparently limited the amount to 10.

"So, I think anything above that is just stupidity in my opinion."

I also asked their opinion on the area search capability and they responded:

"We have been vendors in hunts for years now and have seen many different ways to cheat the system, area search just the most recent.  To be honest if people are going to cheat they will find a way regardless of if a place has decoys or not, so in effect the only thing decoys do is frustrate genuine hunters who dont cheat, and in our eyes thats a bad thing."

I told them that I felt cheating has possibly ruined it for true hunters and they summed it up by saying:

"If they choose to cheat, really what harm does it do? Not much.  If anything they are only cheating themselves out of what might be an enjoyable experience if they just tried genuinely hunting."

I totally agreed.  

In summary, I think that there are ways vendors can effectively foil the area searchers without adding to lag and frustration, but I also feel that as hunters we have a responsibility to not encourage cheating and to give stores all the support they deserve.

I hope you have found this as informative and helpful as I have.