Dear SE: Make Game Good. (Open World NMs & HNMs)

[DarthTaru]

If all we were going to be doing is entering instances from town (duty finder), you could have spared yourselves the resources and left the bland 1.0 environment. The game needs open world everything - dungeons and bosses that can be claimed.

Fates are what we said they would be before launch - mindless spamfests.

How cool would an Aurum Vale-esque dungeon be if it were open world, home to four or five Notorious Monsters with various difficulty and windows??

"I don't wanna' stand in one place for hours camping a NM."
Great. I don't wanna' stand in town for hours because there's no NM's to camp.

How hard can it possibly be to design 100 Notorious Monsters of varying level and difficulty and respawn timers and drop them all over the world? You seem scared to do it, yet it would probably be the greatest content patch you've had to date.

[DarthTaru]

The Bulletpoint:
1. Notorious Monsters that can be CLAIMED provide long lasting content and will keep people logging in. Camping them in the beautiful environment you've created would be preferably to camping nothing in Uldah. At least with NM's there's a chance something might happen that differs slightly from the day before.

2. Bring back Skirmish as an HNM training ground to help `casuals` learn fight so they'll eventually feel confident about trying to claim (if you must)

3. Make all mobs in game a placeholder for certain HNM's, eliminating the long Dragon's Aery style camps people complain about (as well as conditions for bot claiming) without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Tiamat can spawn right outside Gridania or in a remote corner of Eorzea. HNM's are now hunted and sought rather than camped and claimed.

[DarthTaru]

4. Like an XI, some Notorious Monsters should respawn once an hour (Moldavite earring) and others twice a week (Cerb, Tia, etc). Long windows keep it fresher, longer, and their drops more epic. Instant respawns are bad.

5. "Not fair to casuals"
Neither is Turn 5, or very difficult instances, which "casuals" will inevitably just ignore.
If a certain kind of player is going to ignore something, why should it matter if its open world or in an instance? At least in open world they can see it getting killed.

6. Even if you don't get claim, watching others tackle a difficult HNM is more enjoyable than standing in Uldah asking each other if it's Monday yet.

[DarthTaru]

7. Open world Notorious Monsters allow for more inclusion among members of a FC. People who are online can get an alliance invite and participate. It isn't like an instance where 8 people are in this party, and 8 people are in that party.

8. Adds spontaneity to game. Coil. Titan Mercs. WP farming, etc...All of these things we're going to do exactly the way we did them the time before. It's tedious. Don't expect to maintain a large player base if this is your grand vision. It's nice, but only if it's a layer on top of other layers of game play. By itself it's lame.e. In XI we were never sure what we were logging in to.
In XIV, we know exactly what we're going to do before we even turn our PC's on, and we're going to do all of it exactly the way we did before.

[Pinworms]

Stick them deep in open world dungeons or cave. Make us hut coffer keys and the hunt the coffrer!

[Ravij]

No. I remember the horrors NM's and HNM's brought to XI. Linkshells training mobs on top of Linkshells who are currently fighting the boss. Notorious Monsters brought out the Notorious ugly in everyone. It did NOT promote a helpful community it promoted a rage fest that caused more than a days worth of stress to everyone within hours.

Notorious Monsters. No. It promoted RMT to farm them to sell their drops. Hyper Notorious Monsters, Likewise to that effect except far worse on the market.

I'm happier with a game that has NO special Outdoor/World bosses that spawn rarely and are competed against by the masses of the server wanting a few pieces of gear that may drop off it. Bad idea. I do not support.

[DarthTaru]

You don't have to participate. You can just do whatever it is you do.

[Ravij]

You don't have to participate. You can just do whatever it is you do.

Except I'd be forced to participate because the gear that the HNM's drop would be "essential" to current raiding; As it was in XI. Again. No. If all they were there for was to drop vanity esque items with no visible stats or bonuses. Then yes I can see this working. But so long as gear thats dropped has some potential for leveling classes. Then No.

[DarthTaru]

Except I'd be forced to participate because the gear that the HNM's drop would be "essential" to current raiding; As it was in XI. Again. No.

How are the "horrors of NMs and HNM's" going to repeat themselves if the most sought after bosses don't have designated spawn locations? You're just making a blanket statement about NM's as if the problems with XI's NM system (well, aspects of it) cannot be fixed. How hard was it really to get a Moldavite earring? It was best in slot until Novio. How hard was it to get Leaping Boots?

Sorry, but the Odin and Behemoth fates are dumb.

So is standing in town with no hope of anything spontaneous happening.

[Ravij]

Snip

It's not finding the bosses that is the problem.. You must have came in to XI when they raised the level cap to 99.. for me? 5-6 year veteran of XI. And HNM was an ugly ordeal. Someone claims a HNM and another Linkshell will come in and drag mobs to that Linkshell trying to legitimately kill the boss so they can wipe and they can pick up claim. Then you have the other LS's healers spamming their highest threat gaining cures on your tank to get aggro on the boss so they can run it away to reset it.

That happened on a few Hydras that my Linkshell got. No one is kind to anyone but themselves when it comes to open world bosses. See WoW; Sha of Anger, Galleon, ect. You have people purposely flagging themselves to get tab targeted, then you get their healers flagged and then its game over. This is just like in XI where people would drag mobs to purposely wipe the other group who was there first.

You fail to see the concept of how ugly these open world boss fights can get. And yet all you're whining about is random spawns that "no one" will figure out.

Also.. again. You don't seem to be a veteran player of XI since you seemingly got "Moldavite Earrings" or "Leaping Boots" so easily.

Also.. FFXI was a demo for SE. They wanted to see how they could do in the MMO department. They took from their mistakes in XI and 1.0 of XIV and fixed it.