Originally Posted by
Satyr
I'm sorry but the old NM(HNM) system in this game is just poor game design. I do not care how you argue it...putting monsters in that have revolving spawn times and have 21-24 hour respwans with 3 hour spawn windows (or worse) is poor game design. Endgame content should be about making fights that are a real challenge yet accessible to anyone that wants to participate. The old system forced you to be in an HNM shell due to the spawn mechanics and it is unrealistic for people to have to get up at 3AM to participate in content because some LS decided to hold King Arturo for 5 hours.
The game has consistently been moving away from the old HNM system seeing as the majority of endgame content since Zilart has been instanced, or forced spawn with the end results being things like Abyssea, Nyzul, Assault, etc. They still threw in some absurd HNMs to appease the LSs that think fun is sitting somewhere for 4 hours and spamming a provoke macro for 30 seconds every 30 min. The result? Many people liked Nyzul, and Assault, and pretty much anyone who is playing currently likes the abyssea system. The reason is because unlike with HNMs, you get rewarded for the time put in as well as the effort, whereas I would venture to guess that the vast majority of players have never even seen (let alone killed) Dark Ixion.
TL;DR: Endgame content should be about teamwork and effort, not about who can spam their provoke macro the fastest or who can have the most players awake at 3 AM.