Any new HNM coming?

if a NM like that was 1-2 week pop no one would "camp" it. eve 3-5 days, id not be looking for it like a mad man. i might take a stroll around on a chocobo occasionaly but not long.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

if a NM like that was 1-2 week pop no one would "camp" it

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Sure there would but only a select few.

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4hr window, i camped sw/di everyday till Lv85 came out, botg were 20-24 bar the SW skips occasionaly bc to many in Everbloom

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DI was 4 but campaign made it go on longer and JPs always scared it to extend the tods, SW was 5 and it despawned if unclaimed for an hour. I camped them every day since a few months after they added them till they added Abyssea, wasted way too much of my life rescanning over and over for a disgusting amount of time every day, as did many others.

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if a NM like that was 1-2 week pop no one would "camp" it

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So they just made an NM that nobody legit will camp but that people can buy alts and park in zones to death scan instead, you just made HNM just for cheaters again. People would pay over $1k for good bots, you think they won't pay a few extra bucks a month for however many mules?

Not me lol and SW/DI never popped in same zone the died/depop in last. theres over 20 zones they can make it pop in, and if its a 1-2 week pop thats only 4-8 death spots a month, the chance of it popping in a zone 2x b4 a maintenance or update is extremly low, making DS camping unreliable.

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Not me lol and SW/DI never popped in same zone the died/depop in last. theres over 20 zones they can make it pop in, and if its a 1-2 week pop thats only 4-8 death spots a month, the chance of it popping in a zone 2x b4 a maintenance or update is extremly low, making DS camping unreliable.

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The general rule of thumb in FFXI is bot makers > Square devs in regard to spawning HNM, people made way too much rl money off them for it to be any other way. No matter how fullproof you think your idea is they would end up going to the same LS that had that specific app made to find the mob, nobody would just stumble onto it.

Bot don't mean you can kill it.

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Bot don't mean you can kill it.

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Shells with reliable bots attract more/better members since they get claim, that means they can kill it.

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Originally Posted by Atomic_Skull

There are only three possibilities for HNM "challenge"

A. A 100% win strategy is figured out, and it becomes easy.

B. It's impossible to kill (e.g. oldschool Absolute Virtue)

C. Whether you win or loose is a lottery based on what it does. Either you get lucky and win or you are unlucky and it does something and destroys you.

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I'll take B please! ^^;

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Originally Posted by Natenn

Well were all entitled to our opinion, heres my opinion: I play on PS2 only, i outclaimed bots plenty of times and i rarely got beat on SW/DI. bar kings you stand a better chance claiming legit then vs a bot, even then ive claimed more with PS2 then ppl botting did. I think forced pop NM are to easy to access and kill. All the FF games usually have several rare/hard to beat/great reward monsters, this 1 doesn't anymore.

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I see your point about anyone poppin anytime, but just because you pop it, doesn't mean you can beat it. Making the required pop set difficult to get or time consuming is nearly the same as 1-7 day HNMs. I would suggest just making the pop NMs much harder with respect to lvl 99 jobs and in Abyssea the HNMs should be even more difficult due to the introduction of brewing.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

Maby a system like "Mob pops claimed to a random person in its aggro range thats above a certain lvl" that way it's impossible for anyone to bot and claims get distributed accordingly. Like say if they did this to Fafnir and made minimum lvl 70. you bring 6 ppl, theres a total of 12 in his aggro range above Lv70 = you have a 50% chance it pops claimed to you. I think this is a good idea, just tweak it a bit ect. OR if you bring 6 ppl but 2 are Lv69 or less with 12 total aggro range but only 10 are 70+ = your PT has a 40% chance to claim 4/10 eligible in range.

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So what happens if you and your 6 man group are waiting on it and a LS of 30 ppl show up...now you're chances are crap. (17%)

Those who say abyssea has improved FFXI and the vast majority of players have never been happier I would like to state my servers are at an all time low for population and since the release of abyssea there planning a 2nd wave of mergers. A lot of players stuck to this game because it was a hard game if we wanted a wowified game we would play wow just because YOUR happy dont make a generalization for all players that server populations will argue rather clearly.

As for new HNM I am happy for this I love a challenge who cares if its a long spawn or not, and yes I think it should have better gear unlike something you can spam because you put the time and effort into something hard. I like competition and before you whine that people who bot win obviously never tried hard enough botting is not a 100% win its still luck involved. Besides not like you can't bot abyssea or ???'s anyway so idk why you think thats a golden example.

I personally want new tiamat/khim style mobs that you race against 3-4 other LS's every 2-5 days to get to through agro and if your tank dies you lose the race.

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Those who say abyssea has improved FFXI and the vast majority of players have never been happier I would like to state my servers are at an all time low for population and since the release of abyssea there planning a 2nd wave of mergers. A lot of players stuck to this game because it was a hard game if we wanted a wowified game we would play wow just because YOUR happy dont make a generalization for all players that server populations will argue rather clearly.

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The server merges were planned 12 months ago, this is part 2 of that, is nothing new and was done before Abyssea was added.

Also sorry but HNM are nothing to the vast majority of players, when I did HNM every name was familiar. Would be lucky it 100-200 people did them on the entire server.

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I like competition and before you whine that people who bot win obviously never tried hard enough botting is not a 100% win its still luck involved. Besides not like you can't bot abyssea or ???'s anyway so idk why you think thats a golden example.

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It's not 100% but its not far off, good botters that work as a team have a very very high chance to claim.

Someone else posted a good workaround really, if they want to add worldspawn nms just let them pop in a state where everyone can put a claim on them for 30 seconds and it randomly give claim to one of them. Easiest way to leave it competitive but remove the huge bonus botting gives.

My first statement was to those whining how everyone likes abyssea its how it should always be and such not in regards to specifically HNM.

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Originally Posted by Mittenz

Those who say abyssea has improved FFXI and the vast majority of players have never been happier I would like to state my servers are at an all time low for population and since the release of abyssea there planning a 2nd wave of mergers. A lot of players stuck to this game because it was a hard game if we wanted a wowified game we would play wow just because YOUR happy dont make a generalization for all players that server populations will argue rather clearly.

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Hi2u correlation-causation confusion

I would say there was some validity to your points, if

1. FF14 hadn't come out (lol but still, it hurt subscriber numbers as people left and stayed there or left and decided to not come back)
2. WoW Cataclysm came out
3. Rift came out
4. etc etc etc

This ain't a vacuum.

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Originally Posted by RaenRyong

Hi2u correlation-causation confusion

I would say there was some validity to your points, if

1. FF14 hadn't come out (lol but still, it hurt subscriber numbers as people left and stayed there or left and decided to not come back)
2. WoW Cataclysm came out
3. Rift came out
4. etc etc etc

This ain't a vacuum.

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Not to mention there isn't much promotion for FFXI aside from steam sales every now and again.

I'm a bit torn on the subject. Both HNM's and Instanced mobs are fun, I liked doing both, and they each have their share of drawbacks.

I don't care for HNM's 3 hour windows, nor waiting 21 hours for the thing to possibly respawn, I did love the excitement and thrill of outclaiming others, making you think on your feet and stay on your toes.

On the other hand, Instanced NM's eliminate the wait, but you can pretty much take your time preparing when your good and ready eliminating some of the challenge.

I would love to see a change in current HNM's, maybe revamping their drops, the challenge, and shortened respawn/windows giving way to more oppertunities for people to claim, and not possibly waiting weeks for a HNM to respawn back in your timezone. But that's just a bit of wishful thinking on my part.

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Originally Posted by Swords

I would love to see a change in current HNM's, maybe revamping their drops, the challenge, and shortened respawn/windows giving way to more oppertunities for people to claim, and not possibly waiting weeks for a HNM to respawn back in your timezone. But that's just a bit of wishful thinking on my part.

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My friend, let me introduce you to the concept of leaderboards, trophies, and achievements. Suppose you and your linkshell just killed an instanced version of a really strong monster. You want to flaunt your kill and waggle your e-dingdong in front of other linkshells because...well why the heck not? They obviously can't be there to watch you and the title you now have might have been from a kill some time ago. The easiest solution is to provide a sort of kill list at the scene of the fight of all the best kills in recent history including the duration of the fight, the number of members, the names of the members and the jobs they were on. The next step would be difficulty levels, meaningful level caps and player imposed restrictions on the fight all visible with the kill list.

So the next time your friend in a rival linkshell says "we just killed tiamat in 20 minutes with 6" you can say "yeah? we did in 18 with 6... naked. Don't believe me? check the kill list".

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

This may not be directed at you, But i have a feeling all the people itching for 21-24hr world-claim NMs being the level 99 Kings of gear, are just the people who bought thousand dollar bots, only to have thousand-dollar wasted Computer Memory now because of what Abyssea had made the game, and they want the e-peen and false sense of superiority they had back when they ruled the FFXI endgame scene.

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Which is why you would make the bots useless by having the mob pop yellow for a few seconds and then pass claim to a random person on it's hate list. That way you'd still have to pay attention and be fast to get claim but it would also make bots completely worthless because attacking it first would not claim it. Claim would be given randomly to one of the people who attacked it during the 2-3 second long claim window.

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Originally Posted by Tivaud

So what happens if you and your 6 man group are waiting on it and a LS of 30 ppl show up...now you're chances are crap. (17%)

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If bots didn't exist and claiming was completely fair your chances would be 17% with 6 vs 30 anyway.

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Originally Posted by Atomic_Skull

If bots didn't exist and claiming was completely fair your chances would be 17% with 6 vs 30 anyway.

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I would rather have that then a almost 0% unfair chance because people bot.

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Originally Posted by Sasukeuchiha

I would rather have that then a almost 0% unfair chance because people bot.

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How about this?

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Which is why you would make the bots useless by having the mob pop yellow for a few seconds and then pass claim to a random person on it's hate list. That way you'd still have to pay attention and be fast to get claim but it would also make bots completely worthless because attacking it first would not claim it. Claim would be given randomly to one of the people who attacked it during the 2-3 second long claim window.

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SE already did something similar to that in the past to interrupt spam bots, but all it really does it keep people from constantly spamming Job abilities and spells. All you end up doing is fake claiming the mob, receiving invalid message, and temporary delay penalty before you can recast the action, which by then is too late. Most of the bots now have been modified to adjust for the delay through packet sniffing, that lets people cast or use a JA so they can claim the exact moment the computer will allow people to claim.

Though the idea is not half bad, it's pitfall would be whomever has the most people would likely get claim. Most botters lack any real skill in playing their job, so they tend to have a bunch of people to throw at the NM to begin with. Besides, even if they did have some skill, it wouldn't take much to create or use a bunch of mule/trial accounts soely for claim.

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Originally Posted by Atomic_Skull

How about this?

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In the end they should not make it a 21 to 24 hour + spawn. Can you not see all the problems that come from this system yet,. Bottting unfairness the faster it spawns and the faster people get there gear the faster there going to move on so everyone will have there fair chance at the nm.

Jesus Christ so much crying in this thread... Suck Less™ at claiming or don't camp. Easy as that.

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Originally Posted by Snaplin

Jesus Christ so much crying in this thread... Suck Less™ at claiming or don't camp. Easy as that.

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Most people's problem isn't w/ the camping itself rather than the possibility of NMs only popping once a day again, taking our step forward with the past couple of updates a huge step back in the wrong direction.

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Originally Posted by Swords

SE already did something similar to that in the past to interrupt spam bots, but all it really does it keep people from constantly spamming Job abilities and spells. All you end up doing is fake claiming the mob, receiving invalid message, and temporary delay penalty before you can recast the action, which by then is too late. Most of the bots now have been modified to adjust for the delay through packet sniffing, that lets people cast or use a JA so they can claim the exact moment the computer will allow people to claim.

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I am aware of this, however my idea is the complete opposite of that so I don't see how it's relevant.

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Originally Posted by Swords

Though the idea is not half bad, it's pitfall would be whomever has the most people would likely get claim. Most botters lack any real skill in playing their job, so they tend to have a bunch of people to throw at the NM to begin with. Besides, even if they did have some skill, it wouldn't take much to create or use a bunch of mule/trial accounts soely for claim.

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If bots did not exist and claiming was completely fair this would be the case anyway. More people would still = higher chance to claim.

Trial accounts aren't a problem SE discontinued them a while ago.

For people saying there's no competition in the game anymore go camp Gukumetz or Amun during JP prime time and then come back with your QQing.

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Originally Posted by Mrbeansman

For people saying there's no competition in the game anymore go camp Gukumetz or Amun during JP prime time and then come back with your QQing.

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This^^, lowering the re-spawn time won't make a difference but LS's who bot can claim more often. Poping once a day lets LS's be able to sit around and bot claim more then once. Suck it up and get better at claiming or don't camp is about all you can do.

Remember when Sandworm and Dark Ixion came out and everyone cheered SE on for such a good idea of a multi zone/Area pop NM? Hi2u Death spot scanner, no matter what SE comes up with there will always be a way to get an edge over the competition. ("???" Spawned HNM's?) There are bots that can trade a pop before your F8 Spam even clicks on it. Sorry but its one of those "Just deal with it situations. :/

On a Side note I do hope they bring HNM's back hell 30 min between each window means I can afk and get real life stuff done, I afk for 30 min in abyssea and my LS is on the opposite side of the zone while I'm getting face raped by some mob attacking me. I will agree tho windows like Tiamat, WTF was SE thinking?

Edit: To be honest SE prob. didn't think people would ally face camp HNM's who knows, Maybe they though LS's would mule there and race out. Can't be mad at them for other people having time on there hands. :/

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For people saying there's no competition in the game anymore go camp Gukumetz or Amun during JP prime time and then come back with your QQing.

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I spent years among HNM players, they don't want competition...at all.

They want to be able to win and either cockblock others or just get their stuff asap, but they really don't like/want anything where they could routinely lose. As in they don't like fair odds compeition gives, thats why all the biggest shells were the botting shells.

People that say they want compeition from HNM really just want the old status they used to have standing around afk in an ebody that almost nobody else owned, every time I see people lose claim even in Abyssea they start turning on or searching out the bots. Thats all this games playerbase boils down to, if they can't win most of the time they'll cheat while spouting excuses as to why.

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Though the idea is not half bad, it's pitfall would be whomever has the most people would likely get claim. Most botters lack any real skill in playing their job, so they tend to have a bunch of people to throw at the NM to begin with. Besides, even if they did have some skill, it wouldn't take much to create or use a bunch of mule/trial accounts soely for claim.

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I wouldn't have a problem with this personally but it's easy to stop. Make it so that once claim is given to the random player your alliance is locked and you can't invite or outside assist that alliance. Now unless you can field 2 fully capable kill squads you can only claim on max of 18 players same as other shells.

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Originally Posted by Runespider

I wouldn't have a problem with this personally but it's easy to stop. Make it so that once claim is given to the random player your alliance is locked and you can't invite or outside assist that alliance. Now unless you can field 2 fully capable kill squads you can only claim on max of 18 players same as other shells.

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That's not entirely true, The JP bot shell on my server have so many f'king mules they could easily kill with an alliance of mules. I swear to god they Mule ally camp EVERY King even to this day, even if there is no competition because their the only ones who gives 2 cents about kings.

Well if they locked the alliance from moment of claim given till all drops have dropped then there would be a lot less point in that...unless they really wanted to gear mules. Anyway having mules is something everyone shares these days, especially since Abyssea and I would rather this method and Square get more money from that to work on new FFXI content than some retarded bot maker get it.

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Originally Posted by Snaplin

This^^, lowering the re-spawn time won't make a difference but LS's who bot can claim more often. Poping once a day lets LS's be able to sit around and bot claim more then once. Suck it up and get better at claiming or don't camp is about all you can do.

Remember when Sandworm and Dark Ixion came out and everyone cheered SE on for such a good idea of a multi zone/Area pop NM? Hi2u Death spot scanner, no matter what SE comes up with there will always be a way to get an edge over the competition. ("???" Spawned HNM's?) There are bots that can trade a pop before your F8 Spam even clicks on it. Sorry but its one of those "Just deal with it situations. :/

On a Side note I do hope they bring HNM's back hell 30 min between each window means I can afk and get real life stuff done, I afk for 30 min in abyssea and my LS is on the opposite side of the zone while I'm getting face raped by some mob attacking me. I will agree tho windows like Tiamat, WTF was SE thinking?

Edit: To be honest SE prob. didn't think people would ally face camp HNM's who knows, Maybe they though LS's would mule there and race out. Can't be mad at them for other people having time on there hands. :/

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What I meant to say was if you want competition for mobs that drop the best gear in the game it's still there. It's just not your POS cockblock everyone for your giant epen competition.

At this point in the game's life anything that retains players, or brings back ones who are retired is a plus. For people who love abyssea for w/e reason there is plenty of that to go around. Have a blast in the 9 zones.

For people who like to camp HNM's give em a couple to go do what they do. Make them a true challenge, where claiming is not 96% of the difficulty. Make them a true challenge to a lvl 90 alliance. Toss in a couple seriously devastating tp moves that it does at random twice or so every 10 mins. PLEASE do not place them in an abyssea zone.

For people who want to PvP SE needs to revamp the system so it is easily accessible, and located at the very least in a major hub say WG. Place is damn near empty now. Make it completely optional with a feature to ignore all requests for PvP.

Those are 3 viable choices that appeal to a wide range of players both hard core, and casual. Engage in all three if that what makes you happy. If there is an option there you don't care for avoid it. This caters to everyone, and does not crush the life out of any one faction.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

New HNM should involve luck claiming AND intellect to kill it afterward. Now when i say intellect i mean something that requires every member of your party to be on the ball. A ??? NM like AV was a little extreme, everyone knew how to kill it but it required everyone to have a MDT set, be skilled at their job, ect. right now all most ppl are doing are crying because they scared of not claiming. Im sure the new BCNMs for KC/HKC will drop the stuff that the new HNM drop, only at a lower rate. But, this is only my speculation mind you.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

To me, yes it does, it means all my hard work keepin track of ToD/not giving up paid off. It took me years to get D ring, fighting against botters up till the day i got it. So yea its of much more value to me then an eponas ring.

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I'll have to say, of all the posts about 21 - 24 hour, single zone HNM's, yours seem the least informed as to what the HNM shells do. Even people in HNM's with bots pretty much wanted the old system to end. Because, it wasn't about luck. It was about who brought the most well-staggered set of bots to the zone. The only luck involved was when someone got lucky enough to beat out the bots. And, the HNM shells weren't impressed. They were chuckling because of someone's dumb luck. Honestly, taking years to get an item because you were losing to botters is as unimpressive as those who made all their claims through bots. So, if you're arguing to bring back that kind of HNM, you are in a true minority. Unless of course you're planning to run some bots this time. Otherwise, the bots will be back in force and you can lose to them for several more years.

p.s. - I never botted and even beat the bots on a couple occasions. But, I knew that it was dumb luck and laughed about it myself. The type of HNM you are arguing for should never return.

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Originally Posted by Zaknafein

For people who like to camp HNM's give em a couple to go do what they do. Make them a true challenge, where claiming is not 96% of the difficulty. Make them a true challenge to a lvl 90 alliance. Toss in a couple seriously devastating tp moves that it does at random twice or so every 10 mins. PLEASE do not place them in an abyssea zone.

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Oh please you sit there and say, "make it difficult" but fail to have any good or original ideas on how to do this. There 2 kinds of difficulty in games for the most part. First is gimmick and the second is attrition. Almost every encounter in a traditional RPG can be one or a combination of these 2 things.

For a gimmicky encounter it relies on it's surroundings, positioning, and other factors that are controlled usually by the player. Dark Ixion and Doomvoid versions of KA, Guirve, and Lambton are all gimmick based HNMs. Gimmick based encounters are as difficult as you want them to be. The problem is you learn the gimmick and the difficulty fades away.

Attrition was PW, literally inflict as much damage as possible on your players slowly killing them. This is very difficult to balance because as seen with PW players will just keep throwing PCs at the mob to hold it and slowly zerg it down. You make it too hard you end up with AV.

In short difficulty is only temporary on anything that can be killed. Making something more difficult just raises the number of players needed to take it down. This makes it harder to reward everyone in a fair way. Just having single item drops is a bad idea you're better off with point systems.

You could argue that reaction time is part of the difficulty but that's more part of gimmick like stunning Cerb's GoHs. This game would have to overhaul their combat massively to allow true action/reaction based gameplay.

TLDR: Difficulty is usually a fleeting feeling in an MMO because everything is repeated so much it becomes easy.


Finally on the heart of issue. Having free spawn NMs are fine as long you have every single reward on them able to be obtained at the exact same rate from an instanced version at the player's convenience. Having to live with your schedule centered around a game just to have a chance at the best gear nuts and pretty pathetic.

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Originally Posted by Orson

Oh please you sit there and say, "make it difficult" but fail to have any good or original ideas on how to do this. There 2 kinds of difficulty in games for the most part. First is gimmick and the second is attrition. Almost every encounter in a traditional RPG can be one or a combination of these 2 things.

For a gimmicky encounter it relies on it's surroundings, positioning, and other factors that are controlled usually by the player. Dark Ixion and Doomvoid versions of KA, Guirve, and Lambton are all gimmick based HNMs. Gimmick based encounters are as difficult as you want them to be. The problem is you learn the gimmick and the difficulty fades away.

Attrition was PW, literally inflict as much damage as possible on your players slowly killing them. This is very difficult to balance because as seen with PW players will just keep throwing PCs at the mob to hold it and slowly zerg it down. You make it too hard you end up with AV.

In short difficulty is only temporary on anything that can be killed. Making something more difficult just raises the number of players needed to take it down. This makes it harder to reward everyone in a fair way. Just having single item drops is a bad idea you're better off with point systems.

You could argue that reaction time is part of the difficulty but that's more part of gimmick like stunning Cerb's GoHs. This game would have to overhaul their combat massively to allow true action/reaction based gameplay.

TLDR: Difficulty is usually a fleeting feeling in an MMO because everything is repeated so much it becomes easy.


Finally on the heart of issue. Having free spawn NMs are fine as long you have every single reward on them able to be obtained at the exact same rate from an instanced version at the player's convenience. Having to live with your schedule centered around a game just to have a chance at the best gear nuts and pretty pathetic.

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Well if you had an instance version of a mob that drop the same item them could solve alot of isues. Hnms just promote to much botting and is un fair if said gear only drops from them. Give some alternative, make the gear drop faster, or make it much lower then 21 to 24 hour pluss will solve alot of problem. Find a decent solution to get people off the mobs for good so other people have there fair chance at the nm. Everyone deserves there fair chance to get the gear not just people who want to bot.

Theres no real point putting HNM drops in another BC unless BC is way harder, the best gear should be rare, not everyone should have it, the only ppl debating this are those who won't claim/lazy. They wan't everything equal so they wont look bad running around in old content equip while ppl who are good at the endgame scene have the new/good stuff.

Don't badmouth us bc you don't wanna spend time getting claims.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

Theres no real point putting HNM drops in another BC unless BC is way harder, the best gear should be rare, not everyone should have it, the only ppl debating this are those who won't claim/lazy. They wan't everything equal so they wont look bad running around in old content equip while ppl who are good at the endgame scene have the new/good stuff.

Don't badmouth us bc you don't wanna spend time getting claims.

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That can be played both ways though. like say

"The only people arguing for it are those who want their expensive bots to be useful and can hoard the good gear over more casual players and feel pretty in town. "

But Both sides have multiple reason, and both can be looked at in a negative light, But I'm pretty sure everyone has their own reasons. Not everyone would stand by that reason i listed on your side of the argument, and not everyone on the other side would agree to your interpretation.

Ppl think crying "bots bots bots" means HNM are bad, I never botted, i claimed. So world spawns are bad bc most ppl can't cut it? Thats not fair to the hardcoe base. SE gonna cater to everyone, not just 1 group of ppl.

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Originally Posted by Natenn

Ppl think crying "bots bots bots" means HNM are bad, I never botted, i claimed. So world spawns are bad bc most ppl can't cut it? Thats not fair to the hardcoe base. SE gonna cater to everyone, not just 1 group of ppl.

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That's the problem free spawn HNMs don't allow you to cater to both groups. If they could no HMN enthusiast would care if the equivalent gear could be obtained from else
where. Why shouldn't the instanced version have the best gear? See the problem is it's not about having both. Free spawn HNMs are based around exclusion not challenge. If you really think it is, why not make a retarded strong HNM that has a special title that you only get at a 10% drop rate? Don't lie all you care about is the gear and doing your best to keep it from others.

I've said before too but I'll say it again. The supposed hardcore player that you refer to is largely gone and even the few that still are around are the worst players to try and please. If SE wants to keep making money they need to keep releasing accessible content. It doesn't have to be dumbed down or stupidly easy but it has to be able to be done at the players leisure and with smaller groups.