HNMs and the future of FFXI

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Originally Posted by Habu

Never said that, but there should be something that caters to those who still take the game a little more seriously than VW and making more Emps. Legion has sufficed for that until you beat final chamber, which is the only chamber that requires any real effort.

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"Seriously" = Sitting Around Forever and then either Pure Luck or Outright Hacks to claim the mob.

In any way that the game is broken today, the HNM system was broken far worse. (after several years of first hand HNM experience)

p.s. - My shell made lots of claims. I personally did many times with Dia, Provoke, or even a Dart. So, your comment about people not making claims and complaining is a poor generalization

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Originally Posted by Habu

Never said that, but there should be something that caters to those who still take the game a little more seriously than VW and making more Emps. Legion has sufficed for that until you beat final chamber, which is the only chamber that requires any real effort.

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So based on this comment I can assume you've already beaten the final chamber of Legion?

If so, congratulations!!! But on point, sad to say, I for one do NOT miss camping HNMs in the game... not that there aren't some folks within the worlds of FFXI that actually considered that "fun"... so if SE reads this thread... please disregard. =/

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

like i said, if it's so easy, then show us how it's done.

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1/10.

You can do better than that.

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning. HNM's in the old days were hard then got easier as everyone figured out the strategies and the only hard part was getting claim. To say that Legion is now easy because your group has the strategy down now is no different.

Asking for the game to be made harder for the small fraction of uber gamers is silly, when the population was always largely made up of the average.

SE gave you Nyzul 2.0 (and everyone decided to use cheats to beat it) and gave you Legion (and everyone abuses the crap out of PD/Wild Card to beat it).

You want difficulty, then try to beat Legion without SMN's. Beat Nyzul without cheats. Play the game on a console without all your windower add ons. You'll find it plenty challenging. Every uber player I've heard of maxes out his gear, windower add ons and then complains that its too easy. Such a pile of hypocrisy.

You could also try playing the game while having someone smash you in the face with a brick, but I don't see how that would improve the experience either.

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Originally Posted by Mirabelle

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning. HNM's in the old days were hard then got easier as everyone figured out the strategies and the only hard part was getting claim. To say that Legion is now easy because your group has the strategy down now is no different.

Asking for the game to be made harder for the small fraction of uber gamers is silly, when the population was always largely made up of the average.

SE gave you Nyzul 2.0 (and everyone decided to use cheats to beat it) and gave you Legion (and everyone abuses the crap out of PD/Wild Card to beat it).

You want difficulty, then try to beat Legion without SMN's. Beat Nyzul without cheats. Play the game on a console without all your windower add ons. You'll find it plenty challenging. Every uber player I've heard of maxes out his gear, windower add ons and then complains that its too easy. Such a pile of hypocrisy.

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Their confusing difficulty with exclusivity. They don't want the game "difficult", its a game, it's frustrating when you run into an artificial brick wall. The mechanics of FFXI do not leave much room for creative strategies, it always boils down to kill it before it can kill you. Thus any strategy is about doing maximum damage, finding a way to survive long enough to kill something or some combination of the two. Now exclusivity is a different beast, it means barriers to access and limits on who can acquire gear. Abyssea gear is good, it's really really good stat wise. What makes these people angry about it is that anyone can acquire it, thus the good gear is available to everyone without any barriers to access.

HNMs on the other hand only had a few items that could be considered "good". There was a huge barrier to access in that the monster only appeared once per day with it's HQ cousin appearing twice per week in place of the regular one. Only one group on the entire server could get access to this NM at a time. Assuming the NQ only appeared five times per week, we got ~260 appearances, with any particular gear having a 10~15% drop rate that is only 26~39 of a particular item being created per year for the entire server. A very small portion of the games population can reasonably expect to acquire those items and thus we got the super exclusivity of HNM shells. You spend a year or two building up points / favors to get the rights to lot on some extremely rare item.

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Originally Posted by Mirabelle

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning. HNM's in the old days were hard then got easier as everyone figured out the strategies and the only hard part was getting claim. To say that Legion is now easy because your group has the strategy down now is no different.

Asking for the game to be made harder for the small fraction of uber gamers is silly, when the population was always largely made up of the average.

SE gave you Nyzul 2.0 (and everyone decided to use cheats to beat it) and gave you Legion (and everyone abuses the crap out of PD/Wild Card to beat it).

You want difficulty, then try to beat Legion without SMN's. Beat Nyzul without cheats. Play the game on a console without all your windower add ons. You'll find it plenty challenging. Every uber player I've heard of maxes out his gear, windower add ons and then complains that its too easy. Such a pile of hypocrisy.

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'If you want Abyssea to be hard, use no Atmas!!'

First off Legion without SMNs basically amounts to being repeatedly oneshot by special attacks that do more damage than you have HP. Even if you perfectly gearswap MDT/PDT gear, you're still going to bite it from TP spam and with 30mins on the clock deaths mean losses. Your healers wont save you, rotating Scherzo wont save you and expecting every TP attack to be stunned (if it even can) is bordering on impossible.

This is not difficulty, it's an artificial sense of challenge designed by a dev team unconcerned with 'balance', though they enjoy the word far more than any mortals should. The same strategy of mindlessly zerg or be utterly and completely destroyed with no chance of recovery has become the mainstream in XI with everything from ADL, Diabolos, Voidwatch, Provenence then to Legion and it still adds not one iota of difficulty to the content.

I argue content like Pantokrator, Apademak, Raja, Rani and Shinryu without brews at 90 were harder than anything offered since Voidwatch took the wheel and all of these allowed you to use atmas.

To summarize: Legion involves a bunch of mobs with AOE attacks designed to vaporize anyone in range not using an Aegis. There is no skill, effort or tricks to avoid these attacks other than a mindless zerg with 36 or utilizing Alexander/Embravas to beat the mobs before they beat you into a bloody pulp.

Nyzul also involves so much luck that your 'skill' means nothing if the random number generator says you're not getting to 100. Couple that with the lamp floor lag to reinput combinations and the difficulty becomes nothing about personal skills and more about how often the computer decides to not screw you.

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Originally Posted by Mirabelle

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning. HNM's in the old days were hard then got easier as everyone figured out the strategies and the only hard part was getting claim. To say that Legion is now easy because your group has the strategy down now is no different.

Asking for the game to be made harder for the small fraction of uber gamers is silly, when the population was always largely made up of the average.

SE gave you Nyzul 2.0 (and everyone decided to use cheats to beat it) and gave you Legion (and everyone abuses the crap out of PD/Wild Card to beat it).

You want difficulty, then try to beat Legion without SMN's. Beat Nyzul without cheats. Play the game on a console without all your windower add ons. You'll find it plenty challenging. Every uber player I've heard of maxes out his gear, windower add ons and then complains that its too easy. Such a pile of hypocrisy.

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Its not really about how NM are hard to beat, its more about HNMLS war for me,
I personally miss this (incluing drama between rival LS, and provocations)

FFXI without any HNMLS war is sad,
It's like, Naruto Shippuden without Akatsuki.

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Originally Posted by cidbahamut

You could also try playing the game while having someone smash you in the face with a brick, but I don't see how that would improve the experience either.

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Well... it would probably feel slightly better than waiting for an HNM to spawn.

Special thanks to the OP for writing something so stupid that I could agree with Analheem on every point. You are gifted my friend.

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Originally Posted by Randwolf

"Seriously" = Sitting Around Forever and then either Pure Luck or Outright Hacks to claim the mob.

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Pure luck eh? You mean like opening a VW chest 150 before getting the drop you want? Outright hacks? ftfy

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Originally Posted by Mirabelle

SE gave you Nyzul 2.0 (and everyone decided to use cheats to beat it) and gave you Legion (and everyone abuses the crap out of PD/Wild Card to beat it). You want difficulty, then try to beat Legion without SMN's. Beat Nyzul without cheats. Play the game on a console without all your windower add ons. You'll find it plenty challenging. Every uber player I've heard of maxes out his gear, windower add ons and then complains that its too easy. Such a pile of hypocrisy.

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Stop using hacks? I love how you can infer that I use 3rd party tools just because I can beat Nyzul. Ask one of my buyers if I'm sliding through walls or running around @ 800% flee. Do Legion without PD mmk, I'm going to guess you've never stepped foot into Legion. PD is vital in final chamber, let me know when you do it and we can talk strats.

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Originally Posted by saevel

Their confusing difficulty with exclusivity. They don't want the game "difficult", its a game, it's frustrating when you run into an artificial brick wall. The mechanics of FFXI do not leave much room for creative strategies, it always boils down to kill it before it can kill you. Thus any strategy is about doing maximum damage, finding a way to survive long enough to kill something or some combination of the two. Now exclusivity is a different beast, it means barriers to access and limits on who can acquire gear. Abyssea gear is good, it's really really good stat wise. What makes these people angry about it is that anyone can acquire it, thus the good gear is available to everyone without any barriers to access.

HNMs on the other hand only had a few items that could be considered "good". There was a huge barrier to access in that the monster only appeared once per day with it's HQ cousin appearing twice per week in place of the regular one. Only one group on the entire server could get access to this NM at a time. Assuming the NQ only appeared five times per week, we got ~260 appearances, with any particular gear having a 10~15% drop rate that is only 26~39 of a particular item being created per year for the entire server. A very small portion of the games population can reasonably expect to acquire those items and thus we got the super exclusivity of HNM shells. You spend a year or two building up points / favors to get the rights to lot on some extremely rare item.

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Best post in the thread.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Well... it would probably feel slightly better than waiting for an HNM to spawn.

Special thanks to the OP for writing something so stupid that I could agree with Analheem on every point. You are gifted my friend.

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You're one emp is telling me this thread went right over your head.