HNMs and the future of FFXI

[Alhanelem]

Yes let's turn a mob that pops generally every 4-6 days into something you must first get 99KS to pop the NQ version. Then hope that the NQ will drop an item that can pop the HQ, which is horrid. Then once you get that HQ pop you have to hope the NM drops the item you were actually after, if not repeat the cycle. How could this possibly be better than knowing when the HQ will pop?

You didn't know when the HQ would pop. It was random. Contrary to popular belief there was no set maximum time for the HQ pop; not that any of this has anything to do with they should have just made the BC drop everything instead. Between an alliance of people, you were able to do the KSNM more often than you could have done the HNM (speaking from before it was changed to the force pop system)

I don't like the PvP the way it is setup in FFXI hence why I don't do it.

I don't like the HNM the way it is setup in FFXI hence why I don't do it (anymore). It's also why the system for certain NMs was changed.

I'm sorry I thought we were on a FFXI forum? So instead of trying to get something implemented for the people who would be in favor of HNMs I should just go play another game? Makes sense.

You implied you cared more about competition than you did fighting the monster. So I simply proposed better ways to enjoy competition- by playing a game or doing an activity that's actually competitive. You could get the same thrill out of winning a lottery ticket or other gambling activity. Why not do something like that instead?

Oh? I'm getting the reason people didn't want to go to them were the fact that you had to sit there for 3 hours MAX

You make it sound like 3 hours isn't a long time. It IS a long time, it's a stupidly long time to wait when there are lots of other things you could do in the game in that amount of time. 3 hours of doing nothing is not fun, and it's even less fun when you did it for nothing.

This isn't the third grade, not everyone is a winner, that's life.

Proof of your lack of maturity. Nobody said everyone had to be a winner. But I'd rather lose to the NM than lose to a claim bot. Challenging fights, not seeing who can beat the random number generator, should be the source of the thrills. Your idea of a thrill is pretty shallow- it's reaching pretty far if this is the only thing that could give you thrill in the game. Proof further that you're a creator of drama- that's the real reason you want this.

You might be erroneously gathering from this that my groups never won pulls. We did- quite often in fact. That doesn't make the 3 hours of camping spawn windows somehow fun. They could have cut the time in half when they first created it and it wouldn't have been so bad I strongly doubt anyone would have said "You know, 15 minute windows are too short, can we make them longer, like 30 minutes?" The spawn windows should have been shorter. Same thrills, less wasted time, both for the winners and the losers. it's the single thing I hated most about early HNMs. It never really got much better either, as later HNMs didn't have set spawn windows but just had one big one when they were due. That ended up being an even bigger colossal waste of time because you had to be paying attention for however long it took.

Oh yeah, then there's the people who claim it but spend 7 hours trying to kill it when your group could have killed it in less than 1. You think they're going to wipe but they don't, and so your LS just sits there the whole time just in case they wipe. wasting more time (only to have Tiamat drop nothing but a single crystal)

Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. this is the biggest reason why the HNM system sucked. Don't get the wrong idea. Our LS and most of the LSes present were (usually) good sports when it came to the claim. It just baffles me how anyone could find the hours and hours of waiting "fun."

Is that little thrill spike when the NM pops really worth hours and hours of waiting? To me, and to most people, the answer is a resounding 'no.'

[Benihana]

You didn't know when the HQ would pop. It was random. Contrary to popular belief there was no set maximum time for the HQ pop; not that any of this has anything to do with they should have just made the BC drop everything instead. Between an alliance of people, you were able to do the KSNM more often than you could have done the HNM (speaking from before it was changed to the force pop system)

I don't like the HNM the way it is setup in FFXI hence why I don't do it (anymore). It's also why the system for certain NMs was changed.

You implied you cared more about competition than you did fighting the monster. So I simply proposed better ways to enjoy competition- by playing a game or doing an activity that's actually competitive. You could get the same thrill out of winning a lottery ticket or other gambling activity. Why not do something like that instead?

You make it sound like 3 hours isn't a long time. It IS a long time, it's a stupidly long time to wait when there are lots of other things you could do in the game in that amount of time. 3 hours of doing nothing is not fun, and it's even less fun when you did it for nothing.

Proof of your lack of maturity. Nobody said everyone had to be a winner. But I'd rather lose to the NM than lose to a claim bot. Challenging fights, not seeing who can beat the random number generator, should be the source of the thrills. Your idea of a thrill is pretty shallow- it's reaching pretty far if this is the only thing that could give you thrill in the game. Proof further that you're a creator of drama- that's the real reason you want this.

You might be erroneously gathering from this that my groups never won pulls. We did- quite often in fact. That doesn't make the 3 hours of camping spawn windows somehow fun. They could have cut the time in half when they first created it and it wouldn't have been so bad I strongly doubt anyone would have said "You know, 15 minute windows are too short, can we make them longer, like 30 minutes?" The spawn windows should have been shorter. Same thrills, less wasted time, both for the winners and the losers. it's the single thing I hated most about early HNMs. It never really got much better either, as later HNMs didn't have set spawn windows but just had one big one when they were due. That ended up being an even bigger colossal waste of time because you had to be paying attention for however long it took.

Oh yeah, then there's the people who claim it but spend 7 hours trying to kill it when your group could have killed it in less than 1. You think they're going to wipe but they don't, and so your LS just sits there the whole time just in case they wipe. wasting more time (only to have Tiamat drop nothing but a single crystal)

Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. this is the biggest reason why the HNM system sucked. Don't get the wrong idea. Our LS and most of the LSes present were (usually) good sports when it came to the claim. It just baffles me how anyone could find the hours and hours of waiting "fun."

Is that little thrill spike when the NM pops really worth hours and hours of waiting? To me, and to most people, the answer is a resounding 'no.'

I SMELL BACON!

iN B4 NO POLICE.

on a serious note, tldr, you don't speak for everyone.

[Habu]

You didn't know when the HQ would pop. It was random. Contrary to popular belief there was no set maximum time for the HQ pop

Did you not read the part where I said "generally 4-7 days for a HQ" meaning that it could go longer than that but a decent amount of time it spawned between the 4th-7th day after last HQ spawn. Yes it can go up to to 8-9-10 but it was very unlikely to go that far and even more unlikely to past that.

I don't like the HNM the way it is setup in FFXI hence why I don't do it (anymore). It's also why the system for certain NMs was changed.

It was changed after the numerous years of people complaining they couldn't claim. In roughly the year before it was changed to force pop there was barely anyone even camping kings anymore so I don't see why the system was changed to this terrible one.

You implied you cared more about competition than you did fighting the monster. So I simply proposed better ways to enjoy competition- by playing a game or doing an activity that's actually competitive. You could get the same thrill out of winning a lottery ticket or other gambling activity. Why not do something like that instead?

Really? Why is this even being mentioned like I need a thrillseekers anonymous or something.

You make it sound like 3 hours isn't a long time. It IS a long time, it's a stupidly long time to wait when there are lots of other things you could do in the game in that amount of time. 3 hours of doing nothing is not fun, and it's even less fun when you did it for nothing.

No one is forcing you to do the content, if you actually do what you say then you wont even do them. So what's the problem with people who actually WANT to do them? If someone wanted to revamp Ballista and PvP I wouldn't go in telling them they're stupid, PvP is dumb, and they are wasting their time. I would let them do what they enjoy and go about my merry way.

Proof of your lack of maturity. Nobody said everyone had to be a winner. But I'd rather lose to the NM than lose to a claim bot. Challenging fights, not seeing who can beat the random number generator, should be the source of the thrills. Your idea of a thrill is pretty shallow- it's reaching pretty far if this is the only thing that could give you thrill in the game. Proof further that you're a creator of drama- that's the real reason you want this.

Lack of maturity or being a realist? Name one challenging fight in the game atm? You continue to go on and on about this "challenging content" but you never provide any example. Beating the random number generator eh? I suppose you don't like the new Nyzul system either huh?

It never really got much better either, as later HNMs didn't have set spawn windows but just had one big one when they were due. That ended up being an even bigger colossal waste of time because you had to be paying attention for however long it took.

I'm assuming you're talking about DI/SW? DI has moments where the mob is in CB where you get to afk for a decent amount of time. SW was full window but wouldn't spawn in the previous zone, which still isn't THAT bad.

Oh yeah, then there's the people who claim it but spend 7 hours trying to kill it when your group could have killed it in less than 1. You think they're going to wipe but they don't, and so your LS just sits there the whole time just in case they wipe. wasting more time (only to have Tiamat drop nothing but a single crystal)

Sit a ToD mule there and leave. If you're LS wasted 7 hours watching a group fight Tiamat, I highly doubt "wasting" 3 hours sitting at a Behe/Faf/Aspid camp hurt you that much.

Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. this is the biggest reason why the HNM system sucked. Don't get the wrong idea. Our LS and most of the LSes present were (usually) good sports when it came to the claim. It just baffles me how anyone could find the hours and hours of waiting "fun."

See above point.

Is that little thrill spike when the NM pops really worth hours and hours of waiting? To me, and to most people, the answer is a resounding 'no.'

To me and most people the answer is a resounding 'yes'

[Kysaiana]

I won't argue the logic in camping 24hr+ spawn NMs, or the so-called "thrill" in doing so. The subject has been beaten to death. I also won't say "NO! DON'T ADD MORE!" because either way, it doesn't affect me as I doubt I'd care enough to join a shell that would camp them. SE did say some time ago that they planned on adding the rest of the elemental wyrms, so I suppose there's that to look forward to for the people that clamor over HNMs. Some people just love drama and that's pretty much all camping HNMs was back in the day.

[Alhanelem]

To me and most people the answer is a resounding 'yes'

You're kidding yourself if you think a majority of players, most whom never even tried to fight HNMs, want the old HNM system to return, you're crazier than I thought.

Out of the total population of the game, people who fought HNMs are a minority. This is a fact, as players at endgame of any sort in an MMO is in a minority (Less than 10% of people who play WoW reach level 10, much less the maximum level in one class, much less more than one- FFXI's statistics are probably better than this but not drastically- I can't seem to find last year's census but this year's should be coming soon) Further, people who fought HNMs *and* liked the whole competition thing and the 3 hour spawn windows and multi-day respawns is an even smaller minority.

Sit a ToD mule there and leave. If you're LS wasted 7 hours watching a group fight Tiamat, I highly doubt "wasting" 3 hours sitting at a Behe/Faf/Aspid camp hurt you that much.

This isn't much of a point. 3 hours is a long time, so is 7. I certainly don't want a repeat of that tiamat experience ever again. A ToD mule only helped for certain NMs. For the others, maybe you have no job and no life and don't see 3 hours as very much time. A lot of other people can't even play for 3 hours in a day. A lot more than those who can, in fact. Again, and this is not meant in an offensive context: Your type of player is a minority.[/QUOTE]Name one challenging fight in the game atm?[/QUOTE]There are plenty of them, unless you can tell me you run up to any random fight and beat it first time every time. I don't know anybody that can claim that. Every fight becomes easier once you learn it. Regardless, this is an irrelevant point as the answer is subjective and doesn't really have anything to do with the merits or lack thereof of HNMs. Also, I'll quote myself here:

Challenging fights, not seeing who can beat the random number generator, should be the source of the thrills.

I didn't name any specific fight as being challenging- I stated what *should be* what gives thrills in the game. It's really time to move on if the *only* source of excitement or thrill in the game is beating someone else to the claim of a monster.

[Habu]

You're kidding yourself if you think a majority of players, most whom never even tried to fight HNMs, want the old HNM system to return, you're crazier than I thought.

Look at the last line of your previous post, now back to mine, now back to yours, now back to mine. It was a joke.

People who fought HNMs are a minority. This is a fact, as players at endgame of any sort in any MMO is in a minority (Less than 10% of people who play WoW reach level 10, much less the maximum level in one class, much less more than one) Further, people who fought HNMs *and* liked the whole competition thing and the 3 hour spawn windows and multi-day respawns is an even smaller minority.

People who did HNMs are in the minority at this point in time yes, but whose to say new HNMs wouldn't convince a few more subscriptions to come back. Reaching level 10 in WoW takes less than 4 hours, I seriously doubt your facts unless you can prove otherwise.

[Habu]

Saying I have no life isn't supposed to be offensive? Mmk please continue with personal attacks though it's funny. Rather ye could you just stop? You've completely derailed this thread to the point where no dev would possibly ever want to read through. This was just a suggest that I and a few others had.

[Alhanelem]

We're still talking about the suggestion about bringing back HNM content- so no, the topic isn't derailed.

People who did HNMs are in the minority at this point in time yes, but whose to say new HNMs wouldn't convince a few more subscriptions to come back.

It might bring back a few subscriptions (I could probably count them on my fingers and toes) but it wouldn't be worth the development cost.

Saying I have no life isn't supposed to be offensive? Mmk please continue with personal attacks though it's funny.

Yes, it wasn't meant to be offensive. Only meant to be a fact, because it is. People who have all day to play and don't consider 3 hours a long time to play are a minority. If you don't like "no life," then feel free imagine some other less offensive synonym in its place. The point was simple: You might not consider 3 hours a long time to camp an NM, but other people do. You can't argue that this was a completely sound design that needed no adjustments or changes.

It was changed after the numerous years of people complaining they couldn't claim.

No, it was changed after the numerous years of keeping a badly designed system in the game. By the time it was changed, most of the competition for these NMs was already dead.

Reaching level 10 in WoW takes less than 4 hours, I seriously doubt your facts unless you can prove otherwise.

It doesn't usually take 4 hours to decide whether you like a game or not. This shouldn't even strike you as suprising, much less unbelieveable.

Anyway, here's the article:
http://kotaku.com/5469238/most-new-w...-past-level-10

The numbers are probably a bit higher now than when this was written, simply because WoW went "free to play up to level 20"- so now it's "most new people who play wow don't make it past level 20."
(I will accept that I made an error, and it's 70% of people don't make past level 10, not 90%.)

Why add even more content that only a tiny fraction of all players will ever enjoy? We already have legion which barely anybody does, and this was within days of its release.

[Habu]

It might bring back a few subscriptions (I could probably count them on my fingers and toes) but it wouldn't be worth the development cost.

Development cost? You mean reskining a mob that is currently in game (hopefully an Ig-Alima or Botolus Rex) and taking existing gear ideas, tying the two together and putting them in a zone? Not hard.

Yes, it wasn't meant to be offensive. Only meant to be a fact, because it is. People who have all day to play and don't consider 3 hours a long time to play are a minority. If you don't like "no life," then feel free imagine some other less offensive synonym in its place.

There is no other way than to take "no-life" being offensive. I'm not personally attacking you and I'd appreciate if you did the same.

No, it was changed after the numerous years of keeping a badly designed system in the game. By the time it was changed, most of the competition for these NMs was already dead.

Subjective

It doesn't usually take 4 hours to decide whether you like a game or not. This shouldn't even strike you as suprising, much less unbelieveable.Anyway, here's the article:
http://kotaku.com/5469238/most-new-w...-past-level-10. The numbers are probably a bit higher now than when this was written, simply because WoW went "free to play up to level 20"- so now it's "most new people who play wow don't make it past level 20."
(I will accept that I made an error, and it's 70% of people don't make past level 10, not 90%.)

Comparing people who have just purchased a new game and are testing how the like it =/= a player base who have played for years and wish something to be reimplemented. Regardless of the % of the player base wanting said reimplementation.

Why add even more content that only a tiny fraction of all players will ever enjoy? We already have legion which barely anybody does, and this was within days of its release.

You're not going to please anyone, with your logic why should SE ever release any new content? Not everyone is going to enjoy it anyways, right? Legion barely lasted for people who couldn't beat it. For people who can clear it, it's become quiet the money-maker.

[Alhanelem]

Development cost? You mean reskining a mob that is currently in game (hopefully an Ig-Alima or Botolus Rex) and taking existing gear ideas, tying the two together and putting them in a zone? Not hard.

Then we'll call up SE, tell them to hire you, and leave you in sole charge of developing this new HNM content. Let me know when it's finished- I expect it on Tanaka's desk by friday, since you're clearly a content development expert.

Subjective

Not subjective, a fact. Prior to this change, you could go to many of the HNMs and find them up and wandering around. Hard to compete against nobody now, isn't it?

Comparing people who have just purchased a new game and are testing how the like it =/= a player base who have played for years and wish something to be reimplemented. Regardless of the % of the player base wanting said reimplementation.

You're right, they're not equal. One group is much larger than the other, three guesses which. Even among those who make it past a certain level, not all of them get to or participate in endgame.

You're not going to please anyone, with your logic why should SE ever release any new content?

Nobody said they shouldn't release any new content- but the content they should release should be pleasureable to as many people as reasonably possible. Otherwise, they end up losing customers.

Legion barely lasted for people who couldn't beat it. For people who can clear it, it's become quiet the money-maker.

I don't know one person who's made money off of legion. It isn't even a matter of who can beat it, it's a matter of who is interested in it. From the beginning, very few people even wanted a part of it for two three reasons:
1) it's large group content being added at a time where large groups are becoming increasingly rare
2) very few of the drops were considered attractive to many, and at least a few of the drops that are, are also available from another event.
3)If many people couldn't beat it, then that to me makes it challenging content. Of course, I'm sure you beat it trio blindfolded with your limbs bound together, since you apparently feel there are no challenging fights in the game.