An Idea To Spice Up Normal Grinding - Mini-NMs

THIS WAS PREVIOUSLY POSTED IN ERROR UNDER GENERAL. Sorry!

I have been thinking about how to make the basic grind more interesting. I have focused on this as it would be a simpler addition to make than adding an entire new system within the game.

I would like to see the introduction of Mini-NMs.

Allow me to explain, in Phantasy Star Online, a game built around grinding, there was a small chance that when a basic mob popped it would be a rarer variety of the same creature. This was normally illustrated by it having a slightly different appearance, i.e. a different colour. Killing these creatures was normally much more of a challenge and would potentially drop rare items.

This improved the basic grind as there was always a hope that a rare mob would pop round the next corner and when they finally did it was a heart pounding experience while you battle with a tougher opponent in the hope of acquiring some rare item. Secondly, it breaks up the monotony. If this concept was applied to FFXIV, you can grind the same old elts or doblyns but every now and again a bad-ass one will show up. Perhaps killing it would drop a rune or give more XP/SP or drop a ton of shards/crystals, it doesn't matter as long as the reward is desirable.

The important thing here is that these aren't regular NMs. They aren't part of a leve, set to appear in a particular area where they can be camped or on a timer. These pop anywhere a normal mob does. An example would be the marmots outside Ul'dah, they pop as normal but with a small chance that one will appear as a "Giant Marmot/King Marmot". This means anyone has a chance to see and claim them not only the most dedicated.

Anyways that my 2 cents.

edit: What do you guys think?

- If this was implemented what sort of drops would you like to see? maybe gear, rare loot, status affects?

- Which mobs would you most like to see a bad-ass version of most? personally I want to see a mean looking ladybug!

tl:dr - Lottery Pops

i like this idea, would like to see things that change the pace of grinding. shame they can't make all the mobs equal to the time to kill so we can kill everything and they just mix it all up a bit so we grinding on many different types of mobs doing different types of things.

also i like the idea of a mini genkei to go with u'r idea, same idea but everytime someone levels up a mini nm pops up as well that the party needs to kill. would make every lv up a tiny bit more exciting and entertaining.

Keep a hidden counter, for every 1337 mobs of a kind that were killed in a specific time frame, a mini-NM of that kind will pop up for a duration in a random location in that zone. It will drop an item that maybe slightly better than normal gear but has unique appearance, or material to make such item. To spice things up even more, if this mini-NM is not engaged within first 5 minutes when it spawns it will gather a gang of 20 mobs of its kind and begin roaming around hunting for players within the zone. Every time it kills a player, it will gain +1% Max HP.

I would absolutely love to see small scale NMs in the game.

I'd like to see a good deal of them at a difficulty relative to the placeholders, say you have a party skilling up on moles in bloodshore, the mole NM may pop and would be a TOUGH fight in relation to the normal moles but would not be impossible for the party that are skilling up on normal moles. There'd be great incentive for normal SP parties over guildleves if you knew an NM would spawn with good drops

I like this idea. As long as there are enough of them to keep away campers, or as mentioned has no set spawn location, and the rewards aren't too great (Lizzy boots anyone?), then I would love to see it implemented. I am in favor of NMs that mostly drop items used in special crafts. It makes sense that a marmot NM would yield a superior piece of fur that could be used in a special recipe for a piece of gear slightly better than it's normal counterpart. It would not make as much sense for a marmot NM to drop an already crafted piece of gear. I could accept that beastkin NMs could have gear or weapons on them already, but not something like a marmot.

Nice idea :)

Hi PennywisE,

Yoshida-san actually mentioned adding lower level NMs as part of the updates coming up. He acknowledged there needs to be something for non-R50's to participate in getting. So I'm guessing it'd be like Valkurm Emperor, etc. :)

I suggested a similar idea a while ago.

I called it the "hive system"...in short worlds, it would be a mix of pephedo hives and ramparts (salvage).

You get the NPC hive (by hive assume a NPC point that spawn monsters...don't need to actually look like a hive), protected by 5~6 monsters. every time a monster die, another one pops right away and the hive loses 1% HP.

When its down to 50% HP, yoy start getting mini NMs rare spawns, that spawn and automatically make party with any of the common monsters already spawned close to him and are aggressive.

When HP reaches 0%, you get the queen to spawn. It will make party with every monster from that hive that already spawnned, is aggrevisse and supposed to be a tough fight. If beaten, the hive disappear (might be respawning in another place) and a casket spawns where it was.

This is more for grind than for drops since each hive would offer at least 100 monsters in a very fast respawn rate, but would also be nice for having some rare drops or something (i wouldn't really add way too good stuff here, or there would end with high rank people soloing low rank hives just for the items, which would be bad for hive parties of that rank).

Hi Guys!

Thanks for all the positive responses to this idea!

@Lienn
I think this idea is somewhat different to yours. However, I really like your idea. I think it would be really good to have your party invloved in a larger scale battle against mobs (i know its only a few mobs at a time, but you know there are reinforcements waiting to spawn). To two ideas would work nicely to enhance the normal grind and at the end of the day, that is never a bad thing! Cheers!

About everything that breaks the monotony is most welcome now ^.^/

I'd like to see them randomly in leves, rather than grinding. Personally, I think anything they can do to make grinding less attractive, the better.

Sir, you have attained my Seal of Approval.

Great idea PennywisE

Have something that "might" be able to add to it. When this mini NM spawns the party gets a visible warning indicating the approaching threat like the music changing slightly, not completely sure how though.

Ideas for drops could be may be a higher % of +3's, as you mentioned more shards/SP nothing to major, just enough to spike the player base interest.

I played PSO, and I would love to see this happening in this game. but it shouldn't be as rare as PSO did. because PSO rare monsters are just crazy rare, and when they pop up, you have to face the drop rate of 0.0001 chance to get their rare loots. (Especially Dreamcast era had the worst rate)

I think it will be better to have their chance of pop up not so hard. may be 5% chance to pop up? and the drop item shouldn't be too good to avoid camping and stealing. It would be very make sense to make it drop the same item as normal mob, but in "rare color", so that you can use his part to make rare color equipment. (this won't be game breaking gear)

@Shadowskill & Alise

I think we are all in agreement that the drops from theese mini-nm's shouldn't be too epic. HQ versions of mats, extra sp and larger volumes of dropped items (eg. drop x20 instead of x5) would seem like the way to go.

Also, I completely agree they shouldn't be as rare as they were in PSO. However, they also shouldn't be a regular occurance either. A happy medium would be best, if they were everyday sights it would reduce the enjoyment of battling these creatures .

I love the idea of a different coloured mat drop. Could be used in the same crafts as the regular ingredient but changes a colour on the finished gear. This would require alot of work from SE to implement though.

Shadowskill your idea of a change in music to signal its arrival is very cool. It would certainly add some excitement to a grind. Strollng along and then suddenly you hear some thundering drums signalling a rare encounter.

Well more lessons from FF11. You'll have campers, or you'll just have annoyances. So bitter sweet thing to have world NMs in or not (mini doesn't make them any more NM).

People when leveling will hate the randomless from hurting their xp/hr gig. That is unless the NM is popular, then they hate the campers for killing their spawns.

People when not leveling will hate the fact it's so tedious to spawn it.

Ahhh the drama...

The whole "instance" aka levequest was spawned from this problem, now you want to go back to it?

Though having more unique models is always a plus. A monster that hits harder then usual is already in FF11

It's call your: <whistle> IT++ incoming

I think there won't be so many campers if it is just same idea same status with only different color,
And I think it won't be so hard for SE to just add one new color, actually it is the easiest way to bring new unique gear.

Signed. Rarespawns would be a nice surprise every now and then.

I agree ^^!!

and rare color of the same item sound nice! it is not too uber and it is still cool.

It's a good idea. I also wouldn't mind it if it was just similar to XI's. They had sort of "mini-NM's" that were beatable by as low as level 10 (possibly even lower) all the way up to level 75. Some would be a random pop from killing the mobs in the area and a few had to be popped with an item.

It gave players something else to do than grind all day and they dropped gear suitable for around that level, and in many cases would be good for even higher. I personally had a lot of fun camping the NM's.