Say NO to the New Possession (Claiming) Structure Being Developed!!!

[MeowyWowie]

As far as spike flailing people and purposefully messing them up, the solution is to have mechanics that dont work easily like that.

That solves the problem, sure, but at what cost? Again this is one of my main concerns. The types of encounters we will engage in will be limited because they will no longer be able to implement enemy abilities that require certain events to be fulfilled.

We won't have mobs that put up aoe magic reflect shields, because it can be exploited. We won't have spike flails, because it can be expoilted. We won't have physical/magic absorb shields because it can be exploited. Surely you can see where I'm going with this.

[Physic]

That solves the problem, sure, but at what cost? Again this is one of my main concerns. The types of encounters we will engage in will be limited because they will no longer be able to implement enemy abilities that require certain events to be fulfilled.

We won't have mobs that put up aoe magic reflect shields, because it can be exploited. We won't have spike flails, because it can be expoilted. We won't have physical/magic absorb shields because it can be exploited. Surely you can see where I'm going with this.

certain skills would be party based hate skills and others would be everyone based. something like aoe reflect would probably be applied to the party members who cast it.

As far as splitting the spoils with other people. If they are getting a piece of the spoils, it would mean they passed a certain threshold of involvement of the fight, suggesting that they contributed as much to the fight as any single player on your team. On one side you dont want people to be sequestered into instances, but you basically want an instanced fight, where no one else in the area can be involved or contribute. the claiming system is almost exactly like an instance, except its triggered once you tag the monster. I always found it weird in ffxi, you could get killed by monsters you couldnt touch.

As far as splitting the spoils, they dont really have to do it that way, they can also have each player have its own rolls on loot, your total parties loot would consist of everyone involves roll. In this way, you are not really splitting any loot with other people, the loot that they get is their own roll on loot that they owned. This would probably mean, the rarity of certain items would be high on a person to person basis, but since it would require more people, the same amount of items can be given out per cycle. For a better chance at items, i would give higher rate chances to the instanced versions of the NM, whose pop item/s is distributed at a high chance to parties with first claim, and to a lower rate randomly to those who helped.

This really, depending of course on the development team, opens up a whole new type of battle that really represents an open world event, and of course it should be the type of monster/battle that needs whole groups of people to defeat it. If the monster is not something people can 8 man, or something that people will profit from defeating under certain conditions (that a lot of people fighting at once make more likely), this can really open up the game.

just to be clear you can still have spike flails, but that would have to be triggered by the PARTY with dominance, it only makes sense that a dragon would use an aoe move to take out a group of targets, why would it spike flail for a single dude throwing a rock at it? Also if you add in a time bonus for defeating it, or requirement, or some other time sensitive skill, it would be to no ones benefit to try and sabotage a team.

It really is perfectly possible to make interesting battle mechanics around multiple groups, that also makes sense.