Quote Originally Posted by Reika View Post
You can always heal that person fighting it and buff them, unless it is an NM they are fighting.
Not an option for non-healers. Also besides the point. A restrictive claim system puts up an artificial barrier that prevents people from just joining up and helping each other. Which becomes especially important once the game moves to the PS3 where people need to be able to interact with each other without having to go through a bunch of menues first to form a party.

A possible alternative to this would be system where joining an ongoing fight simply does not take anything away from the people who "claimed" the mob first. The joining party would need to cross a certain threshold of participation before they become eligible for rewards of any kind. In this case, SP/EXP/items wouldn't be split, but the additional participants would be awarded from a seperate, additional SP/EXP/item pool.