[dev 1026] Petition against proposed claim system and portions of new party system.

[Kazimir]

One problem with the proposed system: it doesn't allow ad-hoc cooperative play without formal party forming.
More simply: if I ran past you and see you're struggling with a mob, I can't actually help you kill it.

That's not really an excuse for having a poor claiming system. Besides, allowing things like that only works in games that have only instanced content, which this game does not. In XI there was a "Call for help" option due to this, and they could implement something similar. Hopefully not in a location where someone can hit it on accident. In fact they could combine the call for help feature with this suggestion you made:

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.

In general a good idea, though I would suggest a cap on the number of mobs or mob groups that can be claimed at a time. Perhaps 3? Without that cap, or with a cap too large, open world mob zerging could be an issue.

I considered that this could be an issue. However with the changes to the battle system/combat we are supposed to have more engaging battles. To me this would mean fights that last longer than a few seconds that actually require attention. This would make it so mob zerging would be very difficult or impossible. I'm taking a more wait and see approach to this issue because I don't know how it would work until I know what the changes to combat are.

Much too early to conjecture. I'm sure the dev team knows about the issues involved and I think the majority of the players would adapt to whatever system is in place.

But I understand instancing is usually only about 1 group per instance. Where do you get the idea that multiple parties will be allowed in massive dungeons? They said sought after items will be instanced so I don't think there will be much drama in the open world on who gets the aldgoat horn...

That's an assumption I'd rather not hope for. I personally feel it's best to get your opinions out before a system is implemented. It makes it easier for them to change things not yet implemented if they agree with you.

Instances can be for more than one group. An example of this would be Dynamis from FFXI. You buy a specific item from an NPC then you trade the item to everyone who will be joining, all players trade said item to a spot and that allows them to enter. I don't know or assume that they will put something like this in the game. That comment was more so because the system would allow them to if they chose to in the future. Also, yes they did say sought after items will be instanced, they did not say all sought after items are going to be from instancing. I doubt with them adding even more NM's in the game they'll change all current items into instances and make all current and future open world NM's worthless.

If they allow multiple parties to engage and "help" defeat an NM, I think most people would welcome it if each party gets their own loot table. I don't see why only one rare item should be awarded to the first party that claimed or the party that does the most damage. Why not, for example, give each party that participates a certain amount, say at least 20-30% of damage, a chance of getting some rare loot, and those who merely participates can get a chance at common loot. Each winning party can each get their own Ura skin for example. But most likely, everyone will get nothing cuz the drop rate for it is so crappy...~.~

I doubt most would welcome it. Allowing people to zerg NM's would just make all the fights way too easy and boring. It would be the opposite of what most people want.

Another issue is people “helping” to fight an NM or mob when that person does not want help. If I try to fight something difficult for the fun of the challenge I don't want someone running up to “help” and ruin it. I can't count how many times this has happened to me in WoW.