Quote Originally Posted by NoMX View Post
Now, to my main point for posting; allowing anybody to attack a monster makes max party size irrelevant. They want to make the game balanced around either 4, or 8 man parties but they want to allow anyone and everyone to attack any monster at any time? Well... Then you got twenty parties of 8 out there wailing on an NM... It's now broked. And don't pretend it won't happen if they remove the claim system.
It is important to remember that end-game content wont all be Nortorious Monsters in the open world, if you had been following at all you would see that much of it will be moving towards 'instanced' content (love it or loathe it) so it becomes a somewhat moot point.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...816df108bbfbf4

Read through the diagram there for some interesting stuff.

I feel that Notorious Monsters will end up quite like 'Rare Spawns' as in World of Warcraft, or 'world bosses' - a challenge with minor loot rewards for everyone involved, but not necessarily meant to be particularly well organised minus basic instructions, such as don't let it step on you, where as the Instances and such let them design an interesting encounter free from the distractions of other players and with challenges within made specifically for your eight man group.

It is also important to note that four man parties are to be the 'norm' with eight man being 'large', or 'Alliance (FFXI I believe?)'/'Raid' (WoW terminology).

It is very important to realise that what you are playing at the moment is not what you are going to be playing once all these changes and additions are in, even the Combat System is going to be changed completely, and that will have wide ranging repercussions. Don't try and compare it to what you have at the moment, but instead by combining what we have learned and the possible direction of content and the game.