Notorious Monster please.

[Velo_Vandore]

I do think Odin as a fate has been a sore disappointment, due to overcrowding (particularly when I'm on PS3). It's not a challenge (besides fighting lag and trying desperately to get in a party) and it's not a good experience when you can't see Odin half the time, or find your own party members to heal. It's just not worthy of Odin. It's been some time since release and the overcrowding continues in these rare fates as much as ever.

I'm not sure about open world NM's however due to the camping thing, but perhaps one of the following could work nicely?

1. Add channels to the FATEs so they don't get overcrowded. Rendering would less of an issue and the difficulty could be controlled to make the encounter an enjoyable challenge.

2. A hunt board like FFXII so you and your party have to pick up the hunt before you can go and encounter the NM. The hunts could then have a cooldown timer. Also would be good to build up in difficulty from easy hunts to super hard. This is kind of like treasure hunting already, but the variety of bosses on treasure hunts is limited and none are a true challenge for a full party of lvl50's. I also think it would be nice if these had several possible spawn points to encourage a little exploring and give the rue feel of a "hunt" rather than go to quest marker.

It could be made even more interesting to have certain hunts (like Odin) only appear on the board randomly for a limited time as a rare hunt. Once you have initiated a hunt there could be a timer which ends the hunt once expired (i.e. Odin left). To find the NM you could use a tracking skill similar to the DoH which tells you you sense something 300yalms to the east, except the target obviously could move as you hunt it. Even other monsters could throw you off when using the tracking skill.

Finally, upon encountering the NM the timer should certainly re-set to give you fair chance to battle, and instance could even be entered at this point with a stage that looks similar to the zone (think of the smashing screen in old Final Fantasy games - this effect would actually be a great nostalgia). Nice clips could be incorporated too.

EDIT: It could alternatively work like crisis core. So you unlock missions which are instanced (for different party sizes), and upon completion more are unlocked. You would follow certain mission "chains" to unlock the best hidden battles. Some rare missions could only appear on the mission board once certain conditions are met, i.e. beat this fate, talk to this NPC, kill x amount of ladybugs. These objectives would be hidden to encourage players to actually play in the open world more freely and loosely, wondering each day at what new mission could be uncovered. (or they can just cheat and check them all on google :P). Now players are moving from quest marker to quest marker, or fate to fate, or simply choosing a dungeon on duty finder. We need to reward players who like to play move freely around the world, interact with NPCs or objects, and deviate from the quest line. It can feel very restrictive to follow a quest line or fates, but we do so because there's little point or reward in exploring the world and talking to random NPCs.

...maybe i'm getting carried away now ^^;