Quote Originally Posted by Vaer View Post
It was an instance that was pretty much like tower defense, it's been so long so I don't remember exactly what the setup was and completely how it worked.

There would be mobs that pour through the gate that would try to destroy the carts which you pretty much defended the entire time. You had a bunch of friendly NPCs that would attack them that were placed in between them and the various carts. The carts were basically defenseless. One strat would be to turtle with a bunch of WHMs to heal the NPCs so they didn't die (they do most of the DPS), a tank and I think a couple of gatherers and crafters. Gatherer jobs could pick up potions from objects around the field and turn them in to debuff the mobs. If you matched certain combinations of colors you would cause an effect to occur. IIRC, attack down was 3 reds. The crafters would make items to turn in to buff the NPCs I believe.

The tank would wait at the gate and grab the boss that would come through, and bring it to some empty location and kite it around for the rest of the time.

*snip*

Before you even entered, there was a little turn in mini-game period that the entire server could participate in where you would turn in crafted items to increase the defense level of the hamlet being attacked. If someone in your group was in the top 3 places, you would get a higher chance at getting a seal from the hamlet. Not sure if it affected drops (maybe crafter offhands/personal loot to the person who is on the board only). Once this period ended, you could enter and actually do the Hamlet Defense. The seals were used for the relic in 1.0.
More info:

Hamlet Defense - Final Fantasy Wiki

Wow, content in the game that actually is INCLUSIVE of crafters and gatherers? That gave you points for stuff like using emotes and specific party/equipment setups?

THIS is how you innovate in MMOs. It's sad that everything else was so broken (and the fact that modern MMO players don't like 'different') that the game failed, because stuff like this is awesome.

Square-Enix: Bring back this sort of gameplay.