Highly Notorious Monsters

[Alhanelem]

Don't have every HNM exist in the open world. Make some Instanced.

All or nothing, as far as I'm concerned. This statement doesn't address the problem. FFXI had both world spawns and popped HNMs.
FFXIV does have 'instances' that are in the normal world area. I'd be fine with that system being leveraged. Anything that doesn't deny other players who want to the chance to participate in content is fine in my book.

You should never eliminate content that so many obviously have interest in solely due to the fact that someone may find a way to exploit the systems flaws.

The forum-goers are not wholly representative of the entire playerbase. even most of the people posting in support of this thread don't support world spawn HNMs. Far more people are looking for something like BCNMs.

Crafting was being botted, Square-Enix found a way to fix that exploit.

Part of the reason I'm not a big fan of crafting. it's hard for it to be beneficial unless you do it all day or you bot so you can control the market. It's gotten a lot better lately though, i'll give it that.

IMO, if you want to be competitive, then you should be doing PvP when it comes out. Competition should be kept out of PvE except as it pertains to who gets what loot when your group kills something.

Driving a stake through the heart of a game would be not listening to a large mass of people who are calling for the implementation of HNM's

It's not a "large mass" of people that want to play HNMs. This thread, while long, is mostly a handful of people talking back and forth. that's not a "mass of people." Even if every post in this thread were made by a seperate person, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the total playerbase.

Please don't assume that just because a thread has X number of posts on the forums, that everybody wants it. On top of that, not everyone in this thread wants the same thing.

Some people want BCNMs.
Some people want force pop NMs.
Some people want something else.

These should all be treated as seperate topics, not lumped under an umbrella and called HNMs. Those things above are not HNMs.

[Alhanelem]

Well hopefully in 2.0, you won't be able to attack an enemy which another party/alliance has engaged.

That's a rather big hopefully. For ordinary purposes, the revised claim system we have now is fine. It's going to be a mess for any kind of world spawn boss if nothing is done though.

[Alhanelem]

I like that a lot better. I'm not in any way opposed to the spirit of your suggestion. I'm very specific about what I don't want- I don't want FFXI's HNMs to be implemented the same way in FFXIV. It doesn't mean I don't want them at all- It only means I want them without the frustration and annoyance and large amount of idling the old system had (Honestly: That's actually what I hated most: Sitting around doing nothing for up to 3 hours.)

But the glory of it all, was the branches of content. There was so much to kill, you could decide what you wanted to go after.

Only thing is most of this came much later. For quite a long time, the only "HNMs" were the Three Kings, their KSNM clones, and maybe Kirin. Then the three wyrms in CoP. Then the three new kings in ToAU. It wasn't until ZNM that it started branching out a lot more.

[ThePatriarch]

I like that a lot better. I'm not in any way opposed to the spirit of your suggestion. I'm very specific about what I don't want- I don't want FFXI's HNMs to be implemented the same way in FFXIV. It doesn't mean I don't want them at all- It only means I want them without the frustration and annoyance and large amount of idling the old system had (Honestly: That's actually what I hated most: Sitting around doing nothing for up to 3 hours.)

As do we all!

I loath even the thought of sitting around for 3 hours hoping every 30 minutes that X-HNM will pop.

I like the thought of 6hour, possibly an 8 hour respawn. With just 1 (one) 15 minute window. Hell, it could be 5 minutes I guess.

Lets say that in FFXIV they release an HNM called Fafnir. Say Fafnir has an 8 Hour repop, with 1 quick 15 min window.

Fafnir is due to pop at 8:37pm. We can roll out at 8:20, get to camp a few minutes early, window hits and he pops within 4 minutes. Even if you lose claim, less than a half an hour used up, and you can get back to whatever you were doing, or move on to your next daily event.

And HNM's are just a small morsel for our hardcore crowd, we all need to be thrown a little piece of the bone.

Alas, HNM's should hopefully be just a morsel of the diversity of which will hopefully be NM's. Along with HNM should come instanced NM's, force spawn NM's, lottery spawn NM's, and many unique styles to cater to all branches of the game, and not solely for the hardcore.

[Cichy]

If they did world bosses the claim system is fine. They could add dragons that take 40 people or something to kill and give people credit for helping by giving points like in Rift.
Lets say Nidhogg and his army spawn somewhere, group kills them. They get "dragonslayer points" that can be used to purchase gear from NPC in Ishgard. Everyone wins.

[ThePatriarch]

If they did world bosses the claim system is fine. They could add dragons that take 40 people or something to kill and give people credit for helping by giving points like in Rift.
Lets say Nidhogg and his army spawn somewhere, group kills them. They get "dragonslayer points" that can be used to purchase gear from NPC in Ishgard. Everyone wins.

I can level with you here, kind of a neat option. Would most certainly promote teamwork, and fair play. Along with even loot distribution. I think content like that should definitely be taken into consideration. I will add this to OP

I think that there should still be a few true HNM's that can only be taken down by a single group, and not openly attacked by everyone. But I'm sure you can level with me, and agree that a couple of true open world HNM's for the hardcore crowd that likes them wouldn't be too bad.

[Richard_BG]

large scale open world community PvE content is awesome. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to GW2. But there still needs to be some straight up competition in open world. Nuff said. ADD IT ALL I say so that EVERYONE can be happy.

- instances
- large scale community pve
- competitive world hnm
- minor nms
- competitive pvp

ALL

[ThePatriarch]

large scale open world community PvE content is awesome. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to GW2. But there still needs to be some straight up competition in open world. Nuff said. ADD IT ALL I say so that EVERYONE can be happy.

- instances
- large scale community pve
- competitive world hnm
- minor nms
- competitive pvp

ALL

This 100%.

I know it is impossible to please EVERYONE, but I see no harm in attempting to cater some content to every sector of your playerbase.

[Cichy]

I think the problem could be resolved through loot.
I guess in XI SE intended for a group to go camp Fafnir for a bit and than move on. However, it never happened because of the crappy drop rates.
If they added lets say 20 major HNMs to begin with, put a reasonable repop on them, and gave them a decent drop rate. Maybe it would work. A decent amount of NMs would spread out groups and if they got their stuff fairly fast they could move on. Fights should be pretty tough, but take no longer than 30-40 min. Rage timers included.
SE would have to avoid giving them gear like in XI though. The gear that was hands down best around for many years.
I strongly believe that best gear should be earned by hard work, not drop. More like a relic quest, but something players can chip away at everyday. Reward effort, not killing 1 mob in this case.

Another idea is quests where you would have to kill HNMs. It's could be a bit of a twist on abjurations.
You get a cursed piece of gear made with some rare mats (throw crafters/gatherers a bone) go to a NPC and he says go kill Fafnir, Behemoth, and Ada to lift the curse.
This way they dangle a carrot which keeps everyone around occupied.

[ThePatriarch]

I think the problem could be resolved through loot.
I guess in XI SE intended for a group to go camp Fafnir for a bit and than move on. However, it never happened because of the crappy drop rates.
If they added lets say 20 major HNMs to begin with, put a reasonable repop on them, and gave them a decent drop rate. Maybe it would work. A decent amount of NMs would spread out groups and if they got their stuff fairly fast they could move on. Fights should be pretty tough, but take no longer than 30-40 min. Rage timers included.
SE would have to avoid giving them gear like in XI though. The gear that was hands down best around for many years.
I strongly believe that best gear should be earned by hard work, not drop. More like a relic quest, but something players can chip away at everyday. Reward effort, not killing 1 mob in this case.

Another idea is quests where you would have to kill HNMs. It's could be a bit of a twist on abjurations.
You get a cursed piece of gear made with some rare mats (throw crafters/gatherers a bone) go to a NPC and he says go kill Fafnir, Behemoth, and Ada to lift the curse.
This way they dangle a carrot which keeps everyone around occupied.

I really like that second idea, pretty crafty. In a sense, they would give us plenty of content to go after, all the while keeping crafters/gatherers busy as well with more content. I gotta admit, this is a win/win. I will also add this to the OP (starting to get cramped, need to find the right spot to put it)

I can also level with you on the quality of items dropped from HNM's. While I do like the fact that some HNM's dropped some over-powered gear, I can deal with compromising. I do feel however, that a few select, incredibly difficult HNM's should drop some pretty great pieces, they should not drop ALL of the best gear available. As this was primarily the case with Zilart (sky gear being a slight exception, but Ebody/Abody/D.ring/Ridill/etc beat the majority of Sky Gear hands down)

For the most part I think it appropriate if SE can keep instanced content gear on par, and equal with that of non-instanced gear. I think this would motivate players to be active in both realms of the game.

But at the same time, as we have discussed make Open-World content more accessible. Don't water it down and make it easy by any means, but reduce the spawn timers drastically. Very the spawn areas to nullify botting. Design HNM/NM's that can't just be simply zerged down, etc.