Highly Notorious Monsters

[Alhanelem]

So you honestly believe HNM's should be unkillable... AV-type HNM's? Ok, lets do it.

There's a difference between really hard and designed-to-be-impossible. That being said, today AV and PW are tough but not impossible HNMs. Neither of them has a pop timer or spawn windows. They only appear after beating a long chain of other NMs- in this case, the encounter is made rare without relying on timers- it takes a certain amount of time to beat all the stuff that lets you fight the HNM.

Content like VNMs and Zeni NMs were based on this premise- the hardest mob can only be fought once every so often because you have to fight other stuff to get to it. This is the best way to make an encounter rare- by tying it to other content that must be cleared first.

PS i understood the sarcasm- that's not why i made the last post.

[Jeronlmo]

Yes, actually they should be up near 100% of the time- because they're hard to beat. I want deadly monsters that are almost sure to rape my face- not easy monsters that I have to camp all day to crush under my foot. I don't mind if the mob only pops say once or twice a day. I only mind that even if you know when it's "ready" to pop, you still have to devote up to 3or more hours of your game time to doing nothing before getting to fight. Playing the game = fun. Not playing the game = not fun.

You're just taking what I said and twisting it to absurdity, and not coming up with a compelling argument as to why 30 minute spawn windows make HNMs better. HNMs are fun in spite of the waiting, not because of it.

You honestly complaining about people not comming up with a compelling argument to a post a page back that youve edited atleast 3 times that ive seen, your post started as the first sentence.

The idea of windows adds randomness to it for the next day spawn, 30min-3hrs later meaning you cannot just never camp and NM and automatically know the ToD (theres also keeping HNM's in a certain time zone issue), you could have also just gone to Einherjar. Secret - it lasted 30min's

World spawn bosses (what people here call HNMs) are fine. hours of 30 minute spawn windows are not. Have the HNM, ditch the spawn windows, and just have it pop randomly over time or at set intervals. That immediately solves my main grievance. pop windows are just completely unnecessary. If you know a ToD, you should just go there when the time comes, have it pop, either claim it or don't, and get your reward or don't. There's no good reason to potentially make people wait 1-3 more hours on top of that.

Oh your sneaky, just start new post or atleast edit when your post are still new.

Considering you sound like you have virtually no play time, if there are no windows, you will never have a ToD, people will only be in the area for the exact time it takes to kill any given HNM, windows are literally the only way the majority found the ToD's in FF11 once they were lost. If I remember correctly if you had a decent party setup is 5-6 people even Nidhogg only took 10min ish, so you would have 10min's every day to happen to be there, which would prob actually mean your going to have to stand there the entire day waiting for others to show up and hope you werent afk, a bathroom break and you could miss the kill.

Edit: Removed double posted text

[Lady]

Because obviously these new HNM's should be up 100% of the time, and why should we have to fight something for more than 5 seconds to get its drops, what a waste of my precious little butterfly time, hell, im the only person in the world with a job and a life and a family and your lucky im offering 5 seconds to kill these "notorious" monsters.

Had to read your quote 3 times before my sarcasm detector went off lol. I think the batteries are dying on it.

[Jeronlmo]

Had to read your quote 3 times before my sarcasm detector went off lol. I think the batteries are dying on it.

lol, well you got it, thats what counts.

[Alhanelem]

Me, and several others in fact have said we agree sky/sea and I guess even ZNM/VNM's did something right, but guess what? FF11 had all of them as an option with HNM's, not just what you like, hell, I remember people trying to explain this to you before the servers went down and you just cannot seem to understand that I/we do not care if you liked... lets say pvp, I do not personally enjoy pvp, do you see me starting a thread saying PvP should not be in the game?

No, because PvP isn't a fundamentally flawed game mechanic like spawn windows are.

Spawn windows are the only thing I'm fighting against. I want to go to the NM when I know it's going to show up, and either fight it or not. I don't want to sit and wait for 3 hours or more. Why would you have NMs with shitty spawn conditions "as an option?" That would be a pretty terrible option that pretty much nobody would end up actually taking. I dont' care if an HNM takes days to pop, as long as I don't also have to wait for hours after that spawn time is up. NMs and drops that are only rare because the number of people willing to put up with stupid design decisions is low is not a good way to make things.

Spawn. Windows. Are. Garbage. They add nothing to the experience. Why have them? 24, 48 hour pop windows are fine- It's ok If I only get to see the NM once every so often- but I shouldn't have to devote several additional hours of my time doing absolutely nothing in addition to the 1-3 days of it not being up. I love HNMs- just not spawn windows.

Ask anyone who's ever camped nidhogg in FFXI what their favorite part about it was. I don't think anyone will answer "oh, the fact that between spawn windows there's nothing to do except play isketch or stir up drama with the other LSes".

Oh your sneaky, just start new post or atleast edit when your post are still new.

So in this long winded post, the only argument this person has against me is I'm editing my posts. That's not an argument. The fact that I edit my posts means nothing relevant to the discussion- I edit my posts because I write down what's on my mind, and often I click "post" before I'm really done getting it all out. That's not a crime, nor does it detract from my argument. I did nothing sneaky. My post was still "new" when I edited it.

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edit for one more thought: To some degree I understand why long time players of ffxi want to have things like they had in the old days. That's fine and all, but this isn't a retro game. It's something new and modern- And mechanics that require large amounts of doing nothing or really long cooldowns between activities just don't have a place in modern games- We live in a faster moving world and it is unhealthy for us to be forced to play all day long when we have lives. Now I'm not talking about casual vs hardcore. I played both FFXI and FFXIV a lot in spite of having a job/life- quite a few hours every day- that's not "casual." Casual is an hour here, an hour there, probably not even playing every single day. I don't understand why the few people who can still sit their arse in front of a computer 16 hours a day should be more entitled to have content just for them than anyone else- and if they do have it, why it should give better rewards than anyone else can get. Playing to such an unhealthy level isn't something we should be rewarding.

[Phe]

on which page was the explanation of how botting for claims can be excluded?
i missed it.

edit: nvm i found it.
probably it can only be solved with a random factor.

but how goes a random factor for claiming go together with the competition idea?

i mean its easy mathematics: when 5 LSs are camping a HNM, chances are 80% that you camp for nothing.

[Blackpearlguy]

on which page was the explanation of how botting for claims can be excluded?
i missed it.

edit: nvm i found it.
probably it can only be solved with a random factor.

but how goes a random factor for claiming go together with the competition idea?

I think people were looking at spawns like DI/SW where it was more of a hunt than a pop and claim.

[Jeronlmo]

on which page was the explanation of how botting for claims can be excluded?
i missed it.

edit: nvm i found it.
probably it can only be solved with a random factor.

but how goes a random factor for claiming go together with the competition idea?

i mean its easy mathematics: when 5 LSs are camping a HNM, chances are 80% that you camp for nothing.

honestly the easiest way to combat botting in an HNM situation is to make the mob have mechanics like that of Dark Ixion or Sandworm in FFXI. They had random(well kinda random) spawn conditons where they even changed actual zones every spawn. Yes bots still worked with those but if you didnt have a competent LS you still were not going to claim it. I would say build on those mechanics making them more random as in no patterns at all or at least enough patterns that it wont repeat for at least a week.

For people who did not play XI i will summarize how Sandworm and DI generally worked:

Sandworm: Could spawn in iirc 9 different zones with about 2-3 different areas in each zone. The zone of spawn was usually to large for one person to be able to stand still and notice the spawn so you had to run around searching. It also had no window intervals like that of Fafnir/Behe.. meaning it could spawn at anytime of the random spawn period which was 20-24 hours.

Dark Ixion: pretty much works the same except if there was a campaign (major NPC battle event; kinda like behest) it would run out of the zone and into another zone where no battle is taking place. Yo also needed a special throwing item to even claim it. Once claimed it pretty much killed anyone solo unless you were extremely skilled and geared.. honestly there was no one who could claim it and hold it for more then about 15-30s other then the best geared Paladins.

I think the way those mobs work are the best way to implement HNMs into FFXIV with more tweaking and building on the mechanics to fit the game and make it more fair.

The simple fact is that no matter what a developer does there will always be a bot. and i think people blame the devs way to much thinking they are not doing their job when its not the case. If a game uses a mouse and keyboard AT ALL to input commands there will be a bot always. no if ands or buts because a bot simply presses keys for u. So instead of saying no to HNM's period because of bot wars just use mechanics that aren't able to be predicted.

Also if the FFXI HNM ways dont fit the playerbase make it something like this :

-Said HNM has a domain where he rules
-The domain is NOT instanced but rather have it where u need special qualifications to enter you group whether it be quest or farming tokens ( like headresses for Garuda in 1.0)
- The domain is a VERY hard place to navigate and get through meaning mobs are hard.. mini bosses are present before you get to the main boss.
-The Main HNM boss can move to anywhere in its domain.. its kinda dumb to call something Behemoths dominion and he only pops in the same spot every time not much of a dominion.
-The HNM has a random respawn timer or lottery spawn like the mechanics of FFXI. Make the Respawn timer like 6 hours with a lottery spawn from killing the mini bosses and it can take up to 12 hours to spawn starting at 6 hours. Can adjust these numbers to 2-4 3-6 or whatever to fit the player base.
- The most important thing is to make this content difficult as to not make it outdated because of ease of access to the gear. Make it take at least 1-2 hours to even reach the HNM with a full alliance of people. (See. Dynamis Lord or Kirin from FFXI)

and thats my wall of text for HNMs

Beyond popular belief, botters did not like botting, HNM ls's in 11 did it because someone else did, if 1 person does it, the rest follow or die. Sandworm/DI were near perfect for getting rid of the botting for HNM's, the only flaw was the fact that in FF11 mobs had "death spots" which was basically their dead body, which you might think it disappears because it no longer shows on your screen but the ID for the dead body stayed behind until the HNM respawned which was the trigger for knowing it respawned.

So even though botting still existed on sandworm/DI, is was very far from effective, with how respawns worked on those 2 mobs aslong as you knew TOD and you were searching for it, you had equal chances at getting it, you could know it spawned but not where.

I really have no idea of the purpose of there being death spots (which is what bots detected), but if they could simply remove them, I would see no way for them to even be used.

Edit: I think the actual term we should be using is "Packet Bots", which is what HNM LS's used, which can be delt with fairly easily, they simply sniffed packets. Normal bots on the other hand is not generally what was used in HNM's, normal bots just control keyboard strokes which no game can do anything about sadly, theres really no way for them to tell if you or a program is hitting a key which is what RMT/crafters use.

[Enma]

Hmm, I really can't understand why so many people is scared by repop time. Do you fear to really be forced to wait doing nothing?! It is not necessary the case.

I don't mean the waiting time makes a fight difficult, but it afflicts how much practice you can do over that, and how epic would be your victory. Spamming an HNM with 5 minutes repop means that, even if you don't have fingers to play, at the end you will win it.
If you can combat against it just once a day (If you pull it), it means you can't and you don't want commit any errors, because you are fighting a RARE mob.

My opinion is that there are two different concept behing HNMs through the people:

1. EX Final Fantasy XI players: Long Repop Time
2. New Final Fantasy XIV players: Epic Fights

These two points of view don't exclude each other and can cohabit too. We can call High Notorious Monsters the FFXI school of thought, and F.A.T.E. the new one.

Even if it appears F.A.T.E. could be not so much hardcore, it's a perfect system to improve which can get big attention by players. In A Realm Reborn both systems could be improved, but the secret is not to make one more worthwhile than the other.

[Blackpearlguy]

My opinion is that there are two different concept behing HNMs through the people:

1. EX Final Fantasy XI players: Long Repop Time
2. New Final Fantasy XIV players: Epic Fights

These two points of view don't exclude each other and can cohabit too. We can call High Notorious Monsters the FFXI school of thought, and F.A.T.E. the new one.

Even if it appears F.A.T.E. could be not so much hardcore, it's a perfect system to improve which can get big attention by players. In A Realm Reborn both systems could be improved, but the secret is not to make one more worthwhile than the other.

Definitely two different user groups I won't dispute that, but that's why it makes sense to cater to both. If you check GW2 the whole FATE system is an epic fail. FATE will be the introduction, instances will probably be the main course. With that being said FFXI had 500k subs at peak, a lot of which could be attracted back by features like the re-implementation of HNM. If you can't tell that by the 100 plus pages on this forum then you're blind.