Highly Notorious Monsters

[Wynn]

I have to disagree, although I appreciate your input. It's so nice being able to discuss conflicting opinions in a mature manner.

We have discussed plenty of methods to make botting pointless (set HNM spawn area to the majority of an entire zone, don't make it just one designated spot).

But you are telling me that casuals should be able to obtain the most elite gear in an MMO? I think that is folly, good sir.

Casuals are called casuals, because what? They play casually. There should be items that are out of reach of casual players. If you make an MMO that doesn't contain items that are incredibly rare/difficult to obtain you are going to be trumping quite a few of the hardcore players. HNM's aren't hard to implement, and they would keep alot of us busy and satisfied.

Furthermore, I'm not sure if you remember the early years of HNM's, but the majority of them weren't "zergable". Strategies were built, lines were closely followed to avoid wipes. Fafnir, KB, Kirin, etc those were not zerged back when they first came out. It took quite a while before DD had enough power to plow through those mobs in just a couple of minutes.

But as you see with our instanced content, we already have speed runs. These events haven't even been out for 6 months...

I'm sorry, but this game needs an assortment of challenges, and HNM's is one of them.

I don't believe that casual players should have everything that players who put more effort into the game have. However, the real problem is when a good item is designated by the players as absolutely must have. Then no longer can casuals say whatever, they have to go get it or they can't even play when they log in because groups will turn their noses up at them.

When you make a piece of gear so good compared to everything else, players tend to call everything else gimp. You MUST have the best item even if it's only a couple stat points better. That's really where the problem starts. But if the drop isn't that good then what's the point of farming the NM? So you have two bad situations and depending on where you sit in the discussion one may not may not matter to you. To me, it is better to not allow this kind of gear to drop in the first place than to create a situation where the majority of players are inconvenienced or even outright denied the enjoyment of the game because of the introduction of the alpha item.

I think NMs are fun and I want to see lots more in the game. Especially if they are unique and challenging. But, I think they should not drop great gear. Trophies, achieves, things to put in your house, and stuff of that nature? Great. Let's have that.