Quote Originally Posted by Riaayo View Post
I have many friends who have been dying for open-world HNMs.

Back in XI, the things that turned me off of HNM camping were the exceptionally long respawns & camping windows, and the over-abundance of bot claims.

My favorite NM in FFXI was Shikigami Weapon. Despite its long respawn, it had a very short window and it spawned invisible, requiring players to figure out where it was and then magic aggro it, then claim it. This type of setting was so much fun to me as it eliminated the pain of a 3 hour window as well as mostly prevented bot claiming.

I don't want even NM or HNM to spawn invisible or anything, but I would love to see this type of creativity in NM spawns in the game.

I want to say though, I personally want to see the challenge put in the killing of said monster and not in the claiming. I would like to be able to on a whim say hey let's go fight (insert dragon here), and the shell could on said whim go find and kill that HNM. Now, balancing that desire with giving the HNM powerful, desirable drops and not wanting everyone to have those drops is rough... and truthfully, I can't off the top of my head offer a great solution to that problem (maybe it's already in this thread).
We have discussed how drops should work a few times so far, and it would seem that the greater majority would like to keep HNM (drops) in their true fashion of having a decent/low drop rate, and have them be great items, alongside money drops.

Your dislike of long windows is shared by almost all of us, and I have edited my first post to reflect common opinions on the matter.

Your input on Shiki Weapon is a good one, for that has not been discussed. It is definitely a unique spawn and I think we should look into how we could implement that in several more ways. Thanks!