one of the arguments put forth by the anti open world HNM camp is that it will create an uneven playing field where LS who cheats/bots will monopolize the HNMs.

I have seen suggestions of making the NM pop over a wide area but this will not eliminate the possibility of botting and will also create hazards for parties/gatherers.

i don't know if this is a good idea or not but how about making the NM unclaimable by anyone within the first 15 secs that it popped. After 15s, the NM will be claimed by the player with the highest /random within a certain vicinity where the NM popped. the game will recognize the first random generated for each player only (to prevent players from spamming /random)

advantages:
- cannot be botted
- eliminated the issue of NA crying foul that JP has an advantage
- is fair over the long run
- gives casual a chance to challeging content

if there are no random after 15s, then the NM will be available for claim by the first player to get its hate (i.e as per normal)

to promote sportsmanship, the leader of the party that claimed the NM can also invite other parties (up to 2) to join into a 24 member alliance to kill the NM. The NM, if defeated, will have a small chance to drop the loot for the main party but also a smaller chance to drop the loot for the 'helpers'. So if defeating Nidhogg gives the main party a 1% chance to obtain a defending ring, the other 2 parties will EACH have a separate 0.5% chance of getting the ring too.

to avoid MPK, the NM will despawn if the party that claimed it is defeated, saying 'you foolish mortals, come back to challenge me when you are stronger'. this, together giving a smaller chance to parties that help, will prevent the ugly scenes we see so commonly in ff11. of course if a ls is able to gather 24 member for every pop, kudos but dont forget the pop will eventually move to ithe timezones so there's no chance that a single ls, even being incredibly lucky to win every /random, is Able to monoolize an NM