Quote Originally Posted by Miliant View Post
I must agree with the post *at the top of the page*. I don't believe HNM are a viable option for me. It's a FFXI mechanic that works well in FFXI, but this isn't FFXI.

I didn't mind spending my free time hunting HNMs for drops in FFXI. But that was like 10 years ago and I was 17 years old and I had a lot of time to burn. The "huge-time-sink-for-nothing" mechanics that defined FFXI no longer cut it for me, and I don't want to sit in front of my computer idly for a slim chance at the HNM that may drop something that only 1 person out of the 18-man alliance is going to get. IMO, that's no longer acceptable for a game I'm actually throwing money at every month to enjoy.

Make it insanely hard. Make drop rates suck. Make just one person get the drop I don't care. But don't make me waste two to infinite hours of my life just to watch someone else kill the enemy.
I 100% agree but couldn't we have both? I like the idea of having to kill a certain type of mob to get a drop to spawn the main mob. Just don't butcher it like the how ZNMs worked in FFXI, when Zipacna went from pop to this formula it worked well. Call me old-school but I want both options. There should be an open world NM every 21-24 because face it: really "elite" people want this. This is how/where they can separate themselves from casuals. Additionally there is a whole group of other people who don't like the time drag so give them the other option of instancing it through a pop item. Just make it so you can't spam the NM once you get the pop item, maybe once ever 10 days to keep a diversity in content and lack of repetition (I think Grand Companies will do something like this). Also make anything that qualifies as HNM to be very very hard so just fighting it is a big event.

The beauty of the 21-24 spawn, or even just a random spawn timer, makes it so the world feels a little more alive.