Highly Notorious Monsters

[Shougun]

I liked the trigger ideas - like in FFXII.

Also you can have the big NMs wandering around but then if you do a certain action or acquire a certain item at location you can force pop it. Would be awesome/hilarious if force popping does the screen swoosh/shatter effect (for getting into battles in classic FF games and then the music and battle field is particular just for that fight).

In this way you can make the natural pop the kind of introduction fight (since normal players will be like "ooo whos that") and the force pop fight is the real fight that people looking for loot will be doing. (important that the NM can run around in zone so it can be known, or at least most of them some could be secret fun pops).

I think some of the big NMs will be really fun FATE events but like others have said you can over use the system and there are limitations on how much strategy can be involved.

And I really think the claiming system is stupid competition because its such a short and almost unpredictable case that leads to many groups being left out. 5 parties waiting 1 hour, 1 party gets it because they had a super connection located right next to the server or because someone was just the right job at the time for a .01 second animation time. Its all really crap excuse for competition since its so short. IF there is to be competition at least make it a real one*.

An Idea I had for a multiparty competition fight is like a hydra where each party gets one head to claim and that hydra head only targets the claimed party. After you kill a head you can move to the next one (hyrda may not be the best example but you could use the phalanx boss idea like in Demon Souls as well). In this way you'd really be competing and fairly (non of this per chance claiming nonsense) - more kills boosts the % drop at the end by a little (say there are 20 targets and then each kill increases the % by .5-2 depending on the item in the table).