New mob claiming system

[Kaoru]

Also remember, PS2 users have an advantage over PC users, when i play on PS2 and PC at the same time i will see mobs 2-3 secconds before they even show up on PC

dunno why, its just true, PS2 latency owns PC

[rooster]

That wouldn't work either.... you see,

(R)(receive)
JP -> You(dirty gaijin)
Avg. 180-2000

(S)(Send)
You -> JP(The mother land)
Avg. 50-300

NOW! your recieve higher, meaning that a mob could Pop 1-2 seconds before you see it. Your Send on the other hand is ALSO a variable that is dependent on your connection and location in the world. Some in japan close to mx1.square-enix.co.jp could have a send of 1-15, which again wouldn't fix the problem.....

I personally see 3 ways to fix it.

1) Invoke pop - Sky style, invoke pop. You could have a 10% chance that an HQ version would pop and all is happy and fair, and we all live in peace. Go farm some items and there you go! BUT! BUT! then the hardcore gamer reaches an end too fast(which is not good for business in the MMORPG world). The limits or controls for people not to get too far too fast would be a time/day reserve most likely. the game is going in that direction. In other words, each time you pop Jesus(or fake new super kirin fuck off god) you would have to wait 1 day or something like this to pop jesus again. In any case this is good for everyone. good solution

2) Random voke - This would have to change how voking works, but for nidhogg/aspid/kb style mobs you would have a 'Open voke window' of about 10 sec. meaning that when Jesus would pop, he'd pop gray and you'd have 10 secs to voke. in those 10 sec(or what ever time) everyone that vokes is put into a list on the server side. The mob would then turn red to the one that is /randoms to in that list. This would allow people that had people there to get voke and not some 4-6 jps that are going to call their friends at night to say wake up and hold it for 2-3 hours. This has some down sides, Zerg LSs. 40-50 avg people coming to win from 20-30 people, but it would be fair, and everyone would have a chance. for this you'd need to make the window 2-3 hours random in the window.

3) Simplely move the spawn timers- 18-36 is good, or every 12 hours or something! The down side to this is that there would be again, a large flux of items flowing out. Too many people getting good things too fast. Sometimes that actually not healthy for people or LSs. With this tho also comes the loot ratios. If you made more items for the mobs, but made it so that 1-4 different 100% drops, and 1-3 10-20% drops (kinda like how KB, or fafnir is), this could still keep the attention of the HNM community.

AnyONE of these would be a better system then what is in place now, but if you've ever played Everquest. You'd know that there was sooooooooooooooooo many HNMs that if one wasn't up, you'd go get another mob, that's how FFXI will become over time, we just need to hope it with the next april patch. Including more lvl 75 xp areas.

[joft]

when they introduced the HNMs there weren't that many people hunting them

now every NA has 2 jobs at 75 as well as every JP, and there's a fuckton of people who would hunt this shit if they knew they had a chance.

i say change the pop rate to 12 hours or 8 hours, let more items flow out so the assholes who ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS win the claim can max out on the items dropped and move on to something else. the SAME THREE or four japanese LSes that have been RAPING us EVERY SINGL EFUCKING DAY on the claim for these things are STILL HUNTING the SAME FUCKING THINGS a YEAR LATER because they haven't maxed out on them yet!

[Elcura]

It was just a dumb idea, honestly I like the idea of 1, invoke, force pop whatever, since it negates camping and competition (somewhat) meaning there is less drama and bullshit. I don't really like idea 2, since you'd have a large fraction of people camping against the smaller ones - who the hell needs 24 people for simurgh, behemoth, roc or serket? Idea 3 is ok, but then JP people would find a way to hog the timers or some shit, my suggestion would be a despawn timer, if you don't kill after ~hours and/or minutes it just despawns, this was JP players can't hold a HNM to keep it in their timezone.

Sorry for the huge block of text X_x

[killerc4]

the way joft feels pretty much sums my feelings for the last year or so lol...

forget all those possible fixes.. SE should just have a mandatory bed-time for jp

oh and btw, on shiva... NA have gotten 1 king EVER.. it was KB 1 time, still no idea how we got lol. The same 2-3 jp ls have gotten 100% of every nidhogg/kb/aspi ever ever ever.

[Septimus]

Or, do an invoke pop similar to ENM and Dynamis.

A certain amount of people enter a battlefield to fight the mob, win or lose you cannot enter again for a set amount of time. They would not have to limit it to one party, or even one alliance, like in Dynamis.

Make it so you have to complete a quest like certain ENMs. Make it so you have to spend some money to buy an item like Dynamis. Make it so you have to get a dropped item like gods or AABC.

Any of those methods are better than the system that they have in place now for HNM.

[joft]

my suggestion would be a despawn timer, if you don't kill after ~hours and/or minutes it just despawns, this was JP players can't hold a HNM to keep it in their timezone.

this doesn't matter. there is no "jp timezone," they're all up 24/7/365, and yes, 366 on leap year

[Elcura]

1) Invoke pop - Sky style, invoke pop. You could have a 10% chance that an HQ version would pop and all is happy and fair, and we all live in peace. Go farm some items and there you go! BUT! BUT! then the hardcore gamer reaches an end too fast(which is not good for business in the MMORPG world). The limits or controls for people not to get too far too fast would be a time/day reserve most likely. the game is going in that direction. In other words, each time you pop Jesus(or fake new super kirin fuck off god) you would have to wait 1 day or something like this to pop jesus again. In any case this is good for everyone. good solution

[Aratharn]

Or, do an invoke pop similar to ENM and Dynamis.

A certain amount of people enter a battlefield to fight the mob, win or lose you cannot enter again for a set amount of time. They would not have to limit it to one party, or even one alliance, like in Dynamis.

Make it so you have to complete a quest like certain ENMs. Make it so you have to spend some money to buy an item like Dynamis. Make it so you have to get a dropped item like gods or AABC.

Any of those methods are better than the system that they have in place now for HNM.

What more do you want... if everything was like sky gods or Dynamis the game would get dull and boring and old. If every HNM was popped everyone would have all the gear they wanted and there would be no challenge. I, personally, like the way things are now. Yes I get bitchy and complain when my LS loses claim after claim, or when we clear the place holders all week then on the weekend the JP show up and claim Nidhogg. But I'm happy for variety.

You got sky where you can pop gods and get some cool god armor and cursed gear.

You got Dynamis where you can enter every 3 days and don't have to compete over mobs and can get some of the best gear (AF2).

You got earth gods where you compete with other LS's and clear place holders all week for ground kings to spawn that drop some very cool cursed gear.

I wish somethin could be done to even out the latency issues.. but unless they offer NA servers nothin really going to be done about bitchin about it... not trying to offend anyone, but you guys are complaining about how you "wish" things were, when if you stop and think about it they already opened up some of those options via Sky/Dynamis, etc~

[killerc4]

It's not that we "mostly" lose pulls to jp lol. its 99.99% I see your ls has a koenig body and earthen which means youve won a pull or 2... but after you attend 50+ fafnir camps for the same ls to outpull you around the clock no matter what you do. you'd be saying the same things.

BTW this ls has held a monopoly on the 3 kings for 1.5 YEARS I dunno how else to explain this to you lol.

[geno]

or when we clear the place holders all week then on the weekend the JP show up and claim Nidhogg.

Thats why its hard to explain to him kilee

[killerc4]

ohhhhhhhhh you guys actually get to clear the placeholders XD yeh we dont get those either lol

[Cybaster]

If i'm SE i'll call pajitnov. my idea is to make the hnm camping less spamfest, hackfest, botfest, latencyfest fight. whenever you are on interval, there will be a chance a pop up will show up asking if you want to play tetris challenge. you will be given 5-10 minutes to get highest score to win the pull, so only skilled ppl can win the pull, and tetris is fun.

or if SE is smart enough, they will utilize tetra master into this, and if you didnt pay 1$, you will given random deck, that way ppl will pay for tetra master and getting good deck, 1-3 representative of ls fight the other ls, that could work, but of course you will have a jp having super super super super unbeatable cards problem

[Mifaco]

If i'm SE i'll call pajitnov. my idea is to make the hnm camping less spamfest, hackfest, botfest, latencyfest fight. whenever you are on interval, there will be a chance a pop up will show up asking if you want to play tetris challenge. you will be given 5-10 minutes to get highest score to win the pull, so only skilled ppl can win the pull, and tetris is fun.

or if SE is smart enough, they will utilize tetra master into this, and if you didnt pay 1$, you will given random deck, that way ppl will pay for tetra master and getting good deck, 1-3 representative of ls fight the other ls, that could work, but of course you will have a jp having super super super super unbeatable cards problem

actually the problem with tetra master is the ridiculous rules people set. For example, a game might have a time limit of 15 minutes per move, and your opponent will take 14:59 to make his move. you also lose if you leave the game, so a typical tetra master game turns into a 15 hour snoozefest.

[Septimus]

What more do you want... if everything was like sky gods or Dynamis the game would get dull and boring and old. If every HNM was popped everyone would have all the gear they wanted and there would be no challenge. I, personally, like the way things are now. Yes I get bitchy and complain when my LS loses claim after claim, or when we clear the place holders all week then on the weekend the JP show up and claim Nidhogg. But I'm happy for variety.

You got sky where you can pop gods and get some cool god armor and cursed gear.

You got Dynamis where you can enter every 3 days and don't have to compete over mobs and can get some of the best gear (AF2).

You got earth gods where you compete with other LS's and clear place holders all week for ground kings to spawn that drop some very cool cursed gear.

I wish somethin could be done to even out the latency issues.. but unless they offer NA servers nothin really going to be done about bitchin about it... not trying to offend anyone, but you guys are complaining about how you "wish" things were, when if you stop and think about it they already opened up some of those options via Sky/Dynamis, etc~

Variety is great, variety is awesome. The problem is that there is very little variety when it comes to ground HNMs: the lowest latency wins the pull. (Aspid and Nidhogg have trickier pulls, but many JP linkshells have gotten into the habit of killing flies in Dragon's Aerie, so once more it is about latency.) I have yet to see Behemoth or King Behemoth pop any color other than purple- isn't that fun!

My biggest problem with the ground kings is that most people have jobs/school that prevent us from being available 24 hours a day to actually be there at the drop of a hat when they spawn. I work 40 hours a week, my boss isn't going to give me time off to go kill a giant turtle. So in order to max out my character I should quit my job and never sleep? Remember that warning about not forgetting family, friends, work and school, shouldn't Square do something about that?

I am not saying that they should just hand everyone everything that they want (one Crimson Scale Mail, Crimson Mask, Duelist's Tabbard, Duelist's Chapeau, and Enhancing Sword please), but they should make it less inconvenient for people to get the opportunity to get these items. Take Dynamis for example- I can count the number of people with full AF2 on one hand and we have been going there religiously one or two times a week for over half a year now.

And yes, we do have a right to bitch, whine, moan, gripe, bellyache, and complain about things that we see as unfair and/or problematic- that is the joy of being a paying customer as well as a fundamental American right and tradition. Square makes a lot of money off of FFXI, if a lot of people get disgusted with the lack of end-game activities and they will lose a lot of money when their players go to other games. That doesn't mean that they should do everything that we demand, but they should at least keep up some effort to make us happy.

[Dethsbane]

See, in the real world, you would think that LS#1, who has uber-claim skills would get all the drops they need off of HNM#1 and then move on to HNM#2 so that LS#2, LS#3, etc. can take a stab at it. But LS#1, who feels good about themselves and all the pimp gear they've worked to get, don't want to see the noobs from LS#2, LS#3, etc. with it on as well. So what do they do? They will continue to come camp and claim HNM#1, only with less people, so they can go get HNM#2 and HNM#3.

What is the moral of the story? LS#1 will distribute melee drops to mages and mage drops to melees. When everyone has one, they will just NPC the rest. They will not stop, just so YOU can't have it. BTW, after the latest server reset, the timer was a bit early(a conspiracy!) but NA LS's still manage to muster the manpower to go claim. (servers restarted @4PM est.) On the weekends you'll notice the JPNs showing up to claim at 6AM their time.

Bottomline is, if you really want it, you have to work for it. Apparently the JPNs want it bad enough to wake up early and/or lose sleep to compete with you. They have jobs, they have school. There are no excuses about you can't claim because during the weekdays, its the NA LS's show. I don't know how it works on your server, but there are 3000+ people during the weekday morning/early afternoon. People's linkshells can not be so empty that they can not send a small alliance to claim and hold. (Losing Nidhogg on weekends to JPs suck!) NA LS competition is totally another topic on his own (head bobbling dolls and claiming with their backs turned, oh my!)

SE will never admit that there is a latency issue. They will never attempt to fix it. I'm not even sure that its possible to fix. Latency is latency. NA servers are ideal but who has the money? I'm sure SE lost 50% of the NA subscribers to WoW. Why bother fixing it for the rest of the hardcore players? Just somethings you have to contend with and if you lose claim today, go back tomorrow and try again. Never falter and you will succeed one day.

Ciao.

*edit: clearing darters... ha! There are ways to circumvent that... oh yeah, please excuse the grammar errors. I'm at work and I am trying to get a point across before my boss comes back. =T

[Aratharn]

And yes, we do have a right to bitch, whine, moan, gripe, bellyache, and complain about things that we see as unfair and/or problematic- that is the joy of being a paying customer as well as a fundamental American right and tradition. Square makes a lot of money off of FFXI, if a lot of people get disgusted with the lack of end-game activities and they will lose a lot of money when their players go to other games. That doesn't mean that they should do everything that we demand, but they should at least keep up some effort to make us happy.

Never said you didn't have the right to, just said it's been shown time and time again that it will get you no where. Just gets old to hear over and over again people bitchin about the same thing when there ARE ways around it.

On our server I believe the top NA LS's have more will and more persistancy than the JP LS's. And my LS usually just camp 1 at a time, sometimes 2, sometimes all 3... but the key is we pick 1 we want and be sure to hold it to times that convenient us, so we don't have to miss work/school/sleep to camp what we want. Then go after the others only if the "focus" is being handled. That's only because majority of our members have school/work durin the day and just can't put in 9 hours camping the 3 kings. So we deal with it in our own way, and that's by focusing on 1 at a time.

Say what you want, but our server has it's share of hardcore JP LS's (NC, NGJ, Manause, Dahlia, just to name a few) but we have some persistant NA's (R0, PO, PV) who... well sorta, work together to keep the times in NA time. Every now and then you have the dumb people claim Behe on first window and kill right away saying "Well KB won't spawn tomorrow and I don't feel like holding" then the next day JP show up since it's earlier for them, kill right away, rinse and repeat until it's in prime JP time and 4am for NA's and we don't see Behe/KB for months until end of Feb. update... enough of that rant..

Latency is an issue but it's not going to make you lose 100% of the time. Maybe the majority of time but that's when the whole persistancy and determination to see your friends and "e-family" get the gear they want comes in. I seen NA LS outclaim JP plenty of times, most the time JP win, but not all the time. I don't want to give out too much information to competition on my own server, but I do believe there is a factor much greater than ping and latency that will make you successful in ground HNM's that 95% of NA LS's overlook that I credit 100% to the reason we have 1 Koenig Body, 1 Adaman Body, 3 Dalmatica's, 1 Shura Feet, 4 Hecatomb Subligars, 2 Ridill's, our MNK with Black Belt, and countless Fafnir drops after only being on the ground HNM scene for only a couple months.

[Dethsbane]

Not to mention the numerous gay berets everyone has...

[berticus]

there's a lot of good points in what the PO guys said, and i've also talked to kiyone who's now in r0 about midgard HNM stuff. from what she's said from when she was in GO it was a pretty cool scene, and holding for time wasn't really viewed as unethical. that's different on bahamut - holding is really taboo and even at times that we've pulled fafnir with hardly any damage jobs there we've been accused of holding by some really pissed off JP.

the issue everyone's discussing here pretty much depends totally on the server, and i guess bahamut falls somewhere in the middle. the only uncontested KB/Aspi/Nid we've ever claimed was the first nidhogg we ever got and died to back last july. so it's pretty cutthroat but it doesnt degenerate into MPK or call for help or anything like that.

btw, mobs popping dead is a bug right? i dont think they meant to do it

[Aratharn]

That's true each server is very different. But the underlying factor I'm talking about can be applied to any LS on any server..

And people do get pissed about holding.. someone from an NA LS trained (in a very clever way, might I add) onto a JP LS after they had Fafnir for an hour and a half and hadn't engaged on it once, just kept sleeping it over and over. My LS stayed completely out of it, we decided even if they wipe and die, we weren't going to be the ones to kill this Fafnir LoL... but another LS (R0) helped them out and grabbed the spiders as they were wiping and held Fafnir until they could RR up and fight again... it all ended up biting the training LS in the ass in the end when a few days later Nidhogg spawned and members from the JP LS were in R0's alliance and JP MNK claimed for them as repayment for helping with the train and it dropped M. Body and E. Body.

People generally don't get too uppity about holding tactics, MPKing and CFHing on the other hand is a whole other story...

btw, mobs popping dead is a bug right? i dont think they meant to do it

Yeah pretty sure it is.