If there were no FATEs

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Originally Posted by Vactus

FATE grinding and exp parties/camps are the same thing. FATEs just give bonus xp at the end. How does no one see that? It's what everyone wanted. Grind parties. Which themselves are a terrible design. Why? They still don't teach you your class! You'd have to have FFXI all over again where grinding for hours got you one level. FFXI just a slower version because you couldn't solo a damn thing.

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Fate grinding ISN'T the exact same as EXP parties. Well, considering if they took away fates they'd likely have to make overall mobs a lot stronger on the world map. I also doubt they'd let you have 8 man parties in that instance. Likely the 4 man set up that dungeons have. You wouldn't be able to zerg AOE spam with a four man party. And, gasp, people might actually have to learn their rotations to survive enemies if they buffed them.

This is a lot of assuming on my part though.

Which is FFXI all over again, even if you did bring down mobs some from FFXI level, it'd still send far more players away. Hell that is even more of a grind and even less fun. We'd be back to people /shout LFG Exp Party and people waiting forever hoping to get a group. There is a reason grind parties went out of fashion and FFXI was the last major game to have it and still be moderately successful.

A better design would be to reset quests per class to at least break up the monotony. They definitely would have increased dungeon exp. There must be something we (collectively) aren't thinking of yet.

ITT: A very thinly veiled attempt at making FFXI-2.

You do realize that a FATE group is just a mobile XP Party, right? Instead of standing around waiting on crabs to spawn, it goes and hunts them down. And it doesn't give a giant middle finger to players that aren't the FOTM for efficiency.
A better solution would be a New Game+ mode that resets the Main Scenario. They are already buffing dungeon experience in 2.1.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

ITT: A very thinly veiled attempt at making FFXI-2.

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Considering that the whole point of the thread (which actually is now off track) was wondering what the game would be like WITHOUT fates (whether for better or worse), it wasn't going one way or the other for it to be more like FFXI. Following posts may have conveyed that response, however.

I prefer party grinding so much. This isn't about FFXI-2, but XI is probably the most known party grinder (or was).

There's something to be said for playing your job correctly and fates don't require that at all. Seriously, sometimes I'm solo and find a boss fate (not mega boss, but boss) and if I have a method of healing myself, I can usually solo them. Aoe fates are flat out dumb too especially how it favors aoe jobs and yet several jobs get very bad aoe abilities. If every mage could equip blizzard 2 (and had the mp regen side effect to support it) and every melee could equip flash AND had the mp regen to support it, I'd have no complaints about this aspect, but aoe fates come down to: Your party is as good as the number of blm's.

I'll take party grinding over that any day.

This game simply doesn't have the mob strength/density to support grinding out mobs in a party. Even if you don't care about how boring/trivial it is, you'd just run out of stuff to kill so fast if you actually get 4 let alone 8 guys killing stuff in an area.

On the subject of FATE, reading the blurb that describes it, I got the feeling whoever wrote this stuff isn't even trying, or maybe the guy thought he was funny except he isn't. I'm really tired of the 'monster eating Lalafells' or 'rich guy needs some peasants to do his work'. Honestly this game's quest dialogue is downright insulting. I get that I'm not supposed to be as special as I think I am in a MMORPG, but in FF14 you're literally just a peasant in quests and FATE. You might as well be pulling out weeds in a FATE, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a FATE like that already.

A lot fewer people jobs leveled to 50 by now. That's for certain. I like fates, but they ended up giving so much exp the ruined the leveling balance. I would rather them have been giving exp at a rate closer to what the dungeons do now. Instead dungeons will be getting an exp boost soon. People would be complaining less and less about having nothing to do at end game if it wasn't possible to level a job to 50 in a few days.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

This game simply doesn't have the mob strength/density to support grinding out mobs in a party. Even if you don't care about how boring/trivial it is, you'd just run out of stuff to kill so fast if you actually get 4 let alone 8 guys killing stuff in an area.

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Yup, this is pretty much why monster-grinding doesn't work. If you look around the fields (barring outside the towns), you'll find that groups of monsters usually come in packs of 3 or 4, and that there's a sizeable distance between one pack and another. I remember a Community Rep mentioning that each field is broken down into grids where, which is probably why the monsters come in those specific, segregated groups. To add to that, their respawn rate isn't that fast--around a minute--so if you're working on chain bonuses you'll need to be very quick about killing 'em, especially since the time between chains decreases with each successive kill.

I, personally hope that they add a wide-open field just filled with monsters at some point. Even more so if killing a certain number within a set time would trigger a boss to appear (kind of like how certain conditions needed to be met in FFXII to summon rare game or Marks). Plus, a map like that would really help out those of us who want to level our Chocobo companions.

I think the game would have been basically the same without fates. First, no one would know any different, so it is not like having fates then removing them with people knowing what has been taken away. The only thing I can think of that would be a huge difference is that people might know how to play their jobs better without fates, since they would be running more dungeons with parties. Also, people might meet more friends since they would be interacting more often with others.

I've done THM to 50, CNJ to 34, GLD/MRD and ARC to 20 all through FATES. I'm sick of them, but doing all that through much slower xp means? *shudder*

I'm looking to start a WAR in 2.1 with the increased xp boost for dungeons. I'll learn how to tank BEFORE I reach 50 lol.