We spoke, you listened. Good job SE. Thank you.
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We spoke, you listened. Good job SE. Thank you.
FATE EXP was perfectly tuned for when Heavensward was brand new, although the FATE scaling did get too high sometimes. But now that many people have completed the quests and are looking to just level, these are good and welcome changes.
This, I think, is a seperate issue. SE's goal was to make levels 50-60 take roughly as long to complete as levels 1-50 did. This means that the same amount of dungeon runs that would take you from 40 to 50 should be enough to take you from 50 to 52. If a dungeon were to give 1/4 of a level bar while in the 50-60's it defeats the purpose. Dungeons SHOULD give much less of a percentage of the exp bar in the 50-60 range than they do in the 1-50 range; this is working as intended.
The topic of this thread, though, is that FATEs in Northern Thanalan are yielding exp at a greater rate than those in the new areas, for several reasons: the FATEs have tougher monsters that take longer to kill, the exp rewarded is not high enough in the new zones, the FATEs are spread much farther apart, and so on. Even with this, though, the number of FATEs to complete a level from 40-50 in Northern Thanalan is much lower than the number needed to complete a level from 50-60 - this is still a thing, and that, too, is working as intended.
SE needs to make the Heavensward area FATEs more attractive, so that people stop grinding in Northern Thanalan once they reach Heavensward, and it sounds as though they're gearing up to do just that.
Isn't scaling supposed to be more of a real-time adjustment instead of relying on past numbers? It does sound hard to implement something like this but what you could do is something similar to the level-sync button, but instead of auto-syncing, it would be a participate button in order gauge out how many people are actually doing a fate, instead of automatically engulfing them just because they so happen to be in the area where the fate spawn.
Very glad to see this. :)
FATE grinding actually works quite well as a way to bridge XP gaps between quests and dungeons, especially since it's an incredibly easy, approachable group activity requiring minimal organization beyond "run here to whack the XP piƱata."
As creators, I cannot imagine that S-E has been happy to see people going back to old areas in favor of the new ones that they've clearly spent a great deal of effort on. Speaking for myself, I hated it.
Thank you for addressing it.
Thank you, SE for this. I find it horrible to rely on just Northern Thanalan to level via FATEs. Same place gets boring extremely easy and fast.
Yay. Now we'll have even more level 60's who haven't the faintest idea how to play their jobs.
I agree. what happens when i fly in solo to a FATE that I've soloed before, but lats time it had 30 peeps in it? i get wiped, I fail the FATE, and I get less exp. this is NOT effective scaling of a FATE. the above poster has the right idea. If the game eingine can recognize when I enter the area and my level is too high....AND sync me when i press a button, it should be able to scale the monsters in density based on the number of people participating. As an example: 4 people are running a FATE. 2 more enter: once they press the sync button (or simply enter the area and are the right level), the spawn rate of the monsters goes up, and the amount needed to finish the FATE goes up as well. 1 more enters...it goes up a little bit. 5 leave...it drops drastically, and instead of taking another 20 mobs to finish, it may only take 5 or 6.
Yeah, this could potentially draw out a FATE if your 95% completion and suddenly 5 more people join. but, the idea is that those 5 people will be able to help finish it just as fast as if they weren't there. this should be constant, real time adjustments. The ONLY time a FATE's difficulty should adjust based on the last one, is if it was a failure. then you could have the next one start with a lower curve as it relates to Mob respawn density and kill count (for the FATE completion).
This whole idea of scaling it based on the last group that did it is crazy....your assuming that the same group, the same size, will be coming back to that FATE eternally? Do you honestly think it's fair that the smaller group suffers for EXP just so you don't give the bigger group an easier FATE? Thats all I see from this design...your going to punish smaller groups by making FATEs tougher if a larger group did it last. and it actually will be EASIER on a larger group if a smaller group did it last. horribad design.
The only thing that has me concerned about this notice is that it doesn't account for travel times. For a person that's doing other stuff and just happens to do a one-off FATE, that seems like the correct thing to do.
However, will splitting the N.Thanalan train be enough? People who can't fly in an area will probably still be worse off. Given the FATES are more spaced out and some will be able to fly 200% speed while some have to go around. Right now that's still a big crowd which can't fly in places besides CWH and Drav-Forelands.
What I'm saying is, if the N.Thanalan train gets split directly down the middle, will the half that's gone to the higher places be able to kill the mobs quickly enough to be more worth it than N.Thanalan AND will it be time effective for travel. Also bearing in mind that the half wanting to move on will also be divided between the likes of CWH, TSoC and DF. Then some some will also favour all the passive travel that N.Thanalan allows. I mean, in that place there's not really a vertical element, you don't so much as need to auto-follow to get where you need, you can just auto-run in the general direction and do a bit of casual steering.
I want the N.Thanalan train broken for interests sake, but even in the expansions starting areas, the reward EXP is going to need to reflect more than just 1-3 levels higher if it's going to top the benefits of the rapid slaughter and easy golds that keep people right where they are now. Changing pop-rates seems to be the most sure solution. Aside from raising new FATE rewards (should never have been lower to begin with).
In spite of my dislike for the way that SE meters out exp like it's bread and water...the leveling curve isn't bad outside of the Horrid FATE exp. I can run my daily roulette's (just the low level dungeon, trial, and story instance), and do my daily personal hunts (not the big ones, just the little guys), and walk away with about 800-900k exp for the lot. that's per day. add in an extra dungeon run for on level gear, and the disparity isn't that bad. All we really need IMO is the FATE's simply need boosting.
I got finished with my dailies today on an alt that's 56. trying to get them to 57, and i tried a few FATE's in the Mists. 32k per for about 10m of work. not horrible...but i was solo, there was no one else around...and in NT in the same timeframe i can get 43k up to 80k depending on FATE timing (and whether a boss chain is going or not). That's a HUGE disparity. at minimum, it's about twice as much.
Now, if people were running FATE's in the Mists like they were in NT, my times would go down and it would possibly be worth it at that point. And from what i hear, the hinterlands are even better. but thats locked behind a storyline that I haven't gotten to yet on my main (im actually trying to get my alt past my main, enjoying it more atm). so for me it's grinding in NT at lvl 56. sad. I want to enjoy the FATE's in the new areas, but it's tough when half of them you can't do as your the only one there (the boss FATE's are a pain solo). and NT is so easy....i just follow the crowd and spam AoE's.
My point was really just that if they expect people to take the same amount of time between 50 and 60 as they did between 1 and 50 then there should also be an equal amount of content. I think what's really needed is some options for leveling.
There are leves in Ishgard but there're LOLAWFUL XP. Only leves I did were the crafting ones which aren't too bad. Never touch a Temple Leve.... ever.... Not until they fix them. There is no bonus, no extra reward, they just steal your Leve allowances and barely give out more than 3 allowances worth of XP.
Thats another good point. I was dumfounded when i saw those...they made absolutely no sense. well...I suppose if you only play an hour or two a week...and you wanted to maximize your experience i leaves...and you have leave allowances to burn...
...nevermind. they'r still a horrible option. no clue what they were even thinking when they made those.
I really can't see how an expansion got released without the new fates "up to date". This company knows full well why people do fates and yet completely forgot/who knows to get this right.
When you can level faster in old content, there's a problem that should have been fixed before release. QA dept fail.
My fear is that since they didn't give is a way to really benefit from these fates now, their answer will be to later on down the road give us a reason to have to grind them on our level 60 characters for absolutely no other benefit at all. Just like with the relic upgrade quest in ARR. So instead of being fun leveling content now, they'll simply be something for us to resent/hate later.
The irony is palatable. $40 for a new expansion so we could level up on North.T FATEs.
If anything, I would rather that the new FATEs they created have a larger XP growth than the FATEs in N. Thanalan so that people will go to grinding those areas in their separate levels from 50-60. More dungeons in Heavensward would be great as well, as currently there are not many.
I do agree with the statement said earlier by someone about a real-time adjustment based on the people who participate; however, you also have to take into mind how they actually code the FATE system. It might be a very, very long time before they even fix it since the way they had it before Heavensward was ok to them.
My solution to this problem would be that you get 50% less XP when Sync'd, so that people will actually be bothered to move to other areas and do those FATEs to level their characters instead of grind the usual ARR FATE Content.
Ran FATES in Western Coerth this morning before work to check out the changes. Before the changes, the FATES were rewarding around 14k exp on the level 50-52 fates. This morning I was getting 34-38k exp. They were popping quick and people were actually doing them. I see this area being the new Northern Thana spot. The exp is nice and I hope it stays this way.
Coerthas is good till about 53 then you just camp Swirling Mists afterwards till about 58. Those two large Darkscale Fates alone give almost 200k+ xp together on top of there being no downtime between FATE spawns.
in hinterlands around level 57 to 60 iget around 53 to 58k exp per fate!.
Problem is if they are sacled with alot hp its slow as hell..