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FATEs, for better or worse, have set a certain precedent for the use of open-world space through repeatable casual combat content.
How or what could they have been to provide more to the open world as a repeatable or reiterative content type?
(I'll post my own ideas eventually, if there's actual interest in this topic, as evidenced by a couple pages of posts or so, but this is mostly just to gather opinions and ideas of what could have been more so than to discuss just any one such set.)
The problem I have with FATEs is that the only ones that are worth anything can take a very long time to spawn and can spawn at odd hours of the night only to vanish shortly after. This creates a lot of problems as you essentially have to have someone sitting around on the map doing nothing and waiting for the FATE to trigger. At times, this can mean days with a very small window. Ultimately, this discourages a lot of people from participating in them because they just see it as something not worth their time when they can be doing something else. After the initial rush of people getting to the level cap, they're pretty much abandoned. Something like tokens from FATEs that can be traded for items that are normally acquired from the rare FATEs can be a nice start.
Ultimately, I feel FATEs essentially need something like the Anima weapons, but far more generic in their requirements. This is the path that the next set of upgradeable weapons need to take. They need to make it so that any content can contribute to the upgrades, thus making all content relevant again instead of making it so that only SB content counts. The problem with Zodiac was that the requirements were too precise. The problem with Anima were that they were mostly just tomestone grinding and only Heavensward content contributed to Aetheric Condensation.