FATE levels in zones with a big level difference

For example in Thavnair, one half starts at Lv 80, while the other half has lv 85 FATEs.

When farming to rank up the zone while also getting EXP on my other jobs, it sometimes feel as if I'm losing out, when I don't have a job at Lv 85 or so and take a penalty for doing the Lv 85 FATEs on a Lv 81, for example.

I know it's not a big deal, it's just something that comes with the forced splitting of a zone into a wide level range.

Perhaps stop doing this for future expansions? With how the MSQ restricts our access to the higher level half anyways, I don't see any immersion nor gameplay benefit at all to this structure.

If you have to, just physically cut in half the first starter zone of the expansion and you get your two-way split in the starter story. Then connect the two halves by Lv 85 or so using some story device and make that the final unlock for flight.

Not a big deal for a lot of people who maybe don't care about FATEs, or farm FATEs on level capped jobs anyways. But for a smaller group of people, it just doesn't feel great to take a penalty when it's the devs putting those higher level FATEs in the zone, not us going to a higher level zone, but we get the penalty as if we're doing something bad.

The "penalty" is just a slightly lower contribution you get towards gold rating. It will be barely noticeable if you actually participate in most of the FATE. I've had no problems getting gold on a level 75 job in EW zones.

The rewards for the higher level FATEs are reduced to what are rewarded by FATEs your job level so it's effectively the same as having the entire zone filled with FATEs your own level. You're not really missing out on anything. It just takes a little more effort to clear the FATE by yourself.

As for why the zones end up split, it's to help reduce congestion bottlenecks in the initial zones at expansion launch. Players get spread out more by advancing into later zones faster. When they're ready to return to the initial zones, the players who had started later have moved into the zones just left behind. It's a decent system that has been working well for the most part.