If there were no FATEs

First and foremost, I don't hate fates. I think they should at least take some skill as opposed to how they're currently set up (as opposed to time spent = pure exp), but I digress. What I'm wondering is how the game would be/have turned out if there were no fates.

I believe the 'shout for party' and putting a party flag up scenarios would just increase ten fold. While duty finder would still be the number one source of parties, I think the overall atmosphere for partying would actually be better for DPS. I'm saying this mainly because of the increase of 'shout for parties' and the availability of EXP/Dungeon parties. Overall DPS exp would drop and wait times would increase, but that's only because fates are so instantly gratifying.

Anyways, how do you think the game would be if there were no fates? Do you think everyone would quit due to the game being more grindy? Do you think it would make for a better overall attitude amongst players since they'd be FORCED to level with people in dungeons (like FFXI) after running out of quests? Do you think it'd have little to no effect at all?

I don't want this to turn into a e-peen flame war, I'm just wondering what the general consensus is of how the game would have turned out of there were no fates. Please don't resort to turning this into a "fates are fine, dungeons need to be buffed" thread.

Plus, I'm bored at work.

I think fates are badly designed. There are fates that is just kill x amount of monsters and no meaning behind about why are we killing those say monsters. Where as there are fates that you can see have a meaning behind or a purpose for them. Such as NPC being kidnapped or part of a zone getting taken away by a bunch of raiders or fight an NM.

The fates need to have meaning, soul behind them. Not the mindless grind that most of them are.

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Originally Posted by HamHam

I think the fates are badly designed. There are fates that is just kill x amount of monsters and no meaning behind about why are we killing those say monsters. Where as there are fates that you can see have a meaning behind or a purpose for them. Such as NPC being kidnapped or part of a zone getting taken away by a bunch of raiders or fight an NM.

The fates need to have meaning, soul behind them. Not the mindless grind that most of them are.

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That's not what I'm asking with this thread though. I'm wondering why you think the game would be like if they had never existed (for the better or for worse).

Since we can't restart quests for our other classes, old school grind parties. They can be fast exp. However, this would hurt in the long run because mobs don't spawn fast enough to accommodate that kind of grind. So mob spawns would have to be increased.

Grind parties are always faster vs dungeons. It wasn't until recently that even big bad WoW increased the dungeon xp so much that you could just grind dungeons all day to level.

My guess:

For every thread complaining about Fate grinding that is lost, will be replaced with at least 3 threads crying about Duty finder queue's and lack of quests in game.

Without them, there would be one less way to get XP, and i really feel people would be doing more hunting logs, dungeons, perhaps farm groups in particular parts of the world with AEs (similar to standing in the Mines in Northern Thanalan while fate grinding/waiting for Dark Devices. I think Dungeons would be a higher priority as they would be the big XP makers after Hunting logs are exhausted. I think the rest of the world would be a bit more populated....
I also think if fates hadn't have been added they would have made quests repeatable by class. If there were no fates, the lack of questing for alts would lead to only dungeons, hunting log, AOE farming. Might have even been Experience Camps!!

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Originally Posted by Jermz

Might have even been Experience Camps!!

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Man, I miss EXP parties / camps. :3

Do you all thing the community overall would be better since parties would almost be mandatory for leveling? Or would most players still be jerks?

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Originally Posted by HamHam

The fates need to have meaning, soul behind them. Not the mindless grind that most of them are.

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One word: Campaign!!!!!!!!!

Bring the campaign system back.

FATEs in general was designed around NMs and the soul purpose of sharing the fight(and possibly a drop) with those who participated. This is back-firing with the masses wanting to take part in killing HNMs like Odin and Behemoth or Hydra.

If FATEs are going to be so bland, add challenge to them(and balance). FATEs need to last longer and they need to pose a challenge. There's NOTHING memorable about a FATE atm.

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Originally Posted by Noahlimits

Man, I miss EXP parties / camps. :3

Do you all thing the community overall would be better since parties would almost be mandatory for leveling? Or would most players still be jerks?

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Yeah, me too. A place where people can log in and kill(or be killed,lol) to gain seals and/or exp. A camp to hang out and talk sh!t and laugh, then plan the next move. So far I like the GC system and all the stuff we can get through GCs. With almost all classes to 50, i care about gaining seals.

I don't know if the smaller areas (and lack of enough mobs like Vactus said) would be able to handle it if everyone was hanging out all over the place in parties. It would be like going to the most popular place to eat in town, you would have to stand at the entrance and wait to be "seated" lol. Good question though, makes me wonder if that's why fates are here in the first place, because the areas are not big enough /shrug?

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Originally Posted by Noahlimits

Man, I miss EXP parties / camps. :3

Do you all thing the community overall would be better since parties would almost be mandatory for leveling? Or would most players still be jerks?

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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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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.