Fate Grinding & Poor Game Design

How is it acceptable game design to have these fates which you wait forever to spawn for have a few among them which are completely impossible to solo, duo, or even trio?

Four Winds is a good example. What am I supposed to do? Gather a full party of people in an otherwise empty area, tell them to hang out and hope this fate spawns just so we can kill it? No one has the patience for that.

This is such an awful idea. I stress awful. Ugh I wanted to like this game more than this but honestly with each patch they keep pushing this grind - fate design. It's not fun at all nor is it interesting especially when your server doesn't bother w/these fates as it is.

Here's my opinion of the FATE grind. Players were complaining of lack of open world content. Saying there is no on out side of the sanctuaries. So SE made a quest line to easily fix that. Was it lazy and uncreative on their part? Some(most) may say yes. But they needed something to help boost the activity in the open world. I believe for right now it is fine. A PITA but it does make the world seem more active. As of waiting on a certain FATE to pop, this is your 'NM' that so many players were QQ about. Again it could've been handled differently but it was something that could be easily implemented in the game. If you are having trouble compleleting the FATE, throw out a shout I'm sure people will come and help. Or ask your FC mates. This always works on my server. But my server is top class also so...

My problem with FATE is that it's not interesting, or becomes not interesting all too quickly. So far as I can tell, atma is just a way to keep people cycling lower level FATE, possibly as a way to help lower level classes level. If nothing else, it does tend to keep people in the areas, so there's always a chance that people will directly or indirectly help each other.
As for having to do certain FATE, sure, you could set up a Party Finder specifically for that purpose, but that sounds like work.

^ Correct it was to boost lower level FATEs for the new players starting up with the PS4 release and Steam as well. And true again using PF or asking for help is too much work. Lol

I wish there were new areas to explore at this point.

Or you could call upon your friends/FC after it spawns to help you out?

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

How is it acceptable game design to have these fates which you wait forever to spawn for have a few among them which are completely impossible to solo, duo, or even trio?

Four Winds is a good example. What am I supposed to do? Gather a full party of people in an otherwise empty area, tell them to hang out and hope this fate spawns just so we can kill it? No one has the patience for that.

This is such an awful idea. I stress awful. Ugh I wanted to like this game more than this but honestly with each patch they keep pushing this grind - fate design. It's not fun at all nor is it interesting especially when your server doesn't bother w/these fates as it is.

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find better friends?
got 3 ppl to hang out with me for my four winds fate + 4 chocos, downed it rather easy
of course they all migrated from XI with me and are used to the LONG SPAWN TIMES lol

Somehow i wanted the fate to affect the maps...

Like the sahagin attack on north and south gate... if failed they will take over the gate and after sometime will trigger a fate to attack the small base and to aleport.

make it so if aleport is taken ... no tele or ships are able to go there...

That will make ppl wanna take it back...

So then how would you do things if you can't get to a town due to it being taken over?

Not to mention people rarely let FATEs fail so your idea for failure would probably never see the light of day.

OP probably might want to start joining a good FC and also a couple of good linkshells.

I agree that whilst some of the higher level fates were solo-able due to no level sync and you having overpowered gears, some are just not, like The Four Winds and some level synced bosses.

Usually I'll just call for help from FC and LS and I'll get a couple of souls who are free to help. Like wise, help them out if possible. After getting my Animus I'm still helping some of my LS mates who needed to clear certain FATEs.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

if you can't get to a town due to it being taken over?

Not to mention people rarely let FATEs fail so your idea for failure would probably never see the light of day.

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How about another fate for an NM to spawn in aleport for people to clear.... once killed aleport is taken back and it goes see-saw direction....

It could be happen on the other side as well as Maelstroms success in culling the other side of fates will pop a HNM in the spawning grounds.

To me, the current fates are just boring with nothing to really play for... if not for farming atmas and clearing books, I wont even touch it.

I was thinking of some things like specialize nodes for gathers only if the maps hit a certain criteria, like what I say above , killing the HNM will allow players access to the nodes before weekly reset.

Suggesting these are just making it more worth the time people actually do them, make it more engaging for players to feel they actually belong there.

Well the problem here is wouldn't be "balanced" in a sense. Sure, some areas would have high activity no matter what, but other areas may not be so lucky, so if an area were to get taken over by monsters and said area isn't a major stopping point, most people probably wouldn't care or would just teleport to another town near the closed off one to get by. Hell, most of the FATEs are see saw anyway; "good job! you prevented the kobolds from storming into the town! But oh noes! They're back again after you just defeated them! Think you can help us again?" The other problem is constant changes to a town's status could cause some strain on the severs or other issues, but that's just my guess; outside of battles, the game needs constants and not variables to keep things smooth.


Not to mention 99% of the players would probably ignore the "story" aspects behind the whole thing since they're only looking to events that reward them in EXP, gil, and items.

I like the idea of beast man taking over certain places if the fate isn't completed. But like stated above the unpopulated areas would suffer because players would have no reason to go there. Now if they made the fate very rare, such as an Odin or Behemoth this would work out nicely. Randomly have 1 FATE spawn in La Noscea/Thanalan/Shroud. I think this would be really cool.

Another issue with the idea I just realized is having towns "closed" off or whatever would break every single quest that requires the player to visit a town or city. You'd throw a huge brick wall to everyone and that would not go down quietly. It would be worse than what the Atmas are doing now.

There are a few FATE series that do as you ask, baijiazi.

South Shroud: (Breaching/Defending) and (Keeping/Clearing) The Hive. (level 32) NW of Quarrymill. Successfully completed, the series allows you access the interior of The Hive and a merchant who sells the Baby Raptor minion. (The pond inside is a fishing hole with East Hathoeva River fish. Would be nice if it had different/exclusive fish.)

Eastern Thanalan: Attack on Highbridge (Prelude, Act I, Act II, Act III) (level 26) Success/Failure of the series determines what the Highbridge merchant has for sale (which includes the Tiny Rat minion) and the number of NPCs in the area. Failure leads to missing NPCs until Attack on Highbridge: Denouement has been successfully completed.

Yeah I do know them, however I do wish to see more on the beastman maps...
so as to give a feeling that we are actually "At war" with them.

Overtaking aleport for example could prompt GC to issue quest in the respective city( an NPC will pop?) with better seals / rewards to players.
But I do get the point it will cause inconvenience to lower lvl players... the retake could be scaled towards to their lvl as well...

The other end would be the HNM (if the bosses are at a level of odin / behe ) if being cornered will drop some exclusive stuff as well...

I see this idea more towards to hamlets in 1.23, gathers and crafters could help to supply the needed items to npcs near these bases
so they would spawn stronger npcs to fight as well.

just my 2 cents on fate design...

The retake, even if it's level scaled, is still going to block lower level players from finishing their quest and it will turn them away from the game. The game would basically be telling them "Sorry folks, you can't progress in your quests until you solve this problem first!" And then repeat that for every single time an area gets taken over. It's just not going to work.


FATEs are fine as is. Square just needs to stop using them every time they come up with new content.