Improving fates

I think one of if the weakest parts of 14 is its lack of open world and the fate system. While the fate system was fine concerning first time leveling it has become woefully stale. This is in part from the relic weapon system constantly forcing you to grind them out for hours.

What 14 needs is an improvement of the fate system to allow it to interact with the world. The current fates do not do this and in consequnce makes the world dull. Other competitors like world of warcraft have more interactive systems (world quest) despite being older in systems and engines.

I suggest that the development team examin the fate system and consider atleast for future content allow these fates to interact with the landscape and be more emersive. Even adding a diversity of rewards like battle currency, scripts, and a bigger increase of gil would also improve them temporary until a more permanent system is in place.

This topic is a good one because, I'm just now starting to build up my shared fates. So i can only speak on what bothers me with them and what I would like to see as well.


To start off with, The level sync bothers me. Yes I know we don't want max levels to go in and blow them up...but can't we reduce our damage and life without giving up some of our skills?


Second thing is, I would love to see the fates cause the zones to change in some way. Picture being a new player going to a zone that is a mess, but you do fates and the zone starts getting better all because your actions. Some of the older zones that players don't hang around in or do the fates in. Going around and cleaning the areas up. That would make it feel like your actions matter more. heck I know my wife would make it her sworn duty to keep her fav zone clean lol.

While I can deal with the level sync for a challenge I cannot deal with lack of abilities making it even more unbearable. I think a good system would be somewhere you mention where the fates will help improve the zone. This can be a small improvement or a big one. Such as garlean ships falling from the sky and now we must rescue or kill the crew and clean then clean up the ship from causing toxins in the area. Something simple like that can defiantly go a long way. I know we cannot have exact world quests, but giving us a more interactive fate instead just kill X, protect the crate, or collect items. While these can be still implemented they need something more interactive with the lands like using cannons that are permeant to the zone.

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

This topic is a good one because, I'm just now starting to build up my shared fates. So i can only speak on what bothers me with them and what I would like to see as well.


To start off with, The level sync bothers me. Yes I know we don't want max levels to go in and blow them up...but can't we reduce our damage and life without giving up some of our skills?


Second thing is, I would love to see the fates cause the zones to change in some way. Picture being a new player going to a zone that is a mess, but you do fates and the zone starts getting better all because your actions. Some of the older zones that players don't hang around in or do the fates in. Going around and cleaning the areas up. That would make it feel like your actions matter more. heck I know my wife would make it her sworn duty to keep her fav zone clean lol.

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I like this idea! FATES that have an actual effect would be really cool to see!

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Originally Posted by Reaperking386

I think a good system would be somewhere you mention where the fates will help improve the zone. This can be a small improvement or a big one. Such as garlean ships falling from the sky and now we must rescue or kill the crew and clean then clean up the ship from causing toxins in the area. Something simple like that can defiantly go a long way.

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These sort of things are known as fate chains and do exist.

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While these can be still implemented they need something more interactive with the lands like using cannons that are permeant to the zone.

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There are some fate chains in ARR where if you beat the fate, one side wins and if it fails, the other side wins and takes over the territory until someone beats the fate.

Fates are one of my favorite things to do to level, but honestly after lvl 50 it isn't practical. There just isn't much insensitive to do them since the rewards are so bad (barely any XP, gil, and seals). Shared Fates were a cool idea but there isn't anything really worth buying with the crystals.

I feel like there is so much more that could be done. Stuff like battles against beast tribes for control over areas, primals spawning and attacking settlements. Heck I think 1.0 had something were viodsent could attack camps and destroy them for a bit unless people stopped them.

I hope fates get more love, but I don't see it happening. Unfortunately the devs seem to prefer pushing things aside rather than improving them

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Originally Posted by spf1200

Shared Fates were a cool idea but there isn't anything really worth buying with the crystals.

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Not anything worth buying to you, but maybe to others. There are a lot of minions, orchestrion roles, barding, triple triad cards and things of that nature, as well as riding speed increases which were fun to collect. Let's not forget we will have a mount for getting all of the triple triad cards soon as well.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There are some fate chains in ARR where if you beat the fate, one side wins and if it fails, the other side wins and takes over the territory until someone beats the fate.

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To go into specifics, there is the Hive series of Fates in the South Shroud which begins with You helping the Gridanians take a bandit fort, then has a separate FATE where you kill their leader, then a final FATE much later where the Bandits try and take the fort back and you have to resist them. There is the Series of Fates where you help some former Pirates in Limsa protect their land from Rats, then Coerls then Kobalds (Though really this one doesn't change anything beyond whether their Captain is still around), then there is one near that large bridge in East where Kikr..Kir... The Rat people come and kidnap people from the small settlement at the top of the bridge. after that, You get a FATE to rescue all the people that were kidnapped, being helped by the guards that don't die in the kidnapping attempt. (The Rat people are being commanded by an Amalja, so you can guess what they're being kidnapped for.

The the case of the Hive, If you successfully take the hive, there is a merchant there that sells you a minion. I believe there is a similar case where one of the kidnap victims in the bridge mission is a merchant, though I haven't done that one as much.

I think there was also a FATE chain in HW where you help one of Hresvelger's brood fight off one of Nidhoggr's, but I'm not sure if anything actually happens with that one. Someone else can probably mention more.

One problem of making the rewards better is bots will just farm them all the time. And it's annoying to do fates as a legit player when that is happening because the amount of bots hugely scale up the difficulty of fates in the zone, so you are forced to pretty much follow the bot swarm to whatever fate they are currently doing to clear anything in a reasonable amount of time.

If fates had mechanics it could be both a bot deterrent and more fun for real players, but the devs have said it takes too much time/resources to design every one like a critical engagement in bozja, so for that reason Endwalker fates will be the usual no mechanics mash-keyboard and win.

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Originally Posted by Reaperking386

Other competitors like world of warcraft have more interactive systems (world quest) despite being older in systems and engines.

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I really hope you're not suggesting SE basically copy WoW's world quests. I hated them. I found them to be so tedious and some took way too long to do for the meager rewards they gave.

However I am in support of giving players more incentives to go out in the open world with their combat classes after they finished the msq. Sure hunts are a thing but some people are just not interested in them. I know I'm not.

I do feel the shared Fates were a step in the right direction. They certainly made me do far more Fates than I had before.

There is a chain of Fates in Thanalan that temporarily unlocks a vendor who is the only source of a particular minion. SE could create more of these scattered around the game with each vendor having their own unique stock. Some of the vendors could be from small settlements or be travelling merchants. They could tie this in with the Shared Fate system so players can use the currency from that to purchase some of the items, while others would have a cost of gil. The items should of course be market prohibited so that doing Fates is the only way to get them.

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

Second thing is, I would love to see the fates cause the zones to change in some way. Picture being a new player going to a zone that is a mess, but you do fates and the zone starts getting better all because your actions. Some of the older zones that players don't hang around in or do the fates in. Going around and cleaning the areas up. That would make it feel like your actions matter more. heck I know my wife would make it her sworn duty to keep her fav zone clean lol.

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Some vendors could even be unlocked through the above quoted suggestion, and because they would take more effort to do due to having a zone-wide effect, the rewards would be much greater. I also would like to see Fates have a real effect on the sort of geography we see in the game.

As for the items these vendors would sell...anything and everything. Glam gear, minions, mounts, dye, emotes, hairstyles, fashion accessories like the current umbrellas, TT cards, furniture, xp scrolls for DoL and DoH (the ones that increase xp gain), orchestrion rolls...all the goodies that many players enjoy.

And for getting access to the vendors the player would need to get at least a silver rating from the Fates they do so that no one gets to benefit from it by being mostly afk.

I'm not against taking a system and crafting it to their own specifications, but I am not asking them to copy it downright. Fates are going to be replace and world quests will not be integrating. These are mostly rough draft ideas in terms of improving fates to make the open world more interactive.

I like the Shared FATE system. It's a step in the right direction. I was pleasantly surprised to see additional rewards added throughout the expansion, too.

I do wish they scaled better, though. Often when I'm farming the FATE currency I'm the only one in the zone doing it...and although FATE's are far from challenging other than boss FATE's...some of them do drag on a little.

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

The the case of the Hive, If you successfully take the hive, there is a merchant there that sells you a minion. I believe there is a similar case where one of the kidnap victims in the bridge mission is a merchant, though I haven't done that one as much

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All three chains actually unlock a minion-selling merchant. The minions are cheap, and since nobody ever bothers to figure out where they're from, can sell for a profit on the MB. Kinda slow way to make money, but, viable for some pocket change early on.

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Originally Posted by Reaperking386

I'm not against taking a system and crafting it to their own specifications, but I am not asking them to copy it downright. Fates are going to be replace and world quests will not be integrating. These are mostly rough draft ideas in terms of improving fates to make the open world more interactive.

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Cant edit by phone, but to clarify... *fates are not going to be replaced* and world quests are not going to be integrated to be wows. I just want a improved immersive version if fates. This forum is rough draft ideas for the community to define what a fate can be in the future.

FATE chains.
FATEs that have an effect on the world around them.
FATEs that unlock S rank hunts.
Shared currencies for FATEs.
These things all exist already.

When ShB released, everyone was doing these FATEs. Beating Archeotania was a pretty big deal. Everyone wanted the frog suit and the robofrog mount.
The issue isn't that the content isn't implemented in the game, it's that people just don't do it any more, and you can't do it on your own.

I think what the FATE system needs to straight up being less jank, make it more enemies spawn and make it so that these specifically instantly get AI instead of standing around for a couple seconds

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Not anything worth buying to you, but maybe to others. There are a lot of minions, orchestrion roles, barding, triple triad cards and things of that nature, as well as riding speed increases which were fun to collect. Let's not forget we will have a mount for getting all of the triple triad cards soon as well.

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Those are nice and all but you get enough crystals just leveling each area to get all of those. Each area should have had something big to grind for after you maxed its level out.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

FATE chains.
FATEs that have an effect on the world around them.
FATEs that unlock S rank hunts.
Shared currencies for FATEs.
These things all exist already.

When ShB released, everyone was doing these FATEs. Beating Archeotania was a pretty big deal. Everyone wanted the frog suit and the robofrog mount.
The issue isn't that the content isn't implemented in the game, it's that people just don't do it any more, and you can't do it on your own.

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I gave up going for the frog suit or the dwarf chain quests. Aside lack of players going there, most of the time it feels the FATEs just don't work, you can complete multiple times and still not get the continuation or having those lame "oh you gotta wait some time before it pops again".
And the Ahm Araeng chain seems a myth to do lol

Making FATE's a bit more complex and lengthier would be nice. Perhaps we should even have some nearly persistent FATE's that would give us something to do in the overworld that we could jump into and out of whenever we want. Something like a dungeon but without queues or a penalty for leaving. This would alleviate standing around waiting for a FATE to spawn and would also provide content that is very easy to fit into whatever amount of free time a player might have.

I want more open world activities too, but I'm tired of fates being the proposed solution by both devs and players tbh.

I'd like to see behests brought back as well as hamlet defences. I'm sure the current team would vastly improve both of those systems. It's been 10 years after all.

I don't like the unpredictability of FATE timers/spawning at all. And they feel more like piñata wacking parties that pop in the map when there isn't a lack of players around.

People have said the same thing about fates ever since ARR. They lack impact or consequence and they're ultimately meaningless..

There are 1 oe 2 kind of fate chain things but even they fail to change the word in anyway, this is one of the big reasons why everyone says Eorzea is bland and lifeless.

You have that fate in hyrstmil where it gets overun by opos. but whether you win that fate or lose it the result is the exact same.

They could do something cool and bring back something akin to hamlet defence. or maybe even a hybrid style content between hamlet defence and something like beseiged in ffxi.. where settlements repeatebly come under attack and players work together to repair them or bolster up defences and stuff like that. Things that would actualy change the world in meaningful ways you travel to a settlement and its basically been ransacked so you can get on your gatherer or crafter and either go gather supplies to help rebuild it and fortify it. or as a dow/dom go out on a rescue mission to find and rescue any citizens taken in the attack.

Something like this could eally bring the open world to life and make it evolve in some fashion.. You've just finished gathering your zodiac stuff only to go to hyrstlill and find Gerolt has been abducted. welp gotta go rescue him.... hundreds of little things they could do to add some life to the world

The issue fates have is they're just empty brainless zergs. of whack it till its dead. boring dull and lifeless.

The thing I find strangest of all. FFXI is over 20 years old and some of its code was literally written in the 90s. and yet Vana'diel is or at least was when I played this living, breathing, ever changing dynamic world, with various systmes like besieged, campaign, garrison, even the conquest system always changing the world in some way and the effects of these systems were spread far and wide accross the game..

If a nation lost control of an area to beastmen or even another nation then vendor stocks and prices would change. this in turn would affect the global auction house prices and the economy as a whole. It would also affect your travel options and various other things.. If that outpost was overrun by beastmen. there goes your warp home... iIf you lost beseiged say good by to the astral candescnece and all its benefits. Oh you cant even hire a chocobo as the npc got abducted in the attack so gotta hoof it where your going on foot. All things that made the world feel more alive.

Hell even just having to wait 5 minutes for an airship. along with the real time flights. you could be on an airship and see the world below as you flew over. at the same time people in the zones you were flying over could look up and actually see the airship you were on flying by...

20 year old code and its actually quite amazing what they managed to achieve and it makes eorzea look stale and dead in comparison.

So I see a lot of people saying that FATES do effect the world, but I really don't see how. The areas themselves never really change, you're not going to notice enemies out of place or new enemies entering an area because a FATE chain wasn't completed. A real effect on the world would be failing a FATE chain in La Noscea and having the pirates or bandits start spawning right outside the Limsa gates. The area being overrun with them and maybe an optional boss appearing in the zone afterward that you have to defeat to remove them. Back when they were still working on a new Everquest they mentioned having a world system where if players didn't keep things like orcs in check, they would overrun roads and areas and players would have difficulty crossing them later. This can obviously become a problem if areas are suddenly becoming filled with enemies that new players cannot defeat when needed but something similar would give the world a more lively and dynamic feel.