FATE improvement wishlist

FATEs kinda suck, but they really don’t have to. With the right changes, I think they can scratch the Exploration Zone, non-raiding combat itch that a good number of players seem to want. The advantage FATEs have over other combat instances is that they come prepackaged with an expansion’s launch, and their barrier to entry is incredibly low. If you enter a zone, you should have a videogame to play that might actually be kinda fun. Please consider these changes, and additions to the FATE system.

Please increase the difficulty/complexity of mini boss FATEs to be around a similar level as Dawntrail dungeon bosses (or dungeon bosses in general). It seems like both non-raiders, and experienced raiders agree that the dungeon bosses from Dawntrail dungeons have been fun while still maintaining an easy, and accessible difficulty. So I think their complexity, and difficulty would be appropriate for mini boss FATEs. This is the most important request, the below requests mean nothing if FATEs are not fun to fight.

Please add more FATE chains. I think that every ‘kill lots of enemies’ style FATES should always chain into a mini boss FATE. This would mimic how Notorious Monsters, and Critical Engagements are spawned in exploration zones. Also we just get more FATE per FATE.

Please add a world boss FATE to every zone. Six alliance raid level bosses with rewards would be available to players at the start of an expansion. And please allow us to trade in excess world boss tokens for either bicolor gems or bicolor vouchers. It would also be great if world boss FATEs from previous expansions had chance of having the bonus reward buff applied to them.

Please add more Forlorn Maiden interactions. I made a post outlining a rare ‘Forlorn Mistress’ enemy concept, so please consider it. Another change that would be great is dramatically increasing the spawn chance of Forlorn Maidens/The Forlorn in 1 or 2 zones per expansion. Increasing the spawn rate for Forlorn Maidens in a zone will make that zone great for leveling.

Please add more long term FATE rewards. A long term FATE reward I would like to see in the future is like some kind of universal accessory that increases the amount of bicolor gems you get from FATEs. Another would be a consumable item that can be bought with vouchers that forces Forlorn Maidens to spawn in FATEs you are participating in.

Some miscellaneous wants: a FATE log with achievements, and rewards for completing it, get players out of combat faster when a FATE ends, an auto sync option, don’t remove tank stance when syncing for a FATE, add bicolor gems to FATEs up to at least Heavensward zones, and add challenge log entries that reward bicolor gems for completing FATEs within your level range. I genuinely think it would be worth it to apply these improvements to FATEs in zones from previous expansions as well.

Still waiting for that enmity bug to never get fixed

Another thing could be integrating Fates into the MSQ.

Not as in "Farm 100 fates to progress" of course. But as in creating Fates that narratively tie in with the MSQ and are perhaps a bit more fun gameplay-wise than normal run-of-the-mill fates.
(Of course they have to spawn reliably and often, no matter how many people are in a zone or anything. Perhaps the player could even actively trigger them. And they'd have to scale with the number of players so you can solo them on any class if nobody is around but also have enough of a challenge when you do play with several people.)

Like this you interrupt the long stretches of cutscenes and fetch quests between dungeons and instances with more battle content and active participation.

I think it would help a lot to make the progression through the story feel more dynamic and engaging.
The world would feel more alive as well because you'd use the game's actual main gameplay mechanic in the actual world.

Just make the boss-level ones more normalized, and more frequent and they'll be good in my book... Doing ones like Archaeotania and Chi are still really enjoyable.

Breadcrumb ones that have nothing to them just aren't fun.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Please increase the difficulty/complexity of mini boss FATEs to be around a similar level as Dawntrail dungeon bosses (or dungeon bosses in general).

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I'd be alright with that and I don't really know why they stick to ARR-level mechanics for FATEs in Dawntrail. People are obviously beyond dodging a telegraphed conal AoE by then.

We could argue that hunts fit the bill of what you're wanting already, it's just that they don't sync like FATEs do, so they reach a point where they melt. This can happen to FATEs as well depending on their level. But they could just do what they are with hunts when making FATEs too.

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Please add more FATE chains.

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FATEs died after POTD was released in Heavensward, especially after the anima relics got old and nerfed. It felt like nobody did them in Stormblood at all except the ones with achievements. In Shadowbringers, they wanted to fix the fact nobody cared about FATEs, and made lots of FATE chains, taking inspiration from an extremely popular lore chain in the Azim Steppe.

It seems this project failed, and people didn't care about the Shadowbringers chains as much as the bicolor gemstones, so they put their focus on the gemstones and making long term grinds for a mount and other rewards.

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Please add a world boss FATE to every zone.

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Almost every zone up through Shadowbringers has an achievement FATE. 2 of them are scaled for 24-48 people while the rest are scaled for 8 people. I'm not opposed to more of them needing 24 people, but it can be hard to find people, especially when they get older.

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Increasing the spawn rate for Forlorn Maidens in a zone will make that zone great for leveling.

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Good idea. I think one of the problems with FATEs is that, because it's world-based, there are naturally less people than a Field Operation, which shares the population across worlds, and that's a potential problem they have with this.

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get players out of combat faster when a FATE ends, an auto sync option, don’t remove tank stance when syncing for a FATE

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Agreed.

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add challenge log entries that reward bicolor gems for completing FATEs

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That might help with getting people to form parties each week like happens with Blue Mage weeklies, which is super niche but you can in fact find a party for their weeklies if you look.

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Originally Posted by VictorSpoils

Still waiting for that enmity bug to never get fixed

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If you mean where you have to generate enough enmity to get gold rating, that isn't a bug. In fact, SE teaches you about it via Active Help as a new player upon your first encounter with a FATE. I can confidently say that most players do not read this because they are "unaware" of this always their first time doing them.

It used to be standard that each area had an area boss FATE. That seems to have been largely replaced with hunts, which are just worse in every way.

My biggest wish for FATES is to expand bicolor gem shops to include twine/glaze like hunts have. There is zero reason for hunts to reward savage level gear and fates not to.

Of course ideally all these different kinds of content would have their own sets but that's asking a lot of the art team.

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Originally Posted by Immut

It used to be standard that each area had an area boss FATE. That seems to have been largely replaced with hunts, which are just worse in every way.

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No, they continued the boss FATE concept but stopped doing it as of Endwalker.

Hunts have existed since ARR, and are far better mechanically.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

No, they continued the boss FATE concept but stopped doing it as of Endwalker.

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Eh? we have two big boss FATEs in DT, The Serpentlord Seethes and Mascot Murder, both of them drop unique currency that is used to get items that can't be gotten otherwise, much like we have two in EW(Chi and Daivadipa), two in ShB(Formidable and Archaeotania), two in StB(Ixion and Tamamo Gozen), so on.

...unless I completely misunderstood what you meant.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Please add more FATE chains. I think that every ‘kill lots of enemies’ style FATES should always chain into a mini boss FATE. This would mimic how Notorious Monsters, and Critical Engagements are spawned in exploration zones. Also we just get more FATE per FATE.

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This, so much. The Dataqi Chronicles is one of the best narrative bits of content in the open world specifically, and though not as interesting, the chain with the Fuaths and our Pixie friend in Il Mheg is also a fun one. Each zone should have at least one of these chains.

Also, new music, for the love of Hydaelyn.

Make the bosses themselves drop rng loot, not currency. A chance at some rare glam, mount, pet or something. PLUS a weekly coffer you can get something ultra-rare from.

I'd say gear, but until the gearing in this game becomes less boring, I don't think gear should be attached to anything unless its in a vacuum like Bozja etc. Where it can thrive away from the horrible crafted catch-up gear system.

And yes, new music. This game in general needs to stop being lazy with music... with everything tbh.

Add more chain FATEs with unique rewards like a weapon glam or minions, make Critical Engagement style FATEs in the open world zone. Problem solved.

I would be happy, if they change the FATE scaling depending on the number of participants to the actual FATE instead of the entire zone.

I'm fine with all of those suggestions, if they remove the 1500 bicolour gemstones limit or lower the amount of FATEs needed per zone to get Rank 3/4.

Having to do 400 FATEs before unlocking the vendor and having all those gemstones go to waste because there's nothing of value until then, is miserable.

If they're not going remove the 1500 limit or lower the required number of FATEs to the maximum rank, all those suggestions will just make FATEs even more miserable.

I really want them to bring back 1 special fate in each zone. For some reason this is another thing they cut down on and now we only get 2 special fates per expansion.

I would really like to see them scale, dynamically, to those who are present. Incredibly annoying (and boring) to get a FATE that you have to sync to, where you can survive, but you also gently tickle their toes for 20 minutes, and NO ONE is interested in doing because it's old. I'd also definitely really like to see the type of tasks and concepts be expanded a lot. Both WoW and GW2 do these quite a bit better than FFXIV (just open world content in general FFXIV could learn a lot from those two games).

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Originally Posted by Vintersol

I would be happy, if they change the FATE scaling depending on the number of participants to the actual FATE instead of the entire zone.

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They scale to the number of participants who did that FATE the last time. And since Stormblood also the FATEs nearby get scaled.
With the 3 instances per map it was annoying when a swarm of players did instance hopping after they did all the FATEs. And when you wanted to do a FATE that spawned, the swarm already changed to another instance and you were there alone on the FATE which has now scaled for a full party (or whatever the maximum scale is) and you need to kill double as many mobs with more HP to complete the FATE.

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Originally Posted by Vintersol

I would be happy, if they change the FATE scaling depending on the number of participants to the actual FATE instead of the entire zone.

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They scale based on the number of people who did the FATE the previous time (or a FATE "linked" to it).

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Originally Posted by ACE135

They scale to the number of participants who did that FATE the last time. And since Stormblood also the FATEs nearby get scaled.

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It's just that certain FATEs are "linked" and cannot spawn at the same time as eachother. They aren't always actual chains, but rather just can't spawn at the same time. Therefore, if 24 people fight the previous FATE, it scales up the next one which is "linked" to it, which very rarely can be the same FATE if it respawns before the others. If it's not linked to anything, it just is scaled up the next time you fight it.

For example, people who spawn Senmurv will occasionally observe that if 24 people defeat Tarasque (a HW boss), then when Cerf's Up spawns next, it's scaled up and sends around 100 hippocerfs at you every cycle.

This does actually happen even in ARR as well but they had to reduce it due to allow beast tribe, relic and Hildibrand FATEs to spawn more.

It works the same for Skirmishes in Bozja. All of them in each of the 3 sections are linked, thus the next Skirmish is scaled to how many fought the previous one in the that section. The exception is the ones that spawn Critical Engagements, which is why they can spawn at the same time.

Honestly I wish the bicolor items could be sold again. It made good incentive to do fates as a group and that made fates more enjoyable to me, personally.

This is more a personal annoyance, but I'd love it if we could turn off the FATE jingle and large writing, as when not currently doing FATEs but having to cross 3 them in close proximity on a mount, it's annoying always having them obnoxiously appear - plus having great field OSTs interrupted. Maybe they could add a small HUD element that lights up with a ding when we are inside the FATE boundary.

get rid of FATE ranks (we could add gemstone to that too) and make FATEs more rewarding, we could even imagine a gamedesign where FATEs lock parts of the open world like if a FATE is on a bridge, bridge is locked until it is done (i know some ppl will say that flying exist and ppl won't bother with it anyway but to me flying in every zone was a mistake). FATEs should look like what GW2 is doing (the dragons there are amazing open world bosses with good rewards and player interaction)

Also yeah, get rid of the Fates in the map with a toggle. It really breaks immersion when youre BAMMED with the fate music and the whole map is dotted full of purple.

These are all good suggestions. FATEs can also be a great storytelling device, if we could get a log to read the descriptions whenever we want as well as more chains. They could make each zone much more interesting.

I also would love more exp rewarded. I'd like to level up jobs in the open world but I always end up spamming dungeons because it's just not worth the time.

I think the Challenge Log should reward Bicolor Gemstones when you finish the FATE sections as a lvl 100.

I'd like to see more FATEs that interact with the world and add to its immersion, like the one in Central Shroud where you assault a bandit camp. These days almost all of them are just "AOE a bunch of random mobs" which makes grinding them such a slog. It's not fun at all.

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Originally Posted by Moqi

These are all good suggestions. FATEs can also be a great storytelling device, if we could get a log to read the descriptions whenever we want as well as more chains. They could make each zone much more interesting.

I also would love more exp rewarded. I'd like to level up jobs in the open world but I always end up spamming dungeons because it's just not worth the time.

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Oh yeah, I'd love that too.
I really enjoyed leveling in the open world in other MMOs and it's sad that this isn't a viable alternative in this game. Dungeons are cool and have their place but personally I find fighting monsters within the game world more immersive, even if they don't have an objective like a dungeon. It feels more like actually adventuring.
With Fates you could add maybe one or two zone bosses that have a similarly complex attack set like a dungeon boss that appear after doing enough other fates (but that scale with the amount of players doing the Fate so you can fight them in light or full parties or solo).

They basically just need to copy FATEs and CE from Bozja... but then they'd have no content for their Exploration Zones.

I wish the devs would play Guild wars 2 before implementing any improvements to the FATE system. Events (FATEs) in that game is much more enjoyable and immersive than what we have here.

Can we please get escort missions varieties.

Fates to me would be far better if we added Trust (much like XI) that can act towards helping you complete fates in case you are behind on ranks, gemstone farming or achievement hunting, card hunting, barding hunting, costume hunting. If no ones around to help complete fates after the initial farm frenzy. We leveled the scions to the max so why can they not be available for summoning during fates? XI you could summon on command different NPCS. Each area could have NPCS that are also available within the region. For example, Aymeric and Lucia in Heavensward. Gotetsu, Yugiri and Hien in Stormblood. Lyna, Ryne in Shadowbringers. Endwalker I suppose Zero and Vtra. And in Dawntrail Koana and Gulool Ja Ja. It would make them more interesting, players may be engaged to join up if they see the characters throughout making comments as well.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

I'd like to see more FATEs that interact with the world and add to its immersion, like the one in Central Shroud where you assault a bandit camp. These days almost all of them are just "AOE a bunch of random mobs" which makes grinding them such a slog. It's not fun at all.

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FATEs that utilize the environment around them are neat. Thinking it might be possible to like jury-rig dungeon or alliance raid-like fights in the overworld using FATEs.

Shameless self bump, but it was implied in the 7.4 that overworld changes could be on the agenda for the future. Improving the gameplay for FATEs will be worth it, and I still want these changes.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

FATEs that utilize the environment around them are neat. Thinking it might be possible to like jury-rig dungeon or alliance raid-like fights in the overworld using FATEs.

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It would be cool if you could use the overworld environment against FATE enemies. Such as being on raised elevation or hiding behind pillars to avoid certain attacks, hiding behind a cactus when targeted with a charging tackle to hurt the enemy, or nullifying fire related attacks by being on water.