Instead of nerfing FATEs, buff everything else.

I don't think people that hate FATEs understand how slow leveling would be if their experience were nerfed. What I've gathered is most people just hate that it is the most effective way, which makes them feel like they're pigeonholed into doing it, so why not buff the experience of Guildhests, Dungeons, and Leves to a point where they are at least competitive with FATEs?

I agree. FATEs are fun now and then, and you should have the option between a bunch of different equally viable options for leveling. Make the first-time guildhest bonus something that refreshes hourly. Make running dungeons give more XP (and something other than tin out of the chests). Grinding FATEs is at a good pace right now, but it is boring as all hell.

This won't work. Leaving FATEs the way they are and buffing everything else would definitely give people more choices about how they choose to level. However, it would also double (or triple) the speed at which players level. As it is right now an average player can get from 1 to 50 in a week of spamming FATES. Increasing experience gain on guild leves, guildhests, and dungeons could potentially shorten that time to a few days.

All they need to do is spread the experience more evenly between all of the activities. Leveling speed won't be effected and people will have more choices. It's a win/win.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Papamax

This won't work. Leaving FATEs the way they are and buffing everything else would definitely give people more choices about how they choose to level. However, it would also double (or triple) the speed at which players level. As it is right now an average player can get from 1 to 50 in a week of spamming FATES. Increasing experience gain on guild leves, guildhests, and dungeons could potentially shorten that time to a few days.

All they need to do is spread the experience more evenly between all of the activities. Leveling speed won't be effected and people will have more choices. It's a win/win.

---

I for one would like to be able to level up my character moderately quickly, endless grinding can drive a lot of people away from MMOs. Yes you can try and argue that if a person blows through the content then they'll just quit the game, but there's a lot more than just leveling that one class to max.
1k char SUCKS

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Papamax

This won't work. Leaving FATEs the way they are and buffing everything else would definitely give people more choices about how they choose to level. However, it would also double (or triple) the speed at which players level. As it is right now an average player can get from 1 to 50 in a week of spamming FATES. Increasing experience gain on guild leves, guildhests, and dungeons could potentially shorten that time to a few days.

All they need to do is spread the experience more evenly between all of the activities. Leveling speed won't be effected and people will have more choices. It's a win/win.

---

Buffing dungeons to be comparable to fates wouldn't make it even faster because you can't be doing both at once, it'd just make running dungeons a viable option outside your initial quest.

FATEs are awesome, yeah, but the real problem here is that the alternatives just give such horrible XP for the time involved, especially instances past the first run.

I also thinks fates would more fun in general if the other options pulled traffic from them. Right now its just a dumb steamroller of insta-winning the things with no excitement, but if there were less people running back and forth steamrolling them they would be a blast for alternative leveling or opportunistic fun times.

Add more regular quests and stop gating them behind story stuff and most people would choose that route over fate farming i think. FATE's should be like the dynamic events in gw2 optional area specific events that paint a picture of the zones and make you want to take part as a way to help the npc's survive against the beastkin and other threats, not as a mandatory thing everyone ends up doing because Se messed up and forgot to put enough quests/give enough xp per the ones they have.

I like FATE's but they should in no way be something you must do to get to 50.

I love FATEs, at least as they were in the low level areas. The problem is just that in the late 30's and beyond there are just too many people there.

Quote:

---

Instead of nerfing FATEs, buff everything else.

---

hi, power creep

In my opinion the progressions should look something like this:
Fates: Seals > Money > Experience
Dungeons: Items > Experience > Seals/money
Leve Quests: Experience > Seals/money > Items

But for some reason fates give a ludicrous amount of experience and seals and dungeons/leve quests don't even give seals which blows my mind. Leve quests are so blown out of the water for exp gain by fates that everyone saves them for leveling crafts. The content that could be balanced around for progression is there but is poorly utilized and its severly disappointing. I would like to level other classes but many people including myself don't want to sit in queue for dungeons that no one runs because everyone is aoe spamming fates to get experience. I have had people throw the "You don't have to level by fates" argument at me several times but at the moment there really isn't any other way to level without wasting time.

Edit: Also dark devices (even though not considered an exploit) is completely flawed in that fates are infact the only decent way to get seals and that WHOLE AREA gets put on hold because its more effective to grind for experience than it is to complete the objective. Silly to say the least.

This type of reasoning was brought up in the Diablo 3 community concerning Barbarians being so overpowered and therefore Barbarians wanted Blizzard to buff everyone else to be overpowered rather than nerfing Barbarians. It doesn't work. Not only would Barbarians need to be nerfed but the other classes still needed to be buffed to bring it all in line with the game. I concluded that the only reason why you would want something overpowered is that you enjoy it being overpowered and you like exploiting it so you'll do or say anything to keep it that way, even destroy the game balance in the process.

Fortunately the game designers are not stupid. They may have not anticipated the Fate being used like this, but that doesn't mean they'll leave it the way it is and also, at the same time, they won't keep the exp rate of the other methods lagging behind either, so take from that as you will.

I'm a legacy player, I only had to level one class in the new system. I really enjoyed playing through the story as acn, was a decent pace to learn 2.0 and a bit about the class (Stopped at 40 and finished on a 50 so i could get into endgame content).

I personally did not enjoy fate grinding, but its fast, way faster than dungeon grinding. Personally, I dont' get why people want it to take a long time to level, you realize that for every class you level, you are looking at 60 CM runs (or equal amounts spread accross ak and garu spam) to gear up. That's easily 40 hours of grinding the same 3 instances. Why should people have to grind 50-60 hours just to get to that grind?

I would love to see dungeon exp made equal to fate exp (including things like DD, cus... why would I do dungeons at an increased rate if DD would still be faster). Many have said this will "destroy the community cus too many 50s lololwhatever." Buffing dungeon exp will have the oppostie effect. FATEs don't teach you your class, dungeons do. Dungeons are at least party play.

And, if we're honest, someone who only has one 50 and just got there is mostly in the dark about their class compared to peopel doing titan and coil. There will always be a learning curve for fresh 50s, at least grinding dungeons rather than fates will give the players that made that choice a head start. I want to get my friends into the game, and I want to play with them, which means I want them 50 ASAP. Geting at least one 50 will keep you in the game longer.

Also, fate grinding and the such is meant for after your first 50 (since you can't do anything worthwhile without having done the story anwyay). At that point you've gone the "slow" way once already. Quickly fate/dungeon grinding just keeps peopel more interested and flexible at 50, not "nubcakes flooding the community."

Having finally having actually needed to fate grind I can say the rate of exp gained from doing it is a perfect rate of progression. The time played to EXP gained ratio feels right to me which just supports the idea of buff everything else. It would be really nice if there were more quests to do an more areas to play in to get the exp a natural way as well making things like leves and dungeons worth while as more alternatives. I think the best thing possible would be to balance out the content so that every activity is a decent way of leveling so people can play however they want and the best way to do it is buff everything up to the level of fates and add more content and quests (though this may be difficult due to the youth of this version of the game).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by coffeerox

Fortunately the game designers are not stupid. They may have not anticipated the Fate being used like this, but that doesn't mean they'll leave it the way it is and also, at the same time, they won't keep the exp rate of the other methods lagging behind either, so take from that as you will.

---

You're right, they aren't stupid. Which is why they have not only not nerfed FATEs, but they have also shown no interest in doing so in the future. On top of that, they have already announced that they will be buffing dungeons. So all together, they are taking the right course in leaving FATEs as they are and buffing dungeons to be on par with them. :)

All is right in the world.

Fates really aren't that "attractive" of an option, it's just that players are drawn to the fact that it is indeed leagues ahead in both experience and the farming of gil or seals. What I feel really needs the boost is Leves since they are limited questing options that practically function as the game's dailies, but due to their pitifully insignificant Exp & Gil rewards, people completely ignore them because they are seen as a waste of time.

I know that they want to keep Fates attractive so that they can actually get completed, but when that's the ONLY logical way to do anything, it gets extremely repetitive and boring due to the influx of players flocking to regions like Coerthas in order to farm them 24/7.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by coffeerox

This type of reasoning was brought up in the Diablo 3 community concerning Barbarians being so overpowered and therefore Barbarians wanted Blizzard to buff everyone else to be overpowered rather than nerfing Barbarians. It doesn't work. Not only would Barbarians need to be nerfed but the other classes still needed to be buffed to bring it all in line with the game. I concluded that the only reason why you would want something overpowered is that you enjoy it being overpowered and you like exploiting it so you'll do or say anything to keep it that way, even destroy the game balance in the process.

---

That's a false equivocation though because FATEs are not an issue of overall game balance and FATEs being strong doesn't act to the detriment of other players like having overpowered/underpowered classes do. FATEs make dungeons obsolete in the same way barbarians made some of their counterparts obsolete, but it's not a comparable situation at all outside a very superficial level. Secondly, tinkering with class balance in such a way directly impacts the flow of content given that encounters/dungeons/raids are balanced around a certain baseline... FATEs being what they are is pretty much a self inclusive problem. Thirdly, the problem in your example is one of the problem class outstripping everything on its own while other classes aren't necessarily having issues themselves... the analogy breaks down there because even if you ignore FATEs, dungeons, leves and grinding simply aren't remotely efficient either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylari

That's a false equivocation though because FATEs are not an issue of overall game balance and FATEs being strong doesn't act to the detriment of other players like having overpowered/underpowered classes do.

---

quite a nice long post you got there, even though you missed the point entirely. The first sentence that I wrote talked about the REASONING that players used. Therefore this is psychological and having to do with how players think. It's the exact same thing, people think exactly the same way about this issue as they did on D3.

The thing is, unless they buff dungeons to the point where they are leagues ahead of fates the majority of people still wont do them. The reason being is because the success and experience rate is determined by the skill of the party as a whole where as with fates i can cast aero on 4 targets, walk away and get gold almost 90% of the time with my "effort". FATES in their current state will stranglehold the other functions as long as their THIS easy - i'm not asking for them to whip out ultima on a level 1 or anything, but it wouldn't hurt to make them more challenging and attractive. As of right now they're nothing more than a "leveling tool" rather than the activity they should be. Human beings will always take the path of least resistance and that will almost always be FATES in this current incarnation.

@CrimsonJenn
On the other hand a large portion of the players find FATES super boring and making dungeons good will still take away a lot of the players from the FATES. Even if it isn't the ultimate solution, I think it is a good first step. Also if players want to level with FATES still I don't see anything wrong with that; what I do find wrong is that it is the only choice currently. It is also hard to make challenging material when you can zerg it in open world

Couldn't agree more I actually really enjoyed dungeons but they just don't get you anywhere. I'd love to see optional and repeatable quests added to them so you get to the end and just get a big lvl chunk.

Dungeons should give 2x the exp fates do, as should leve's and quests as they generally require more difficulty.

Fates shouldn't be nerfed, but the others should be higher, fates are the more relaxing way to level that doesn't require much effort.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Calypsx

Dungeons should give 2x the exp fates do, as should leve's and quests as they generally require more difficulty.

---

Dungeons give a lot of exp whats with this dungeons dont give exp thing.
I ran a guild member through Haukke yesterday despite overleveling it.
The completion alone was 6.3k + 6.3k bonus with the boss giving 2k and adds doing something like 500. Thats 14k, a fate at my level in coerthas without the armoury bonus is about 10k. The whole dungeon gives exp for my level its not a lot, but at level 28 it's quite sizeable. Now if im running Cutters, Brayflox or Qarn I get good exp. If you're trying to get a piece of equipment you often end up outleveling the dungeon going for it. Of course it depends on how much you actually care for dungeon equipment and the dungeons themselves.
I like em and the exp isn't bad at all, it's pretty damn good. I outleveled brayflox trying to get my Calvary top which I didn't get (woe is me), if dungeons gave 2x exp it would've been even more ridiculous trying for it. Dungeon exp is really good only time it "seems" poor is if you aren't heal/tanking. Otherwise it's an easy source of exp and (random) items.

If I want to level "quickly" I can run dungeons. The exp is good.

Levequests? Now that is something that sucks. Holy smokes levequest exp drives me nuts. Pop 6 of them, get like 10%? So the daily thing which you get 6 of a day...are a mere 10%? That is terrible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hundred

If I want to level "quickly" I can run dungeons. The exp is good.

---

No it's actually not as good as Fate parties. Though it certainly gives the illusion of it. I'm currently leveling my alt all with JUST doing dungeon runs to see the time difference, so far it's been taking days and constant hours. The gap from 29-30 took around 3-4 runs of Haukke without rested exp. Which I know from a fact I can hit level 30 from 29 much faster than that if I ran fate parties.

and it's not a duty finder problem either, i'm a tank, my boyfriend is a healer, we get dungeons instantly, however we are playing for fun, and all of our friends passing us up are doing fates by a long shot when we all started our alts at the same time. They are in their late 40s while we just hit level 30, and our playtimes for those alts are nearly identical. We are doing this so our FC can figure out the most optimal way to level, and they pretty much have their answer on how they are going to help level new recruits.

I would not recommend dungeons for "quick" leveling compared to fate parties. If that was the case more people would be doing it and less people complaining about the duty finder becoming more and more empty at lower levels.

Also that Fate that gives 10k in Coerthas only gives you 10k because you didn't join a Fate party. You'll get a whole lot more exp in a big group. Also Coerthas has a ton of fates going on, you'll get far more exp by hopping from fate to fate than just 10k.

Everyone that is playing the game for the first time now is horribly spoiled compared to what 1.0 was like (previous to SE allowing power leveling). It used to take a couple months to get a combat class to 50, so quit complaining and just be happy that it isn't MUCH MUCH slower.

I am already seeing people playing less because they are getting classes to 50 so fast they start to run out of anything to do but grind dungeons for tomestones, this is a massive problem. If SE wants players to stick around they need to slow down leveling. I'm not suggestion they set it back to how it was in 1.0 but this is way to fast, and requiring almost no effort, there is no satisfaction in acquiring level 50 right now, I leveled arcanist when the game went live again and it felt like an empty achievement when I hit 50. If you are all happy with how it is now, or even worse, want to make it easier, I think there is something seriously wrong with you.

When I've managed to do a Fate with a very small number of people they have been pretty fun. The risk was there to balance out the reward.

That is the primary problem, as Fates do not scale in difficulty in relation to the number of people there it turns into a mindless, riskless, AE or tab, dot, tab, dot, boring exercise. Theres zero risk so zero need for gear. Thus another reason that dungeons, and crafters, pre 50 become meaningless.

At the moment players only run a dungeon the first time, because they have to, to progress the story. Subsequent classes, Fates.

Fates need to start to balance the risk v reward which would promote gearing up, which would give players reason to want to run lower level dungeons again on 2nd and subsequent classes.

Even queing as a healer or tank in the first few dungeons can be a very long time before people even start to add into the Duty status. Which is going to give a huge negative to any new players if they end up hitting a brick wall in something as mandatory to progress as the main storyline.

Changes need to be made for the long term health of the game.

After level 35-40, questing (main and sub quests) is an effective way to level. As my first character, I was able to get a level in a hour and a half at most, which is roughly the same than by doing FATE.

Levequests are out of the way. It gives 70% of a same level quest experience, but requires allowance. In my opinion, experience points rewards from Levequest should be the same than main quests'.

A 40 mins dungeon gives roughly the same exp than 3 FATE. You can steamroll 8-9 FATES by the time you complete a single dungeon. Dungeons experience points should be at least twice what it currently is. I don't care about FATE being more time effective: at least, with dungeons exp doubled, you could get 66% of FATE's experience points and still enjoy the game more than by steamrolling FATE.