Fate grinding is an awful thing to do for 50 levels..

[Darkov]

This game has many many options for leveling. You want a grind? You should have played vanilla FFXI. Stop whining, I'm sick of games being dumbed down to suit the "OMG WANT LEVEL CAP RIGHT NOW SO I CAN GRIPE ABOUT HOW BORED I AM IN TWO WEEKS" crowd.

Hold on, you think FATE grinding is... intelligent, smart, challenging, fun, etc?

FATE grinding is the simplest, most dumb way to level in the game, beyond perhaps simply grinding normal mobs. There is no challenge, no thought required, no real effort and you spend half your time standing in town waiting for them to spawn. Questing didn't dumb down the leveling process in MMOs, it made it more intelligent and in most cases more challenging (until certain games decided to make everything too easy).

[Furious]

this only matters if your entire aim is to hit level cap in as short a period of time as possible. Doing that is boring as sin no matter what system is in place and you're going to find fault in whatever leveling system is in place because you're brute forcing it.

That is the case for a very large portion of the player base. Whether or not it is "boring as sin" is subjective. What is objective is that repeating FATEs is significantly more efficient than any other means by a margin that is large enough so as the other options might as well not exist for those players seeking efficiency.

People are making many arguments in this thread that have literally nothing to do with the subject matter. The subject isn't whether leveling in this game is too fast or too slow, whether or not it is right or wrong to rush to max level - these things are irrelevant.

This thread is about the fact that one SPECIFIC method of leveling is more efficient in every measurable sense than any other method in the game, across all levels and classes. For any player who cares at all about efficiency, even if they were willing to give up SOME efficiency for variety, they have no option. The other "choices" are so far behind that they might as well not exist.

[Velveteer]

Players want to zerg rush fates so they can be 50 in the smallest amount of time?
What about taking the time to really understand your class/job?

[Furious]

Players want to zerg rush fates so they can be 50 in the smallest amount of time?
What about taking the time to really understand your class/job?

This is an argument that people make in every MMO that I never understand. You are saying people should slow down their leveling process so that they can learn their jobs, when in most cases they are missing key abilities and cooldowns until very late in the process of leveling.

The best time to learn your job as it applies to endgame is in endgame.

[Nib]

This is an argument that people make in every MMO that I never understand. You are saying people should slow down their leveling process so that they can learn their jobs, when in most cases they are missing key abilities and cooldowns until very late in the process of leveling.

The best time to learn your job as it applies to endgame is in endgame.

Except that you have to stop to at least do your job quests or you will be missing core skills and useful equipment. Have fun trying to heal without Regen or Divine Seal, for example.

[jvp]

I think the leveling curve the way it is now works well. If people want to grind fates all day everyday, that's fine, but you're obviously going to become bored of it after a certain amount of time.

If you want to powerlevel through content to get to the endgame, then you have the FATE system, if you want to take your time and experience leveling at a decent pace, your can also do that. In my opinion, if you make all content give massive amounts of xp, you're taking away options for the group of players that don't want to gain a level every hour, and force them to move on prematurely before they've had a chance to experience all the content in a given area.

[bakudannar]

I'm level 36 now on my first job, I only needed to do FATEs and quests a few times when I was behind one level to proceed in the story. I'm saving most of the sidequests for my second job, which is what the developers didn't intend for people to do.

There are already many level 50s on Behemoth, a non-Legacy NA server. I think the process is fine for most people. People who want to rush through the plot and ignore everything else end up grinding FATEs the most. I think if you do the sidequests and catch FATEs while traveling between Main Story destinations, you should never feel like you're grinding in any way.

[Livilda]

>I can't get to level 50 fast enough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO5t4UkfUnY

[Crescent_Dusk]

Except that you have to stop to at least do your job quests or you will be missing core skills and useful equipment. Have fun trying to heal without Regen or Divine Seal, for example.

Job quests are once every 5 levels. I have a lv50 Summoner, and am now lving a Thaumaturge. I will not have quests left, so I'll need to do stupid fate grinding. Even the 50% bonus xp built into the armory system doesn't affect quests! Only fates and mob kills, encouraging grinding even more.

[Reuskon]

"Guys, I found the most efficient way to level, so that's what I've been doing this whole time and I'm tired of it!"

I'm sorry, but if anything else was more efficient, you'd complain just the same. Of course doing the same exact thing gets old after doing it dozens of times. No one is forcing anyone to grind fates, yet that seems to be all I see in shout chat when I'm going about my own business "LFXM for fate grinding." It never takes the playerbase of a game to find the fastest way to level, then people start feeling compelled to joining in to keep up or compete with the rest of the server. If that's the way you think, that's your problem, not ours.

I honestly think SE should buff Fates to more properly match the number of players involved, that way it can't be cleared in just a couple of minutes, and closer to the 15 minute timer they put on it. That'd lessen the efficiency of it, and make players doing other things in between.