Scale Fates off the amount of PC's doing them.

[Taemek]

So the Fate system is becoming a way to abuse fast leveling with no coordination or effort.

The current design on the Fate system is taking in to account the amount of players doing them, therefor, the Fates are not a challenge when the Fate itself lasts no longer then 1 - 2 mins at times and you can barely get a skill off to land contribution.

The sheer amount of people doing these Fates is making it trivial and sometimes you are lucky to even get a hit on a mob to gain contribution. I do not believe this is how the Fate system was orginally designed.

What I would like to suggest to fix this issue is, simply scale the diffculity of the Fate off the amount of people ethier inside the Fate Zone area OR the zone itself for that Level range as some zones have different level limits in them, i.e. Central Shroud.

Scaling the NPC's will increase thier overall HP and Damage output, but the reward will still be the same. Therefor they take longer to complete and will require coordination, healers to actually heal and Tanks to actually tank. This also allows casters with long cast times to gain contribution as they should be due to NPC's with more health allowing us to actually land magic attacks.

I disagree with bumping up the XP of Dungeons to be on par with XP gain from Fates.

This will make them a challenge and not a rush fest.

[pandabearcat]

Uh, but what if you have no tanks or healers...?

FATEs are designed to be spontaneous, "pick up" group activities.

It should scale in some fashion sure, but requiring a party is entirely against the design of FATEs.

[Taemek]

No such thing as no tanks or healers in this game.

[Moontide]

This is about what I have been saying for a while now. The reward versus skill, effort, gear, team coordination, time and challenge is disproportionate to everything else. Thumbs-up.

Also for tank-healer thing: Right now FATEs favor instant-attack ranged classes and fast, repeatable AoE skills. It's imbalanced already. I don't think allowing healers and tanks getting some more credit for actions of their intended roles would make it any more imbalanced.

[pandabearcat]

What?

Tanks and healers get gold as easily as everyone else, or you've never seen a gladiator camping things with flash.

Aero is just as effective of a picker-upper as any ranged class, and Holy spam is ridiculous AoE if your group gets their things in order. Cleric stanced white mages are some of the best aoe dps in the game.

Anyway the point of forcing people to have tanks and healers turns FATEs into open world dungeons which is not what they were intended to do. They were supposed to be, like I said before, open world pickup groups.

Spontaneous social activity. You might think "there will always be healers and tanks" and you would be wrong even currently, when everyone is zerging. I've been in all dps FATE parties before.

What about 3 months down the line? What about when the level distribution is almost entirely 50's? There will be like 3 people doing a FATE in a given area (which is the case NOW too, if you're in one of the 20 zones that aren't the 5 designated "best FATE zones"), and forcing them to group to down the "content" is ridiculous, and forcing one or more of them to heal is as well.

[Moontide]

Aero and Flash camping isn't the intended purpose though. Right now what matters is the ability to "tag" enemies before after, after which it boils down to the ability to deal as much damage as possible in a short time so you still get credit from those enemies. Especially the latter part heavily favors DPS classes.

And out of the eight classes 25% are acceptable tanks and 25% are acceptable healers. I don't see how them being useful beyond dealing damage would be unfair, nor I see how that would be a problem regarding sudden situations where they're required fill the intended role of their class.

[pandabearcat]

Have you been in a fate party?

Esp in the zerg heavy ones, or ones with lower level people in them, healers are immensely useful, as are tanks obviously for boss fates, so you don't have some archer kiting the boss in circles making melee unable to hit it.

As people have mentioned before participation (past tagging one or two enemies) is based on hate generation, and both tanks and healers are great at it.

I have never heard of a healer in a party doing minimal damage and focusing on healing who did not get a gold when the rest of the party did.

[Moontide]

As people have mentioned before participation (past tagging one or two enemies) is based on hate generation, and both tanks and healers are great at it.

This is exclusive to FATE parties. You were talking about spontaneous social activity and those don't really count as them since they're going to be locked as soon as the places fill and they don't forum up during a sudden FATE save in a few very rare situations.

I'll and as a response to the one below also due to daily post limit:
You skirted around the spontaneous activity argument by saying that it doesn't apply to half of the classes and those should look for groups. That, and FATE groups rely on just steamrolling through most of the time. There's little need for traditional class roles once the participation is big enough. Scaling difficulty/mob levels/whatever up would make it actually feel like a proper fight. And that's a part of what Taemek was saying.

[pandabearcat]

Wait, so did you expect to sit in a corner during a fate and heal, and get gold? Which, though I am being tongue in cheek about this, DOES actually work, if you at least tag a few enemies and heal those that are engaging them.

Similarly, you can elect to tank a boss without being in a party, and unless everyone around you is a complete jerk, or there is a dearth of healers (bring your choco healer friend!), you will get healed, and you will get gold.

I think fundamentally, MMOs, and every game in this vein, is about killing enemies. Whether you're in a group or solo, nothing gets done unless the enemy dies, so hopefully we can agree on this.

That being said, because the focus of tanks and healers is NOT to do damage, but to support those that do so, they are inherently classes that benefit the most from a party, or group setting.


So EITHER, you go and join a group, because thats what your class is designed to do, and easily get gold, OR you choose the more solitary damage dealing (which any healer and any tank can also do) path, and still get gold.

I don't see the problem here.

[Taemek]

As people have mentioned before participation (past tagging one or two enemies) is based on hate generation, and both tanks and healers are great at it.

I have never heard of a healer in a party doing minimal damage and focusing on healing who did not get a gold when the rest of the party did.

Wrong.

On my WHM, all I do is Aero every single mob in a fate, I don't even have to heal or get the tag first and I get gold medals all the time.

Your contribution is as far as I am aware, based on your xp gained from killing mobs that are attached to that Fate. XP is shared no matter who has agro on the mob or what your postion is on the threat table with that NPC. This then is compounded by those who abuse the tagging system, I can essentially run around a fate, agro everything, get the tag with one aoe or as you metioned, a simple skill like Flash and hey presto, automatic win. So currently, you can do one of two things to get Gold, Tag the mob first so its locked to you (red) and purple to everyone else OR just tag everything with damage of some sort with instant based skills.

But guess what, Aero has an instant cast time, try maximizing your XP gain in a fate with 1 - 2 second cast times where mobs are dead before you get a skill off.

Healing should have a bigger contribution weight then it currently does regardless of wether you are grouped or not, if it even has one to begin with. It is why so many people die on Fates because healers just simply don't heal so they can try for Golds.