Conclusion: We really like FATES, but lie to ourselves.

[EirolOcarrol]

To be honest, I feel like 99% of the issue I have with FATEs is that they've been presented as an exhaustive answer to all opportunities open world.

It feels kind of like "You got your circle with waves of braindead mobs or a HP-overladen striking dummy with the occasional AoE, so be happy about it and don't ask for anything further!"

If the devs had shown any intention to improve upon or add to open world systems, I'd still consider FATEs disappointing, but I wouldn't look on them outright negatively.

I love open world content when it's done well. FATEs, though, are not well done. They're barebone and lack even any sense of isolation or cohesion (you just do them while waiting on other things for the most part, or else screw over any solo levelers by consequence of your FATE train party whom they'll either never see because you're operating on a completely different side of the zone or will hardly be able to compete against unless on tank classes or pre-tagging everything). That FATEs are all we get, and all we're likely ever to get (and in the same form we've always had them), feels like a slap to the face.

They could defnitely do more and better with them. And some FATEs are a lot more interesting than others. Defending the Golden Bazaar from Amal'jaa and the Forgotten Springs from Sandworms wowed me when I first experienced them. And others have unique ideas they play into. Such was when they chain multiple FATEs together. Dark Devices in Norther Thanalan was fun and interesting.

A lot of them though are just "fight this enemy that's been giving people trouble". Or "collect me a lot of items". Which basically makes them a fetch-quest.


So it is more than just the rewards that need work. The activities themselves also need work. There needs to be more variety in the type of things you do in FATEs. The fact when I made it to Shadowbringers, and one of the first FATEs I participated in was just fighting a bunch of Gremlins showed that they hadn't really evolved the system. And it was the same kind of content still.

While it may be a stretch, I think it would be nice for a future expansion to been something of an expedition. Like Eureka, but where players can build their own settlements and camps that are player run. Where players can build and defend areas, like a game of Tower Defense. And players move out to build resources. Where camps can recruit Free Companies, or have Free Company owned camps. Can add housing items to their camps and customize them with the same system as the housing system. And can recruit randomly generated NPCs that work similar to Adventurer Squadrons. Where, like Eureka, areas are full of dangerous monsters, and exploring out is dangerous, but necessary to provide for camps, and finish the expedition and see the whole continent or area.

Perhaps the New World could work like that, someday?

That's one of my sort of "dream open world content" that I would like to see added. Though I fear it may be a pipe dream to hope for.

[Shurrikhan]

That's one of my sort of "dream open world content" that I would like to see added. Though I fear it may be a pipe dream to hope for.

I worked up a "Living World" (before I even knew of GW2's patches by the same name) update idea for 1.x back in the day, among which that was a part (and, honestly, what I'd hoped would take the place of Housing with time, as I wanted people to be out in the world more, and more connected, rather than... less). Your idea especially reminds me of, say, Turning Leaf in 1.x, where you'd have sort of hiker groups that had just finished sneaking past the Lv. 99 Treants and now provided search and rescue, of sorts, for those less fortunate, but building so much further on all the means that made all that was great about that little piece of emergent gameplay.

The "Living World" thread was... pretty long, to say the least, but everything in it would still apply today. The only part of it the game's even scratched the surface of yet was the FATE chains introduced in ARR. I can't find it in the archives, so I may have to rewrite it, though.

Highlights:

• Map-wide mechanics and events (encompassing FATEs and FATE chains, but among far more and with more cohesion)
• More advanced mob and herd behaviors.
• More Journal involvement than just Quests, allowing for the collecting of lore and interaction with psuedoquests (easter egg or hidden quests, so to speak, that don't take on a discrete entry until you've notably progressed them, and no official quest-like entry until their completion)
• Hunt systems (more akin to MH:O, rather than what we later got, with more lore interaction and generally as longer, more involved unofficial pseudoquest chains)
• Greater interaction opportunities with existing developments (e.g. working with the Marauders, Yellow Jackets, Bronze Shields, Wailers, the Ul'duhn cavalry scouts, on a map-specific and cross-map basis)
• Greater economic interactions possible, especially in furnishing the above merged with what became special deliveries, rather than such being limited specifically to leves.
• The development of sparser fringe zones in areas that have less excuse for randomization (no moving trees, no sandstorms, etc.).
• Frontiers system, as briefly mentioned here.
• Outbasing (building and development of depots, posts, bases, training grounds, and the like, in the open world or across Frontiers), using the cross-seeding tech from the Frontiers system.
• Largescale scaling PvE content in the open world in the vein of actual warfare (whereupon previously semi-randomized or -instanced areas would collapse to a single seed, where all interact with each other to meet the threat head-on).
• Broader NPC reputations systems (without any gameified metrics) allowing for further interaction therewith, including in the manner of Squadrons, Special Deliveries, Wonderous Tails (minus the added content-rewards system) and Trusts -- able to fit alongside either, but probably with both placed under this broader mechanical manner.
• Ship-building and usage. Would later include submarines. Pirates, beastkin, trawling, deep sea fishing, and underwater salvage all included, of course.
• Interactable airship building and in-person usage, rather than via a mission board. Sky Pirates and potentially Garlean forces and air-based supply lines included, of course.