Fates are a cheap alternative to the party grind. Fast xp and levels. Problem is, people don't learn how to play in a party environment. You see threads with "omg this 42 tank in copperbell didn't know anything, how do you get that far and not know how to play your job?" Easy, because SE designed that you could easily xp up on fates. There should be more real world non instanced partying in this game. This game needs the dunes. People complained about it, but generally they knew how hate management worked and what to do when playing with other people. Get rid of fates and force people to party. Sure they'll complain, but they'll be better players for it.


The party schema needs to change too. You have 2 tanking jobs and one healing job out the door, plus 5 dd jobs. 6 man would be a much better ratio, with tank, healer, 4 dd or 3 dd and a support. It's like they are concentrating on making this game "raid ready" and "pvp ready" without ANY consideration for what you do before that.

Sure everyone runs through a story line, but everything is so guided that you couldn't screw it up if you tried. My 9 and 10 year old daughters play the game with ease, and do all the quests. The game needs to teach players how to play the game. Do each dungeon once, you can be fighting ifrit having only played with other people 3 times for roughly an hour each. That's not enough to learn how to play well.


tl;dr 6man parties instead of fates will fix a lot of problems.