I thought the OP's post had a great idea for them to implement though: increase the drop rate after a certain amount of fail. It'd still involve luck, it'd still involve pointless FATE grinding, but at least after some great amount of time there'd be PROGRESS towards something.

But the other thing that bugs me about the commentors here: the ATMA is essential! Yes, you can go do your Levi weapons and all that, but the Zenith is ONGOING, meaning if you don't get the ATMA/ANIMUS now, you'll be further left behind with future patches, and who knows what the weapons will be like in the future patches, so saying people should forgo an important questline is idiotic. And when all is said and done its a moot point anyways as its just a bad game mechanic. I'm all for including FATE's into the design of it, but there were countless ways to make the system more fun than what it is. This is a game afterall, we're supposed to be doing things that are fun, not mindlessly counting down the hours.