It is nice that they are increasing participation with lower leveled players however, as someone who has recently got their atma weapon I don't imagine myself doing the fates ever again. I'm sticking with one and if the drop rates do go up in a later point in time when the atma quest line becomes outdated...I may still end up ignoring it. Also what's going to happen when most of the community get's all these upgrades, unless they force us to grind them again in a future update fates could just as easily go dead again.
I have an fc member who spent 20 hours to get their second atma, for me it took around the same time in total to get all twelve. Just the other day I had my final two atma drop within the same hour of each other. I logged on did the first fate I saw and immediately got the crab atma(note I also got my very first atma on the first fate which was required for another quest line). Went to the next area did like 5 fates and got Lion as the final piece.
I get that the entire new quest line to get the highest upgrade is supposed to 'stall' us until next patch. However members of my fc who have started on their books had to get help from fc members in order to complete fates because not many people have gotten past the atma grinding section. The issue became clear when we had to go to coerthas to do a fate there which not many people were around to do because...guess what? They were all atma grinding still and the fate I had to help out with was clearly meant to be done by a decently sized party or group of people as the 4 bosses were tanky as hell and used stone skin as if it was designed to deliberately stall you out so you run out of time and fail the fate.
There is absolutely no sense of progression with atma grinding as it is nothing more than a slot machine that determines who gets their atma and who doesn't. They want to make it a grind? That is fine, they can incorporate fates into the quest line but there has to be some sense of reward or progression with each fate completed. They could've just made a quota of fates to complete for each atma, if they really needed to stretch it out they could have put a limit as to how many you could collect in a time frame. Sure people would still be upset over it but at least they know what to expect, and actually feel like they are 'working' towards their atma weapon.