FATE is no fun at all, especially if you build content upon it.

[TheUltimate3]

People would then complain that they have to farm items to get FATEs to drop.

Also they would have to change the name because it certainly wouldn't be a Full Active Time Event.

Moving on...

Seeing how people seem to really hate FATEs, but their purpose was to make things actually happen in the world-

"THEN WHY THE ($*@ DON'T JUST ADD NM AND HNM YOU STUPID MUTH-"

Whoa there. Calm down. They wouldn't do much with actually making things happen in the world because they would spawn, then they would die, and the "active things" happening in the world would be people standing around X Y or Z and waiting for them to show up.

"THEN WHY NOT A POP-ABLE ITEM YOU DUMBA-"

Seriously, calm down. A pop item would be fine. More power to it. Hell they have that in game now I can't for the life of me understand why they don't use it more, unless of course Japan really really loves FATEs.

Moving on...

In short, FATEs exist because they wanted things to be happening in the world in real time, with events that come up and players can fight together without having to form a party. Something quick and easy and gets the job done. For this purpose, and despite people saying they hate hate hate them, they continue to see use. Should they stop using them for seasonal events and the like? Probably. But it is their method of getting people to play together, and they can't risk putting it in a trial or something and having DPS sitting out missing the event for hours at a time because lawl.

[Prototype909]

In short, FATEs exist because they wanted things to be happening in the world in real time, with events that come up and players can fight together without having to form a party. Something quick and easy and gets the job done. For this purpose, and despite people saying they hate hate hate them, they continue to see use. Should they stop using them for seasonal events and the like? Probably. But it is their method of getting people to play together, and they can't risk putting it in a trial or something and having DPS sitting out missing the event for hours at a time because lawl.

FATEs are like the bare minimum for content people can do which could be classified as "playing together".

It's less playing together and more playing solo among a horde of other solo players with whom you have no interaction beyond contributing damage together.

[TheUltimate3]

FATEs are like the bare minimum for content people can do which could be classified as "playing together".

It's less playing together and more playing solo among a horde of other solo players with whom you have no interaction beyond contributing damage together.

Of course it is. That was the point. It was meant to be "show up with other people, do quick, go separate ways". It was not meant to be actual group content like you would expect from dungeons and the like. And like I said, to that they served their purpose.

And on a personal note, I love the "no interaction" thing because groups are silent because they expect everyone else to be silent. I poke and prod and banter until I get neat conversations started. Who knows, maybe I'm just a social butterfly. Or maybe I know the true horrors of sitting in EQ exp camps where the only form of communication was the /tell for invites followed by 2+ hours of pure silence and work damn hard to not subject myself to that again.

[Prototype909]

In terms of seasonal events I honestly prefer just having solo quest chains that are totally divorced from FATEs like Little Ladies Day or the Easter Event (Thus far) compared to the Swimwear/Christmas events. Were those still pretty minimal? Yes, but at least they had some storyline associated with them beyond the initial exposition you get offered in most of the FATE based ones.

[Vaara]

It's a shame because I don't think FATEs would be that bad if they scaled well. As it stands, you either have them too weak for the zerg that's doing them, or too strong for someone to solo (e.g some of the crystal tower fates that no one does any more).