Fate Grinding & Poor Game Design

[baijiazi]

if you can't get to a town due to it being taken over?

Not to mention people rarely let FATEs fail so your idea for failure would probably never see the light of day.

How about another fate for an NM to spawn in aleport for people to clear.... once killed aleport is taken back and it goes see-saw direction....

It could be happen on the other side as well as Maelstroms success in culling the other side of fates will pop a HNM in the spawning grounds.

To me, the current fates are just boring with nothing to really play for... if not for farming atmas and clearing books, I wont even touch it.

I was thinking of some things like specialize nodes for gathers only if the maps hit a certain criteria, like what I say above , killing the HNM will allow players access to the nodes before weekly reset.

Suggesting these are just making it more worth the time people actually do them, make it more engaging for players to feel they actually belong there.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Well the problem here is wouldn't be "balanced" in a sense. Sure, some areas would have high activity no matter what, but other areas may not be so lucky, so if an area were to get taken over by monsters and said area isn't a major stopping point, most people probably wouldn't care or would just teleport to another town near the closed off one to get by. Hell, most of the FATEs are see saw anyway; "good job! you prevented the kobolds from storming into the town! But oh noes! They're back again after you just defeated them! Think you can help us again?" The other problem is constant changes to a town's status could cause some strain on the severs or other issues, but that's just my guess; outside of battles, the game needs constants and not variables to keep things smooth.


Not to mention 99% of the players would probably ignore the "story" aspects behind the whole thing since they're only looking to events that reward them in EXP, gil, and items.

[Woggers]

I like the idea of beast man taking over certain places if the fate isn't completed. But like stated above the unpopulated areas would suffer because players would have no reason to go there. Now if they made the fate very rare, such as an Odin or Behemoth this would work out nicely. Randomly have 1 FATE spawn in La Noscea/Thanalan/Shroud. I think this would be really cool.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Another issue with the idea I just realized is having towns "closed" off or whatever would break every single quest that requires the player to visit a town or city. You'd throw a huge brick wall to everyone and that would not go down quietly. It would be worse than what the Atmas are doing now.

[Ultimatecalibur]

There are a few FATE series that do as you ask, baijiazi.

South Shroud: (Breaching/Defending) and (Keeping/Clearing) The Hive. (level 32) NW of Quarrymill. Successfully completed, the series allows you access the interior of The Hive and a merchant who sells the Baby Raptor minion. (The pond inside is a fishing hole with East Hathoeva River fish. Would be nice if it had different/exclusive fish.)

Eastern Thanalan: Attack on Highbridge (Prelude, Act I, Act II, Act III) (level 26) Success/Failure of the series determines what the Highbridge merchant has for sale (which includes the Tiny Rat minion) and the number of NPCs in the area. Failure leads to missing NPCs until Attack on Highbridge: Denouement has been successfully completed.

[baijiazi]

Yeah I do know them, however I do wish to see more on the beastman maps...
so as to give a feeling that we are actually "At war" with them.

Overtaking aleport for example could prompt GC to issue quest in the respective city( an NPC will pop?) with better seals / rewards to players.
But I do get the point it will cause inconvenience to lower lvl players... the retake could be scaled towards to their lvl as well...

The other end would be the HNM (if the bosses are at a level of odin / behe ) if being cornered will drop some exclusive stuff as well...

I see this idea more towards to hamlets in 1.23, gathers and crafters could help to supply the needed items to npcs near these bases
so they would spawn stronger npcs to fight as well.

just my 2 cents on fate design...

[MilesSaintboroguh]

The retake, even if it's level scaled, is still going to block lower level players from finishing their quest and it will turn them away from the game. The game would basically be telling them "Sorry folks, you can't progress in your quests until you solve this problem first!" And then repeat that for every single time an area gets taken over. It's just not going to work.


FATEs are fine as is. Square just needs to stop using them every time they come up with new content.