Dear SE. Understand that FATEs are not fun!

[Lunavi]

so next time a customer complains to a CS rep, the CS rep should ask the customer to give a solution?
so next time your boss bans your idea, and you ask him/her to give you a solution?

Also at OPs use of "end end-game". Funny how this genre has made end-game become start game and end end-game is true end-game. So what is end-game?

With end-end game gear I mean the gear that drops from the "final" available boss that currently will have no use other than show everyone how awesome you are (the iLvl 115 Allagan weapons) and to give you a headstart for next content. End game gear I consider gear you use to tackle the endgame. And for that I do not for a second doubt that the relicsomething will be the thing to go to at one point or another which means you will need to keep relic up to date to not be overwhelmed when new relic that is good comes around.

[Roserei]

If I understand correctly, the real complaint here is that FATEs have been tied to Atmas. If you're just playing normally on a pre-50 character, I don't think there's anything wrong with them. They can be a fun way to gain extra exp, there are varied goals to suit different people, and there's a nice sense of community sometimes, when a bunch of random players arrive and all start working together. I'd be sad to see them go.

[i2agnarok]

so next time a customer complains to a CS rep, the CS rep should ask the customer to give a solution?
so next time your boss bans your idea, and you ask him/her to give you a solution?

Your first two questions are two different situations and make no sense together.

1) If a customer complains about something, its because they are unhappy with the way it functions. The product is already released and is in the consumer's hand. If a customer tells me "I hate your website because I can't find anything," if they are genuinely looking to provide feedback and get something fixed, the correct thing to do is ask something along the lines of "we value your feedback; where would you be expecting to see x item, or what would make it better to you." Otherwise, the customer is complaining; we know they don't like it, but don't know why. That's why you shift things around, then customers complain because they changed things and the original problem is either worse or has the added annoyance of having to learn it all over again. This is why companies with high Net Promoter scores have them.

2) If your boss bans your idea, its not getting the green light. He will tell you why your idea was banned. You go back to work. You have feedback on why your idea doesn't fly. You have the feedback that gornotck is asking for in the first place.

I'm under the impression that you don't actually work a CS position where feedback actually matters or are able to contribute, as this is fairly standard practice for companies that do.

Do you know what you do when something isn't working and you have absolutely no idea why? You tweak things until you can figure out why. In some cases you cause other things to not function as well. This is why you have Atma in the first place. If a customer is going to whine, the less information they give, the less likely they are to get the expected result. Whining helps about as much as saying "my car's broke," and that's it.

If I understand correctly, the real complaint here is that FATEs have been tied to Atmas. If you're just playing normally on a pre-50 character, I don't think there's anything wrong with them. They can be a fun way to gain extra exp, there are varied goals to suit different people, and there's a nice sense of community sometimes, when a bunch of random players arrive and all start working together. I'd be sad to see them go.

I'd venture to say that the Atmas are tied with FATEs. I'd say the problem is that you're doing a low level FATE that requires you to sync, for an item with an extremely low drop rate, and are getting absolutely nothing for the time invested. If you're doing anything else in the endgame, whether it be going through Coil for gear, doing dailies, etc, you receive something else, a minor compensation to not make it seem like you're not completely wasting your time. Also, keep in mind that you lose all of your abilities, and because you have a level-sync, you can literally spam the skills you actually have access to, not bother dodging most things, and still be fine. They are completely uninteresting. If the FATEs were brand new, level 50 FATEs, there would still be complaints, but probably nowhere near as many.

The problem isn't the FATE system itself, but the way the Atma questline is implemented into them.

[Ferth]

...The problem isn't the FATE system itself, but the way the Atma questline is implemented into them.

Yes, and no. You are correct, though. Being forced to do low level FATEs as a level 50 where the only rewards you are likely to get is a paltry sum of gil and gc seals is poor design. They could alter the atma quest in one of two ways from there and it would atleast seem less... lazy? They could allow people to farm atma with non-50s, which would allow people who don't have every class at 50 a means of leveling alternate classes as well, or, as you say they could have created new FATES that pertained specifically to atmas.

But to say that the FATE system is fine as it is... I don't agree with that. If their only purpose is to supplement exp from leves, quests and dungeons then yeah, they are fine. They are basically grab bag experience and there's nothing wrong with that, per se. But the system really bears no weight in the game world. And really, that's a complaint I have about numerous aspects of this game... It really lacks a lot of depth. I'd much rather see FATEs altering the world around them to some degree, providing players with a sense that their participation can actually make differences, that they are more than npc errand boys and that mobs are more than exp pinatas.

When the game launched I was willing to forgive some of the shallowness, figuring that the time constraints paired with having to work with a lot of pre-existing ideas carried over from 1.0 meant that they wanted to get the bones for the game in place and then they'd flesh it out after the fact... but after 6 months of seeing them add more bones and very little flesh I'm beginning to think it won't happen. They have a very pretty game... if they want it to last ten years though, they need to add some depth, to give it some personality.

[Velox]

I ♥ FATEs

/10char

[L-D-Omlette]

For open world content I would prefer strong trash groups with a powerful "leader" NM.

Funny, that is EXACTLY how several fates are designed.

DD in Northern Than, bunch of trash, then boss FATE. Bridge series in East Than, same thing, with TWO bosses, I know it's crazy...

[i2agnarok]

Funny, that is EXACTLY how several fates are designed.

DD in Northern Than, bunch of trash, then boss FATE. Bridge series in East Than, same thing, with TWO bosses, I know it's crazy...

To my understanding, the people who want this particular sort of setup are complaining about the ease of said Fates. I believe the framework is there, but the execution is what bothers the people asking for this stuff. Also, the person you're replying to stated "strong" trash groups, which the enemies in Fates are anything but. If Fates had rewards other than XP, which is another source of complaint for people wanting open world content, less complaints would happen. Look at "The Four Winds" Fate; it is probably designed more like what people are asking for, but its something you only do in specific scenarios, otherwise everyone avoids it completely.

Regarding Ferth, I probably should have chosen my words a bit more carefully; I don't care for the Fate system itself, for similar reasons as you, but I was just letting the person that I was responding to know that the direct thing that people are complaining about is less that we're being forced to do Fates themselves, but more that we're being synced to the baby ones and zerging them endlessly.

[Maero]

Fates are fine to some extent but having them for the seasonal events and now for atmas is in fact poor design. New content or quests in each patch always seem to have fates in it, i mean really.
Maybe they needed a reason to have more people go do fates again, dunno.
A better option like someone mentioned is add more content like dungeons or maybe have the drops for atma in EX Primals. I think the majority of some complaints that stem from fates is some players simply use fates to lvl up either alternative classes or what not and do not actually learn the class properly. Not to say that all players are bad that do so

[i2agnarok]

Fates are fine to some extent but having them for the seasonal events and now for atmas is in fact poor design. New content or quests in each patch always seem to have fates in it, i mean really.
Maybe they needed a reason to have more people go do fates again, dunno.
A better option like someone mentioned is add more content like dungeons or maybe have the drops for atma in EX Primals. I think the majority of some complaints that stem from fates is some players simply use fates to lvl up either alternative classes or what not and do not actually learn the class properly. Not to say that all players are bad that do so

Again, I'm not against moderately challenging for this stuff, but the direction they took for the Relic is for it to be placed with less difficult content.
They took "less difficult" and ran with it about as far as one could possibly get, but that's not the point.
EX Primals are already tied to a weapon (though your mileage may vary on how useful it is).
It would have been better to make new content altogether.
Even if they were new lvl 50 Fates, they would have been infinitely better than what we currently have.
Again, mileage may vary about the drop rate, but that isn't the point.
Also, I see no reason NOT to do seasonal stuff with Fates, honestly.

[D_C]

Don't fool yerselves into thinkin' FATEs were tied to Atma just outta laziness.

There're two great ideas tied into it;
1) Get more people doing FATEs, especially low level ones
-If ya noticed, there was a serious drop off of this once they buffed dungeon and leve experience, as well as once the first big rush to 50 wore off.
2) Get more people into the World
-Good for business, arguably so for the players. New players will see the world as more populated. Standin' around the Toll queuein' for shite isn't all you want veteran players to see of the world, either.

Atma quests accomplish that, but the problem is how the implementation makes it feel like a slog. Ya don't get anything outta a fate but a roll on the RNG wheel. I mean that in both ways - a paltry sum of coin an' seals is your physical reward, the satisfaction of DoTtin' or AoEin' enough mobs in a clusterfuck is yer mental reward. Whoop.


If it were up to me, FATEs would give a scalin' reward based on yer level. Make the coin and seal rewards equal to a level 50 fate if yer level 50. Throw in somethin' small like a few Myth tomes too. About 4 or 5 would work, considerin' how fast you can do 'em, but also that you can get 50 in under 10 minutes in Brayflox. Then ya wouldn't feel so bad doin' 'em, and might even stop to do some if ya weren't on the ATMA quests.

Additionally, makin' the EX Primal Weekly able to get you an ATMA would've added an alternate advancement route to progress on with no RNG, while still enticin' players to do the FATEs to make it "faster".