I agree with the above couple posters. FATES are fine when they are just a means to supplement exp. But they seem to want FATES to be the main open world attraction, and they tack it onto everything. I think its safe to say that most of us don't want them as requirements for important things like relic upgrades. Unless they improved them like some above posters have mentioned and actually made them more meaningful and have tangible effects. If you agree that FATES should not have such a prominent role in the open world, you can give my question at the end of page 2 of the Questions for the Live Letter (General) thread a like. Not that they'll address it. Its fairly obvious that the reason FATES are so relied upon for open world content from a developers standpoint is that it is probably extremely easy to develop and implement on a mass scale. It really does just come down to lazy and/or financially cheap design.