What the heck happened?

[Guilty_King]

I remember back when ARR released and people swarmed to fates. It was so much fun getting into groups right away. Leveling a DPS was easy without waiting 30 minutes for a question to pop.

Now that I've come back, I don't think I will ever level a dps because it would take way to long. There are fate groups few and far between. It's sad because I would love to play some dps classes, but the leveling process in this game is a real ball buster.

[Velox]

The reason people swarmed FATEs was because FATEs provided the most efficient means of gaining EXP. Since then, SE has added various bonuses to dungeons, such as buffed experience from enemies and the low level roulette, and made leveling in dungeons equally viable. Now instead of 90% of the population doing FATEs and 10% doing dungeons, you have a more 50/50 distribution. "But Velox, why are my DPS queues so bad?" DPS queues will always be bad, and have always been bad in MMORPGs becuase the vast majority of any game's population wants to play DPS style classes. In fact, when people were zerging FATEs for exp, DPS queues were much worse for dungeons, sometimes going on 50-60 minutes. 20-30min queue times are much better than what they were, and sometimes can even be lower for certain dungeons (WoD has tank queues at 18-20min while melee DPS usually wait no longer than 7min).

[ChameleonMS]

What happened on Goblin, see my post here.

As for levelling DPS; with the Challenge Log, Roulettes, Hests, Levequests, Dungeon XP; you can still very easily get through the levels.

[Adrasteia]

You can blast through most of 1-25 in a day or so of playtime. Past that point, LLDR will net you about a level per day, if you only do that, and nothing else. 26-27 days to get to level 50 ain't that bad.

[seekified]

You're saying you enjoyed doing 40-50 at the Ceruleum Plant? I did it because it was the only efficient way of leveling back then, not because it was fun or otherwise rewarding. Had a few fun and social FATE groups, sure, but still.

The work they've done with increasing the rewards in DF may well be one of the best changes to the game ever.

[StrejdaTom]

I have leveled most of my classes in 2015 but I can definitely tell you what happened.
Most people I know already have everything on 50. The game was out for nearly 2 years so many people just have done everything and have no need to do FATEs again.
In my opinion FATE leveling is still the best way to level up.

[StouterTaru]

Oh the nostalgia, FATEs that lasted under 60 seconds from the time they popped, using Scathe as BLM because every mob except bosses died in under two seconds from pop, mobs not loading because 100 people were swarmed around them.

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

Don't worry the swarm will be returning soon. At least at lvl30+

[seekified]

Don't worry the swarm will be returning soon. At least at lvl30+

The amount of people running Haukke NM and Brayflox HM is going to be insane as well.

I still think that dungeon runs with boiling eggs is the number one way to level tanks and healers because of instaqueues. For my SCH I switched to Ceruleum Plant fating at 48 because Dark Devices still seemed like a better idea than Aurum Vale.

[Voltron_HD]

Aurum Vale sucks something aweful. cant wait until no level sync happens, so I can steam roll that place a few times to exact some revenge on that hell hole.

But yea, Daily roulette and que for dungeons. while you wait for the dungeon to pop, do leve quests. Im getting about 2 levels in about 2 hours of play time. not bad.