Dynamic FATE Difficulty - Is There a Better Way?

[Jpec07]

Right now, FATE difficulty is determined based upon the number of individuals who participated in the FATE the last time it was up, within a certain range. While this is good when there are consistent numbers of people grinding FATEs in a given zone, there are times when those numbers tend to fluctuate, which can lead to some poor experiences. There are two immediately that come to mind:

1. Sudden Influx of People - FATE is Already Over
   If a zone has been empty of people for a while, and a bunch of people (say half a dozen) come in, they will mow down FATE mobs and bosses before most people can get a hit in. Especially if there is a large influx, there isn't enough time for even the people who started a given FATE to generate enough enmity to get anything more than a silver.
2. Sudden Outflux of People - FATEs Unbeatable
   Contrary wise, if a group of people suddenly leaves a zone where they have been farming FATEs, those FATEs' difficulty will be tuned to the former amount of people. The problem here is that the few people who are left will have no way of completing these FATEs within a reasonable amount of time, if at all. Worse still, the FATEs often have to run their full timers before de-spawning and resetting, which means at least 15 minutes, and at most, half an hour.

Multiple times in grinding FATEs for certain items (Atma, Yokai, Crystals), I have encountered at least one of these situations; often, I've experienced them back to back (a FATE party comes in, rapidly kills all of the available FATEs, and leaves, making them unbeatable when next they spawn).

I don't know that I have an answer, but I can't help but feel there must be a better way to calculate the difficulty modifier of a given FATE. I would greatly appreciate the dev team taking a cycle or two to think about this, and iterate on the great system that they've created.

[ChameleonMS]

The game already tracks the players which are involved in FATE (assigning rewards at the end). These same metrics could be used to adjust the FATE difficulty at set time intervals during the FATEs existence.
For mob type FATEs, after the interval adjustment, the HP of new spawns would reflect the new difficulty.
For boss type FATEs, an actual change to bosses HP would have be performed mid stream.
For delivery FATEs, is this ever an issue? Those always seem to be about 20ish items and done.

[Jpec07]

The game already tracks the players which are involved in FATE (assigning rewards at the end). These same metrics could be used to adjust the FATE difficulty at set time intervals during the FATEs existence.
For mob type FATEs, after the interval adjustment, the HP of new spawns would reflect the new difficulty.
For boss type FATEs, an actual change to bosses HP would have be performed mid stream.
For delivery FATEs, is this ever an issue? Those always seem to be about 20ish items and done.

Agreed. There could be a spell during the FATE progression called "Twist of Fate" that performs this adjustment on all mobs (say every 5 seconds or so):

• If more people show up than expected, buff enemies' resistance and Def/MDef stats, and maybe even hit them with a HoT. Would also increase respawn amounts, enemy kill requirements, and enemy difficulty.
• If less people show up than expected or people leave, then debuff enemies' resistance and Def/MDef stats (but no bleeds). Would also decrease respawn amounts, enemy kill requirements, and enemy difficulty.

Obviously this would need to be tuned, but it would be a good way to perform a real-time adjustment to the difficulty of a FATE to accommodate its current participant count.