Fate grinding made the world feel more alive - why was it de-emphasized?

[TeraRamis]

Look, I know that a lot of people didn't like grinding fates, and that's a perfectly valid position - I am not here to argue with you. People are going to enjoy different things.

But, from my perspective, at least, fate grinding made the world feel more alive, even if it was occasionally a bit of a slog. Practically every zone was full of a group or two (at least during prime time), running around and killing stuff. It was just a really social, fluid way to progress to the cap - you met a lot of people, you learned a fair amount about the game world (since every fate is essentially a silly little story), and even if you weren't a part of the mob scurrying around, their presence made Eorzea feel more populated.

By contrast, my leveling has now deevolved into 6 roulettes a day. I see a lot of Prae (which I despise); I see (for some reason) a lot of Aurum Vale; I see a lot of the three Crystal Tower raids. I don't really enjoy much of any of it - it's just a chunk of about 2 hours that I have to grind through until I hit 80.

Now, maybe you really like this streamlined 'log in, do XYZ, log out' approach to leveling up. But, from my perspective, what it does is leave me with nothing to do once I am finished (and no, I am not going to solo grind fates - that's not fun). The fate grind at least was flexible enough to allow me to play and progress on an alt for as long as I wanted - not until I ran out of a short list of tasks.

I don't want fate grinding to go back to being the only route to the level cap. But I wish it would go back to being a viable alternative that people who enjoyed it could level via - especially when they were finished with roulettes. Fates, as you might recall, were originally designed to 'breathe life' into FFXIV's game world. Having people basically ignore them; having the current meta discourage them from doing fates, has really sucked a lot of the vibrance out of that world.

[Ririta]

I was one of the people that passionately argued against huge zones, flying and giving dungeons as much exp as FATEs. Anybody that played WoW knew that this would happen, the game would turn into a lobby where you just queue for things while the overworld felt dead and empty.

But oh well, people got what they wanted. The dev team is doubling down on it by making flying possible on the last bastion of overworld that's still the ARR zones. This is unfixable by now.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I leveled drg from 70 to 80 solely on fates.

You can do it if you want to.

[TeraRamis]

I leveled drg from 70 to 80 solely on fates.

You can do it if you want to.

Yes, but you probably did it almost by yourself.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yes, but you probably did it almost by yourself.

No, I had parties in each region. Just throw up a pf, you get people joining occasionally.


Most people hate fates, for whatever reason, so you won't find many sympathetic to your request.

[Vahlnir]

No, I had parties in each region. Just throw up a pf, you get people joining occasionally.


Most people hate fates, for whatever reason, so you won't find many sympathetic to your request.

I hate them, but that's mostly because I was 500% done with them before ARR's first major patch went live. They seem to love throwing them at us. That doesn't make me like them more, it makes me hate them so much more with every bit of content they attach to them.

[Amnmaat]

The decline of Fates started with Heavensward where they cut down on the number of fates per expansion. Just compare the number of fates in a realm reborn to Heavensward and you'll see why no one does them.

In La Noscea I had over 30 Fate choices. In Western coerthas it's like 10 at the most. That's the real issue, no variety since Heavensward. They also take longer/are harder without chocobos in HW, SB, Shb.
I just want to chime in and say I love Fates, but the way they did them in Heavensward and beyond is vastly inferior to what we had in A realm reborn, though still it's fun content even after realm reborn.

[StriderShinryu]

Yeah, in my experience it often ends up where there are a number of people in a zone sort of just waiting to do FATEs or are passing through for one reason or another but once you get rolling and start doing them (especially the XP Boost ones) other people start doing them along with you.

That said, I do agree that it would be nice if FATEs did reward more than they do. I barely even bother doing them unless they're XP boosted or I'm needing them for my Weekly. If they don't want to boost individual FATE XP any further for whatever reason they could at least add another tier or two to the Weekly FATE Challenge.

[Renato]

I don't care what anyone says. FATES can be utilized well and I saw this with the release of Shadowbringers. I loved logging on and roaming around, grouping with others to take out a target. I'm not sure if FATES were as interesting in SB and HW because I didn't pay attention to them as much back then. But I really enjoy the little stories told through them. Some of them even chain into other FATES if you keep following them. But once people outleveled the area, you could hardly find groups for FATES. The addition of gems helped because people farmed them for rewards but they don't get updated at all so people stop doing them.

I also miss the huge world boss FATES. Fighting Odin and Behemoth back when they were relevant were really cool experiences.

Honestly, I feel like if the devs stopped using them as just ways to level people would do them more. For example instead of just having a prerequisite to cause one to pop, how about having it pop when you discover a certain location on the map.There a lot of cool sights around Eorzea with nothing in them. Give players a reason to explore. Maybe have some NPCs that spawn on the map that mention that the monster is around. I've been saying for the longest time that there should be a footprint system for FATEs/hunts that indicate if one is around. The size of the print signifying the rank or difficulty of the FATE/Hunt.

What if there were rare spawns by monsters from the void that if when defeated, they open a portal that adventures can jump into to explore. It'd be an experience similar to PoD or Treasure Map dungeons. If finished, you could get exclusive weapons, armor and mounts.

I do agree that they make the world feel more alive though and I feel like they should be utilized more somehow.

[Enla]

No, I had parties in each region. Just throw up a pf, you get people joining occasionally.


Most people hate fates, for whatever reason, so you won't find many sympathetic to your request.

Honestly I'd like them a bit more if they were like the dynamic events from GW2. It was kinda nice being able to pick and chose what I wanted to do for each event as opposed to almost always being tasked with killing something like the FATES in this game tend to lean towards. It helps make the grind a lot more bearable when you have options.

That said ShB was probably the most fun I've ever had with FATES as like you said you simply just kick up a party finder and most people are willing to jump in on it for the bi-colored gemstone grind. The ability to fly, while absolutely having killed a lot of the FATE community, also made getting from one to another a lot less tedious as well. I still have the FATE routes for Northern Than and Coerthas memorized from ARR because if you wanted to get from 30-50 they were bar none the fastest way back then and navigating those zones is just absolutely dreadful.

If they want FATES to matter again they really need to double down on the bi-colored gemstone trade ins. Make them more worthwhile beyond crafting and add a level of degradation to them to keep people coming back after they hit max. Likewise they frankly need to go back to how things used to be and make FATES actually the fastest way to level again. Right now the rewards for the time investment and sheer monotony just simply aren't worth it.