StQ field notes

[fulminating]

The field note drop rates and available windows for them to drop are pretty miserable. Waiting around for an hour killing rearguards trying to make sure the hypertuned havoc chain can spawn as soon as possible is not particularly fun or rewarding when rise of the supersoldiers yet again doesn't drop the note - or waiting around lunya's stand for help wanted and of fire and steel. Nor is entering the instances with the sole intention of running Castrum Lacus Litore or the Dalriada only to see it already underway. Bad RNG is not new to me - I have the big fish title - however with fishing there's few fish where you have to put in so much time babysitting the game.

There are several ways this could be addressed:
1. Severe reduction and/or removal of cooldowns and mob requirements on rare fate spawns. This would have a knock-on effect of making the duels come up more regularly, but as to whether or not that is a bad thing is another matter.

2. Increasing the minimum drop rate of notes to 20%. I don't know what it currently is, but it certainly feels less than that. Since the instances are also used for leveling, I don't think it would completely kill the zones, but I don't have data for that.

3. Implementing an RNG protection scheme similar to the weapon/mount totems from extreme trials. If all notes could be purchased from the historian after completion of the relevant skirmish for an arbitrary amount of coins (200 bozjan coins/rarity tier for example) then it would be an alternative for the 50 for absent friends with no note drop issue. Having them purchasable without doing the relevant fight doesn't sound correct so there might need to be some limit similar to the arr minion vendors that only show up after beating the fate chains (attack on highbridge etc)

d. Making CLL and Dal separately queueable. and maybe giving the tunnel borer echo so it's in with half a chance on extremely small party runs. This would probably require the most dev attention to implement and might be futile.

[EnderRyu]

I know this is old content and the devs would likely prefer working on something else. They may even need to work on newer things, part of my love for the game is the love and detail they put in across the whole thing.
That being said I'm not sure if it may be a cultural difference that they might find this kind of thing enjoyable. For me it just honestly makes my depression worse some days. One of the heartless responses I hear is "Lol just learn to do the dual." when I ask people to farm for clusters or something elsewhere. I have been in the zone for a hour killing mobs to spawn the one fate. I can't even do the dual if the mission beforehand won't pop (For Absent Friends in this case, which leads to Of Steel and Flame). The truth is some of us don't have quite that level of skill or maybe have other difficulties that prevent us from winning a dual as well.
Trying to get the dual field notes from the fates just feels like an exercise in futility however. Last night I was with a person that has been doing nothing but trying to get "For Absent Friends" to spawn and do "Of Steel and Flame." We will sit there for hours, ignoring other content and players because we are afraid of missing the time it spawns. It is crushing to do all that work and get nothing from it.
Now I understand part of this was to keep people in the zone after they finished stuff, but honestly some people will get the things they want to do done and never return to the zone. Devs or anyone in the square-enix team if you see this please just do a quick search for Field Notes in google and read what the players are saying, please see that this content needs some updating to reflect the change in player count.