Make FATEs more challenging

[Faelim]

Often, I'm seeing everyone asking for FATE rewards to be reduced, or for dungeon rewards to be made better, etc. etc.

That isn't what this post is for.

What I'd like to see is for FATEs to become more difficult -- something worthy of the reward they produce and not a mind-numbing spam of AOE.

Give FATE swarms more health, more damage output, more variety of abilities (stuns, silences, slows). Make some FATE swarms a mixture of high DEF enemies, as well as high MDEF enemies to make them less susceptible to AOE spam. Make it a requirement to split a mob of FATE enemies into manageable groups instead of cattle-herding them into one massive group to be AOE'd down. Make FATE swarms scale by strength, not by number: 5 very powerful creatures require better tactics to deal with than 20 very weak base creatures.

Make boss FATEs more than just tank and spanks. Give them world boss-like qualities (scaled in difficulty appropriate to their location in the game). Make them hit harder, and use scarier abilities. Make them aggro wipe, so they require more than one tank, and give them terrifying ranged skills making them unable to be kited.

Make them something challenging, where people must measure risk vs reward when they form FATE parties. Let it reward people for cohesion and working as a team, instead of "zerging" things to death. Make the FATEs likely to last longer than the first 2-minutes of their spawn timer (but with a well organized and cohesive group, a FATE can still be dispatched quickly).

The impact of a change will be realized quickly, when mindless or sloppy gameplay leads to FATE parties being steamrolled by more powerful enemies. It'll force the players to either adapt and play smarter, or move on to alternative avenues of growth (quests/dungeons).

I have nothing against FATEs directly, I love the concept. I just feel that, in their current iteration, they're not as epic, intense, or nearly as fun as the first couple of times I walked into a FATE circle.