Leveling anything other than my main class is turning into a massive grind of FATE-chasing. I see crowds of people inside some towns just sitting on their mounts waiting for the next FATE to appear. I can't blame them, either, because it just isn't worth your time to do anything other than FATEs to level your sub-classes.
Why?
- Guild leves and Guildhests are only worth running once, because of the bonus experience and gil you get when you run them for the first time. After that, the reward-to-time invested ratio drops dramatically.
- Dungeons are fun and, if you're a tank or healer, you can pretty much grind your way to max level running dungeons if you want to. If you're a DPS, however, it's a whole other story. Queues for DPS classes can last anywhere from 20 -90 minutes, depending on the level of dungeon. Nobody runs them because they just aren't worth it, especially for alts. The experience isn't all that bad, but the gil and chest rewards are pathetic. Six tin pieces (150 gil) as a chest reward in a level 24 dungeon? Or a useless potion? Come on.
- Quests. You run out of them. I understand that you don't want people to level doing quests exclusively. What's happening instead is that people are leveling doing FATEs exclusively.
Suggestions:
- Guild leves - The BASE experience and gil reward on guild leves needs to be increased. Leave the first-time bonus alone, but increase the base. That will encourage people to do them more than just once.
- Guildhests - Same as above. Increase the BASE experience and gil reward. Leave the bonuses alone.
- Dungeons - Leave the experience rewards alone. Increase gil rewards. Re-vamp your loot tables and make the rewards worthwhile. If you're going to put chests in a dungeon, then make sure they're worth fighting for. Many of the groups I've been in who have done the dungeon before won't even bother with them. You need to at least DOUBLE the amount of gil in these chests, or you need to give the current reward to every player in the group. Having a low chance for a random green item to drop would be nice, too. Stop with the random potions. Nobody uses them. (Fixing potions I'll leave for another thread.) The big chests you get after a boss fight are pretty much okay.
- Quests - All "kill" quests (outside of the ones that are part of the main story line) should reset after 7 to 14 days so the sub-classes have some quests to run.
- FATEs - This is the one that will cause you the most trouble because you made these things too juicy, and when you nerf them (and they have to be nerfed) you'll never hear the end of it. (It's always less painful to add to something than it is to take something away.) FATE experience rewards need to be halved. Some FATEs are giving over 15,000 experience for a few minutes work. Think of it this way.... if players are given a choice between doing a quest that will earn them 4,000 - 5,000 experience and will take them 15 minutes, or sitting in a FATE-hub for 5 minutes and then earning 10,000 experience just for showing up and whacking on a few mobs, which do you think they'll choose? Nerf FATE experience. Do it now, while the game is still new. There'll be a backlash. Deal with it.
I'm not saying these suggestions are the be-all-end-all to fix the game. I know that there are going to be a lot of people who read this who will strongly disagree with one or more of them. I'm also confident that there will be just as many people who will agree with one or more of them. I expect to hear a lot more feedback from the former group than the latter.
tldr: Nerf FATEs. Take the experience you remove from FATEs and spread it out between guild leves and guildhests. Increase gil rewards in small dungeon chests. Let "kill" quests re-set for sub-classes.