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.
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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.
Continue reading...