Final Fantasy XIV News: Free Login Campaign, Yokai Watch, Moonfire Faire…and FATEs

Summer is the perfect time for a variety of events in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. There is a Free Login Campaign going on for those who want to try the game out again. Accounts must have been inactive for thirty days prior. The moment users login to update their client, their free five days begin.

For new and returning players alike, the crossover event with Yokai Watch and the Moonfire Faire are currently active. As a promotional tie-in, the Yokai Watch and Final Fantasy XIV developers worked together to bring both games together in Eorzea. Players can collect minions and mounts that are lookalikes from Yokai Watch, and collect Yokai Watch inspired weapons such as the Cane of the Shrine Guardian for white mage. Weapons are exclusive to each class, so players can collect them all. The event lasts over two months because of the sheer grind involved.

Depending on which weapon a player wants they must participate in FATEs with a specific minion summoned. They then collect legendary medals by completing these FATEs. The number of legendary medals required for each weapon increases each time. Unfortunately, these medals are not guaranteed drops.

I’ve heard reports of needing over 300 FATEs in order to collect each of the weapons, minions, and both mounts. The grind reminds me too much of the unpopular Atma stage of the relic weapon quest in A Realm Reborn—running FATEs with terrible drop rates for Atma crystals across Eorzea for days on end.

I chose to sit this event out, as well as the Moonfire Faire.

The summer-specific event features Power Ranger-inspired armor to collect. Seeing the new poses from players around town is entertaining enough for me. There’s no grind involved here, but the FATEs alone put me off from participating.

Events that require FATEs are part of a bigger problem in Final Fantasy XIV. One of the biggest outcries during A Realm Reborn happened during the Atma stage of the relic quest, and again during a later stage of the quest when we had to run more FATEs for Alexandrite pieces. Yet again for the next relic weapon quest in Heavensward, players had to complete FATEs for luminous crystals. At this rate, I expect the relic quest in the next expansion will require FATEs that drop something similar for progression.

Most seasonal events over the past three years required players to do FATEs. For the first few events, I didn’t mind it. For the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII event, I enjoyed fighting alongside Lightning across Eorzea. But, for the most part, FATEs are the same: hordes of unchallenging mobs attack and players are tasked with spamming a few buttons to get enough credit for Gold participation. The process is uninspired. It’s tired. It’s overdone.

Whenever I hear another event involves FATE spamming I lose all interest. Sure, it’s great for new players when they see low-level zones populated with adventurers. But I wish the developers could find a way to make FATEs more exciting.

Back in A Realm Reborn, the Odin and Behemoth FATEs were worthwhile. Both boss encounters were challenging at the time and rewarded interesting gear for glamour. Whenever player corpses littered the Black Shroud, only Odin could have decimated them.

There’s nothing left in the open world with the same sense of danger and challenge. Odin and Behemoth are largely ignored these days. Most people have all the glamour gear now. The ones that don’t are out of luck because no one seems to care about these FATEs anymore. Our replacement for these types of battles are the Hunt monsters.

Hunting these mobs feels like FATEs without the level sync and the indicator on the map. Players search for the A or S rank spawns, and other parties flock over to defeat the enemy. Everyone earns Allied or Centurio seals depending on their level of contribution.

At the start of Heavensward, we had to collect Centurio seals in order to upgrade our gear at the time. I was bored out of my mind flying from place to place, fighting to do enough damage to the spawns before they died, and then moving onto the next one. I needed the upgraded gear to raid. There was a serious backlash against Hunts when they were first introduced. Despite the outcry, the developers made this process required for raiders to have the best item level gear at one point in the game.

There is no reason to complete FATEs or Hunts other than for personal gain: experience points, tokens for seasonal events, Atma, Alexandrite, luminous crystals, seals, or endgame currency. We don’t lose access to NPCs in the zone if we fail to save them from a boss. We don’t get parts of Central Coerthas Highlands cut off if Behemoth terrorizes the land. I imagine these things would be inconvenient if the FATEs spawned while hardly anyone was online. I would find FATEs more interesting if they had an impact on the world.

I wish these game systems were more meaningful. They are the only open world events we have. The rest of Final Fantasy XIV is instanced. Raids and dungeons through the Duty Finder feel impersonal. Often players I meet in a dungeon aren’t on my server. And, chances are, I’ll never see them again. There’s a real disconnect in the sense of community and involvement in this game because of the abundance of instances.

FATEs and Hunts make some effort to change that. If every event from now on has to have FATEs, then I hope that they’ll eventually be more involved than they are now. I’d like to see what happens with these two systems once the next expansion rolls around. The developers showed us with Diadem and the Palace of the Dead that they’re open to experimenting with content. Everything else in Final Fantasy XIV plays it safe. I want to see where the game goes from here.