I had an enjoyably bizarre experience in Final Fantasy XIV earlier on — and it's the sort of thing that couldn't possibly have been planned; the kind of emergent weirdness that only comes about when you put the unpredictability of humans into the mix with a set of systems that always play by set rules, regardless of context.

In order to explain the situation for those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, indulge me a moment, veterans, while I define a few things.

One of the main systems in Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Full Active Time Event (or FATE) system. These are essentially "public quests" that spawn at predictable points on the map, but on an unpredictable schedule. Some spawn more frequently than others; some are required to progress in certain quests; some are more "popular" than others owing to their convenient location or rewards on offer.

There are three important things to note about FATEs: firstly, they're time limited, usually providing you 15 minutes to complete the main objective, which is generally plenty of time; secondly, if you are standing inside the blue circle that represents the FATE area on the map and hit just one enemy once — even if it's just a glancing, accidental blow from a weapon better suited for channeling powerful magics than melee combat — you are considered to have "participated" in that FATE; thirdly, the number of people who participated in a FATE the previous time it spawned determines how difficult it is the next time around: in other words, at peak periods, FATEs are designed to be challenging for larger groups of people, whereas if the last time a FATE spawned no-one took part in it at all, the next time it appears it will probably be completable by a (well-geared) solo adventurer, perhaps with a chocobo companion in tow.

Completely separate from FATEs is a newer system called The Hunt, in which each area in the game has three Elite Marks that players can hunt down for substantial rewards: a B-rank mark, which you can fight solo, and which only offers rewards if you have a specific Mark Bill inviting you to hunt it down; an A-rank mark, which requires about 4-8 people minimum to take down, but which offers rewards according to how much you (and, in most cases, your party) contributed to the kill; and an S-rank mark, which is much more powerful but works along the same lines as the A-rank marks in terms of rewards. We're mostly concerned with A-rank marks here, since S-rank marks have special conditions that need to be fulfilled before they'll show up in most cases, whereas A-rank marks will just show up regardless.

A-rank marks spawn on predictable schedules — you can see the timers ticking away for the server I play on right here, for example — and appear roughly once every four hours. What normally happens is that hunting parties will gather when the first marks on the list are approaching the "four hours since last killed" mark, then spread out and start looking for the beasts to respawn. There then follows a phenomenon that has become known as the "A-Train", where hunting parties move from zone to zone and pick off all the A-rank marks on the list one at a time until they're all dead, at which point the parties will all disband — unless there's the possibility of an S-rank showing up — and reconvene again when the first timer on the list hits four hours. It's like clockwork; it's perhaps not how the designers intended the system to work when it was first designed — and indeed, it's been tweaked and reorganised several times since it launched — but if you can get involved (which is usually as simple as throwing up a Party Finder ad with the word "Hunt" in it) it can be both fun and rewarding, if not particularly challenging in most cases.

Anyway, the point here is that when an A-rank mark shows up, a horde of players normally follows — and I do mean a horde. We're talking maybe 30 or so people minimum, and usually much more than that.

When I was sauntering around the lands of Western La Noscea earlier today, hacking and slashing my way through some FATEs in an attempt to collect the very last Atma crystal I needed to upgrade my Paladin's relic weapon into its Atma form, I happened to stumble across one of these gatherings, who had showed up to fight the giant crab Nahn. Nahn, as it turned out, had spawned right in the middle of the FATE I had actually run to this area to complete, and as such there was something in the region of 50 people standing around, killing Sahagin indiscriminately to clear the area ready for the big group push towards Nahn. The important thing to note here is that the Sahagin they were hacking, slashing, punching and setting fire to (depending on class) were parts of the FATE I had shown up to complete, so as far as the game was concerned, when that FATE's boss fell, over 50 people had participated in it.

I'm sure you can imagine what happened a little later, after Nahn was defeated and after I returned to the area to complete the same FATE again as it happened to appear while I was passing through.

Yes, believing that 50 players being in the area, battering Sahagin left, right and centre, was a representative example of the zone's population at that particular hour, the game adjusted the difficulty of the FATE to cater not to little old me and the two other people who happened to wander into the FATE at the same time as me — oh no — but instead to the 50+ people who were no longer present, now doubtless considerably further down the tracks of this particular run of the A-Train.

I didn't notice this initially. I thought that the "trash" enemies that you have to defeat before the main boss monster showed up were a little stronger than I remembered, but I thought nothing of it. My companions and I slaughtered our way through them until the boss showed up, at which point I, as the Paladin — a protector "tank" type — got its attention by smacking it firmly upside the chops with my shield, and then began inserting my sword into various parts of its anatomy while my companions got busy with magic spells and poking it with a spear respectively.

I figured something was amiss when the health bar of the boss was moving very slowly despite us all unleashing our most powerful attacks. To put it in context, the boss' health was declining at roughly the same speed as a well-geared party taking on Ramuh Extreme, currently one of the most challenging fights in the game. Fortunately, the boss didn't receive a damage buff at the same time as his vastly increased hit points, otherwise we would have been in real trouble.

We persisted, though, shaving away a tiny sliver of health with each hit. Andie happened to be passing by at one point, and joined the fray to contribute a bit of extra damage from her Bard class. We were making progress, a tiny bit at a time, though the longer the fight was going on the more exhausted my Paladin was getting, my ever-declining TP (Tactical Points, used for triggering physical attacks) getting perilously close to the zero mark. I had the boss' attention pretty firmly, though, so I eased off the powerful attacks and let my (TP-free) automatic basic attack do its work for a little while.

The timer ticked down. We were into single digits of minutes remaining, despite the fact that we'd all entered the fray with the full 15 minutes on the clock. The boss was barely at 50% of his HP, and I was starting to doubt whether or not we'd be able to beat it. Still we persisted.

"DIE DAMMIT!" I typed in frustration, on the /say channel so that my companions (whom, aside from Andie, I didn't know) could "hear" me.

"for real!!!" came back the response from one of them. We'd shared a moment. It was nice. Still we fought on.

My TP had recovered a bit by now, so I triggered my Fight or Flight ability — which temporarily increases my Paladin's damage output — and started hacking away with a bit more gusto once again. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, but the boss' health bar seemed to be going down noticeably faster. It looked as if we might just make it.

In fact, it was beginning to look like we'd make it just as the timer hit zero. Would we pull it off?

Sadly not. At less that 1% HP remaining, the timer expired and we failed the FATE. Our characters all fell to our knees and wept for the 15 minutes of effort we'd just put in — and, of course, to add insult to injury, I didn't get an Atma crystal from that FATE either.

I don't regret the experience, though. As I say, I shared a moment with those other people who were there at the same time as me, all doubtless thinking the same things, willing their characters to do just that little bit more damage. When I happened to run into them again doing another FATE in the area about half an hour later, we exchanged pleasantries and had a laugh about how the new FATE was quite a bit easier than our earlier tragedy. Then we went our separate ways. It was a real "ships in the night" moment, but it made what would have otherwise been a frustrating experience into something highly memorable — and, indeed, something I ended up wanting to write about at length.

I've got one more Atma crystal to go before my Paladin's weapon and shield can be upgraded, hot on the heels of my Black Mage's weapon reaching the powerful Novus (second-to-top) upgrade phase recently. If I can have more experiences like the one I just described, though, I really don't mind it taking a little longer; shared hardships like that — while fairly trivial in this instance — can bring people closer together, even if it's just for a moment or two.