Let me try to explain to the best of my poor ability.
First a correction:
val Holryn wrote:
Fate already "recycles" between Teirs (ie "you can't take it with you") and you can't spend more in one round of play than your Fate score.
Actually, this isn't the case. The actual text reads: "[T]he Hero gains a number of
Fate Points equal to his
Fate Score at the start of each Tier of Hero advancement." (A:RPG, pg. 320) Fate points to do not reset. Rather, you get an additional amount equal to your
Fate Score when you reach a new Tier. It's intended to top you up and let you do more cool things, instead of being a reset button.
For the people who are using Fate as it is intended (spending and receiving a couple points each mod, the net gain or loss never more than -2 to +2) this is a non-issue as you have already pointed out. You will likely never reach the cap, nor will you ever run out.
That said, then there are the other cases: As acurrier and Nierite both mentioned, there are those in the campaign who end up with not just 10s but 100s of Fate Points. There are GMs who just give 5 away at the end of every module to every player, just for being there. And in an average module, with the limit on how much Fate can actually be spent, it's also a non-problem. But when it comes to big events, where we will often remove the limit on points being spent, and some people have 100+ Fate to spend (and yes, some people did), it can be a game breaker. We don't want to have to counter that by Fate-locking climactic battles every time.
To your specific suggestions: We considered guidelines in modules, but rejected it for a couple reasons. First, it puts more effort in for writers and editors, and we're already having trouble getting both. Trying to anticipate not only what the players will do, but how they will do it adds a lot of complications and makes modules sizeably larger since each case would have to be handled individually (i.e. something that is Heroic in one module might not necessarily be in another depending on circumstances). Second, putting guidelines in modules would have a lot of Chroniclers thinking "Oh, I can *only* give Fate out if they accomplish exactly this". It's similar to the problem we're having with experience points, where some GMs feel they have to accomplish the letter of what we put in, and some just give all the experience regardless of whether the players actually followed the plot or just blundered around it ignoring the story hooks.
In regards to PCs running them the way they want to, absolutely we want that: But a quiet bookish investigator can use Fate points just as effectively as a flamboyant duelist (Fate point: Do the Impossible to randomly select the exact right book off the shelf while researching in a library? Boost an attribute to easily make a logical leap that would otherwise have been a very difficult roll? I can think of other examples if you like).
<Redacted>