I don't think you should.
I don't. I am the one who pointed it out, after all.
Whereas FATE very much encourages the GM to flex his omnipotence during the game to create obstacles and problems in response to the players efforts.
In D&D, creating new resources in order to keep alive a favored NPC villain is considered bad form. In FATE, it's considered normal and even encouraged.
Not quite.
The GM is expected to create difficulties and problems. But not "as a
response to the players' efforts". It is not supposed to be a "move-countermove" dynamic, and is not supposed to be adversarial. The GM is not creating difficulties for the purpose of protecting their favored NPC alive. They are crating difficulties because difficulties
are interesting.
And at this point, we can note that Fate is from... Evil Hat Productions. The people who brought us Blades in the Dark, and the GM Principle, "Be a fan of the PCs". The advice giving to GMs in Fate about exercising their power are not so succinct, but amount to something very similar.
Player control over the narrative therefore depends not on the game, but no an on going metagame conversation.
This sentence abstracts what actually happens in play behind jargon.
Personally, as a player I find no real distinction between "No" and "Yes, and..." except that "Yes, and..." feels far more frustrating and adversarial to me in practice.
I cannot speak to your experience, or diagnose your particular problems, not having witnessed them. I can make guesses, but I'd not have much confidence in them.
I have played and run a lot of Fate - it has never been adversarial for me on either side of the screen.
Consider the two scenarios:
Player: May I have a cupcake?
DM: No.
Player: Alright, may I have a cookie?
Player: May I have a cupcake?
DM: Yes, and when you take a bite out of it, it has live roach in it!
Player: I think I'm going to skip the cookie.
Except, of course, that's not what is happening. The player is not asking if they can
have a thing. They are asking if they can try to
accomplish a thing.
If the player asks if they can
make cupcakes, the GM is not supposed to negate baking success - they are supposed to add to the situation. A more proper complication is not a live roach in the cupcake, as that ruins the cupcake. Better would be, the obnoxious neighbors come to the door, see the cupcakes, and ask if they could have them because they look delicious. The cupcakes are still just as nice, but having them for dessert after dinner got a bit more complicated....
In practice I find that this simply allows the FATE GM to decide whatever consequences he wants based on his arbitrary definitions of the above terms.
Yes, and in D&D, every single room can have a trap in it that says, "Rocks fall, everyone dies". Absolutely nothing in the contract prohibits that adventure design fiat. No game actually protects you from problematic GM behavior. A clever person can always find ways to abuse a ruleset.
In most traditional RPGs, the rules present a sort of contract the specifies how the fictional positioning will be changed by your success so that you know if you ask for a cookie and pass your fortune test, you will at least get a cookie. But in FATE...
In other games, you make a success, that changes your fictional positioning in a predictable way. But, you don't know what's in the next room or if there's about to be a random encounter - your fictional positioning is going to change, out of the PCs control, in a moment anyway.
The only difference is the time when the changing element is chosen. In traditional games it is before the session. In games with "success at a cost" mechanics, it is in response to a roll. Same event, different timing.
As you say, I never know what I'm going to get. The lock may be well and truly picked, but because it is "success with a cost" the thing I may get with my cookie may in fact be much worse than not getting the cookie at all.
But, that's always the case. In no game does picking the lock determine what happens next. It only allows the PCs to move the narrative into the next room, if they wish. It opens a narrative choice, but does not determine where the narrative will go.
But when the fiat is made actually makes an enormous amount of difference in terms of the GMs stance as referee and arbiter.
Eh. GM as "referee" is a posture assumed for traditional games. It should not be assumed to be relevant for non-traditional games. D&D is often like a soccer match. Fate generally isn't.