Level Syncing is Becoming an Increasing Problem

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Every Tank except WAR has both of their stances and gets their basic aggro abilities at similar levels before reaching level 50.

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Pre-60 tanking is a mess in general.

• Paladin gets their stances at 30 and 35 respectively, but doesn't even have a complete DPS combo until 60. So you'll be spamming your emnity combo regardless of if you're MT/OT
• Warrior doesn't get DPS stance until 52, and it doesn't have anything to spend the DPS stance resource on until 54. It's highest potency combo is also its emnity combo, so you'll be spamming it as OT anyways until 54.

The only tank that's functional at 50 is DRK. Who gets both their stances at 30, and completes their DPS combo at 38.

Unless they simply go for scaling down all our abilities, the devs need to readjust what level abilities are learned to make the early game experience less of a dreadful slog. Just for fun, I'm going to crunch down a few jobs with their current skill setups.

Dragoon

True Thrust - lvl. 1
Vorpal Thrust - lvl. 4
Heavy Thrust - lvl. 6
Full Thrust - lvl. 10
Piercing Talon - lvl. 12
Life Surge - lvl. 15
Impulse Drive - lvl. 18
Doom Spike - lvl. 20
Disembowel - lvl. 24
Chaos Thrust - 28
Blood for Blood - lvl 30
Jump - lvl. 30
Elusive Jump - lvl. 35
Sonic Thrust - lvl. 38
Spinershatter Dive - lvl. 40
Dragonfire Dive - lvl. 45
Battle Litany - lvl. 49
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Blood of the Dragoon - lvl. 51
Fang and Claw - lvl. 52
Wheeling Thrust lvl. 54
Dragon Sight - lvl. 55
Geirskogul - lvl. 60
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Mirage Dive - lvl. 62
Nastrond - lvl. 65
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This gives Dragoon its first full combo by level 10 and moves the second combo to level 38, thus the two core mechanics of the job are available fairly early on. It never made any sense to me when Impulse Drive is learned at level 6 but just loiters around for 30+ level being useless. With that now remedied, I brought Doom Spike down to a more sensible spot. The two new additions are Battle Litany and Sonic Thrust moving to pre-50. Why? For one, I want skills more front loaded and both were easy candidates. Sonic Thrust essentially replaced Ring of Thorns, so why we need to wait until 66, I have no idea. As for Litany, this puts more emphasis on Dragoon's party buffs.

Moving on to Heavensward, Dragon Sight comes down. Otherwise, not much has changed. I'm still toying with whether Nastrond should be learned earlier since it's the main component to Dragoon's rotation, but that leaves the 61-70 level range barren.

Warrior

Heavy Swing - lvl. 1
Skull Sunder - Lvl. 4
Berserk - lvl. 6
Butcher's Block - lvl. 10
Overpower - lvl. 12
Tomahawk - lvl. 15
Maim - lvl. 18
Thrill of Battle - lvl. 20
Storm's Eye - lvl. 24
Storm's Path - lvl. 28
Defiance - lvl. 30
Inner Beast - lvl. 30
Unchained - lvl. 33
Steel Cyclone - lvl. 36
Vengeance - lvl. 40
Infuriate - lvl 42
Deliverance - lvl. 45
Holmgang - lvl 49
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Fell Cleave - lvl. 51
Raw Inutition - lvl. 52
Onslaught - Lvl. 54
Equilibrium - lvl. 55
Decimate - lvl. 60
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Upheaval - lvl. 61
Shake It Off - Lvl. 63
Inner Release - lvl. 65

I think we know the big change here. Yes, I am bringing Deliverance down because it's simply obnoxious how Warrior fights for aggro or simply goes Stance-less. Moving Fell Cleave though would give Warrior far too much of an edge. Therefore, we'll leave that in the Heavensward category. I also swapped some abilities around like Vengeance as it made little sense to me you learn the far riskier Holmgang (at least for new players) first rather than your strongest CD. Likewise, since we aren't building gauge in the early levels, Eye is learned before Path. Personally, I don't see Butcher's surviving the 5.0 skill prune, but that's another discussion. We're working with the assumption every current skill remains.

Onslaught is brought down since I think it fits better learned early on than Upheaval. And while I wanted to shift Decimate down a little, It works fine where it is. The real dilemma I considered was what to do with Inner Release. Berserk feels awful, making pre-Stormblood Warrior less fun overall. But not only is Inner Release arguably too strong for 60 content, it leaves Warrior without any "big" skills post Heavensward. Ultimately, a buff or rework of Berserk seemed like a better solution.

Bard

Heavy Shot - lvl. 1
Straight Shot - lvl. 2
Raging Strikes - lvl. 4
Venomous Bite - Lvl. 6
Misery's End - lvl. 10
Bloodletter - lvl. 12
Repelling Shot - lvl. 15
Quick Nock - lvl. 18
Windbite - lvl. 22
Rain of Death - lvl. 30
Mage's Ballard - lvl. 30
Foe Requiem - lvl. 35
Barrage - lvl. 38
Army's Paeon - lvl. 40
Wanderer's Minuet - lvl. 45
Pitch Perfect - lvl. 45
Battle Voice - lvl. 49
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Iron Jaws - lvl. 51
Empyreal Arrow - lvl. 53
Warden's Paean - lvl. 54
Nature's Minne - lvl. 56
Sidewinder - lvl. 60
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Troubadour - lvl. 61
Caustic Bite - lvl. 63
Stormbite - lvl. 63
Refulgent Arrow - lvl. 65
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Bard presented an odd challenge. Unlike most jobs, it's songs are better tied into the quest chain, likely forcing more rewrites. Therefore, I left them mostly as is. The sole exception was moving Wanderer's Minuet down. It will certainly make Bard incredibly strong early on but the sheer amount of frustrated Bards losing a song when synced makes this a necessary change in my opinion. Rain of Death shifts way down to help bridge the sizable skill gap where you don't learn anything from 18 until 30.

Not much changes in the Heavensward or Stormblood category. Nature's Minne moves more to better front load abilities than anything else. Otherwise, I merely reduced the levels of when skills were learned.


Overall, I think this vastly improves the level pacing for new players. Of course, this entirely subjective. That said, I may do others later.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Overall, I think this vastly improves the level pacing for new players. Of course, this entirely subjective. That said, I may do others later.

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I feel like they wrote themselves into a corner, honestly. They tied new skills to job quests, and they made those identically earned between jobs. And even wrote them into the plot of the jobs. To the point that whenever they do prune a skill from a job directly, it makes it feel very wrong not to have something at that point.

Dark Knight, Scholar, Ninja... all of them felt very unnatural coming into Stormblood. And then there's the skills that are job tied, but have nothing to do with the plot, like PLD's new spammable phys-aoe, or Scholar's Miasma II. Just slotted into the job with no rhyme or reason to it.

((Also, personal note, Fang and Claw & Wheeling Thrust need to be earned at the same time, or Fang and Claw needs a tweak so it follows up both combos before unlocking Wheeling Thrust. You can't maintain BotD without both combos ending with a 4th strike))

I can't help but feel that the simplest solution is:

Keep your current level's abilities, traits, etc... but scaling the performance accordingly. Of course, a lv 70 player with more abilities and features unlocked would do more than a leveling player, but they can adjust so this difference wouldn't be that discrepant.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I can't help but feel that the simplest solution is:

Keep your current level's abilities, traits, etc... but scaling the performance accordingly. Of course, a lv 70 player with more abilities and features unlocked would do more than a leveling player, but they can adjust so this difference wouldn't be that discrepant.

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Agree. Most people speedrun through dungeons anyway, let them have their full kit.
I would do those 50-60 / levelling / trial roulettes if I had that actually.

I can see them doing this eventually, maybe not the next expansion, but once theres a big enough gap between starting and end game that they really buff up the lower level exp gains to rush you up to expansion level.

Then again... someone's got to buy those jump potions...

If you create a character on a preferred world you get a 100% XP buff up to level 60. I doubt they'll give any universal XP buff just because of the level gap; that's what those MSQ skip microtransactions are there for.

As for scaling skills while keeping the full kit available, perhaps that could be based on the average output of the character's rotation. For a very simplified example, take a low-level rotation which consists of spamming a single attack with a potency of 140. At a later level a combo attack with a potency of 200 becomes available so the rotation consists of alternating between the two. That's an average potency of 170 per attack. Now scale this rotation so that the attack potencies become 115 and 165. The average potency is 140, same as the low-level rotation, but the button sequence is unchanged.

The problem with scaling skills is that in a level roulette scenario where this type of level scaling would apply to high level players, you're still going to have the new player who is simply too low level to have as many skills unlocked.

While you may be level 70 and have access to 20+ abilities, that level 15 person is still only going to have access to 5. Unless you scale the potency of your skills to 0, no amount of level scaling is going to make your damage equal to that level 15 person.

This is especially a problem for low level tanks who will never be able to generate enough enmity to match the increased output of the dps that have access to all GCDs and oGCDs, while the tank doesn't even have a full enmity combo yet.

All classes need to get looked over, as they all have partwise lots of totally useless skills, or skills, which you should learn significantly early.
All of the later classes need to get redesigned to receive starter classes as well too like the beginner classes of ARR.
SE did that work for the Rogue/Ninja, so they should do that too as well for Samurai, Astrologian, Machinist ect. too, reworking at the same time then the pace and level spots and where and when those classes learn skills, so that the newer classes will also be useful and not borign to play, if you land with them in beginner content., but for that need to have all classes, also the newer onces to start at Levle 1

All professions in this game should have a Beginner Job, an Adept Job and lastly a Master Job Form

Examples:

Beginner-------Adept---------Master
Pillager> Dark Knight > Shadowbringer
Lancer > Knight > Dragoon
Ranger > Bard > Minstrel
Pugilist > Monk > Champion
Warrior > Samurai > Shogun
Fighter > Marodeur > Berserker
Rogue > Ninja > Assassin
Gladiator > Paladin > Guardian
Druid > Whitemage > Sage
Thamaturge > Blackmage > Wizard
Hermetic > Necromancer > Summoner
Sorcerer > Scholar > Explorer
Visionary > Seer > Astrologian
Engineer > Machinist > Technomancer
Arcanist > Redmage > Duelant
Arcanist > Bluemage > Mentalist
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Dervish > Dancer > Swashbuckler
Recruit > Soldier > Mercenary (Gunblade Class?)


Classes, which have currently not Beginner Jobs, need to get them introduced via letting the rebuilded Ishgard receive new Job Guilds, making with SB then HW integrated content of ARR. The Classes of StB get then also integrated to ARR with Job Guilds for them being in the StB region towns, meanign, that if you start ARR with one of the expansion classes, you will start them with level 1 and you wil lsee just different new introduction vidos which show, how your character travels from these regions to the beginning continent of ARR Eorzea, whilek beginning the game with a ARR class lets you see just the normal intro movie that we all know.

Beginner Jobs are then from Level 1-50
Adept Jobs are Level 51-70
Master Jobs are Level 71-100
After that no Level increases anymore, just only if neccessary Gear Level Increases, where I suggest, once we reach Gear Level 500 at 80 most likely, the system should get changed to a Star System with Gear und Weapons rating from 1 to 5 Stars of the colors bronze to gold, so basically 15 stars with each star after G-Level 500 being worth practically 50 G-Levels, so 15 Star Equipment would be basically equivalent to G1250 equipment being the absolute endgame stuff then, BIS so to say, requiring level 100 to wear it.

If getting to level 80 takes hundreds of hours and is considered a slog. How is getting all your abilities right out of the gate going to help that? Now instead of unlocking as you go, let's say you had every skill available at level 1 per job. While you are at it. Remove levels, remove level locks on quests, MSQ, trials, dungeons, raids,hunts, eureka, diadem, and crafting. Everything is available at level 1. Now there is no progression requirements to enter any content.

Oh wait, there is still ilevel. Maybe we should add a merit point system accessible at level 1 so players still feel like they are progressing. But wait, doesn't adding a merit system and having an ilevel system still gate players out of content? Was that not the whole point of making everything available at level 1? Hmmm, maybe to alleviate that we can also prune the MSQ, pruning it from hundreds of hours to 10 hours per expansion? We could also remove the caps on tomes while we are at it. Remove the cooldown on sprint, remove teleportation cost, have mounts available at level 1, and mount speed upgrades will take 1 10 minute quest per upgrade. Remove durability penalties, increase MGP rate to 50% increase. Omit TP and MP as well, now the only cost is cooldowns.

I am dramatizing a bit. But if all rights of passage get pruned or stripped. The game starts to go in a direction I cannot stay invested in like ESO or GW2. A game where because so much of it is accessible right out of the gate. I feel like beginning the game and 100hrs in is more of the same. I progress, but not really because everything scales to me. A level 1 zone and level 50 zone feel more or less the same just bigger numbers.