/r/ffxivdiscussion: A stricter ilvl sync is the solution to casual content being easy

Full title: A stricter ilvl sync is the solution to casual trial/raid content being too easy.

This is an interesting discussion about how to increase the difficulty of casual content that's currently too easy. I'm sure nearly everyone's encountered the issue of their party killing the boss too quickly and newer players not being able to see all the phases and mechanics the boss has to offer. There needs to be something implemented to prevent this from happening.

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Original Post: As you all know, in normal trials/raids/alliance raids/end-game dungeons, things die too quickly and things don't hit hard enough, often result in the most fun mechanic being skipped.

Here's the thing. Normal instances actually deal decent damage at minimum item level, believe it or not, including ARR trials. Obviously, I am not expecting the Duty Finder to default to minimum item level syncing, but,

Here's the solution - make duties have stricter ilvl sync. If it's patch x.0 end-game content, you are only allowed to use x.0 gear without triggering an item level sync. If you are doing x3 level content, then the max you can go without gear being synced would be x6 level gear. If it's patch x.4 content, you are only allowed to use x.4 crafted gear without it being synced. So on and so forth. You get the idea.

But why do I want things to be harder in normal content, where things should be easy?

I enjoy the combat, and current item level sync makes things less enjoyable.
I want people to feel the need to learn the game.
It's a video game, there SHOULD be challenges.
Mechanics are a way for bosses to express their identity, which is an important experience when going through the story, so they shouldn't be skipped (Aglaia final boss)

When I do these trial/raid roulettes, I do not feel the agency and impact I should have as a party member because damage do not hit hard enough.

When I was going through story quests a long time ago, I did not enjoy the Alexander normal trial series because of numerous mechanics being skipped due to ilvl syncing, which kind of takes away the epicness of Alexander, kind of ruining my experience with the story.

Because of this, I decided to do the unthinkable. I PF'ed the entire normal trial series of Omega with minimum item level and no echo. It was one of the most fun normal raid series I ever played. Although not difficult, I felt the need to do mechanics correctly and do decent dps. There were even one or two wipes in O11. The challenge also made me enjoy the story quest more.

TLDR: You want things to hit harder? The solution isn't making things hit harder. That will just force new players to spend time-gated tomes, which sometimes they don't have if they rush the story. Instead, the solution is making item level syncing more strict.

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Notable comments:

"I don't know why they put strict ilevel syncs on amourot/the dead ends/the final day yet nothing else. It's obvious they are aware that not ilevel syncing is a problem, as they went back and added one to the final day."

"And here I am just wanting to use all my abilities when I sync down, even if they're nerfed hard when synced. I agree though, you can certainly tighten up iLv sync to not make it most of it so faceroll, but then again a lot of things have crazy levels of Echo now."

"Nothing is going to make the Endwalker alliance raids remotely difficult, but I agree that its absolutely trivializing other content."

"I think there are definitely places that would help (definitely agree on Aglaia esp), because certain mechanics and moments feel important and fun to see. That was also the logic behind the lv90 trial ilevel sync, and while that wasnt my favourite (because the start of the fight is a drag regardless of ilevel, until the cool bit onwards) I like conceptually the idea of making gear not overpower things as much when they've stopped being current content.
Its also definitely notable how much more duties like Dead Ends and such feel like they hurt and challenge due to this too. In general it feels like a nice idea, and even if I dont think its a one-size-fits-all solution to these issues, it would be nice to see ilevel sync used at least a little bit more often in certain cases."

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Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ion_to_casual/

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves or propose your own ideas below. Cheers.

I'm all for tighter sync, the constant potency creep has left vast majority of the more casual content in state where you can ignore mechanics completely and destroy all enemies in seconds.

While it wouldn't make all of the content more enjoyable, it would help a lot in mid-high level range. To truely fix the lower level experience, we would need more skills accessible instead of having like 3 buttons for ARR content.

I didn't read through all of your comments but I agree with your general statement that a better ilvl sync would make a big difference. The revamp of Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium with their new ilvl syncs should show that, not to mention the ilvl sync belatedly added to The Final Day.

No need to change mechanics. Just make the max ilvl the same as was available during the patch cycle when the content was originally released. Once mechanics were learned, parties were rarely having trouble clearing the content even if there were a few first timers in the party. It wouldn't be any different now.

Counter point but the point of gearing in an MMO is to make older content easier otherwise there's no point in the progression curve existing. If you're just going to tightly item level sync everything, just give us stat tables and make all gear slots purely cosmetic. You're meant to skip mechanics and even entire phases with gear, especially in normal mode content. Maybe I'm just accustomed to WoW where the power creep is insane (and that's before modes like MoP Remix) and you can melt bosses in a few minutes while ignoring 90% of the mechanics. I just feel it would be a huge step backwards if the impact of gearing was negated by syncing everything, at that point it wouldn't be worth doing anything more than once or twice (personally I'd save the glamour farming for when the weekly loot restrictions are removed).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Johners

Counter point but the point of gearing in an MMO is to make older content easier otherwise there's no point in the progression curve existing. If you're just going to tightly item level sync everything, just give us stat tables and make all gear slots purely cosmetic. You're meant to skip mechanics and even entire phases with gear, especially in normal mode content. Maybe I'm just accustomed to WoW where the power creep is insane (and that's before modes like MoP Remix) and you can melt bosses in a few minutes while ignoring 90% of the mechanics. I just feel it would be a huge step backwards if the impact of gearing was negated by syncing everything, at that point it wouldn't be worth doing anything more than once or twice (personally I'd save the glamour farming for when the weekly loot restrictions are removed).

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The thing is that 14 already has a decent gear curve it just doesn’t use it

Like let’s take aglaia, when aglaia was current content BIS was 600 and your random DF run of it was probably in the 570-580 range on average

If you had a moderately competent group who were all close to BIS you could skip scales. It wasn’t a given but you could

Now these days the average person entering aglaia is in 650 with a 665 weapon. Now skipping the 2 minute long mechanic before scales is common

The former sync creep is fine to represent the power fantasy of gearing up, the latter is just pointlessly excessive

An individual ilvl sync will be nice, rather than the party wide ilvl sync we have now.

How individual ilvl sync work? Simple, the more out level you are to the dungeon you are in, the lower ilvl sync will be apply to you.

That way, we can keep our max lvl job action(downgraded version of skill action would be used instead) without melting trash mob/boss too fast.

iLvl inflation does have a part to play in things for sure. But it's not the sole solution by any stretch.

At least as far as regular dungeons go, bosses are usually an MP/Cooldown recovery period compared to the trash pulls leading upto them. That only makes sense from the perspective of trying to make dungeons as hassle free and mindless as possible. It's certainly not conductive to interesting gameplay though =/

The actual problem is that new casual content is designed for an item level you could reach in the previous patch without any weekly lockouts. Which means the content is undertuned from the beginning.

But you can't fix that without revamping weekly lockouts or sacrificing the ability to swap jobs on the fly to fill missing roles.

Also new or returning players could not jump into the new content immediately, which could lead to an outrage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Johners

Counter point but the point of gearing in an MMO is to make older content easier otherwise there's no point in the progression curve existing. If you're just going to tightly item level sync everything, just give us stat tables and make all gear slots purely cosmetic. You're meant to skip mechanics and even entire phases with gear, especially in normal mode content. Maybe I'm just accustomed to WoW where the power creep is insane (and that's before modes like MoP Remix) and you can melt bosses in a few minutes while ignoring 90% of the mechanics. I just feel it would be a huge step backwards if the impact of gearing was negated by syncing everything, at that point it wouldn't be worth doing anything more than once or twice (personally I'd save the glamour farming for when the weekly loot restrictions are removed).

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If you don't want everything to be synced, then don't queue for synced content. Make use of the Duty Finder settings to unsync your party and invite like-minded players to join you.

The experience for new players is pretty bad if the veteran players in the party are almost instantly slaughtering everything because of power creep.

I am all for making older content more spicy again, both by a better ilvs sync, but also by giving people access to more of their jobs abilities at lower level.