Scaling mechanics

Right. I'm a new player, and now I'm into SB content...

I just realized a huge pet peeve when it comes to the level scaling in dungeons or FATEs.

It scales you completely to the point you unlearn spells! Does anyone knows the reasoning for this?

Why we can't just be scaled down in a power level and keep all of our current abilities?

It's awful to be scaled down to Satasha and have like... 1 button to press. I realize we'd be OP to those low level dungeons if we have all of our arsenal avaliable. Well, just make stuff tougher if that's the case, no?

I'd rather them just keep everything how it is with Level Sync

im kinda guessing its to ensure that actual low level players who dont get unsynched arent at disadvantage.

just imagine everyone being freely able to use every skill...it would make a lot of people think of the lowbie person as a burden/inconvenience....because they'd obviously be the worst player in that scenario.

Now, imagine you are a fresh lvl 15 gladiator, doing your first dungeon. Mobs now hit hard as hell, because there are 3 lvl 70s in your first dungeon run. You also can't keep hate, because they have access to their full rotations and you have fast blade, savage blade, and flash.

You now think you are bad, and get discouraged. They don't help by running ahead and killing things because they now know they can take hits better than you.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Now, imagine you are a fresh lvl 15 gladiator, doing your first dungeon. Mobs now hit hard as hell, because there are 3 lvl 70s in your first dungeon run. You also can't keep hate, because they have access to their full rotations and you have fast blade, savage blade, and flash.

You now think you are bad, and get discouraged. They don't help by running ahead and killing things because they now know they can take hits better than you.

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Absolutely.
Besides, we do have a system that scales abilities down, but at lvl 17 you don't know JOB abilities because you are too low.
Re running old content is a 'memory' lore wise and you didn't know Holy etc at lvl 35.

Personally I find it refreshing to have to adjust my rotations every now and again with a little Lvl sync.

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Originally Posted by Niqote

Absolutely.
Besides, we do have a system that scales abilities down, but at lvl 17 you don't know JOB abilities because you are too low.
Re running old content is a 'memory' lore wise and you didn't know Holy etc at lvl 35.

Personally I find it refreshing to have to adjust my rotations every now and again with a little Lvl sync.

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All I can think of now is talking to a group of leafs about that time I ran sastasha and since I don't remember the people I went with at the time I just replace them with the leafs in my mind.

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Originally Posted by Faliandra

im kinda guessing its to ensure that actual low level players who dont get unsynched arent at disadvantage.

just imagine everyone being freely able to use every skill...it would make a lot of people think of the lowbie person as a burden/inconvenience....because they'd obviously be the worst player in that scenario.

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Who cares about a new player having low dps, Satasha takes 15mins. At least it wouldn't be super boring for all the people who have done it 100 times.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Who cares about a new player having low dps, Satasha takes 15mins. At least it wouldn't be super boring for all the people who have done it 100 times.

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Indeed. Screw that new player for not starting when you did. They don't deserve a chance to learn how to properly play their jobs, because you've done the dungeon 100 times already. What selfish jerks they are.

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Originally Posted by FMElan

Indeed. Screw that new player for not starting when you did. They don't deserve a chance to learn how to properly play their jobs, because you've done the dungeon 100 times already. What selfish jerks they are.

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Excuse me? How does me having all of my abilities prevent them from learning their class? Why make it more boring to veterans than it has to be?

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Excuse me? How does me having all of my abilities prevent them from learning their class? Why make it more boring to veterans than it has to be?

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Try completing a lvl 70 dungeon as pld without shield oath on and only with savage blade, fast blade, and flash. See how that goes for ya.

Now flip that, as a new player tanking sastasha against DPs with their full kit.

Its already hard enough for new tanks to hold hate against sync'd players, and this would make it worse lol.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Excuse me? How does me having all of my abilities prevent them from learning their class? Why make it more boring to veterans than it has to be?

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You sound like a mentor.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Try completing a lvl 70 dungeon as pld without shield oath on and only with savage blade, fast blade, and flash. See how that goes for ya.

Now flip that, as a new player tanking sastasha against DPs with their full kit.

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Are you suggesting that a newbie tank would have threat issues? If so that is already the case with my "limited kit". So I think your point is invalid.

You seem to be misunderstanding my point of view as "screw the new players" which is entirely incorrect. I have no issues with new players. But why should a veteran have to suffer a poorer experience? In all honesty a tank should have their full threat rotation from level 16.

Babby tanks are going to lose aggro with or without other classes having access to their entire kit.

All it means to me is that tanks should get their stance and basic 123 combo much earlier than they currently do.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Excuse me? How does me having all of my abilities prevent them from learning their class? Why make it more boring to veterans than it has to be?

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Even putting aside the tank issues, you'd have the problem of mobs just dying way too fast. Palace of the Dead is a poor place to learn a class simply because nothing lives long enough to bring the full suite of abilities to bear. This change would make dungeons far more PotD-like. It probably wouldn't be as bad but new players would lose out on pacing.

Further you'd neuter what challenges the dungeons do have. While Satasha->Thousand Maws probably don't have enough substance to lose, beyond that it is an issue. Think on something like Sunken Temple of Qarn. This dungeon poses real challenges to a group of new players. Needing to kill bees before "Final Sting", having to deal with Doom, killing the golem core before the healer's MP pool is gone. These issues basically all vanish if max level players can vaporize the mobs with max level rotations and potency values. Stone Vigil, Brayflox Longstop, Aurum Vale. All of these have mechanics that teach good lessons that are more trivialized the higher DPS climbs. These are valuable learning experiences.

Another reason is clarity. Say a new player is trying out a few jobs at once, he gets into a Haukke Manor run on his White Mage. He's been thinking of trying out a DPS class and sees a Ninja in his party. This ninja is the same level as him: Level 30. Holy cow that guys shooting lightning bolts, summoning giant frogs, he can teleport, and he has that awesome buff that helps the tank get aggro. "~Sweet~" he says, heading to the Limsa to start a rogue. A couple days later he's 30 and excited to equip his job stone to see his cool new toys and... "Oh. Wow, those are all level 50+. How the world was that other guy using them? This is kind of unfair...". It places a burden on new players to do external research or ask exhaustive questions to be able to have a fair understanding of the context of the group content.

However if we put aside those issues another big one remains, a massive difficulty spike at 60+. Let's say we're OK with players not learning those specific lessons, and bosses going down a bit too quick. They're going to hit a wall and hard when they reach level 61+, as their party members kits start to come into alignment with the content. The effective amount of "Carry" they're starts going down at a far greater rate than any of us veteran players were exposed to. Not that dungeons are the most challenging content but they will certainly seem that way next to the previous 60 levels of steamroll carries.

Besides, the purpose of the roulette system is not to be terribly exciting max level content. Leveling roulette is not around for the benefit for us. It exists for the newbies. It's low level basic content of course it is bland for a veteran. The tomestone rewards and exp for higher level characters are bribes to get us to do content that wouldn't otherwise be engaging to us. If it was supposed to be otherwise they'd get rid of the daily limit, tune the rewards a bit and slap every 70 ability they could inside. Instead the system exists to preserve the low level content in as close to an "Original State" as it reasonably can for new players. Once you make changes to make it compelling for high-level players you totally lose purpose, hence the bribes. So long as these bribes are enough to keep people in they have no reason to change it. If the bribes start failing to be enough they'll either increase them, or change the content the bare minimum away from the Original State to get people in.

They know it is dull, it is supposed to be dull.

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Originally Posted by HPDelron

Another reason is clarity...

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Something to look forward to.

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Originally Posted by HPDelron

However if we put aside those issues another big one remains, a massive difficulty spike at 60+...

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People are using jump potions already anyway and not knowing mechanics/classes.

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Originally Posted by HPDelron

They know it is dull, it is supposed to be dull.

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The game is supposed to be dull to veterans? What?

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Something to look forward to.

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Your "Something to look forward to" is another persons "Disappointing", another person's "Unfair", another person's "Confusing", and yet another persons "Tease".

There are a lot of ways to look at someone else getting cool toys and power you don't, when you're doing the same content at the same level. Some of them positive, the vast majority negative.

What you're saying here isn't "Wrong" in the strictest sense, it's just one very narrow (and my guess is quite uncommon) way people could look at the situation.

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People are using jump potions already anyway and not knowing mechanics/classes.

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..and? If people are paying more to jump the deep end right off the bat, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep the shallow end tidy and accessible.

If there was solid data that only small number of players were opting to not use the Jump potions, maybe this point would have more merit. However "Jump Potion 1st Timer" seems more the exception than the rule, and we should hardly be sculpting the game's core teaching tools around that exception.

So long as there is a meaningful number of true sprouts, we should leave these low level experiences intact for them. They should be free to have the same experiences we did. If these folks start to become rare maybe it would be time for the dev team to reconsider the utility it preserving it for them. However we aren't there, we aren't even close.

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The game is supposed to be dull to veterans? What?

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Not "The Game" generally, but the "Leveling Roulette" specifically? Yes.

It's one piece of optional content with no unique rewards. It is intentionally kept in a state that anyone with even a passing familiarity with the game would know is dull for veterans. It intentionally kept in this state and therefore by definition intentionally kept dull for veterans. It is not kept in this state because "being dull for vets" has value in and of itself but because the other properties of that state have merit. Specifically the preservation of the low level content for newbies.

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Originally Posted by HPDelron

Not "The Game" generally, but the "Leveling Roulette" specifically? Yes.

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So your saying part of the game is designed to be dull? Right.

If players are finding content boring, is it not the job of the developers to make it fun? That is the point of this thread. Stating that "it's dull because it has to be" is just lazy and ignorant. Why can't low level content be fun?

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Originally Posted by Valinis

So your saying part of the game is designed to be dull? Right.

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You can't make anything that is everything to all people. This means that for a game with a variety of features some of them are going to appeal more to certain segments of the population than others, and do so in different ways.

The leveling roulette does not exist for the benefit for anyone that is level 70. It exists for the benefit of the new player. These means the the core purpose for it is to make sure low level content stays engaging, fair and correctly tuned for new players.

That this is dull for veterans is not so much a design goal, but a trade-off in the design knowingly taken. In this case we're considering two properties: "Exciting for vets" and "Fair and well-paced for newbies" which are more/less mutually exclusive. They opted for a design that placed far more value on the latter since this better aligns with the goal for the content.

Certainly they need high level players to make it work, so they bribe them to do something kind of boring with rewards. It's a compromise of sorts and the fact that so many people willingly do it for relatively moderate gains in efficiency on xp/tomestone farming probably tells it's not a huge one.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

So your saying part of the game is designed to be dull? Right.

If players are finding content boring, is it not the job of the developers to make it fun? That is the point of this thread. Stating that "it's dull because it has to be" is just lazy and ignorant. Why can't low level content be fun?

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Every player's definition of fun is different. For example I quite enjoy going back to the old content and running it with a limited set of moves. Making use of my limited toolkit (aka limited resources in my eyes), to conquer the challenges set forth. Then in higher levels, using a fuller more fleshed out toolkit to overcome the challenges.

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Originally Posted by HPDelron

That this is dull for veterans is not so much a design goal, but a trade-off in the design knowingly taken. In this case we're considering two properties: "Exciting for vets" and "Fair and well-paced for newbies" which are more/less mutually exclusive. They opted for a design that placed far more value on the latter since this better aligns with the goal for the content.

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Wrong. We call that poor design.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Every player's definition of fun is different. For example I quite enjoy going back to the old content and running it with a limited set of moves. Making use of my limited toolkit (aka limited resources in my eyes), to conquer the challenges set forth. Then in higher levels, using a fuller more fleshed out toolkit to overcome the challenges.

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That's great for you. Unfortunately there are people who find it to be not fun, hence the reason this thread exists.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

That's great for you. Unfortunately there are people who find it to be not fun, hence the reason this thread exists.

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But it does stress the point of you can't please everyone. Let's say you changed it to just be another max skillset roulette, some people would then find that boring. SE are damned if they do, damned if they don't. It doesn't matter what they do, threads like this will always pop up because there'll always be someone not happy.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

But it does stress the point of you can't please everyone. Let's say you changed it to just be another max skillset roulette, some people would then find that boring. SE are damned if they do, damned if they don't. It doesn't matter what they do, threads like this will always pop up because there'll always be someone not happy.

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I'm willing to bet the majority of people would prefer to have more than 2 buttons to press in a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

I'm willing to bet the majority of people would prefer to have more than 2 buttons to press in a dungeon.

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The amount of dungeons it is this low in very small, I don't see them further destroying all the roulette content just because satasha and a few others are super boring.

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Originally Posted by MrSmiley

The amount of dungeons it is this low in very small, I don't see them further destroying all the roulette content just because satasha and a few others are super boring.

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I count 5 dungeons and a trial where a GLD/PLD would not have access to Rage of Halone. Why would scaling abilities destroy the low level content? It's already trivial with 2 buttons.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

I count 5 dungeons and a trial where a GLD/PLD would not have access to Rage of Halone. Why would scaling abilities destroy the low level content? It's already trivial with 2 buttons.

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Now think of it with blm's using chain flare.

I know running it in under 10 mins sounds cool but I don't think the devs want that to happen for multiple reasons, scaling the enemies up wont help either because than new players would get screwed if they happen to not get a sync player in, and do literally nothing if they do. It's not the best as it is sure, but its still better than the alternative overall.

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Originally Posted by MrSmiley

I know running it in under 10 mins sounds cool

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But you can already do that. /shrug

Giving us full access to our kits would screw it over for the new players, which would in turn lead to one of 2 things:

1) The new player leaves because they are not enjoying themselves. They feel inferior and never have to, or get to, do anything at all. Because the max level person just... does everything for them.

Which reminds me of when my friends power leveled me in WoW. They would grab a mage run into the dungeon pull EVERYTHING including the bosses into one spot and then 1 shot nuke. While I just stood there in exp range. It was boring as all hell.

2) Frustrated players would resort to jump boosts, placing them where they may have the class/job skills, but not the required player skills. Leading to the community getting even more toxic, and leading to an even greater tank/healer shortage then we already got as people will only run with FC members even more then they already do.

Giving us our full kit in every dungeon regardless of sync will only cause more harm then good to the overall playerbase, and basically be shoving daggers into the growth of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

1) The new player leaves because they are not enjoying themselves. They feel inferior and never have to, or get to, do anything at all. Because the max level person just... does everything for them.

Which reminds me of when my friends power leveled me in WoW. They would grab a mage run into the dungeon pull EVERYTHING including the bosses into one spot and then 1 shot nuke. While I just stood there in exp range. It was boring as all hell.

Giving us our full kit in every dungeon regardless of sync will only cause more harm then good to the overall playerbase, and basically be shoving daggers into the growth of the playerbase.

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Having full access to skills and having a max level character in a level 16 dungeon are very different things.

Too much math to be honest. With the current system we have potencies (almost) balanced per level, while including level synced stats. With your suggested changes, it would require ridiculous volumes of math per class, per available skills (and levels because the coincide), in addition to coding figuring out whether or not people did their class quests and the types of debuffs/buffs each class provides...

Like balancing a level 15 Gladiator's eight skills (including role abilities) against lets say... A White Mage's 26 skills or... Red Mage's 28 skills (excluding consolidated skills and role abilities) is very tedious and also very annoying with the amount of different variables, party comps and alike.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Having full access to skills and having a max level character in a level 16 dungeon are very different things.

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Oh and how would you scale the skills then?

Would my Fuma, Raiton, Suiton, True North-Trick Attack Ten Chi Jin with Duality Aeolian Edge follow up only do as much damage as my normal 1 2 combo actually available at that level? Ignoring the fact I have a 20% built in damage boost from traits alone. As well as an attack speed boost so I hit far more often then I would at that level.

I would single handedly rip aggro off any fresh tank and shred the boss stupidly quick because none of the bosses at that level are balanced with me having that much firepower. While at the same time misleading anyone who wants to be a ninja because they would think I have all of that stuff at level 18. And then when I explain it to them they are going to be upset at the amount of grinding and MSQ they will need to do to catch up to actually do something. Either they will wind up leaving out of boredom, or they will open their wallets and boosting and then i will have to deal with them in dungeons where they do not know shit and we are wiping regularly.

Sorry but I would rather keep the current system. Which was made with new players in mind and keeping their content populated as they worked their way up to our content.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Excuse me? How does me having all of my abilities prevent them from learning their class? Why make it more boring to veterans than it has to be?

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Your responses in this thread read as if you've never actually played a game that has done exactly what you are suggesting.

Which is to say, every game I know that has done this has resulted in essentially killing off the flow of new players to the game, dooming the game to a slow, irreversible decline.

Chances are the devs have already thought of this, and have more than enough foresight than to risk the very future of the game over mere convenience for veterans.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Would my Fuma, Raiton, Suiton, True North-Trick Attack Ten Chi Jin with Duality Aeolian Edge follow up only do as much damage as my....

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Why can't it? If not slightly more as part of being a veteran.

Threat is already an issue with the simple 1-2 rotation. Your extra kit makes no difference. Tanks need their 3rd attack at level 16.

Why would they care what you are doing if they are having so much fun pressing 2 buttons like you claim they would be?

People are boosting already without knowing mechanics or how to play their class.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

Your responses in this thread read as if you've never actually played a game that has done exactly what you are suggesting.

Which is to say, every game I know that has done this has resulted in essentially killing off the flow of new players to the game, dooming the game to a slow, irreversible decline.

Chances are the devs have already thought of this, and have more than enough foresight than to risk the very future of the game over mere convenience for veterans.

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You mean like how GW2 did it? It had none of the problems you mention. That's just one example.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Why can't it? If not slightly more as part of being a veteran.

Threat is already an issue with the simple 1-2 rotation. Your extra kit makes no difference. Tanks need their 3rd attack at level 16.

Why would they care what you are doing if they are having so much fun pressing 2 buttons like you claim they would be?

People are boosting already without knowing mechanics or how to play their class.

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I'm not sure you understand what everyone's trying to tell you.

In response to the bolded part especially: The solution isn't to ignore it/make it worse. You can't simply transplant an idea from a different game where it supposedly may have worked out, and expect the same results here. Community mentality in FFXIV is already incredibly different compared to other MMO communities, and that alone means there could be very unforeseen and entirely unintended circumstances as a result.

This is a big change to be making, and if it turns out it's a freaking disaster on a community level, the devs can't simply go 'oops' and get rid of it. There's already precedent on lesser things causing major balancing issues in earlier content - the tank changes resulting in tanks having lower emnity generation at early level dungeons, something the devs have already had to quickly address in last week's patch. And this was a problem largely regardless of experience, now you're pretty much telling us to ignore early level balance because the early level experience is now supposedly worthless and 'sucks to be you newbie, you should have started playing this game when the content was relevant'?

And all this for what? The enjoyment of veterans at endgame who really should have no business running earlier content if it were not for the tome system? Because THAT is the bigger problem. You can see this in mentor roulette too, with mentors dreading getting primal EX and outright telling players to unsync if they want a clear before leaving/trying to initiate a vote abandon ASAP.