Level Syncing is Becoming an Increasing Problem

With 5.0's announcement looming in the near future, and many hours of leveling roulettes under my belt, a new, very ugly problem is becoming increasingly apparent to me.

It's the game's progression. And how level syncs make old content a chore to play in comparison with modern content.
With the move into Stormblood, many classes underwent redesigns wherein lower-level skillsets were streamlined in order to make room for the new 60-70 skills. Many classes also obtained important traits or abilities that completely or near-completely define their current rotation or playstyle (MCH's heat management, DRK's Blood Gauge, etc.).
As a result, many classes now feel either incomplete or just extremely dumbed-down in comparison to what they're like at the level cap. There's little to manage, little to weave, little to press in general. And it makes getting anything below the highest level you can queue for an absolute snoozefest.
A good example of this is Samurai, who is skull-crushingly boring to play before you unlock your Kenki gauge at 52, and then only skull-bashingly boring to play until 62, when your Kenki generation is increased.

This also makes it a lot harder to practice your rotations and whatnot in a live environment. Since what you're doing at level 34 will probably not reflect what you're doing at 70. This issue will only get worse in 5.0 if we're just given another 4 skills and a new gimmick gauge to manage.

I imagine healers are less impacted by this as they don't really have much of an offensive rotation. Just plant a DoT and press your damage spell. But DPS and tanks feel it a lot more.

What I'd like to see is some kind of dynamic scaling based on how far down players in a group are synced (level-wise, NOT item-level-wise), while not removing our skills and traits.

• Are the DPS a higher level than the dungeon? Now all the enemies have more health and the tank passively generates more enmity to compensate for the increased damage output of the DPS.
• Is the tank a higher level than the dungeon? Now the enemies hit slightly harder and have slightly more health to compensate for the tank's increased defensive and offensive capabilities.
• Does the healer outlevel the dungeon? Enemies hit harder and the tank generates slightly more emnity to compensate for the increased healing going out.

Something along these lines really. Maybe it'd just be a flat scaling percentage based on the level difference. Maybe it'd be something more intricate (like how the StoneSkySea dummies have differing levels of health depending on the specific class attacking them).

The short of it is that I'd just like for lower-level content to not make me feel like I've just undergone a lobotomy, so I'm not groaning every time the roulette places me in Satasha/ARR primals.

So, how do you feel about level syncing stripping your skills? Would you be in favour of retaining our learned skills in low-level content?
Or are you, as a DPS, fine with only pressing about 8 buttons in low level content?
Or are you, as a Tank, fine with lacking large chunks of your offensive kit in low level content?
Or are you, as a Healer, fine with lacking whatever-the-hell Healers lack in low-level content (AST's cards, maybe?)?

I prefer that it stays the way that it currently is.

let's keep things as they are now. One day, I want to 1 hit kill kefka with an emote.

one day.

Oh trust me, Healers feet it too. In low level content people just don't suffer much damage, so you just spam Stone/Ruin/Malefic for 30 minutes.

i thought we just /follow <2> the whole dung?
lmao

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Originally Posted by Mirch

i thought we just /follow <2> the whole dung?
lmao

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I rolled into Toto-rak once as a MCH, with a BRD as the other DPS and the healer did this.
I was pulling my hair out, asking them to please dps to get us through quicker but they just weren't bothering.
The tank was the newbie so I didn't want to disrupt their flow, but damn did I wish I could just run ahead and force the healer to heal me.

You should have your basic GCD rotation unlocked by Sastasha, and you should have all of your abilities by level 50. That gives you 20 levels to practice them before reaching end-game, and will let us use all of our abilities in everything but leveling roulette.

Regularly unlocking abilities as you level up has never made leveling more fun or engaging to me. Most of the time it just leaves you with an incomplete and awkward toolkit until you reach a certain milestone.

Definitely agree that this is a problem (that is only going to get worse) ... as for the solution, I would much prefer they went through each class and reworked their low-mid level toolkits to:

1. Have at least a full rotation / combo, 1 AoE (healing or damage), and for tanks, healers, and specific dps, at least 1 utility by level 15.

This would give each class a 'basic kit' from the very first dungeon, and as such players could start learning the basics of their role from the very first dungeon. It also establishes a strong base for each class upon which future abilities can be added, and then integrated by the player as they level up and learn.

As an example, Lancer / Dragoon gets Impulse Drive (second combo starter) at level 6 and doesn't get Doom Spike (their first AoE) until level 40! Are you trying to confuse / bore new Lancer players SE?

It would be much smoother if by level 15 Lancer had at least:
True Thrust (first combo starter)
Vorpal Thrust (first combo mid)
Full Thrust (first combo finisher)
Heavy Thrust (damage boost and intro to positional)
Doom Spike (first AoE)


2. Give 'class changing' abilities as early as (sensibly) possible.

The main reason for this is so that, again, players can learn and integrate new abilities / class mechanics as they level ... as opposed to the current 'welcome to level cap, now re-learn your class' (and good luck on the dungeon speed runs).

An example of this is of course Dark Knight (The Blackest Night), which (for any of its other issues) would at least feel better in the 64-69 range and offer a smoother transition at 70 if it got TBN at 64 (2 levels after its first Blood spender) with Quietus and Bloodspiller (both important, but not nearly as class changing) pushed to 68 and 70.

And I won't even mention post 4.2 WAR, as Inner Release is just completely busted.


3. Group 'connected' abilities reasonably close together.

Again, learning, A connects to B.

Take SAMs Third Eye as an example... currently given at level 6, it isn't really useful until you get Merciful Eyes at 58! That's 52 levels to completely forget about Third Eye before it becomes noticeably useful (gaining HP is infinitely more noticeable than taking 10% less damage for 1 attack).

Third Eye and Merciful Eyes really should both be given at the same level (probably in the 30s) so that players can learn how useful Third Eye can be as soon as they get it. Which is then re-enforced when players get Hissatsu: Seigan (which should probably be in the 50s).

Well, you're not waiting 52 levels to use Third Eye, because you start SAM at level 50.

But I do think this is a problem for the new jobs. They're significantly simpler given that they haven't had three stages of evolution, which results in them have fewer meaningful skills to spread out among the lower levels.

I basically agree. With the ability prune in Stormblood, low level play became even worse than it already was. For example with MNK, if you had already unlocked Blood for Blood then you could start using it as soon as you had a cross-class slot. Now MNK doesn't get their big damage cooldown until level 68.

Because of the need to add new abilities with each expansion but also keep the total amount of abilities about the same to constrain complexity, we end up with this situation where skill acquisition gets spread further and further out and low level play becomes more and more miserable.

However a big part of this problem is because so many of the existing skillsets are back-loaded, that is to say, almost half your entire job is learned after level 50. A typical job gets about 25-28 actions excluding cross-roles, but because the devs feel there's this weird need to have constant new ability unlocks every 2 levels after 50, around 8-10 of those will be unlocked once you're already significantly well into the game. Not only does this make jobs feel horribly incomplete before very high levels (even max level for some jobs), but it causes a problem where you suddenly have to relearn your entire job after unlocking some key skill at high level, even though you've already spent dozens of hours learning the initial rotation.

Considering we're rapidly approaching the next expansion which will most likely be looking to raise the level cap to 80, and Yoshida has already said that they will be pruning skills again to make room for new ones, this is an issue that needs to be considered as soon as possible to avoid falling into the same trap and making low-level gameplay even worse than it currently is.

Simply put, skill acquisition rates and orders need to be drastically changed such that jobs are practically complete by the time they reach level 50. A job's entire basic rotation and core skills should all be in place by level 50, and levels 50-80 should see a dramatic reduction in the total amount of new skills learned (10 at most for the entire 50-80 span, ideally more like 6-8), and those new skills should not greatly alter the existing rotation except to expand on it with new cooldowns or traits.

You don't need to have loads of new skills to motivate people to reach the level cap, they are going to do that no matter what. The sacrifice of not getting so many new skills at high level is DEFINITELY worth the advantage of making low level and synced gameplay much more fun. One of the biggest complaints I hear about XIV from new players and veterans alike is that the combat takes FOREVER to get interesting. Locking away half the job toolkits behind level 50 (which for a new player will take them possibly over 100 hours of MSQ) is a huge turn-off, both for new players and veterans trying to level new jobs or do synced content. If XIV wants to keep retaining players this is something that desperately needs to be addressed in 5.0.

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Originally Posted by Acidblood

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BLM fire IV should be learned lv 54 right after enochian.

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Originally Posted by ShinShimon

You should have your basic GCD rotation unlocked by Sastasha, and you should have all of your abilities by level 50. That gives you 20 levels to practice them before reaching end-game, and will let us use all of our abilities in everything but leveling roulette.

Regularly unlocking abilities as you level up has never made leveling more fun or engaging to me. Most of the time it just leaves you with an incomplete and awkward toolkit until you reach a certain milestone.

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I agree with this, to expand, after level 50, traits could be used to, change abilities into stronger versions, or something different all together. This would allow to give jobs a fresh feel and make them stronger without having to revamp everything or cull abilities.

I don’t know why they just didn’t design level sync to allow us to keep our learned abilities, But lower job strength to bring it in line with the content you were synced to.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Well, you're not waiting 52 levels to use Third Eye, because you start SAM at level 50.

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Good point ;)

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

I don’t know why they just didn’t design level sync to allow us to keep our learned abilities, But lower job strength to bring it in line with the content you were synced to.

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I think the main problem with letting high-level characters keep their abilities is that jobs tend to get a LOT of damage boosts / hard hitting abilities at higher levels (i.e. even with equal stats a high-level character would hit a lot harder than a low-level character) ... which would then mean a lot more work / complexity to ‘level sync’ than simply lowering stat values (lest they make the lives of low-level characters, especially tanks, even more of a nightmare).

It also fails to address the issue of low-level play, especially for new players (i.e. less new players sticking it out until it 'gets better at high levels').

All actions remain usable. Actions that are not level appropriate are reduced in power.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

All actions remain usable. Actions that are not level appropriate are reduced in power.

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Reduced by how much though? I mean, reduce abilities too far and you may as well not use them (why go to the effort for such a small gain?), but not far enough and high-level characters will still be too powerful.

And then you have different types of abilities... reducing BLM Flare / Foul by only 50% would probably still leave them with insane AoE compared to what is normally available at low levels, but reduce BLM Fire IV by the same 50% and it becomes objectively worse than Fire I (i.e. it would be a 30 potency DPS loss and it doesn't refresh stacks)… and is DRG Doom Spike @ 140 AoE potency, which they don't normally get until level 40, too powerful at low levels when BLM has Fire II @ 80+AF AoE pontency and BRD has Quick Nock @ 110 AoE potency (plus a DoT) at level 18?

As I said, it would take a lot of work, and add a lot of complexity, to ‘balance’ level sync properly if high level characters 'simply' kept their abilities... it would be much better to put that effort into re-working the abilities jobs get a low-to-mid-levels, which would also benefit low-to-mid-level characters (for both new players and alt-jobs).

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Originally Posted by Lumadurin

What I'd like to see is some kind of dynamic scaling based on how far down players in a group are synced (level-wise, NOT item-level-wise), while not removing our skills and traits.

• Are the DPS a higher level than the dungeon? Now all the enemies have more health and the tank passively generates more enmity to compensate for the increased damage output of the DPS.
• Is the tank a higher level than the dungeon? Now the enemies hit slightly harder and have slightly more health to compensate for the tank's increased defensive and offensive capabilities.
• Does the healer outlevel the dungeon? Enemies hit harder and the tank generates slightly more emnity to compensate for the increased healing going out.

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This may run into problems if player levels are wildly different. In particular, anything that increases enemy damage while keeping player health the same reduces the margin of error in dealing with mechanics. Higher healing output or tank health doesn't help if the DPS gets one-shot by a mechanic that should have been survivable.

I'm not bothered by losing more powerful versions of skills or minor mechanics, but lacking distinctive skills or major mechanics is annoying. For example WHM's Cure II is just better Cure, and Cure III is basically a hybrid between Cure and Medica. But having no instant heals before Lv50 and having to rely solely on Lucid Dreaming for MP management until Lv52 sucks. The lily mechanic is weak enough to be basically superfluous.

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Originally Posted by tdb

This may run into problems if player levels are wildly different. In particular, anything that increases enemy damage while keeping player health the same reduces the margin of error in dealing with mechanics. Higher healing output or tank health doesn't help if the DPS gets one-shot by a mechanic that should have been survivable.

I'm not bothered by losing more powerful versions of skills or minor mechanics, but lacking distinctive skills or major mechanics is annoying. For example WHM's Cure II is just better Cure, and Cure III is basically a hybrid between Cure and Medica. But having no instant heals before Lv50 and having to rely solely on Lucid Dreaming for MP management until Lv52 sucks. The lily mechanic is weak enough to be basically superfluous.

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Cure II is also flat out more expensive than Cure, and the latter gives a free use of the former. So not the best example.

Honestly this just shows us how important it is to have a decent progression of abilities while levelling. BLM got fixes to its rotation in Stormblood that also helped its levelling period massively. SCH had its issues addressed by the role action system. There's no reason SE can't implement similar ideas on other jobs. Every Tank except WAR has both of their stances and gets their basic aggro abilities at similar levels before reaching level 50.

On Machinist you could easily make Gauss Barrel a flat damage bonus trait at 52, then upgrade it to unlock the Overheat mechanic when you unlock Cooldown at 62.

With AST swap Gravity around either Combust II or Synastry. Fixes their level 50 sync issues and changes very little of of their progression.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

Cure II is also flat out more expensive than Cure, and the latter gives a free use of the former. So not the best example.

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Yes, and that's why it's not simply replaced when you unlock the better version like the Stone spells are. Still, they're both single-target heals with a cast time and they get used in similar situations.

As a side note, it'd be nice if melee could learn to do positional outside of dungeons.

The time spent in dungeon / trial is very minimal when you level your first job and this is where you get most of your habit.

Melee not being able to do positional on most world mobs makes newer player (who are slightly casual in mindset) get a very bad habit of ignoring those. It is not uncommon to see melee entirely ignoring position until max level when they start being told/réalising they perform poorly.

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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.

Reshuffling class/job skills to allow for intact combos and AoEs at low levels sounds like a pretty good idea.

That said, I would be totally fine with them just allowing high level players use all their skills in low level dungeons. The whole point is carrying new players through low level content anyway, they can deal with having only a few abilities as they are still new and feeling fresh, but some jaded long time player who has been playing since ARR's launch just wants to leave the group and take the 30min penalty when leveling roulette throws Sastasha at them..