Keep skills when level sync’d

Hope we’re all having a good day. I wish we keep our skills when synced to a lower to duty /fate but at reduced power to make it fair. This would make it more enjoyable to get lower level duties and let us enjoy using higher level abilities no matter where we are as long as they have been earned. Thank you for reading!

Would this be fun and make the lower level content enjoyable and allow for jobs to use what feels sometime like mandatory skills at levels they don't have them? Yes. I'd certainly love it and prefer it. But can you imagine being a sprout, first ever dungeon in Sastasha, and you get 3 level 80s? Sure they're synced down, but the dungeon wasn't designed for so many skills and it'd feel pretty bad for that sprout. They'd very much feel like a dead weight being dragged through the dungeon.

It's very unlikely SE would ever do this because of how much additional work it would require and the potential problems it would create with random groups.

It would be a balancing nightmare. A level 80 toolkit is much more powerful than a level 60 toolkit. Both of those are more powerful than a level 40 toolkit and all of them are more powerful than a level 20 toolkit. They would need to separately adjust potencies for every toolkit variation where a new skill with potencies or that impacted potencies was introduced and they would have to do it for each dungeon. They would have to repeat the process every time the level cap is increased or toolkits have major changes.

It would likely lead to more kicks for new players as well since they'd still lack the enhanced toolkits. Right now, there's nothing to be gained by kicking a new player because they'd be replaced by someone with the same basic toolkit. With your system, a party could kick the new player and likely end up with someone with party utility to make it a smoother run.

Worst of all, it's not going to make low level dungeons any more interesting. They're still very basic with very basic mechanics that you would have seen many times already. Retaining access to your full toolkit isn't going to improve the experience enough to make it satisfying.

If you want to be using your full toolkit, stick to doing content your level. You'll miss out on roulette bonuses but you'll have a more enjoyable experience if access to your full toolkit makes that much of a difference to you.

IMO that would just make it worse for higher level players. You'd have to do your full rotation against mobs that die in 5 seconds while the level 20 player out DPSs you with one button. That sure sounds fun.

ohh - thanks for pointing this stuff out. I’m just coming from another game where this kinda thing goes down. Thanks again for the discussion!

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

IMO that would just make it worse for higher level players. You'd have to do your full rotation against mobs that die in 5 seconds while the level 20 player out DPSs you with one button. That sure sounds fun.

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I think it would be fun enough, reason i dont do lower level content anymore is because its boring to miss all the buttons. If it was an option in the DF id been down for it, so player could choose if they wanted full kit with capped/gimped output or the usual level skill. Doubt SE would do it tho

That'd be nice, especially for Fates. One of my biggest gripes with the game is how I'll be leveling some job, just unlock some cool new ability and not be able to use it for a while after because I always get down-leveled, or I'll play SMN at all and it's just soooooo boring.

I tend to agree that not having all your abilities at a certain level is boring but what they are trying to do is avoid negativity in the game to make it accessible for everyone. Also beyond that some skills are just plain out upgrades from others like Jolt 1 to Jolt 2 or Thunder 2 to Thunder 4 for instance.

I feel like it could work if all the classes started with the "core" skills from the beginning, but at reduced potency, only to have their potency bumped up when he originally unlocked them. And then upon unlocking the job, you get a few more skills to ease you into things.

Like, let's take Thaumaturge to start with. Let them begin with Fire, Fire II, Fire III, Blizzard, Blizzard II, Blizzard III, along with Thunder and Thunder II, so they can learn immediately what each of those spells are meant to be used for. Then, once Black Mage unlocks, they gain access to Enochian, without it's damage buff, and Blizzard IV and Fire IV, with reduced potency, allowing them to figure out the proper rotation as early as level 30. Once they reach the level where they would originally have unlocked those actions, they get traits instead, Enochian getting it's damage buff, and Blizzard IV and Fire IV getting its increased potency.

Lancer can start out with both the Full Thrust combo and Chaos Thrust combo, so they can get used to keeping their damage buff and DoT up super early in their formative levels, while using the damage combo in between. Once they would learn them originally, the potency gets bumped up. This would also teach them to be using Life Surge on Full Thrust for the maximum damage. Upon becoming a Dragoon, they get Wheeling Thrust and Fang & Claw alongside Jump, to get used to the fourth step in the combo, at a reduced potency. When they would originally learn those weaponskills, they would instead get a trait that improves their potency.

Gladiator can start out with the Rage of Halone combo and Goring Blade combo. Upon becoming a Paladin, they can learn Holy Spirit and Holy Circle, both at a reduced potency, and Requiescat, which only has it's damage effect at a reduced potency. This will teach players to use Requiescat when they have full MP for big damage, then burn away that MP on Holy Spirit/Circle, before restoring it with their melee combo. Upon reaching the level they'd learn Holy Spirit and Holy Circe, they get traits that increase their potencies, and when they'd learn Requiescat, it gets its proper potency and the 50% increased magic damage effect when above 80% MP, which they should have already learned from using Requiescat for so long for it's increased damage.

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Originally Posted by Rollout

I feel like it could work if all the classes started with the "core" skills from the beginning, but at reduced potency, only to have their potency bumped up when he originally unlocked them. And then upon unlocking the job, you get a few more skills to ease you into things.

Like, let's take Thaumaturge to start with. Let them begin with Fire, Fire II, Fire III, Blizzard, Blizzard II, Blizzard III, along with Thunder and Thunder II, so they can learn immediately what each of those spells are meant to be used for. Then, once Black Mage unlocks, they gain access to Enochian, without it's damage buff, and Blizzard IV and Fire IV, with reduced potency, allowing them to figure out the proper rotation as early as level 30. Once they reach the level where they would originally have unlocked those actions, they get traits instead, Enochian getting it's damage buff, and Blizzard IV and Fire IV getting its increased potency.

Lancer can start out with both the Full Thrust combo and Chaos Thrust combo, so they can get used to keeping their damage buff and DoT up super early in their formative levels, while using the damage combo in between. Once they would learn them originally, the potency gets bumped up. This would also teach them to be using Life Surge on Full Thrust for the maximum damage. Upon becoming a Dragoon, they get Wheeling Thrust and Fang & Claw alongside Jump, to get used to the fourth step in the combo, at a reduced potency. When they would originally learn those weaponskills, they would instead get a trait that improves their potency.

Gladiator can start out with the Rage of Halone combo and Goring Blade combo. Upon becoming a Paladin, they can learn Holy Spirit and Holy Circle, both at a reduced potency, and Requiescat, which only has it's damage effect at a reduced potency. This will teach players to use Requiescat when they have full MP for big damage, then burn away that MP on Holy Spirit/Circle, before restoring it with their melee combo. Upon reaching the level they'd learn Holy Spirit and Holy Circe, they get traits that increase their potencies, and when they'd learn Requiescat, it gets its proper potency and the 50% increased magic damage effect when above 80% MP, which they should have already learned from using Requiescat for so long for it's increased damage.

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I like this idea!

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

It would likely lead to more kicks for new players as well since they'd still lack the enhanced toolkits. Right now, there's nothing to be gained by kicking a new player because they'd be replaced by someone with the same basic toolkit. With your system, a party could kick the new player and likely end up with someone with party utility to make it a smoother run.

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I'm not going to wait 5 minutes to kick someone when I could clear the dungeon in 4 with an 80 toolkit.

They have to rebalance everything to accommodate this change and since the devs clearly don’t care about early game (hence the power creep being so massive) I doubt they would even want to do this resulting in sastash runs that last 2 minutes due in having your whole kit on a starter dungeon.

They should at least give 1 aoe option Im down for that as most Melee can’t aoe in early dungeons. But I don’t wanna taint the experience if we carry sprouts they’ll learn nothing and considering this will apply trials aswell they’ll learn nothing from fights which is kinda of a issue now with sprouts at 80 unaware what stack markers are and being generally unequipped for fights due to said carries.

I say leave the literal starter dungeons as is. These dungeons aren’t meant for high end content but there is a specific system I’d like from another MMO to be in ff14 that would breath tones of life in the dungeon game

There's no way you could "balance" a level 80 toolkit for sub level 50 play. Look at DRG, no AoE until level 40+. Bringing a 80DRG into Sastasha and suddenly they have 3 hit aoe combo, Dragonfire Dive, Nastrond, Stardiver etc. Even if these were 10 potency it's infinitely more AoE DPS than a DRG at level 16 has.

This ridiculous notion that people will get kicked for this is getting tiresome. I'm not trying to speedrun sub 80 content, the only time I've seen people kicked is during level cap when people should know their jobs and not hinder the group. We all know the leveling process is mind numbingly boring and lvl sync especially hits certain jobs hard like BLM.

Also, I don't know where people are getting this idea that sprouts would be traumatized by max lvl players but I feel in most situations it would actually have the opposite effect. Imagine that you are a sprout lancer in stone vigil debating if you should keep subbed due to the new player experience being so tedious. Now imagine that the sprout lancer gets grouped with a max lvl DRG and witnesses this person destroy dragons from orbit, do crazy acrobatics, and summon dragon energy blasts.

Wouldn't this motivate you to keep playing after witnessing your job's true power in action? Wouldn't it be fun for a tiny thaumaturge to witness a BLM lay waste to fates using flares and fouls? I don't care that the sprout would be doing the same damage as me with only 3 abilities, fun is whats important to me.

Your level 80 kit is significantly more powerful than your level 18 kit in Sastasha. It's three times as potent, before accounting for stats, just raw potencies.
So yes, you would wipe the floor with a party of level 80s while newbies would definitely increase the duration of the instance by a significant amount. Then we'll get to level 90, and 100 and it'll be insane.
Balancing this would be a nightmare, and entirely unnecessary, because they already have a perfectly fine balancing system, it's called level sync.

The solution isn't to keep your level 80 skills when synced down. It's to better distribute skills throughout the levelling process so that you're not stuck with single button spam for the first few dungeons.
By retaining your skills when synced, you will just allow them to ignore this aspect entirely, and early game levelling will just get worse and worse.

The level sync system is one of the crown jewels of FFXIV, that allows them to populate low level content, at a level playing field, despite constant progression and level increases. Messing this up would be the worst mistake this game could make.
You might think it's boring going from level 80 content to level 20 content, and you're not wrong, but just wait until sub-level-50 content becomes irrelevant or prohibitive for newbies and the game flat out dies because of it.

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Originally Posted by Annihilism

Wouldn't this motivate you to keep playing after witnessing your job's true power in action? Wouldn't it be fun for a tiny thaumaturge to witness a BLM lay waste to fates using flares and fouls?

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Not for me no.
I would be heavily discouraged knowing no matter how good I do I cannot pull my own weight until I'm at cap hundreds of hours from now after I get through all the expacs.

It would also suck to know that even after that point, whenever I pick up a new class I will always be levelling it at the inconvenience of others.

If they can find a way to do it, im all for it. Would make me feel mutch better to play certain classes like SMN. God, playing SMN under 70 feels so freaking slow....or DRG. Not having your Claw/Fang rotation (Or only one part of it) is such a shitty feeling....