This might be a shot in the dark, but I feel like so many other MMO's have level sync systems in place, but instead of removing spells/abilities that are above the synced level--they scale the number down to keep it consistent with the power level of the dungeon or area.
This is a huge frustration with almost everyone I play as they all feel like they level all their characters up while feeling none of the progress of leveling since you hardly ever get to use new abilities. Not to mention a lot of these sequences require practice but 90% of your play time in leveling queues/fates are done with very basic abilities. It's very frustrating. As I said before, it completely wipes out any feeling of progress.
I love this game, I have over 1,000 hours now and I hope to keep getting more in, but it's just so sad doing leveling queues and having only a third of my learned abilities. Probably not something that's going to change--but maybe with enough attention devs might consider it. Hope enough people feel the same.
Please Allow Scaled Down Abilities When Level Synced!
Printable View
-
03-10-2021, 01:02 PMFelduinPlease Allow Scaled Down Abilities When Level Synced!
-
03-10-2021, 01:22 PMHasrat
Personally, think this system works fine as is. The difficulty with scaling abilities lies in scaling player skill. The point of syncing is to maintain some semblance of balance. There is much great difficulty in attempting to balance a level-cap job with an at-level job. The at-level job has very few buttons to press. The level-cap job has very many (usually). Worse, the scaling would need to be balanced at nearly every single level, to account for new skills and traits. Every job gets that final piece of kit at level-cap, so balance to that, but at level-cap-minus-1, you have very different potency, needing a different scale. Additionally, you run the risk of having bad/mediocre level-cap players not fully utilizing their kit. If the scaling balance is meant to take into account a certain expected skill level, and players fail to meet it, you will find duty progress severely inhibited.
These reasons and more, in much more detail, always come up when this idea is presented. Bottom line, it's a considerable amount of work that constantly needs checked and rechecked, and it's just not remotely worth the effort when the current system achieves the balance goal with much less trouble. -
03-10-2021, 01:48 PMDrWho2010
People have been asking this for years. it has been debunked time and again - the answer is always going to be no. Please do a search for existing topics before posting a new one.
-
03-10-2021, 03:01 PMItMe
So what happens when you get put into a party with someone still levelling?
Animosity?
"Ugh, they don't have their full kit yet. They're gonna be a drag."
Feeling like dead weight?
"Shit, I'm level 30. The other DPS is basically able to carry us through this. I'm not doing anything."
People leaving?
"I'm not gonna play with them. A cleric learning can be bad enough, but now the precedent has been set that I'm used to playing with healers that have their kit I'm NOT down for this."
Having a full kit even when synched would be kinda nifty, but man would it cause a lot of undue friction. Yoshi P has said he's against this feature and I don't see him changing his mind anytime soon.
Some game can pull it off better than others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Felduin
14, being so rotation focused, is not one of them.
Instead of fighting this uphill battle I'd rather the devs focused elsewhere.
I recommend running more endgame content.Quote:
Originally Posted by Felduin
-
03-10-2021, 05:58 PMHasrat
Additional point, I made my first post with a very DPS-oriented mindset. But previous post raises probably the winning point. There is genuinely no way to scale down a full-kit WHM to a at-level WHM with nothing but Cure and Medica. Tanks and healers especially all have (mostly) a wealth of oGCD skills for utility/weaving. It may very well be nearly impossible to truly balance most of those to be roughly equal to a synced/at-level player. Back to the WHM example, literally the entirety of the level 80 WHM kit would have to be scaled to equal a level 15-18 WHM in Sastasha, with nothing but Cure/Medica for heals, and Stone(II) and Aero for damage. How do you scale Benediction? How do you scale things like PLD Cover, Clemency, Hallowed Ground?
-
03-10-2021, 10:49 PMYuletide
I am against this idea, I like the way level syncing is. There are certain abilities we don't have access to at lower levels that would break dungeons or make them too easy. In particular any mitigation, stuns, CC, DoTs, etc. Having a full level 80 rotation available to you in a level 30 instance, no matter the downscaling, still means more dps.
The way the level sync is at the moment means that new players have fun with new content and veterans get to help them push forward with their queue times. Level sync is entirely about the new player's experience, not yours. -
03-10-2021, 11:57 PMItMeOh my god... unless it means LESS DPS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yuletide
Like... if all of your moves are scaled down that DoT probably isn't even worth hitting. Players will find their rotation isn't the same at 80, because even though they have the same moves they're gonna be prioritizing different parts of their rotation.
If all your moves scaled down so you aren't so out DPSing someone not levelsynched your rotation might change in really unexpected and ugly ways.
If your potencies are lowered how does that effect your AoE rotation? DRK doesn't get the second hit in their AoE combo until they're in the 70's. Would you not lower the potency on their first hit unless the player has the second attack? Or would their AoE attack be doing basically nothing until mid 70's.
Like... how does this affect your moves as you progress before you hit cap.
If you only have 2 strikes in your 3 hit combo, or you have your combo and it's building meter but you don't have your meter spenders yet... you can't just lower the moves to similar values as a non-synched player puts out, you'd have to have your potencies synch down in stages as each job crosses certain thresholds. And boy is that gonna make people happy getting the next hit to their combo and suddenly getting nerfed for it.
Oh shit healer kits.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hasrat
I was thinking about people's reaction to their party members, but I hadn't fully considered what using them would be like.
They'd have to nerf your heals. They can't let you into level 60 content with a level 80 kit. Your team would be untouchable.
But you can't simply reduced the potency of heals. You'd need to burn too many resources on things you should be able to just drop a Benefic on. You'd have to go through more than your whole kit just to keep up with what previously needed only a few moves, and then you'd still need all your cooldowns ready for the next pull.
Oh my god if not just the healing but also tank mitigation is reduced you'd run into so many ugly problems.
But if you didn't reduce it I'd sprint through duties never having TNB even break.
You can't just reduce the numbers attached to the moves to make them equivalent to the numbers being thrown around at the duty's level, and trying to find a good balance looks to be an impossible nightmare, a monumental task. And if the devs are gonna embark on a monumental task there are many more meaningful than this. -
03-11-2021, 05:21 PMNavrasI’m on the huge minority that agrees with this 100%. It’s my biggest turn off in this game. Is it lots of hard work? Yes! Impossible? Hardly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Felduin
That’s why I avoid old content like the plague, I don’t want to use fire 1... I want fire 4 nerffed. No flare for aoe? Go go fire 2... yay...
And To everyone who day they don’t want this system I say, the system can be implemented and you cab just use the old skills.
simple, but I doubt you would ;)
They have the tools to make this happen, they just can’t bother with it. -
03-11-2021, 06:11 PMRein_eon_Osborne
Imagine when a newcomer WHM can fix a tankbuster with a single [Cure II] but as a synced down capped healer I need to expend more than that because my potencies are reduced...? (i.e. [Cure I] + [Tetragrammation] & [Assize])
Yeah... No.
Imagine when a newcomer SMN can contribute decent amount of damage with their Baned-DoT, but as a synced down capped SMN I need to cycle through my Demi-Bahamut to dish out the same damage...?
Yeah... No.
Imagine when a newcomer PLD is struggling with a pull because they’re paired with an inexperienced healer can only do so much with their available defensive cooldowns but as a synced down capped PLD I can throw in a [Clemency] to help out—or worse(better), [Hallowed Ground]?
Yeah... No.
Is it frustrating to continuously get low lv dungeon via roulette? Sometimes, yep.
Am I forced to use roulette? Nope.
Do I consciously queue into low lv duties when I don’t want to? Nah.
Are we stuck to roulettes to level up quickly? Absolutely not.
So yeah... no. I am against this idea as well. -
03-11-2021, 06:45 PMFrizzeThat can not work in a balanced way. Lets use your BLM example. I get sent down to halitali in a leveling roulette on my lvl 80 BLM, and the roulette matches me with a lvl 20 THM. We get to a boss. He casts Thunder, i cast Thunder 3. Thunder 3 does the same damage per tick as Thunder(so far so good), but T3 lasts 2 ticks longer plus its initial hit is 40 potency higher AND it has a chance to proc thundercloud. You could do some math to find a balance point for the ticks and initial hit, but the fact that i get to wait 6 extra seconds before reapplying is a real advantage and if it can still proc at all(even at a reduced percentage) then the lower level caster can never catch up on damage - and thats before you account for the fact that my gear is sync-maxed and his is likely a mix of poor quality stuff that already puts him at a disadvantage. Enough DoTs, direct burn is the BLM specialty. So you nerfed my F4 to compensate. You say i can just use the old skills? Ok. Im spamming F1 for the same damage as the other guy. But no, i have 3 stacks of AF and he can only get 2 stacks(plus im running Eno and he doesnt have that yet). I can still end each round with a Despair - he doesnt have anything similar. I can pop manafont to extend a burn session, use ley lines for that sexy speed boost, drop manawall to ignore some mechanics, use xeno sharpcast triplecast and swiftcast to do damage on the run - he has swift and none of those other options. Oh, and lets not forget your umbral phase. When his mana is out he needs to use transpose and wait 7-12+ seconds before he can transpose back into his astral phase(needing to rebuild his stack). I use B3, have all my mana back in 4-8 seconds, and can F3 back over without losing my stacks. And thats just single target, we're ignoring the imbalance of an AoE pull where i can multi-dot and he cant, where i have multiple useful spells and he doesnt, and where i can still swap astral/umbral at full stacks and he is stuck with transpose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navras
And all that is for a DPS class, seemingly the easiest to balance. How do you propose we balance Group A having a healer who can only cure 1 and medica 1(both on GCD, both with a cast timer, and no other options) against Group B having those same options, plus stronger versions, plus 9 instant cast heal spells with varying traits(including shields, regens, aoe heals, and a full heal)? Oh, and the second groups healer has 3 AoE damage spells(one of which has an attached stun, another of which has an attached heal), and the first group has none.
Final note, i also disagree with the OPs assertion that the level sync "completely wipes out any feeling of progress". I feel like if anything, it re-asserts just how far youve come. Your character used to struggle just to do a 2 hit damage rotation. Now you have a 15 move opener sequence you do that is optimized to the nth degree. Looking back occasionally really helps that feeling of progress. -
03-13-2021, 01:32 AMLenarrI think this would be great. I played Everquest 2 for years, and when the game originally introduced being able to "level-down" for lower level content, it worked the way FFXIV does now...actually even worse since higher level skills didn't automatically get changed to the lower level versions. They eventually went to everything just scaling down, but you kept all your skills. That works well and was fun...sure it made you more powerful than someone just leveling up the first time, but so what...it's not like there's a competition between the old-timers and the new players. Someone who's max level should feel more powerful scaled down at level 20, than they did when they were first leveling. Just my opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Felduin
-
03-13-2021, 01:40 AMJonnycbad
How do you scale down aoes and oGCD to be balanced
You can't. Because low level players don't have any aoe or any ogcds. So even if you scale down an 800 potency attack to 60 potency in satasha, that's still a 60 potency oGCD that players at that level don't have. No matter how you slice it, it still makes low level content even easier with high level players (aside from the fact that high level players are sync'd down to the maximum stats/melds for that leve) l -
03-13-2021, 01:56 AMLenarrYou aren't going to be balanced...that's a given, but is that really all that bad? We're talking going back and doing old content, yes it'll be easier if you're scaled down, but so what? Just my opinion. I don't expect anything to change, so it's a moot point. I'm guessing that under the current system that a level 80 scaled to 50 will often perform worse than someone who's just at level 50, since the new 50 has their 50 rotation down, whereas (at least in my case) the level 80 who finds themselves at 50 will be going "duh, I just lost most of my kit...what exactly was I doing when I was 50 with only 50 skills"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonnycbad
-
03-13-2021, 03:45 PMHasratConsidering the dev's goal of level sync is achieving some sort of balance between new players and veterans, yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lenarr
-
03-13-2021, 06:22 PMHasratIn theory, this miiiigght be possible. Big maybe. But it involves sorta... distributing the nerfs to potencies across the board. It's not enough to simple scale down potency numbers of everything equally. To balance for a oGCD damage skill, you'd basically have to work out its potency/second, and applying an appropriate nerf to the entire rest of the kit to compensate/balance for it. Might possibly be the same for AoE. And, back to previous point, these are balancing passes that would need to be done at every point where a skill is changed/added for every job.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonnycbad
The result is basically that, in low level duties, you're required to play your job much closer to perfectly, just to match up with a mediocre low level player. And a mediocre high level player will quickly find themselves to be dragging the group down.
BLM is coming up a lot (and it's one I'm most familiar with). I'm really bad about always using Sharpcast. But, Sharpcast undeniably adds some additional potency to the BLM rotation. To account for that, the rest of the rotation needs a small nerf, to keep me balanced. The more I neglect to use Sharpcast, the more I'm punished for missing potency I'm expected to be using.
Failure to balance/nerf in this way results in a much bigger gap between mediocre and skilled players than currently exists, which I would argue goes against the intended design. As is, playing a job at-level perfectly absolutely contributes more to the group, but the gap isn't so wide that mid-range players with under-utilized kits just start feeling useless. Yes, I should really be using Sharpcast and Swiftcast and Manafont and Triplecast more (and I don't always use Ley Lines on cooldown). But, the difference between me and someone playing BLM perfectly is only something I'd personally be worried about in Savage/Extreme content, which I'd argue is a bit outside the scope of this discussion (and is content I don't jump into much anyway). -
03-13-2021, 06:48 PMJirah
just give the DPS early aoe options because i swear this is where all these complaints originate and maybe some better OST for all dungeons below 50
-
03-13-2021, 10:43 PMItMeThat sounds like a fun problem to rewrestle with every expansion when they change every jobs kit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hasrat
When you lay it out like this I don't expect we will ever see scaled down abilities when level synced.
Shame, it could be cool, but it just seems so incompatible with FF14. -
03-14-2021, 09:53 AMHasratMan, just imagine even simply leveling up in the middle of a leveling roulette run. New skill get, but we're in a rush, so no time to read what it does. But, balancing equation doesn't care, nerfing all your potencies, enjoy being newly weak until you can re-optimize. Tanks pulling wall to wall suddenly realizing their defensives aren't quite as beefy, or a healer suddenly noticing their heals aren't quite as big.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItMe
-
03-14-2021, 10:20 AMBadmethodOr, you know, he could ask again cause maybe ideas have changed?Quote:
Originally Posted by DrWho2010
-
03-14-2021, 12:21 PMDrWho2010Then you add to the existing thread. Devs only look for threads that have many pages and that have posts with multiple likes. Scattered duplicated/triplicated threads that fizzle out at 2-3 pages do not gain any traction with the powers that be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Badmethod
-
03-16-2021, 01:38 AMiVolkeThis post shows the power of critical thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frizze
-
03-16-2021, 02:50 AMRisvertasashi
I would also like to see something like this.
I prefer to avoid level sync content and I've seen that others do too. Something like this would go a long way towards making level sync more palatable. And the amount of level sync content in the game is huge and, of course, only getting bigger.
And a quite a few people don't like thread necromancy, for various reasons - posting in an old thread would bring various complainers such as yourself.Quote:
Originally Posted by DrWho2010
But really, you could stop backseat moderating. If the mods don't want new topics on a given, well, topic, they can lock, merge, or delete threads. -
03-16-2021, 03:24 AMDrWho2010
i mean as long as the thread isn't like years old it's not a necropost. this topic comes up every so often, just a do a search. if people would do stuff here the way the devs actually pay attention to things, they'd get noticed more. but no, everyone has to be a snowflake. and i'm not trying to be a backseat moderator either so nyeehehhhhhhhh
-
03-16-2021, 03:52 AMItMeNecro is welcome if you're doing something to add to / further the conversation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Risvertasashi
It's not about moderating, it's about encouraging these forums to centralize ideas and feedback as SQEX has specifically asked us to do. -
03-24-2021, 09:20 AMloki_corgi
I really hope they implement this. Even though it can be hard to balance, low level dungeons will be less boring.