It's time to redesign Level Sync

[Naunet]

Also, I'm curious as to which MMOs have nailed this? Besides WoW, of course, which I've already detailed on how what it does is different than level sync and why using it as a direct comparison is a mistake.

Rift not only scales you down but also up in level for dungeons. GW2's scaling is pretty spot-on as well. WildStar's scaling isn't perfect (still a bit overpowered if you're level 50 queueing for random normals), but it works and they'll continue to tweak it.

Honestly I just hate how boring rotations are at low levels in this game. There is absolutely zero fun in spamming 2-3 buttons in a dungeon you could complete half asleep. Maybe if the dungeons were more interesting, that would make up for it, but they're not...

How is that healer supposed to be able to even come close to competing with me, unless they nerfed the other skills so hard they aren't worth using?

Who cares about someone being able to "compete" with you? Baby Ifrit is only 4 players anyway.

[demonette]

Was it boring when you first hit 20 as a newbie, when knowing your abilities and functioning in a group setting was uncertain?

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

[Avatre]

On a side note regarding the synch...why is it that when you have a full party of 55+ classes, you get stuff like Sastasha/Qarn/Totorak/Thousand Maws? I've had it multiple times in the past few weeks where this has happened, and everyone queued for the leveling roulette.

[Ayer2015]

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

PotD addressed that. New players can level very quickly now and experience higher level skill rotations.

[Bluejay]

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

I agree. The problem isn't with level synced abilities. If you were to nerf a full set of abilities to match a lower level players output then your abilities would be much less effective than the exact same abilities used by the lower level player in some cases. This would be silly.

Better solutions:
1. AI companions that can help new players complete the 1-50 group required content (maybe coming soon?)
2. Redo the dungeons to improve their game play making them repeatable (never going to happen)
3. Make solo or group composition agnostic (like POTD) versions of those dungeons that can be done to complete the story line but that drop weaker loot.

As an aside: As demonette mentions, the lower level content is insanely boring. The fun in too much of FF14 content is the application of skill rotations. The content itself is pretty bad. Obviously if you take the skill rotations out that content becomes boring. Once you make it through the main story line that you can only do once there is almost nothing fun from 1 - 50. POTD is ok but not great, and when you do it for the 300th time it becomes boring too. If POTD were better it might not be so bad (wouldn't help the group required content but it would help leveling alts). Right now, pre-50 PVP is the only decent repeatable content in this game.

It's not like players are unwilling to repeat content. Look at something like Player Unknown or Team Fortress, Street Fighter, Racing games like Forza or Need For Speed, Sim games like Civ or Cities Skylines, Arcade games, Rogue like games and repeatable dungeon crawlers like Path of Exile or Hand of Fate... in some of those games you repeat exactly the same content 1000's or 10,000's of times but you don't hear players complaining about lack of content. I would also argue that some of the post 50 content is good enough that repeating it is not a problem.

[Mikey_205]

I'd love this. Would make the dungeons more fun. Hate the greyed out icons.

[Kling-Klang]

I think doing that would be a huge waste of developement time. Level sync is fine the way it is.

[Berethos]

Rift not only scales you down but also up in level for dungeons. GW2's scaling is pretty spot-on as well. WildStar's scaling isn't perfect (still a bit overpowered if you're level 50 queueing for random normals), but it works and they'll continue to tweak it.

Consider why it works for those games.

As I recall Rift gave you a fair amount of abilities by the time you started running dungeons (as did SWTOR) in earnest, and what strikes me about GW2 and Wildstar is you only have a certain amount you can use at any one time.

The biggest issue with the OPs suggestion is the difference in the amount of abilities based on level in XIV and the balance nightmare that would cause, not necessarily the balance of any one ability.

Allowing the player to use all of their abilities when the difference in amount of abilities between levels is fairly small has less of an impact, which is likely why it works in those games better.

Which means the OP is suggesting a solution that doesn't fix the main issue but instead a symptom of the main issue (that XIV is too back loaded when it comes to abilities, which I do believe is the case).

[RyuujinZERO]

As a DRK since Stormblood this is especially dire IMO.

Level 50 and below we have no AoE to speak of, almost no off-GCD attacks. Our rotation literally looks like this:

Is blood price up? -> Use it I guess
Do you need more emnity on a group? -> Unleash
Do you need more emnity on a boss? -> 1-2-Punch
Just DPS then? -> Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Dark Arts + Souleater
Repeat ad nauseum

Let that sink in a moment... PLDs at level 50 have MORE STUFF to rotate through, than DRK do at the same level. It is just so boring to play DRK down-leveled; even the cracked clusters are barely incentive enough; Levelling roulette is beyond tedious if you get pre-60 content. And no amount of Tier 6 Materia is worth Thousand Snores of Toto-Rak

[Kosmos992k]

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

Really? I mean, how long does it take to level through 20+ now? 3 hours? Doing Story along the way might stretch that an extra hour. With a story jump potion and moderate effort to level you can be in Palace of the Dead in next to no time, and leveling swiftly.

What really get's on my nerves about the kind of sentiment you are posting is that the initial leveling process in FFXIV is so very quick, and it functions as a tutorial to the rest of the game. If MMORPG players haven't got the patience to work through 3-4 hours of tutorial then how do they ever stick around long enough for anything meaningful in any game? The biggest issue I see people running into is this, they start at a low level and none of their so called friends are prepared to take the time to work with them and play with them while they catch up. those so-called friends would rather be working on current content than helping their friends advance. That leaves new players out on a limb where they either use jump potions or slog through stuff on their own.

Friends don't let friends get bored.

Oh, and that doesn't even touch the fact that jobs like Dark Knight, Astrologian and Machinist start at 30, and Samurai and Red mage start at 50, so you are not really locked into the entire tutorial path any more.