Level Syncing isn't the best solution

[Jojoya]

The only MMO I've played that does it is WoW, and it works badly there. They mess with the content tuning so it either remains trivial for max level players being scaled down with full toolkits or ends up too difficult for players who are at the intended level but only have partial toolkits. I'd not enjoy seeing it repeated here. If the content is designed around players having access to only certain abilities then it should be experienced that way when synced.

What I would like is to be able to save multiple hotbar/keybind layouts per job so when I'm syncing to lower level content I can switch to a layout for the abilities available at that level.

[Nabril]

The only MMO I've played that does it is WoW, and it works badly there. They mess with the content tuning so it either remains trivial for max level players being scaled down with full toolkits or ends up too difficult for players who are at the intended level but only have partial toolkits. I'd not enjoy seeing it repeated here. If the content is designed around players having access to only certain abilities then it should be experienced that way when synced.

What I would like is to be able to save multiple hotbar/keybind layouts per job so when I'm syncing to lower level content I can switch to a layout for the abilities available at that level.

Well, in WoW, it's just a very minor part of the game- here it's a HUGE part of the game. Also, I don't think a company that counts as a multi-billion dollar corporation should ever use "It's hard" as an excuse for not making an improvement

[MomomiMomi]

Also, I don't think a company that counts as a multi-billion dollar corporation should ever use "It's hard" as an excuse for not making an improvement

You must be new here. Prepare to be disappointed. A lot.

[Jojoya]

Well, in WoW, it's just a very minor part of the game- here it's a HUGE part of the game. Also, I don't think a company that counts as a multi-billion dollar corporation should ever use "It's hard" as an excuse for not making an improvement

It's not a question of "hard". It's a question of "Will this work with the programming code we are using and will making the change be cost effective?" They aren't going to rewrite the game code from the ground up if it's not compatible. They aren't going to do it if the time and resource costs involved exceed what potential revenue benefit would be gained.

Successful companies don't waste the money they're earning just because they have it.

[Nabril]

It's not a question of "hard". It's a question of "Will this work with the programming code we are using and will making the change be cost effective?" They aren't going to rewrite the game code from the ground up if it's not compatible. They aren't going to do it if the time and resource costs involved exceed what potential revenue benefit would be gained.

Successful companies don't waste the money they're earning just because they have it.

This is a video game. And there is a huge audience who want this. SE makes changes to this game all the time. Costly ones too. That's how MMOS operate. You must be new to them. MMOs grew, change, and evolve. It happens all the time.

[Jojoya]

This is a video game. And there is a huge audience who want this. SE makes changes to this game all the time. Costly ones too. That's how MMOS operate. You must be new to them. MMOs grew, change, and evolve. It happens all the time.

Yes, we know this is a video game. Not sure why that needs to be mentioned. Like any other business product or service, there are significant costs involved that the consumer probably doesn't even think about like payroll, insurances, office space leasing, utilities, supplies and equipment, marketing, etc. Or did you think that games just magically appear in a cost free virtual space with those who make the game volunteering their services and use of their personal supplies/equipment without need for compensation?

Your idea of a huge audience might be a small minority of the total FFXIV player base. You have no way of knowing since you don't personally know every single player.

You honestly think those costly changes were made without some sort of cost/time/benefit analysis being done first? Are you that ignorant of how businesses operate?

I've played WoW since 2007. I also played RIFT for about 3 years and I've dabbled in SWTOR, LoTRO and DDO. Safe to say I'm not new to MMOs.

Growth, as in increasing the active player base or increasing the amount of content available? Most MMOs don't have much growth in the player base after their initial release and growth of content is inevitable because it makes zero sense to remove content that could be keeping players occupied.

Change happens all the time, yes. Companies are trying to figure out ways to keep their customers happy while increasing profits. Most customers aren't happy if they never get anything new, especially if they're being asked to maintain a subscription. Not every change ends up a good change, though.

People will argue over whether the way certain games "evolved" were good or bad for those games. Talk to anyone who was playing Star Wars Galaxies when it "evolved" to add the New Game Experience. Talk to the current WoW player base that is bitterly divided over the current state of the game to the point many are eagerly looking forward to the eventual release of the Classic WoW legacy servers.

You need to make a better case for how your proposed change to the way content is scaled will benefit the game and SE's revenues beyond "me and some others want". As you can already tell, there's considerable opposition from people who are already familiar with how your system has worked in other games or who just don't like the idea for whatever reason.

Did you bother to read the OP? In particular, I call your attention here:


This would never create a scenario in which people are kicked in hopes of a random level 70. In fact, it arguably would afford preferential treatment to sub-70 characters, since as others have mentioned, it's a lot easier to achieve optimal damage output at level 20 than it is to achieve optimal damage output at 70.

How do you effectively make someone with a full AoE toolkit deal damage on par with a player that hasn't leveled high enough to get any AoE abilties at all, especially considering the way things get chain pulled? Drop the potency on the AoEs from the typical 100 or so down to 10 so if it hits 10 mobs then it deals roughly the same damage as a low level player will deal using their standard single target attack?

Do you cap potency on all single target abilities at 150 or perhaps even down to 100 depending on what item level sync is being used? At what content level do you start increasing the potencies to bring them more in line with the demand of those higher but still not max level dungeons?

I'm sure SE would love to see the players behind this change presenting their theorycrafting analysis showing how this can work successfully on a job by job and dungeon by dungeon basis.

[Sigma-Astra]

Well, in WoW, it's just a very minor part of the game- here it's a HUGE part of the game. Also, I don't think a company that counts as a multi-billion dollar corporation should ever use "It's hard" as an excuse for not making an improvement

You keep using this "multi-billion dollar corporation" as an excuse for why your idea should work when that's not how companies work at all. A company could be the richest in the world, that doesn't mean that they have the extra finances to go with every idea that the playerbase comes up with because they're the one in a million person that happens to not like something again for the 100th time.

The money that SE makes from XIV very seldom goes back into XIV, it goes into their other projects. You're acting like XIV is the only thing they're working on at this time.

also, the more practice I get at my max level rotation, the better I'll be at it.

We have things called EX trials, Savage, and Stone, Sea, & Sky for that...as well as expert dungeons and the newest 24 man raid. If you want to practice your lvl 70 rotation in Sastasha, you'll barely get off one or two Fire IV's before the poor mobs are dead. That's not teaching you anything. Honestly, the idea of one-shotting those poor bats is incredibly cynical.

This is like the Zubat cave all over again.