Level Syncing isn't the best solution

[kikix12]

I don't think balance is important at all in lower level content, aside from tanks still being able to hold aggro.

That's so wrong, I don't even know how to approach it.

1) Lack of low-level balance absolutely trashes new players, therefore, player retention. This is literally a game-killer! Low player retention is the #1 reason for games to be canceled!
2) It absolutely destroys any semblance of copy-driven progress. It's far harder to learn by experience, making more effort necessary. And most people already put in way too little effort. You would see even LESS players with any decent skills at high levels, simply because their understanding of the game would be skewered.
3) It promotes toxicity. Players would be excluded for being too weak/too new. The difference between the "new" player and an "old" player would widen the already wide gap of "crap player" and "good player". And "new good" player would think he's crap simply because he met a "decent old" player that outperforms him...even if he plays worse.
4) It invalidates most of the content. Even now the dungeons are too worthless. Their experience sucks. The items they offer are useless. They are too easy. They should be made more demanding, not less! A scholar in Sastasha literally NEVER needs to use a single heal if the tank and DPS are decent. The fairy is enough. That's how easy early content is due to the syncing not being harsh enough. I dare say that older content could actually be lot more fun, even with limited tool kit (if that limited tool kit still did include some AoE...) IF it would demand players attention.


Early-stages balance is absolutely crucial. As much, if not more so, than end-game balance. Literally everyone will go through it and it's what makes or breaks a game for someone. By the end players are more willing to forgive lack of balance since they are attached to the game, friends or whatever. Not to mention there's always the possibility that the next update will change it in their favor, since end-game is frequently changing in ALL MMO games. Early-levels don't have that luxury, be it in practice or in hopes.

[GunksFoy]

Snip

1. Most players wouldn't even notice at that level. Especially new players who aren't parsing, and any vet of MMOs knows endgame is where it's at. But I already ceded that a compromise was necessary.
2. I honestly have no idea what "copy-driven progress" is. But you're wrong. Experience is the best way to learn, and having most of your skills at level 15 would do wonders for players leveling up, as they don't have to change their rotation every 5-10 levels.
3. No one is going to be excluding new players from leveling dungeons because they don't do enough DPS. My suggestion was to give EVERYONE all of their class skills immediately, not just players at max level. If you're going to excluded a new player from a leveling dungeon because they don't have the top level understanding of the job, then you would have excluded them anyways. No way to promote toxicity, though I feel this point was due to a misunderstanding of my suggestion.
4. All of the content is mostly invalidated anyways. I can do leveling dungeons in my sleep as is. I did Sunken Temple of Qarn on White Mage last week and the tank pulled all the way to the first boss and we survived. At level. I agree they could be more difficult, but that doesn't mean they can't be fun by letting us have more skills and some semblance of a functional rotation. This is a casual game unless you're in Savage, and the leveling dungeons reflect that. Giving us more skills doesn't change that. They would be scaled anyways.

The early game is already severely skewed by virtue of balance being for endgame. All the jobs feel handicapped at low levels due to their rotations being so vastly different at 70, and this is only going to get worse. The only real exception to this is White Mage and Scholar (maybe Astro, haven't played it) since they have the same DPS skills at level 20 as 70 (save a few), just less powerful. Healing skills is the only fundamental change. It needs to be roughly balanced, but being able to rip through Sastasha in 12-15 minutes instead of 30 doesn't deter new players. If anything, it attracts them, as the early story and leveling will be much faster. This is the sort of balance I mean. Obviously jobs need to be roughly balanced, though it's far less important at 30 than 70. For example, red mages are extremely powerful early on due to having many of their main abilities at low level, yet are one of the weakest DPS at 70. The jobs don't need to reflect themselves at 70 damage-wise. However, I personally know 4 or 5 people that have picked up the trial, and quit because the early game is too slow and boring. And they're right.

[kikix12]

1. Most players wouldn't even notice at that level. Especially new players who aren't parsing, and any vet of MMOs knows endgame is where it's at.

Most players are not "MMO veterans". And even "MMO veterans" won't slog through a crappy early stages of a game just to get to the end game, seeing as they won't know whether the end game won't be even worse.

The only ones not affected are those that already have a reason to play end-game, like a friend that invites them and can vouch for end-game being good.

And you saying that I'm wrong on this point is pretty amusing, seeing the number of games that go under due to players not sticking to them because the early stages of the game don't appeal to them.

2. I honestly have no idea what "copy-driven progress" is.

Humans are copycats. If someone is doing something better than you, you copy him and thus become better yourself. That works on a subconscious level. In group content, if you manage to notice another player playing better than you with a class you use, you're very likely to start mimicking him...unless he's an asshole. At later stages of the game it's a bit too hectic to depend on it, true, but early on it's far easier.

My suggestion was to give EVERYONE all of their class skills immediately, not just players at max level.

They way you worded it seemed to imply something else. That it was the original posters idea, but limited only to class skills. And under that assumption I answered.

If you mean that lvl1 character will have ALL of the class skills, then that's another problem. Lack of any progress from 1 to 30. That too would have players lose interest in the game at early stages, reducing player retention.

4. All of the content is mostly invalidated anyways. I can do leveling dungeons in my sleep as is.

If it's broken, fix it. Don't break it even more. As I said earlier, the current way it works is most certainly broken, but it is broken LESS than the suggestions being put forth.

The sync function should be better fine-tuned to make players find some challenge in all of the content. At that point, the experience reward should be set more appropriately. This is what pisses me off in FATE's. The higher the level of FATE the less relevant the few levels above it are. At lvl30 FATE you can already be pretty badly beat-up by the enemies, not much less than at lvl50 FATE. But the experience you get for similar level of difficulty is absolutely horrible. If you're syncing down the players stats and skills, you need to sync up the experience accordingly. The time taken to clear a FATE, the feasibility of clearing it solo and the like should be taken into consideration, not the original level of the person. Since that original level does not exist in the FATE. The same is in dungeon. If the sync would make Sastasha a challenge, it should give experience at about 70%-80% of duty that's 3 levels below you. Less because it's easier to play your character well, but still viable since it would be challenging.

But it's not. It's a cakewalk even with syncing. And that's a problem that needs fixing.

I agree they could be more difficult, but that doesn't mean they can't be fun by letting us have more skills and some semblance of a functional rotation.

That's the problem. I am all for making fundamental parts of the class available early on, as I said before. But not the entire toolkit (not even from the class alone). There still needs to be some instant gratification for leveling in the form of skills. But an AoE, some sort of cooldown and at least one full rotation, one ranged attack should be already available at lvl15. This is something I can get behind. Dumping of skills...not.

The early game is already severely skewed by virtue of balance being for endgame.

Yeah. The moment Stormblood hit, playing below 50 for all classes went from bad to horrible. But that's proof of what I am talking about, not you.
Developers of FFXIV simply have this ridiculous notion that you promote that end-game is "where it's at". And that's what kills early stages of the game, even though technically if they were fun two years ago, they should be fun now as well. There is nothing in humans brains that makes old content unfun until AFTER it is done repeatedly. It's the developers that do it by making the old content play differently than it was designed for to cater to the end-game.

I enjoyed leveling classes before Stormblood more than I do now since the point at which the classes seem to have a fine selection got pushed back by at least several levels. And for some classes, they lack core, class-defining abilities until their 70th level altogether...

It needs to be roughly balanced, but being able to rip through Sastasha in 12-15 minutes instead of 30 doesn't deter new players. If anything, it attracts them, as the early story and leveling will be much faster.

All dungeons are set for 15-20minute mark, in general. And it's going to be that way with new or old players. The only way to exceed 20 minutes is to have a player that absolutely doesn't know what he's doing (like a tank that never uses Flash/Overpower and only attacks a single target all the time) and/or a full team of badly undergeared people. Only way to do it faster than about the 15 minute mark (it varies from dungeon to dungeon slightly, Sastasha for example have a lot of walking and stopping points with keys etc., so it takes longer even unsynced than other dungeons) is to have a totally spot-on team that is not only fully decked out but also goes about their business nearly-flawlessly.

The early dungeons are a slog only because you lack AoE attacks. Later in the game dungeons are a slog only if players don't USE their AoE attacks. Or are severely undergeared. Fights themselves are rather short. Hauke Manor for example is going to take you ~8 minutes (...or was it 10 for Hauke?!...sorry, I don't remember which, but roughly 5 minutes less than doing it with a good party if memory serves) unsynced, provided you have spammable AoE attacks and go from one wall to another. Even if you one-hit everything, there's just not THAT much you can cut on other than the bosses. And bosses are actually the most fun part of the dungeons.

So, yes for redesigning classes to have well-thought of kit from early on. No for sync that gives any player a skill that another player does not. And no for no skill gains for the entire early game.

[GunksFoy]

Snip

I think we agree fundamentally, just differ in implementation.


This is exactly my point though. The game is abysmal at level 1-50. It didn't used to be so bad, but between loads of story that never seems to end (even if it was good when it came around, having to slog through all of it at one time and not have it spread out is mind numbing). And I think having more abilities early on, and more thinks to do besides auto attack and press 1-3 buttons would go a long way to fixing that.

I don't that I agree on this in this situation. I rarely pay any attention to the people I'm playing with unless I notice their DPS is very low or insanely high, and then I'm either checking to see what they're doing differently, or asking them/trying to help them, depending on the situation. Honestly, without a parser, most players don't even KNOW they're doing it wrong. I was a prime example back in 2.0 as a dragoon. I assume what I was doing was right, until someone told me that it was wrong. It was my first MMO and I failed to understand some of the tooltips, even though I read them. No amount of watching other people would have told me that what I was doing was not right.

Fair enough. I agree it has it's problems, but so does any solution. The devs have to work around, and try to make the beginning intriguing. I'm not sure what to do about level progress honestly. But if I had to choose between spamming Impulse Drive for 11 levels or not getting skills every few levels, I'm taking the former.

I don't think you need to make them "as challenging as a level 70 dungeon". Having the skills and scaling the potency to make you roughly as powerful as we already would be at that level, but having more abilities. You could even use to solve all the problem of level progression. Grant traits that increase skill potency as you level. As good as getting skills? No, but it's something. Not the perfect solution, but just spitballing. But why not scale up the experience based on your true level rather than the level you're synced to? They already do this with Leveling Roulette, giving a bigger bonus at the end for being a higher level to roughly compensate you for getting a lower level dungeon, but it would make getting lower dungeons less punishing. The biggest problem I foresee with this is that players would find the most efficient dungeon to run and spam that, reducing the value of having so many leveling dungeons.

Sure, I'm up for alterations to that suggestion. Basically, we need more to do in Sastasha than press 2 buttons. Many ways to solve that. Though I don't think having the full class set impacts dungeons too much except maybe tanks, since many of their major skills come from the class and not the job.

I mostly agree. I leveled everything to 50 in 2.x and it was way more fun that leveling now. But we are all just spitballing ideas. History has shown that SE isn't going to heed anything we say if they ever decide to fix it lol.

Sastasha and Tam-Tara can easily exceed the 20 minute mark, even if you aren't doing the extra rooms/mobs. Some of the others aren't as bad, but pre-30, many of the dungoens can easily break into the 25-30 minute time frame. Especially with new players. Stone Vigil is another one, but it is also much more fun because you have many more skills, including some AoE depending on Job. Later on it is pretty consistent on the 15-20 minute time frame.

To address your last sentence: Agreed, Agreed, and tentatively agree. I think they need to get creative with it, instead of making all skills be gated behind level. But as I said above: History has shown that SE isn't going to heed anything we say if they ever decide to fix it lol. So, /shrug