Please Allow Scaled Down Abilities When Level Synced!

[Lenarr]

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.

I 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.

[Jonnycbad]

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

[Lenarr]

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

You 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"?

[Hasrat]

You aren't going to be balanced...that's a given, but is that really all that bad?

Considering the dev's goal of level sync is achieving some sort of balance between new players and veterans, yes.

[Hasrat]

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

In 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.

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).

[Jirah]

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

[ItMe]

In 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.

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).

That sounds like a fun problem to rewrestle with every expansion when they change every jobs kit.
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.

[Hasrat]

That sounds like a fun problem to rewrestle with every expansion when they change every jobs kit.
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.

Man, 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.

[Badmethod]

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.

Or, you know, he could ask again cause maybe ideas have changed?

[DrWho2010]

Or, you know, he could ask again cause maybe ideas have changed?

Then 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.