Skills should scale down in lower content NOT be greyed out.

[andrealfus]

these ideas are all fun and games until sprouts start getting abandoned in dungeons and become unable to level or progress msq because they lack the utility of their higher level counterparts and no one wants to run content with them

this thread has some spectacular examples of why gamers often make terrible game designers

[Mikey_R]

The actual balancing and downscaling of this I have no idea how they'd be able to do though. It would be really hard to do properly.

And not worth the effort. How would you balance an Arcanist going fresh into Sastasha at level 15 with Ruin, Aethercharge, Summon Ruby/Topaz, Gemshine, Fester and Energy Drain compared to a level 90 Summoner with its whole kit? For starters, Summoners from level 22 have access to Summon Emerald, which is a damage increase, however, the important thing to note here is that they are all single target, as soon as you get to Summon Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, they turn into AoE, plus you have access to Outburst, Precious Brilliance and Painflare. The difference in single target and AoE is already quite big, and this is only up to level 50. It only gets worse when you get to level 60 and have access to Dreadwyrm Trance with the 500 potency Deathflare and making Ruin 3 deal even more damage in both single target and AoE, get to 70 and suddenly, you have access to a 1300 potency AoE every minute, everything just compounds into even more damage and, while I am going to stop, there are still 20 levels worth of actions to consider.

In theory, you would have to balance every level you get a new action with every dungeon and bear in mind, this would have to be done for every job separately. There are currently 35 dungeons you can get synced down to (all dungeons of the same level I have counted as 1) including Ktisis Hyperoreia since you do not have your full kit there technically. For Summoner, I count 18 places new actions come up from level 15 to 90. For the first dungeon alone, assuming on average, only 15 different places you get new actions (which is probably a massive under estimate) that is already 285 different kits to balance across all jobs, for 1 dungeon. Now, that number will decrease as you go through the level ranges down to 19 for the final dungeon you have to balance, but in total, that is thousands of levels you have to balance for. It would be an absolute colossal undertaking. Can you really expect the dev team do take on this absolute mountain of a task and still provide the content we are used to having? Of course not. I do believe people do not realise how much work this actually would be, so hopefully, with some quick and dirty maths, skewed in favour of getting the change, it shows just how much work there actually would be.

[Gallus]

I said this long time ago and nobody seemed to agree.

I don't even know why this isn't a thing yet. "Oh but the new players are going to have an underwhelming experience if you have all your spells readily available at Sastasha". Because I can't pull the entire dungeon in Sastasha and watch a pack of 20 mobs meld in literally 5 seconds just by pressing 2 buttons. We gotta make sure they last 5 seconds instead of 3 so that the new players don't get their experience ruined.

Sometimes I wonder if people are even serious at this point.

[Mikey_R]

I said this long time ago and nobody seemed to agree.

I don't even know why this isn't a thing yet. "Oh but the new players are going to have an underwhelming experience if you have all your spells readily available at Sastasha". Because I can't pull the entire dungeon in Sastasha and watch a pack of 20 mobs meld in literally 5 seconds just by pressing 2 buttons. We gotta make sure they last 5 seconds instead of 3 so that the new players don't get their experience ruined.

Sometimes I wonder if people are even serious at this point.

It's not just about the fact that you want to melt everything, these early levels are meant to be an easy instance for new players to get used to being in a group setting. How is the tank going to learn the basics of tanking when you have the summoner nuking the arena. How is a healer going to learn the basics of healing when a tank can just survive everything on their own. By nuking the dungeon, you strip away the purpose of the dungeon.

[Apeachs]

YES scale all skills down, let us use all our tools and skills when doing low level content. Would been so much more fun doing low level content and maybe higher-level character would more easy help out lower-level players that needs help.

[Allegor]

It's not just about the fact that you want to melt everything, these early levels are meant to be an easy instance for new players to get used to being in a group setting. How is the tank going to learn the basics of tanking when you have the summoner nuking the arena. How is a healer going to learn the basics of healing when a tank can just survive everything on their own. By nuking the dungeon, you strip away the purpose of the dungeon.

I...have to agree here. The first dungeon I ever tanked was Halatali - sounds like a joke, right? but little sprout me was terrified (to be fair though, this was back when PLD's only "aoe" was Flash, but point still stands that everyone has to start somewhere)

At least give melees an aoe before lv 35 ish though.

[Icaras]

Another reason I'd like this(and I very much would!) is that when you're leveling and you earn a new skill, alot of the time all the content you do scales you down and thus you don't get to use the new skills/traits you unlock as you ding.

[Enla]

these ideas are all fun and games until sprouts start getting abandoned in dungeons and become unable to level or progress msq because they lack the utility of their higher level counterparts and no one wants to run content with them

this thread has some spectacular examples of why gamers often make terrible game designers

Not to mention all the re-calibrating that would need to happen to take into account all the skills someone might have depending on where they are in the leveling curve. Which then need to be retroactively applied to the older dungeons. They'd also need to design a scaling system so that a fresh group of sprouts without their full kit wouldn't have a tough time fighting through the mobs - so that's another complication added to the mix. And you can't just say "well have everyone start with their max level abilities" either for numerous reasons. Because then the scaling issue needs to be applied across the /entire/ game because up until now it hasn't been designed with a full-class unlock in mind (barring you being at max level) and it would completely implode any sense of class progression as you level. At that point leveling would just be keeping you from the next story beat - rather than slowly and diegetically showing you getting stronger as an adventurer by having you learn new skills as you get strong. In short it's a bloody mess to ham string this kind of system into the game at this late stage and do it in such a way that doesn't harm new player experience.

This is the kind of thing that is decided when a game is in it's planning stages. Not at the start of it's fourth expansion.

[Kokonji]

I can imagine some scenario :
1. just keep all skill and damage potencies but scale them based on the dungeon ilv,
this scenario would make the high level melting the mobs as soon as they spawn,
and make the sprout (or anyone new to their job/role) unable to learn anything,
making them feeling like they are a deadweight in the party
bad to the new player, don't want to add more deadweight feeling in the game, irl stuff already provided that enough
remember when we still have skippable cutscene on msq roulettes,
we just straight up leaving the sprouts to clear the dungeon without even waiting them because it is too slow,
now imagine if there are obvious "deadweight party member" on our levelling roulette,
1/4 sprout ? vote dismiss ?
3/4 sprout ? take penalty and leave dungeon ?

2. further scaling the synced skill and potencies to far below dungeon ilv so the overall dps will be on par with the newer player,
that would make the higher level have to do the perfect rotation to just keep up with the '5 buttons skill sprout',
higher effort to do just on par with the sprout,
this just punishing to the higher level, might causing them to stop helping newer player because "too much hassle"

[Seraphor]

I can imagine some scenario :
1. just keep all skill and damage potencies but scale them based on the dungeon ilv,
this scenario would make the high level melting the mobs as soon as they spawn,
and make the sprout (or anyone new to their job/role) unable to learn anything,
making them feeling like they are a deadweight in the party
bad to the new player, don't want to add more deadweight feeling in the game, irl stuff already provided that enough
remember when we still have skippable cutscene on msq roulettes,
we just straight up leaving the sprouts to clear the dungeon without even waiting them because it is too slow,
now imagine if there are obvious "deadweight party member" on our levelling roulette,
1/4 sprout ? vote dismiss ?
3/4 sprout ? take penalty and leave dungeon ?

2. further scaling the synced skill and potencies to far below dungeon ilv so the overall dps will be on par with the newer player,
that would make the higher level have to do the perfect rotation to just keep up with the '5 buttons skill sprout',
higher effort to do just on par with the sprout,
this just punishing to the higher level, might causing them to stop helping newer player because "too much hassle"

We keep saying this, but still people keep posting "why not?" "I don't care if it's unfair to newbies!" And "but sastasha is so boring!"

1. Sastasha will still be boring even if you have your full rotation.
2. You do it once a day. Levelling roulette is the only thing that takes you that low.
3. If you're bored, do content AT YOUR LEVEL. You can always spam the highest level dungeon you've unlocked for comparable EXP.

This is all-round a terrible idea, sounds great at the surface, falls apart under any scrutiny, and is ultimately borne of selfishness and impatience.

What they need to do is provide more skills at lower levels.