/r/ffxivdiscussion: A stricter ilvl sync is the solution to casual content being easy

[Supersnow845]

The whole point of the gear treadmill is that you get stronger by running on it. I see no issue with content not being the same difficulty it is, day 1, a month later.

14 takes the treadmill way too far and it completely ruins fights

take myths and crystal tower, myths fights are designed to be about 8 minutes long given athylks enrage and when the other fights start looping to the point they still have unique mechanical combinations right up till about the 6 minute mark, they should not be being cleared in 3.5 minutes, at that point you aren’t even seeing half the fight. Ironically aglaias gear sync when it was current content when if you had a decent group in close to BIS you can skip scales was well balanced, needing 20 deaths and half the raid asleep at the wheel to even see half the mechanic BEFORE scales is completely broken scaling.

Crystal tower is even worse. How many people here actually know how the circus tower boss mechanics work or how you are supposed to handle the trash before the first boss in LOTA

Scaling should make you feel more powerful, not completely destroy the integrity of the encounter design, if you want to completely disrespect the mechanics because you are stronger than when they launched then you should unsync it

[Sylvain]

Just a point to showcase how important that actually is.

My BF is currently going through the campaign and he's fairly casual. When he reached the end of HW and had to do the last story dungeon with the NPC (with bad gear leveling gear as he ddin't upgrade stuff once hitting 60), the last boss (Ascien fusion) killed him quite many times. After many attemps, he managed and was proud of himself.

Then he had to queue for thordan which was killed in a few seconds.

I recently showed him my reclear of DSR.
When he saw the phase 0, he was like "oh yeah that was a cool part, the boss was tough"
When he saw thordan "did I do this guy?"

He does not remember thordan.

He doesn't even recognise thordan, he knows the old man, but not "Thordan the boss" because the boss died in 25seconds.

Casual/story content being too easy also ruins their experience. How can something be memorable if a random leveling mobs poses more of a threat.

[Conando]

Even if they do nothing else, for the love of gods,

SYNC THE ITEM LEVEL IN ALL ROULETTE DUNGEONS, TRIALS AND RAIDS.

It should be capped to the maximum item level that was available the day the dungeon was released. If people cleared it on the patch it was released in, they can clear it again. This would take like 15 minutes to implement because the sync system exists already.

So a question here through an example. So do you mean like the ilevel sync for Arcadion Normal should be 710 (fine) or 700? Because what would be the point of not being able to use the gear you can get from the content in the content? Syncing it to the level of the gear you can get from it is fine.

[Conando]

snip

Thordan was always a pushover though. At least in comparison to Ascian Prime.

[Alice_Rivers]

So a question here through an example. So do you mean like the ilevel sync for Arcadion Normal should be 710 (fine) or 700? Because what would be the point of not being able to use the gear you can get from the content in the content? Syncing it to the level of the gear you can get from it is fine.

I remember suggesting somewhere, possibly in this very thread, that the ilvl sync should be five or ten illvl above the dropped gear in any piece of content. Probably ten realistically since the devs like their ten ilvl increments, thus you can take the next dungeon/raid gear into any given piece of content and enjoy it being that much easier. It might also help to tighten up the minimum ilvl too so that the balance point can be higher so that difficulty more consistent.

[PyurBlue]

The only problem I have with tighter sync is how it will affect substats, namely skill speed and spell speed. It can be a annoying to have it constantly change depending on the duty you're in since it changes how much leeway you have in your rotation and how much you can get away with things like slidecasting. I'd prefer if speed could be kept consistent across an expansion.

[Conando]

Yeah, do remember that Materia is flat out ignored if an item is synced down.

[Alice_Rivers]

That's a fair point, but I don't think it should be that hard to fix, right? I mean, rather than just setting materia=null they should be able to set an ilvl based condition that scales materia based on the maximum that can be slotted at a given sync point (with the caveat that any materia below that point is not synced up to prevent T1 materia abuse). I was honestly kinda surprised when I learned that materia is just zero-ed when syncing since it invalidates and entire game system.

[Zakuyia]

As nice as this all is still won't solve the problem of crystal tower always showing up in duty finder XD

[KisaiTenshi]

That's a fair point, but I don't think it should be that hard to fix, right? I mean, rather than just setting materia=null they should be able to set an ilvl based condition that scales materia based on the maximum that can be slotted at a given sync point (with the caveat that any materia below that point is not synced up to prevent T1 materia abuse). I was honestly kinda surprised when I learned that materia is just zero-ed when syncing since it invalidates and entire game system.

It's a three-issue problem:

We know the game uses a fixed table for level stats. Some which is vastly different then where it was when ARR was released.
We know the game scales item levels independently, and that each patch releases new gear.
We know BiS gear and materia were typically desired to complete hard content.



So the solution is:
Level-sync the player's base (ungeared) stats to exactly what it was at release A level 50 dungeon should be a level 50 scale, there are plenty of posts around the forum that even show what these values were before the content received nerfs. If a dungeon is level 16, then it should be scaled to 16.
iLevel-sync the player's gear to what the maximum ilevel gear was rewarded in that content at the time of release. So if you're wearing ilevel 665 gear but are not doing Anabaseios (Savage/ilevel 630-640 req), then that gear gets capped down to what the ilevel gear rewards are in that dungeon.
Materia-sync to maximum possible in that content. So if you have IX or X tier materia melded on ilevel 665 gear, but then enter say, an ARR raid, then it drops down to I/II grade.

That should therefor encourage people to actually wear appropriate gear and materia, even if they are being synced down. Presumably the game is using tables for level, and item level sync already, but the assumption is that materia is ignored in favor of the maxium melding value.

However if you actually go into synced content and look at your stats you will notice that different roles, even when wearing the same gear get nerfed harder. That is a problem when you want the content to still present something of a challenge and when the tanks can solo all of the content.