Level Sync feels worse every expansion

[Eyrilona]

Of course it matters, I have given you ample reason why it does and you have done nothing to dispute my arguments except for saying "no". But again, for the sake of the argument:
the player would have to know these resources exist (i for one did not know they do until now), and still, its a higher hurdle to get into than to open duty finder and saying "yeah I want to play this now".

Agreed. To paraphrase Josh Strife Hayes, if you are reading about your game on Reddit or other forums, looking up websites on how to best play a game, or watch any content creators about gaming, you are already no longer one of the casual players.

[Fynlar]

"just do hunt trains"

literally the most braindead content in the game, where everyone plays tanks with their 40% passive damage resistance or a healer and spams Medica 3 to pump aggro unless they have neither actually leveled.

Well, it IS the easiest way to farm tomes. Isn't wanting an efficient tome farm that lets you use your full kit the reason why you're complaining about roulettes / synced content in the first place?

Everything in this game is "braindead" after a while if it's all you do, roulettes included.

Agreed. To paraphrase Josh Strife Hayes, if you are reading about your game on Reddit or other forums, looking up websites on how to best play a game, or watch any content creators about gaming, you are already no longer one of the casual players.

Extremely low bar for "non-casuals" in my opinion, but everyone's got their own thresholds on this stuff, I guess.

[Catwho]

People have been complaining about this since ARR and level 50. "Then just don't do roulettes" is extremely valid advice, actually. I stopped running leveling roulette as a DPS because of all the aforementioned problems. I stopped running MSQ roulettes entirely because I hate them. It's just not worth the tomes to me.

I'll run leveling as a tank or a healer for the exp on those jobs, because of much faster queues, and I'll run my DPS through a current level dungeon on Trusts instead. The queue time on DPS for leveling roulette makes up for the extra time lost to trusts being dumb and take 30 minutes per dungeon, plus there's the advantage of not feeling pressured to speed run since odds are good I'm still smoothing out the kinks in my 91-99 rotation on those jobs anyway.

Alliance raids are fun enough to me (and have a fast enough queue) that dropping down to a lower level to sync is worth the loss of the DPS rotation.

I'll run expert on my 100 jobs (again, usually a tank or healer if I'm going solo, or as a DPS if I'm with friends) and then I'm back to slamming current content in PF (M1-4 normal and progging M savage, extremes, etc.)

[Valence]

Well, that can easily be mitigated. Just give synched players a debuff, a reverse echo if you will, that caps their maximum potency per GCD to the expected level of the current instance. Hells, give players an option if they want this type of sync or the current one.

Cause really, what do I care if Johnny Greensprout does the same DPS in Sastasha with 2 buttons as I do with 20? At least I can play my full kit and have fun with my class, and Johnny has something to look forward to.

I have seen this alternative being proposed a couple of times and while I don't think it's bad at all, it still would require addressing the fundamental problems of earlier dungeons (especially anything before ShB due to the old battle system and powercreep), where stuff just melts in 5 sec. If you run sastasha in its current state, mobs legit die under 5s. Maybe you will not do higher damage than greensprout with your system, but you'll just leave the dungeon frustrated as heck because what does it serve you to have access to your fancy bursts and rotational tools when the whole mob pack will be dead after you pressed the first 2 buttons?

Still, I'm all for it, but lower level duties still need a full recalibration before any fix or improvement could even make sense. When I started playing in HW, sastasha took the normal length of a dungeon to complete. Mob packs took over 20-30s to die, not 10. To top it all, I started as a healer back then, and how many buttons did I have in that dungeons? Probably more than 10 since SE hadn't yet pruned again and again older skills to make room for new expansions, and the crossclass system also gave me more beyond utility buttons (not saying cross class was good, it was bad), and that's probably as many attack buttons than a current lvl100 healer has access to...

Ah, and yes, we also had to watch our MP, and sometimes slow down because it was possible to run out of it, especially for gladiators (which was required for them to aggro).

[ovIm]

I have seen this alternative being proposed a couple of times and while I don't think it's bad at all, it still would require addressing the fundamental problems of earlier dungeons (especially anything before ShB due to the old battle system and powercreep), where stuff just melts in 5 sec.

Oh for sure, 100%. We need a stricter ilevel sync or a different rebasing of enemy health values at this point. Hells, even more recent fights are affected, we don't get to see the scales on Nald'Thal anymore, and that is level 90 content. Earlier game fights are an absolute joke for a long time now.

[Atreus]

Then don't do level sync content?

Roulettes are fine; there's more than enough people who want to do them even if you don't.

Follow-up concerns

• Just don't do old content then?
  
  Okay. You could tell people that, or we could find a solution that's fun for everyone.

Hey it's like I predicted that exact response.

I already stopped doing it for the most part. Doesn't mean the system can't be made better. There being "enough people already doing it" doesn't really mean anything.

[Mikey_R]

Oh for sure, 100%. We need a stricter ilevel sync or a different rebasing of enemy health values at this point. Hells, even more recent fights are affected, we don't get to see the scales on Nald'Thal anymore, and that is level 90 content. Earlier game fights are an absolute joke for a long time now.

For levelling content, all that needs to happen is a potency squish. For the first few expansions, the Devs would raise potencies on things without really considering how it affects earlier content. All those buffs to Fast Blade, Twin Snakes, Heavy Swing etc. However, in EW and DT, they seem to have had the idea that you can make a trait to just increase potencies, without updating the animation for the actions in question. What they can do then is just introduce more traits like that, likely at levels X4 (since that seems to be where they place them), and then reduce the potency of the base actions, making the traits do the increased potencies throughout the expansions. Things die slower, however, you will still be action locked (if that is a concern).

As for on level cap content, you just need to add ilevel restrictions on everything so you cannot massively over gear things.

These 2 things alone will be enough to give some content their bite back.

[Atreus]

I don't see how #3 can be managed for defensive/healing skills. I sure don't want to have nigh invincible tanks or the overbloated healing kits healers have in an ARR dungeon, at least.

Also I don't want to be permanently stuck with light mage WHM.

I knew I forgot a bullet in follow-up concerns. Yes, you're correct that this is another huge consideration, one that makes me feel that #2 would be a better (but also high effort) solution.

[caffe_macchiato]

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular MMO with over 7x the active player base as FFXIV, managed to get this right. Everyone is synced up and the same leveling content is playable regardless of your level. Perhaps that's why so many people still play that game over ours. It's odd that a 20-year old game has managed to fix this and Square Enix is incapable of doing so. Sad!

[Fynlar]

Okay. You could tell people that, or we could find a solution that's fun for everyone.

Try to please everyone and you will likely end up with something that pleases nobody.

Just accept that not all content is meant for you, like I have had to with savages and ultimates.