It already did suck. I can't count the number of times I've sacrificed marks on one class because the SP was more important on the class I wanted to rank up and people in the party didn't want to lose party bonus by me switching to a 50.
Now I can just go to the correct city when I've a spare leve (easier now that they're more for soloers) and get an increased number of marks per leve.
It's a shame they didn't talk about the changes to gathering leves to make them more worthwhile that have been mentioned in the gathering Q&A. Bit worried they won't get that done for 1.18.