Creating new challenges: Player-controlled Level/iLv Sync

[Providence_]

This is a suggestion for how to create new challenges within FFXIV with a minimal required amount of dev time. As a caveat, I am new to MMORPGs (FFXIV being my first) so I'm not sure if this is a concept that has already been tried and tested or not.


My suggestion is to allow party leaders full control over the Level/iLv sync function within their own parties when challenging content, and to build a metagame around this concept.

Why?

I came into this game kind of late, only 6 months ago. When I hit 50 I was hit by a tidal wave of new content, like 40 different quests for all this stuff. It was essentially four huge patches worth of content thrown in my face in one go. But the vast majority of this was "old" content. I went through stuff like Copperbell HM and Ultima HM just kind of facerolling the mechanics due to most of my party being overgeared for that content and doing it in HLDR. Which is fine, that's how MMOs go, as content gets older it gets easier.

[Providence_]

The issue now is, I'm up to a point where I'm kind of lacking challenging content. I'm trying to get my T9 clear, and after that I'll hopefully try to get FCOB put away before 3.0, but that's...kinda it, that and savage coil.
My main issue with that whole experience was that I got to "see" a whole bunch of cool fights and interesting mechanics, but I never actually got to do them. Facerolling the EX primals or t1-5 was kind of an empty feeling for me and my friends, because we knew we weren't really experiencing the "proper" content. Reading up old strats for stuff like T2 and comparing it to how we just tripped the enrage and facetanked it was kinda depressing. And now that we approach the end of the line and we're running out of challenges, it'd be really nice to be able to go back and sync ourselves down to the levels people were at when those challenges came out, and take on the original challenge.

[Providence_]

So how do you get people motivated to sync down to i70 or whatever and go challenge old content?

By gating rewards behind it, duh. It doesn't necessarily have to be loot, just titles, mounts and minions would be fine. At a stretch, you could offer extra tomestones as you decrease the level in the level sync. This way, newer statics can challenge the old content in the way that it was meant to be, while old statics can dust off their old experience and return to that content for some new rewards.

[Providence_]

This doesn't exactly seem like a groundbreaking, world-changing suggestion.

It's not meant to be. The main benefit behind this idea? It requires nearly zero dev time. All that's required is to create a player interface for a party leader to fully control what Level and Item Level his party is synced down to. Throw in an option to disable the Echo for premade parties as well. Once you've put in the dev time to create that, from that point onward, the players create challenges for themselves. Obviously it's not as interesting as new content, but the point is that it doesn't take the place of new content, it simply supplements the game during the lulls between patches.

[Providence_]

But eventually people will farm all the titles or other cosmetics up for grabs, and then we're back to square one, right?

Well, there is another way of thinking about this. If we allow parties to set their sync level to whatever they want, how low can they feasibly go? What iLv do you think your static can clear FCOB at? 115? 110? What about leaderboards for every server, showing off who has the lowest iLv clear for each dungeon in the game? Different statics competing to see who can push the next iLv down, who can get the lowest iLv clear on the server. If you incentivise it right and offer rewards, I'm sure people would be interested. And who says it's limited to endgame content? What's the lowest level you think you can clear Sastasha at? 6? 4?

Well my ideas spiralled out of control at the end there. Ultimately the basis behind my idea is players being able to create new challenges for themselves from existing assets. What do you think?

[Dererk]

If it wer just for pre mades I can see this being a thing but not in DF also I highly doubt there would be enough people for this to be interesting to them.

No amount of tomestones is enough to do something like this I think.

[Zephyr-Umbra]

I think there could be a place for a system like this, honestly i have an issue with SE personally putting level sync restrictions on dungeons after 50 (Wanderers palace and a few others springing to mind.)
to ' save the difficulty' when it just negates improving your item level and getting stronger, if they want to save the difficulty of said dungeon make it an optional thing and don't force it upon players.
I can understand doing it to dungeons that are progressional pre-50 so it's not just stomped through by randoms in the duty finder, however anything after 50 should not have its level sync forced on anyone, if people want to experience the dungeons difficulty then give them an option to switch to it, especially dungeons like WP which you gain nothing from doing unless you're a fresh 50 looking for some item level 55 gear to help you get into HM primals and to help with crafting your relic weapon.

Instead of being something the party leader switches on though it should be an option within the Duty finder you can toggle when selecting that dungeon, i can't stress enough how having my item level synced in an end game dungeon via the roulette just makes me want to leave outright.

[JimboTCB]

Sounds very similar to WOW and its challenge mode dungeons, which had item level caps and leader boards for clear times, with things like vanity items and mounts as rewards for completing them with high scores. They were great, and actually required a decent level of skill and coordination to clear each dungeon fast enough for a gold rating while still meeting the quota on enemies killed.

Would be good to see something like that as an optional challenge, and to encourage people to do dungeons properly instead of just faceroll through to finish their daily roulette add quickly as possible.