It's time to redesign Level Sync

[Bluejay]

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

I agree. The problem isn't with level synced abilities. If you were to nerf a full set of abilities to match a lower level players output then your abilities would be much less effective than the exact same abilities used by the lower level player in some cases. This would be silly.

Better solutions:
1. AI companions that can help new players complete the 1-50 group required content (maybe coming soon?)
2. Redo the dungeons to improve their game play making them repeatable (never going to happen)
3. Make solo or group composition agnostic (like POTD) versions of those dungeons that can be done to complete the story line but that drop weaker loot.

As an aside: As demonette mentions, the lower level content is insanely boring. The fun in too much of FF14 content is the application of skill rotations. The content itself is pretty bad. Obviously if you take the skill rotations out that content becomes boring. Once you make it through the main story line that you can only do once there is almost nothing fun from 1 - 50. POTD is ok but not great, and when you do it for the 300th time it becomes boring too. If POTD were better it might not be so bad (wouldn't help the group required content but it would help leveling alts). Right now, pre-50 PVP is the only decent repeatable content in this game.

It's not like players are unwilling to repeat content. Look at something like Player Unknown or Team Fortress, Street Fighter, Racing games like Forza or Need For Speed, Sim games like Civ or Cities Skylines, Arcade games, Rogue like games and repeatable dungeon crawlers like Path of Exile or Hand of Fate... in some of those games you repeat exactly the same content 1000's or 10,000's of times but you don't hear players complaining about lack of content. I would also argue that some of the post 50 content is good enough that repeating it is not a problem.

[Kosmos992k]

Yes, absolutely and without a shred of irony. It's hard to keep other mmo friends interested in this game because the low level experience is so mind-numbing.

Really? I mean, how long does it take to level through 20+ now? 3 hours? Doing Story along the way might stretch that an extra hour. With a story jump potion and moderate effort to level you can be in Palace of the Dead in next to no time, and leveling swiftly.

What really get's on my nerves about the kind of sentiment you are posting is that the initial leveling process in FFXIV is so very quick, and it functions as a tutorial to the rest of the game. If MMORPG players haven't got the patience to work through 3-4 hours of tutorial then how do they ever stick around long enough for anything meaningful in any game? The biggest issue I see people running into is this, they start at a low level and none of their so called friends are prepared to take the time to work with them and play with them while they catch up. those so-called friends would rather be working on current content than helping their friends advance. That leaves new players out on a limb where they either use jump potions or slog through stuff on their own.

Friends don't let friends get bored.

Oh, and that doesn't even touch the fact that jobs like Dark Knight, Astrologian and Machinist start at 30, and Samurai and Red mage start at 50, so you are not really locked into the entire tutorial path any more.

[Naunet]

the initial leveling process in FFXIV is so very quick

Jobs don't really pick up as far as having a decent range of abilities until 40-50. What's more the overall leveling process is absurdly slow, given that you have to go through every single MSQ (unless you want to give SE money, which is stupid).

And why would a new player invest in a story skip potion just so they can spam PotD? That's absurd.

[Kosmos992k]

Jobs don't really pick up as far as having a decent range of abilities until 40-50. What's more the overall leveling process is absurdly slow, given that you have to go through every single MSQ (unless you want to give SE money, which is stupid).

And why would a new player invest in a story skip potion just so they can spam PotD? That's absurd.

Hey, I agree with you, it is absurd, but so is the idea that MMORPG players who are renowned for their endurance of long play are unwilling to invest the time needed to learn this game. Since I have seen new sprouts arriving at the gates for Royal Menagerie I can only conclude that leveling and progress in FFXIV is relatively quick.

[Drakkaelus]

Yeah, other games have done this before so I don't know why people seem to think it's impossible. I agree, spamming fast blade -> savage blade 123,654,234,568 times in a row is goddamn boring and I usually just avoid doing leveling roulettes just because I don't want to end up in Sastasha or something.

[Rekujin]

Yeah, other games have done this before so I don't know why people seem to think it's impossible. I agree, spamming fast blade -> savage blade 123,654,234,568 times in a row is goddamn boring and I usually just avoid doing leveling roulettes just because I don't want to end up in Sastasha or something.

Bingo!

This is the problem and why I'm trying to address it.

WoW (yeah yeah, just hear me out) has done an excellent job with Timewalking (their version of level sync) where a max level character is synced down but keep all their abilities, they are HEAVILY nerfed to ensure they don't pull from the tank or cause major dps differences.

[Squintina]

Bingo!

This is the problem and why I'm trying to address it.

WoW (yeah yeah, just hear me out) has done an excellent job with Timewalking (their version of level sync) where a max level character is synced down but keep all their abilities, they are HEAVILY nerfed to ensure they don't pull from the tank or cause major dps differences.

Yes in theory if they figured out how to sync the abilities in such a way that there is no major dps/aggro/heal difference between the full version of the rotation in the higher level player and the incomplete version in the lower level version, it'd work.

But I just don't think many of us have faith they'll be able to get the new syncing algorithm right if they tried to do this.

This literally doesn't happen in other MMOs...

Maybe I'm jaded from having played with a lot of jerks in other MMOs (from both PUGs and guildies. The amount of drama on raidcall in WoW was just as bad, so many people just suddenly forgot what it was like to be someone newer), maybe I'm unlucky to have been in such servers with so many jerks, but it's definitely something I've witnessed in other games, not usually directed at me but I still have to witness it. Admittedly the FF14 community is one of the nicest I've seen, maybe I should have more faith.

[Naunet]

Maybe I'm jaded from having played with a lot of jerks in other MMOs (from both PUGs and guildies. The amount of drama on raidcall in WoW was just as bad, so many people just suddenly forgot what it was like to be someone newer), maybe I'm unlucky to have been in such servers with so many jerks, but it's definitely something I've witnessed in other games, not usually directed at me but I still have to witness it. Admittedly the FF14 community is one of the nicest I've seen, maybe I should have more faith.

Wow, I'm sorry. That sucks. For what it's worth, it's not something I've ever encountered or even heard of happening in the MMOs I've played with dungeon scaling. So maybe it's just s uper rare.

[Kosmos992k]

The fundamental misunderstanding of your post lies in the title and your own words. You talk about level sync, when in fact you mean ilevel sync. The game has both. For older leveling dungeons full level sync places players on an even footing. Otherwise lower level players would be little more than window dressing in a dungeon, and would get and learn nothing from the run.

ilvl sync leaves your abilities in tact, but drops your gear and it's stats to something approaching the level of the content. In other words, it already does what you are asking for. So your request is redundant.

I see no real point in doing this, and doubt they will. The point of auto-downgrading certain skills was to address bloat and skill bar management when doing old content. If anything I'd like them to tune level syncing so we are not so overpowered.

Please make old content harder by syncing our ilv down further

I have been asking for this additional tuning of level sync since before Heavensward. Level sync isn't strict enough, a level 70 in an early dungeon such as one of the ARR dungeons is far and away more powerful than any appropriately leveled player or the enemies in the dungeon which makes the dungeons both easy and boring.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Level 20 Lancer can raise their damage 15%. Can not do any aoe damage at all.
Level 20 (70) Dragoon can raise their damage 15%, can increase the target's piercing damage taken 5%, can periodically raise their damage a further 15%, has a dot, can raise the party's crit rate, can raise their damage yet another 10% while raising another player's damage up 5%, has multiple aoe attacks.
There is no reasonable way to make these players even remotely similar in dungeons.

Here's a simple solution:

Raise everything's HP relative to the levels of the players in the party. Also, lower or raise the tank's net enmity gain by a percentage based on the level of the players in the party. Finally, raise the incoming damage done by enemy units by a percentage based on level of the players in the party. The exact percentage would have to be a little different for each stat change, and also depend on a slightly different equation. But it wouldn't be that difficult.