It's time to redesign Level Sync

[Nixxe]

As much as I don't like losing abilities when synced, do I really want to have to work three times as hard for DPS similar to the guy spamming one or two buttons over and over? No, no I do not. Personally, I hate Sastasha more for the fact that the scaling of the end-of-dungeon bonus doesn't compensate for the lack of mob XP.

Just don't play low level content if it's going to get your knickers into a twist. The game gives abilities at a good pace. You get your full combo at 30, and with the increases to EXP it takes less than a week to get to 50, even 60, but that's besides the point. Next you're gonna tell me that single player games should reward all abilities by Level 2.

There are three complaints I commonly see from people who either refuse to try FFXIV or tried it and quit:
1. I don't like the "anime style."
2. The GCD makes combat too slow.
3. I don't have enough abilities for it to be fun.

Now keep in mind that most of these people are quitting in the first few levels. To be sure, these are mostly people coming from other MMORPGs, so they aren't total rookies and therefore need less of a learning curve, but I do think there's something to the idea that classes/jobs don't get enough abilities quickly enough, especially when we're talking about core abilities that may really showcase what playing it will be like later. There's perhaps a better balance that can be struck. WoW introduces abilities much faster and it certainly didn't cause me problems when I had first picked it up, despite having never really played any games truly like it before. The slow learning curve of FFXIV definitely helps less experienced people get into the game, but it still needs to be fast enough to keep them here. I stuck around because I really liked the story. People who are less interested in the story may not have much of a reason to do so.

[Berethos]

Brutal, right? Having to make intelligent decisions regarding when to hold back and when to cut loose. Sounds almost like...gaming..

The other part is that the there needs to be an element of fun to those decisions. What is fun about sitting on most of your abilities because if you don't you'll pull aggro?

[Avatre]

On a side note regarding the synch...why is it that when you have a full party of 55+ classes, you get stuff like Sastasha/Qarn/Totorak/Thousand Maws? I've had it multiple times in the past few weeks where this has happened, and everyone queued for the leveling roulette.

[Mikey_205]

I'd love this. Would make the dungeons more fun. Hate the greyed out icons.

[Kling-Klang]

I think doing that would be a huge waste of developement time. Level sync is fine the way it is.

[Berethos]

Rift not only scales you down but also up in level for dungeons. GW2's scaling is pretty spot-on as well. WildStar's scaling isn't perfect (still a bit overpowered if you're level 50 queueing for random normals), but it works and they'll continue to tweak it.

Consider why it works for those games.

As I recall Rift gave you a fair amount of abilities by the time you started running dungeons (as did SWTOR) in earnest, and what strikes me about GW2 and Wildstar is you only have a certain amount you can use at any one time.

The biggest issue with the OPs suggestion is the difference in the amount of abilities based on level in XIV and the balance nightmare that would cause, not necessarily the balance of any one ability.

Allowing the player to use all of their abilities when the difference in amount of abilities between levels is fairly small has less of an impact, which is likely why it works in those games better.

Which means the OP is suggesting a solution that doesn't fix the main issue but instead a symptom of the main issue (that XIV is too back loaded when it comes to abilities, which I do believe is the case).

[RyuujinZERO]

As a DRK since Stormblood this is especially dire IMO.

Level 50 and below we have no AoE to speak of, almost no off-GCD attacks. Our rotation literally looks like this:

Is blood price up? -> Use it I guess
Do you need more emnity on a group? -> Unleash
Do you need more emnity on a boss? -> 1-2-Punch
Just DPS then? -> Hard Slash -> Syphon Strike -> Dark Arts + Souleater
Repeat ad nauseum

Let that sink in a moment... PLDs at level 50 have MORE STUFF to rotate through, than DRK do at the same level. It is just so boring to play DRK down-leveled; even the cracked clusters are barely incentive enough; Levelling roulette is beyond tedious if you get pre-60 content. And no amount of Tier 6 Materia is worth Thousand Snores of Toto-Rak

[Beckett]

This is the worst case scenario, but I can easily see someone queuing into a dungeon, seeing that 2-3 party members aren't level sync'd and

/sit
/p vote kick me
/p im not wasting my time a nonlevel sync party

[Mysticdraggon]

i probably just had the greatest solution...

follow with me on this:

what if we REVERSED level sync to focus on the highest level player and applied it to dungeon difficulty itself!

simply put, you have a group of a level 70, and three more level 20's, in a level 20 dungeon.

instead of syncing the level 70 to level 20, buff all available abilities/actions/traits of the level 20 players AND the dungeon level itself including enemies and bosses!

PERFECTION!!!

[Felis]

i probably just had the greatest solution...

follow with me on this:

what if we REVERSED level sync to focus on the highest level player and applied it to dungeon difficulty itself!

simply put, you have a group of a level 70, and three more level 20's, in a level 20 dungeon.

instead of syncing the level 70 to level 20, buff all available abilities/actions/traits of the level 20 players AND the dungeon level itself including enemies and bosses!

PERFECTION!!!

Why not just replace the lv 20 dungeon with a random lv 70 dungeon if a lv 70 job is in the party?