It's time to redesign Level Sync

[Rekujin]

Stormblood brought some really good changes to the game, a lot of quality of life changes that I'm very happy with. That being said, I think Level Sync has been created since launch and ignored... I think it's time to revisit.

I don't know about you guys but I'm always reluctant to help lowbies or even bother with leveling roulette sometimes because I'm not keen to spend 20 minutes in a dungeon spamming 2 abilities (hello Sastasha) It's BORING and almost puts me to sleep.

Level Sync

If you are a level 70 synced down to level 20, your abilities remain but they are statistically reduced to match level 20 damage/healing output. This means your rotations stay the same but your damage and healing is significantly reduced to match the dungeons content.

This makes the level synced dungeon still somewhat enjoyable and doesn't force you to spam 2-3 buttons for the entire duration.

I'm sure a lot of tanks agree, trying to hold AoE agro in a low level dungeon as a level 70 player is extremely frustrating/boring. A Dragoon/SAM/Monk without their combos is insanely boring.

Cheers.

[Sayora]

The issue though lies with the people who are actually leveling up and don't have their entire toolkit. That's probably a reason why abilities are removed in level-sync.

[Rekujin]

The issue though lies with the people who are actually leveling up and don't have their entire toolkit. That's probably a reason why abilities are removed in level-sync.

Don't see the issue though?

Level 20 Dungeon as an example.

Level 20 Lancer, new to the game.
Level 70 Dragoon, veteran of the game

Same Party.

the level 70's stats and abilities are heavily reduced to ensure the 20 and 70 both do similar damage output.

Scenario: The level 20 Lancer, new to the game, can look at the 70 in his party and look forward to what his armor/abilities will look like once he hits max level, which gives new players motivation to level up. This also means the level 70 isn't bored out of his mind spamming 2 abilities.

[Squintina]

But then people might expect all tanks to do a real rotation and end up being abusive to the tanks that don't because they legitimately don't have access to those skills.People will also end up very anxious when a legitimate low-level healer who doesn't have in-battle rez unlocked yet is in their party.

If they did do this, they'd have to make it so the sync further nerfs each skill commensurate with how many extra skills the high level player has to make sure that the amount of aggro you hold in your full rotation isn't greater than if it was a player who actually is the minimum level for the dungeon.

It's a lot of recalculating, which will lead to many complaints when it doesn't end up right.

(and the same kind of nerfing applied to heal/dps of course.)

BTW I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, since as it is the game does not fully sync already (seems Role actions are kept even when synced down to a lower level than it would be unlocked at, maybe a bug?), but the algorithm would need to be extremely complicated to make it viable without making real new players feel underpowered or changing player expectations.

[Jas710]

Was it boring when you first hit 20 as a newbie, when knowing your abilities and functioning in a group setting was uncertain?

The sync down is not meant to service established players by feeding us tomes, etc. Yeah it's a bunch of incentives for sure, but ultimately it all boils down to helping out the up and comers. All inconveniences are shared equally among the new and the experienced.

If we retained all of our skills like we do unsynced, then all it would do is overwhelm the new guys and create unnecessary confusion.

[Aures]

A 70 with all his abilties and his combos will generate more hate as well and a newbie tank will never be able to keep hate. They can barely keep it now when a 70 syncs down.

[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.

[Vespar]

A lot of the arguments levied at the OP, assume that abilities wouldnt be scaled down in enmity, potency, etc while sync'd.

I have actually seen this argument before a few times, and its always this same thing that gets brought up at the reason why it cant. But really it could, it would take a lot of balancing though on SE's part and I feel like THAT is more likely the reason we dont see it. They dont have time to rebalance things at every possible dungeon lvl to make sure it would be in accepted norm's. So while the actions could be tweaked for level sync, it would likely be far too time consuming to do it for every job.
(But man would I love to see it!)

[Sayora]

Don't see the issue though?

Level 20 Dungeon as an example.

Level 20 Lancer, new to the game.
Level 70 Dragoon, veteran of the game

Same Party.

the level 70's stats and abilities are heavily reduced to ensure the 20 and 70 both do similar damage output.

Scenario: The level 20 Lancer, new to the game, can look at the 70 in his party and look forward to what his armor/abilities will look like once he hits max level, which gives new players motivation to level up. This also means the level 70 isn't bored out of his mind spamming 2 abilities.

There is no possible way it'll be similar with the amount of skill they get between those two levels. One of the players doesn't even have AoE of any sort compared to the other. EDIT: I mean they can probably scale it down significantly, but wouldn't the new skills simply be fluff or something?