Level Syncing isn't the best solution

[Nabril]

Yes, you say scaling down, but that process is not going to be perfect. Either you have players with all skills being able to heavily outperform those without those skills, or those with the skills needs to work harder than those without them to do the same amount of damage/healing/tanking, which is a lose/lose situation as neither is enjoyable.

The word "Perfect" has never been accurately used to describe any feature in an MMO because they grow and evolve all of the time.

With testing and patience, it could be made to be very close, but if you think that the current system is "Perfect" the way it is, you're very mistaken. Even now, with level syncing and item level reduction, people slaughter old dungeons. A brand new level 58 with quest or vendor given gear (you know- the normal gear that's available to a brand new level 58) vs a level synced 58 with reduced level 70 raid gear is going to notice a huge difference. The level synced guy is going to absolutely dominate the DPS chart. The system now is far from "Perfect".

I don't understand why it would be better to the game to keep this current system when it's clearly not perfect. I mean, if your concern is that the system I proposed would have to be perfect, aren't you concerned about the current system that's in place? Because the level syncing isn't perfect either. It's unbalanced and badly. Doesn't that bother you?

[JunseiKei]

The current system isn't perfect, but it's in my opinion, the best implementation I've encountered.

The main concerns that pop to mind are:
- Higher level + item leveled players versus the on- level + possible lower item leveled causing disparity and making runs frustrating.
- Preventing power creep if SE reworked the past-dungeon system and gave us all of our skills.
- The new constant need to make sure the disparity between older and newer players is balanced (which means constant maintenance of older content, taking focus away from future in some form).

The current system of syncing down players means that what the content is balanced around is not so easily broken. Though power creep still exists in past dungeons (syncing you down brings you down to certain stats, but it's easy to tell who has a higher lvl/ilvl during a run, leaving them at capped stats that aren't normally achieved at the level/ilevel the content was made available for), it could be much, much worse. If this is put in solely to "work on your rotation," you have striking dummies for this to work it into your muscle memory. If it's to make sure you have the DPS for a fight with your current rotation, you have the Stone, Sky and Sea for that. If you're looking to optimize in a fight, there's literally nothing better than to do the fight and pay attention to where you have moments where you have to line your utility buffs with the rest of your party, move away/stop casting/turn away and making those gaps as small as possible.

[Spiroth]

Story first is this game's Achilles heel. And XIV is neither the first nor the best Final Fantasy MMO with its approach to storytelling, expansions and gameplay feel.


Recommending that people just unsync the older content if they're unhappy with sub-cap rotational feel will kill this game. Because "story comes first," and story demands that new players do dungeons and trials. Which will have reduced population as more and more people refuse to do synced instances. That's exactly why we have duty roulettes and the rewards they give to begin with.

In any event, designing the jobs so they feel good at all levels bypasses this and also provides a better experience for new players that would otherwise still have to slog through this crap for dozens of hours before getting to the "real stuff." Which, you know, seems to be a good business decision as well as a good design decision.

It IS the best FINAL FANTASY MMO with its approach to storytelling, that is undisputable.
And of course "Story first" it is NOT this game's Achilles heel, as evidenced by the reception of it and the marginally bigger total player count than any other FINAL FANTASY MMO at the same point of its lifecycle.


As for the "Real Stuff", LOL. This mentality that "Real Stuff" is only current end-game content is the Achilles Heel of "Players" that think likr you.
If you don't enjoy the game, offer valid solutions.
Lore-breaking Nastrond User Lancer at Sastasha, is not acceptable.

[mosaicex]

The problem is not the idea itself, but rather its actual implementation.

Suppose you get a DRG in Satasha, a level 15 dungeon.
At level 15, a DRG(or rather, a Lancer) does not have any AoE skill.
Now if the DRG is level 50 he will have more tools to increase his dps, such as Blood for Blood, Doom Spike, and Dragonfire Dive.
He will have even more at level 60 and 70 (Geirskogul, Sonic Thrust, Nastrond etc.)
How do you propose the devs balance these skill? Do you simply just reduce their potency so that the total output remains the same as that of level 15 player (which is simply impossible by the way as they don't even have AoE skill) making higher leveled player perform more for less?
Do you leave thing as is? Giving the actual level 15 tank much harder time to deal with aggro, possibly turning more people away from tanking? Hell it might even cause higher leveled players to despise lower leveled players even more for not having all these sick skills, making the run longer, on the other hand.

You said the current system is unbalanced, but what you suggested takes it to the other level.

I'm saying as someone who doesn't really enjoy level syncing much (mostly for just sub level 50 contents), but it is what it is.
So you either deal with it, or suggest an actual realistic solution.

The only MMO I've played that does it is WoW, and it works badly there. They mess with the content tuning so it either remains trivial for max level players being scaled down with full toolkits or ends up too difficult for players who are at the intended level but only have partial toolkits. I'd not enjoy seeing it repeated here. If the content is designed around players having access to only certain abilities then it should be experienced that way when synced.

I'll have to second this statement. The dungeons in WoW, while fantastic and completely stomped on XIV's one, have problem due to its level sync system. New players might as well not bother and just watch the veterans mow down everything in their path. It's part of the reason I did not bother continue playing.

[Lunavi]

The word "Perfect" has never been accurately used to describe any feature in an MMO because they grow and evolve all of the time.

With testing and patience, it could be made to be very close, but if you think that the current system is "Perfect" the way it is, you're very mistaken. Even now, with level syncing and item level reduction, people slaughter old dungeons. A brand new level 58 with quest or vendor given gear (you know- the normal gear that's available to a brand new level 58) vs a level synced 58 with reduced level 70 raid gear is going to notice a huge difference. The level synced guy is going to absolutely dominate the DPS chart. The system now is far from "Perfect".

I don't understand why it would be better to the game to keep this current system when it's clearly not perfect. I mean, if your concern is that the system I proposed would have to be perfect, aren't you concerned about the current system that's in place? Because the level syncing isn't perfect either. It's unbalanced and badly. Doesn't that bother you?

I do not think you get the problem here, I said not perfect as a understatement, it would be disastrous if ANY of those two scenarios occur. The system you are talking about is going to either cause an even greater rift, or make it so that no one is going to want to run level synched content ever. Of course people in decent gear are going to dominate people in their whities, as anything else would be weird considering that otherwise people would have to have sets for each dungeon to perform well in them. Think of it as that people running level synched run with the same level as the best gear they can have at that point, which is not exactly vendor whities. That is an "unfairness" people can buy and respect, but if people start roflstomping level 22 dungeons with flare and foul spamming, that is going to leave an extremely sour aftertaste for new players, and it is going to cause a huge problem if tanks starts tanking as if they expect the BLM in the party to have foul and flare.

Likewhise, if people are going to be forced to use those abilities to do decent in dungeons or even still not do that much damage, then that too is a problem. Then on the topic that dungeons are still being dominated by players, that does not have with gear primarily to do, it has to do with the fact that most leveling dungeons are, and always were, extremely easy (save for Sunken Temple of Qarn in 2.0, which was regrettably nerfed the very next patch). You want to replace a functioning system with a broken one (well, at least one that has not been added in a non-broken way before).

[Nabril]

The current system isn't perfect, but it's in my opinion, the best implementation I've encountered.

The main concerns that pop to mind are:
- Higher level + item leveled players versus the on- level + possible lower item leveled causing disparity and making runs frustrating.
- Preventing power creep if SE reworked the past-dungeon system and gave us all of our skills.
- The new constant need to make sure the disparity between older and newer players is balanced (which means constant maintenance of older content, taking focus away from future in some form).

The system I proposed wouldn't break anything that's not already broken by the current system. As for power creep- a little testing goes a LOOONG way. That's why games like this have testers. So properly utilized, the testers would ensure that this doesn't happen. It's what testers are for and a company this big knows this.

The current system of syncing down players means that what the content is balanced around is not so easily broken. Though power creep still exists in past dungeons (syncing you down brings you down to certain stats, but it's easy to tell who has a higher lvl/ilvl during a run, leaving them at capped stats that aren't normally achieved at the level/ilevel the content was made available for), it could be much, much worse. If this is put in solely to "work on your rotation," you have striking dummies for this to work it into your muscle memory. If it's to make sure you have the DPS for a fight with your current rotation, you have the Stone, Sky and Sea for that. If you're looking to optimize in a fight, there's literally nothing better than to do the fight and pay attention to where you have moments where you have to line your utility buffs with the rest of your party, move away/stop casting/turn away and making those gaps as small as possible.

You don't play much content do you? Combat dummies are garbage and everyone who raids should already know this. There's a HUGE difference between a caster standing in one spot on a combat dummy vs. running around and doing mechanics in a real fight. Yeah, combat dummies serve a purpose and that's to let you practice the ideal rotation in a perfect world, but once you get into a fight, you have to practice THAT fight so that you can alter your rotation around the mechanics FOR THAT BOSS.

Anyone who says otherwise is just someone who doesn't know how to play this game or is simply making up arguments to keep changes from happening. Which one are you?

[Aylis]

No. You can't have that.
When you are doing a lvl 30 Dungeon, you are basically doing it time-approppriate.
When this dungeon was opened to the Warror of Light, it was when he was Lvl 30.

You cannot have that because the Wwarrior of Light didn't have these skills yet.
People must understand that this game is FINAL FANTASY and Story is first unlike any other MMO.

Plus, there IS a setting that can help you get what you want, Unssynced Reviosinst Trivial Mode, or URTM.

Also technically according to the devs with the lore of redoing dungeons you're not actually doing the content again. You're just reliving it through the power of the echo. Since the echo is all powerful and in trials even buffs you as a recollection of your failures as the Warrior of Light. So the idea of taking max level spells and abilities in a weakened state isn't really far fetched with the lore the devs laid out, because Echo and magic rocks. The first time you did it was time appropriate, all other times is because echo.

Anyway as per the topic, I would adore bringing all my abilities in all places despite being dropped to dungeon level it's true. However the issues I see coming from it would take a few overhauls that I really don't think SE wants to put the time and money into resolving balance issues. The first being abilities tied to level and class quests. I doubt they would overhaul the system to be like a Guild Wars 2 system where you basically have your full kit long long long before you even set foot in the first dungeon. The second being balancing issues within the dungeons themselves. Aurum Vale comes to mind just because I know I can't be the only healer that spent nights wishing they had access to their level 50 heal spell which would have made the dungeon a ton easier. AV was a level 49 dungeon if I recall right. That one level difference to open up the spell could easily tip the scales from a living nightmare to a cheese fest.

[Paladinleeds]

Anyone who says otherwise is just someone who doesn't know how to play this game or is simply making up arguments to keep changes from happening. Which one are you?

Actually, it's written into the lore that we revisit our memories when we revisit those dungeons. Now, it's not perfect as we obviously can power creep (but maybe we can attest that to Minstrel-style embellishment).
The power creep issue can be mitigated with two things:
1) Tighter ilvl and/or lvl tuning. Not only is that an easier fix, but I feel it's more appropriate. Plus, it also means that at most, the players will see one or two abilities into the future of what they're gonna get for their class, so it therefore also prevents overwhelming the newer player.
2) Role skill adjustments. Ok, the fact we get all 5 of our role skills when synced down does cause some potential issues. Ideally, we should only get access to role skills (and role skill numbers) at that level.

To me, not only do those 2 fixes solve the overgearing aspect better, but they're also much easier to do as they work within the systems we have already (if I remember rightly, the old cross-class system did limit how many role skills you could use when you level synced). This idea not only makes things more complicated, but I feel it provides no benefit, and a lot of pitfalls, as people have already highlights. And for practicing the mechanics of a fight, aren't you best off doing it in that particular fight?

[OurMom]

They just dont know how to design challenge content. I've always hated level/ilevel sync it makes absolutely no sense, especially in stuff like maps and current end game dungeons.

Why work towards progression just to keep taking it away?

the marginally bigger total player count than any other FINAL FANTASY MMO at the same point of its lifecycle.

Aren't there only two ff mmos? I could be horribly wrong I don't keep up with the franchise. I thought it was just 11 and 14? That's not like it's some massive accomplishment if there's only two and one was created like over 10 years ago.

[Penthea]

Do you really consider it to be a lot more effort to do a level 70 rotation over a level 50?

For some classes yes, also the lowest lvl dungeon is 15, not 50.

I don't know what you mean... perhaps we simply don't have the same definition of the word effort... To me, effort is a measure of difficulty. There's no difficulty in pushing more buttons on a keyboard.

I think you don't know how the game works if you're not aware that pressing three buttons in the correct order is far less effort than a full lvl 70 rotation.

Effort is what I expend at my job- or at the gym- or even on my diet... Effort is not pushing buttons. Could you elaborate on what you mean?

I suggest you try to play truly challenging content if you don't understand how playing your class to its fullest at lvl 70 is more challenging than low lvl dungeons.