Level Syncing isn't the best solution

[JunseiKei]

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.



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?

I do everything outside of ultimate, and that's simply because my raid group just doesn't want to (and I don't particularly want to do that with complete strangers :\). You're strawmanning my statement. I even said nothing is better than the actual fight for optimization, so I don't know why you are saying that back to me. These "anyone who disagrees with me are this" statements are just plain annoying and sound more like a kid saying "I'm right, so there!" but it'd help if you took in my whole statement before you tried to come after me.

What exactly would testers be doing? Companies use player-testers to make sure content that is created works. In this case, giving level 70 players full access to their skills as early as the level 10 guildhests. You queue up, you use a level 70 skill. It works - huzzah! What you don't get out of these tests : the impact of having higher level players being compared against the actual low level characters and how boring it becomes for that new player. SE has also stated how they do in-house testing in past LLPs, so it's not like zero testing is being done.

The idea needs to address issues like this, but so far has failed to do so:

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.

How do you effectively make someone with a full AoE toolkit deal damage on par with a player that hasn't leveled high enough to get any AoE abilties at all, especially considering the way things get chain pulled? Drop the potency on the AoEs from the typical 100 or so down to 10 so if it hits 10 mobs then it deals roughly the same damage as a low level player will deal using their standard single target attack?

Do you cap potency on all single target abilities at 150 or perhaps even down to 100 depending on what item level sync is being used? At what content level do you start increasing the potencies to bring them more in line with the demand of those higher but still not max level dungeons?

I'm sure SE would love to see the players behind this change presenting their theorycrafting analysis showing how this can work successfully on a job by job and dungeon by dungeon basis.

Probably needs to be said, since my other statement wasn't full comprehended, I'm not even against the idea. However, it has issues that need addressing before it should even be considered. Not to mention yet other important issues others have pointed out.

[Dualgunner]

In my (admittedly limited experience), even WoW does not queue level capped players with noobs.

Enemies scale to the player level. Damage the player does is translated to percentage of the enemy's life bar; say the enemy had 100 hp for me and 1000 for you. If I did 10 damage, that translates to 10% and reflects as 100 damage to the enemy on your end. Its also worth noting WoW rotations don't seem to be as heavily fragmented as XIV's.

What I'm basing my earlier statement on, mind, is that on the demon hunter I made, no dungeons pre-Legion are available in df, and I would have to manually fly to the dungeon and solo it to access it. My Death Knight, however, at lv70 has access to a lot more dungeons through df it seems. I could be stupid and wrong but it seems even WoW puts limits on syncing dungeon to player level.

[Spiroth]

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?



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.

Why do you make this point? I was replying to what I quoted.
Also, there are 3 FINAL FANTASY MMOs.

[Spiroth]

You jumped right to the end and missed the entire point.

The "real stuff" isn't the endgame, because this game barely has an endgame. The "real stuff" is having a toolkit/rotation - the basic gameplay loop for XIV and the subject of this thread - that doesn't put you to sleep or otherwise feel like garbage. Unless you think jobs feel fine synced down in the ARR leveling dungeons, but then you should argue that instead of what you currently are.


I did. Look at the first page.

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No, sorry, it's not. The contents of the story being better or worse between the two is subjective, but one of these games forces players to slog through something like 150 hours of fetch quests and cutscenes to access basic game features/modes.

The other drops you into the world and lets you do whatever you want, when you want to do it. You gained access to all jobs (quests) once you hit lv30, and going to expansion areas was simply a matter of 1) figuring out where they were and 2) getting there without having your face ripped off. Very few content types were locked behind the story missions, and the ones that were didn't require the full completion of its story to unlock.

Oh, and the stories still managed to reference one another and feel connected.


Take a look at how many threads crop up (on Reddit, to be fair, but still) about people quitting the game around Titan's arc (30~34), towards the end of ARR or during the 2.1~2.55 stretch. Consider how many basic and obvious design choices, like Frontlines Freelancers, weren't implemented in a timely manner (or at all) because "lore reasons."

Overall player count is irrelevant; XI came out in an entirely different era. When they start giving away story and level skip potions with purchases of the game because they see a decline in player adoption and retention, will it still be story first?

You did not. That post has zero valid solutions.
Nastrond using Lancer in Sastasha is not acceptable, and everything you "offered" mandates that. So no.


And no, "real stuff" are not what you choose to include.
REAL STUFF is everything, not only endgame stuff.

[Spiroth]

By this same logic, the WoL shouldn't be able to do any sub-50 dungeon as a non-ARR job. It's physically impossible for them to have unlocked DRK, AST, MCH, RDM, or SAM by lv15-17, which is the sync limits for Sastasha.

You are wrong, because when we re-do dungeons is through the echo. Nice try though.

[Astrus]

As much as I loathe getting thrown into sub-30 content or missing certain tools I've grown accustomed to I still prefer the system we have here to a system where you retain your whole kit with lowered potencies.
In the games I've played with the latter system very little was done to actually keep synced players in line with players who are at level for the content, the chief concern is preventing overleveled players from clearing whole maps with no effort. Assuming equal players, a character who has their whole kit of abilities, passives, special equipment bonuses and what have you is always going to outperform a character with a limited kit even if their shared abilities are functionally the same.

If preserving a sense of balance between players at different stages of the game is your goal I really only see two options: limiting the kit available at certain levels to keep everyone on equal footing or essentially punishing players doing synced content for leveling up by gradually decreasing their performance to the point where a level 20 character with a 1-2 combo deals the same damage as a synced player who has to go through their whole rotation.

[JunseiKei]

That quote referencing "Titan's arc" makes me wonder if they actually meant story Titan or Titan Extreme. Back then, you could not access The Binding Coil of Bahamut without having cleared all of the primals. Ifrit EX was locked behind downing Titan EX. If you couldn't kill him, the only things to do in the game then were dungeons and Garuda EX and relic (and the 24-man in the later parts of 2.x). Clearing Titan EX back in those days was almost as impressive as downing Twintania.

[HyoMinPark]

Balancing a system like this would be a nightmare - how would you propose balancing a level 70 rotation in Sastasha against a tank that's a level 15 GLA or MRD with a fraction of the skills you have? Mind you, neither have full combos until level 26 and level 30 respectfully, and neither have a tank stance either. It can already be difficult enough being item level synced against a new tank in lower level dungeons with at-level gear; I got Qarn earlier on my alt's AST (full i130 Augmented Poetics) and was pulling from a baby WAR in a mixture of i30 and i35 gear with just Malefics.

Even if you nerfed the damage of the level 70 player by 90%, at that point, why bother? I'd rather have my skeletal level 15 toolkit scaled to Sastasha's level than my full 70 kit scaled down that low. It would just feel bad at that point.

I don't think this is something the game needs currently. If you want to practice a level 70 rotation, there is plenty of level 70 content you can queue directly in to and practice, from dungeons to raids.

Why do you make this point? I was replying to what I quoted.
Also, there are 3 FINAL FANTASY MMOs.

Uhm, last I checked, there were only 2: Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. Unless you're counting 1.0 and ARR separately, I'm unaware of a third FF MMO currently on the market.

[JunseiKei]

Maybe confusing Final Fantasy with Square Enix MMOs because that'd make the number four (Concerto, Dragon Quest X, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV). Only other thing I could think of would be Final Fantasy XV: Comrades, but multiplayer does not make a game an MMO.

[Dualgunner]

You are wrong, because when we re-do dungeons is through the echo. Nice try though.

The best you got is a "no u"? Nice.

If we were reliving the instance through the echo we would necessarily have to be the job we originally were or it wouldn't really be "reliving" it.

Basically the lore angle is crap.