Level Syncing is Becoming an Increasing Problem

[Lumadurin]

With 5.0's announcement looming in the near future, and many hours of leveling roulettes under my belt, a new, very ugly problem is becoming increasingly apparent to me.

It's the game's progression. And how level syncs make old content a chore to play in comparison with modern content.
With the move into Stormblood, many classes underwent redesigns wherein lower-level skillsets were streamlined in order to make room for the new 60-70 skills. Many classes also obtained important traits or abilities that completely or near-completely define their current rotation or playstyle (MCH's heat management, DRK's Blood Gauge, etc.).
As a result, many classes now feel either incomplete or just extremely dumbed-down in comparison to what they're like at the level cap. There's little to manage, little to weave, little to press in general. And it makes getting anything below the highest level you can queue for an absolute snoozefest.
A good example of this is Samurai, who is skull-crushingly boring to play before you unlock your Kenki gauge at 52, and then only skull-bashingly boring to play until 62, when your Kenki generation is increased.

This also makes it a lot harder to practice your rotations and whatnot in a live environment. Since what you're doing at level 34 will probably not reflect what you're doing at 70. This issue will only get worse in 5.0 if we're just given another 4 skills and a new gimmick gauge to manage.

I imagine healers are less impacted by this as they don't really have much of an offensive rotation. Just plant a DoT and press your damage spell. But DPS and tanks feel it a lot more.

What I'd like to see is some kind of dynamic scaling based on how far down players in a group are synced (level-wise, NOT item-level-wise), while not removing our skills and traits.

• Are the DPS a higher level than the dungeon? Now all the enemies have more health and the tank passively generates more enmity to compensate for the increased damage output of the DPS.
• Is the tank a higher level than the dungeon? Now the enemies hit slightly harder and have slightly more health to compensate for the tank's increased defensive and offensive capabilities.
• Does the healer outlevel the dungeon? Enemies hit harder and the tank generates slightly more emnity to compensate for the increased healing going out.

Something along these lines really. Maybe it'd just be a flat scaling percentage based on the level difference. Maybe it'd be something more intricate (like how the StoneSkySea dummies have differing levels of health depending on the specific class attacking them).

The short of it is that I'd just like for lower-level content to not make me feel like I've just undergone a lobotomy, so I'm not groaning every time the roulette places me in Satasha/ARR primals.

So, how do you feel about level syncing stripping your skills? Would you be in favour of retaining our learned skills in low-level content?
Or are you, as a DPS, fine with only pressing about 8 buttons in low level content?
Or are you, as a Tank, fine with lacking large chunks of your offensive kit in low level content?
Or are you, as a Healer, fine with lacking whatever-the-hell Healers lack in low-level content (AST's cards, maybe?)?

[number473]

I prefer that it stays the way that it currently is.

[Mirch]

let's keep things as they are now. One day, I want to 1 hit kill kefka with an emote.

one day.

[Seraphor]

Oh trust me, Healers feet it too. In low level content people just don't suffer much damage, so you just spam Stone/Ruin/Malefic for 30 minutes.

[Mirch]

i thought we just /follow <2> the whole dung?
lmao

[Seraphor]

i thought we just /follow <2> the whole dung?
lmao

I rolled into Toto-rak once as a MCH, with a BRD as the other DPS and the healer did this.
I was pulling my hair out, asking them to please dps to get us through quicker but they just weren't bothering.
The tank was the newbie so I didn't want to disrupt their flow, but damn did I wish I could just run ahead and force the healer to heal me.

[ShinShimon]

You should have your basic GCD rotation unlocked by Sastasha, and you should have all of your abilities by level 50. That gives you 20 levels to practice them before reaching end-game, and will let us use all of our abilities in everything but leveling roulette.

Regularly unlocking abilities as you level up has never made leveling more fun or engaging to me. Most of the time it just leaves you with an incomplete and awkward toolkit until you reach a certain milestone.

[Acidblood]

Definitely agree that this is a problem (that is only going to get worse) ... as for the solution, I would much prefer they went through each class and reworked their low-mid level toolkits to:

1. Have at least a full rotation / combo, 1 AoE (healing or damage), and for tanks, healers, and specific dps, at least 1 utility by level 15.

This would give each class a 'basic kit' from the very first dungeon, and as such players could start learning the basics of their role from the very first dungeon. It also establishes a strong base for each class upon which future abilities can be added, and then integrated by the player as they level up and learn.

As an example, Lancer / Dragoon gets Impulse Drive (second combo starter) at level 6 and doesn't get Doom Spike (their first AoE) until level 40! Are you trying to confuse / bore new Lancer players SE?

It would be much smoother if by level 15 Lancer had at least:
True Thrust (first combo starter)
Vorpal Thrust (first combo mid)
Full Thrust (first combo finisher)
Heavy Thrust (damage boost and intro to positional)
Doom Spike (first AoE)


2. Give 'class changing' abilities as early as (sensibly) possible.

The main reason for this is so that, again, players can learn and integrate new abilities / class mechanics as they level ... as opposed to the current 'welcome to level cap, now re-learn your class' (and good luck on the dungeon speed runs).

An example of this is of course Dark Knight (The Blackest Night), which (for any of its other issues) would at least feel better in the 64-69 range and offer a smoother transition at 70 if it got TBN at 64 (2 levels after its first Blood spender) with Quietus and Bloodspiller (both important, but not nearly as class changing) pushed to 68 and 70.

And I won't even mention post 4.2 WAR, as Inner Release is just completely busted.


3. Group 'connected' abilities reasonably close together.

Again, learning, A connects to B.

Take SAMs Third Eye as an example... currently given at level 6, it isn't really useful until you get Merciful Eyes at 58! That's 52 levels to completely forget about Third Eye before it becomes noticeably useful (gaining HP is infinitely more noticeable than taking 10% less damage for 1 attack).

Third Eye and Merciful Eyes really should both be given at the same level (probably in the 30s) so that players can learn how useful Third Eye can be as soon as they get it. Which is then re-enforced when players get Hissatsu: Seigan (which should probably be in the 50s).

[Seraphor]

Well, you're not waiting 52 levels to use Third Eye, because you start SAM at level 50.

But I do think this is a problem for the new jobs. They're significantly simpler given that they haven't had three stages of evolution, which results in them have fewer meaningful skills to spread out among the lower levels.

[PangTong]

I basically agree. With the ability prune in Stormblood, low level play became even worse than it already was. For example with MNK, if you had already unlocked Blood for Blood then you could start using it as soon as you had a cross-class slot. Now MNK doesn't get their big damage cooldown until level 68.

Because of the need to add new abilities with each expansion but also keep the total amount of abilities about the same to constrain complexity, we end up with this situation where skill acquisition gets spread further and further out and low level play becomes more and more miserable.

However a big part of this problem is because so many of the existing skillsets are back-loaded, that is to say, almost half your entire job is learned after level 50. A typical job gets about 25-28 actions excluding cross-roles, but because the devs feel there's this weird need to have constant new ability unlocks every 2 levels after 50, around 8-10 of those will be unlocked once you're already significantly well into the game. Not only does this make jobs feel horribly incomplete before very high levels (even max level for some jobs), but it causes a problem where you suddenly have to relearn your entire job after unlocking some key skill at high level, even though you've already spent dozens of hours learning the initial rotation.

Considering we're rapidly approaching the next expansion which will most likely be looking to raise the level cap to 80, and Yoshida has already said that they will be pruning skills again to make room for new ones, this is an issue that needs to be considered as soon as possible to avoid falling into the same trap and making low-level gameplay even worse than it currently is.

Simply put, skill acquisition rates and orders need to be drastically changed such that jobs are practically complete by the time they reach level 50. A job's entire basic rotation and core skills should all be in place by level 50, and levels 50-80 should see a dramatic reduction in the total amount of new skills learned (10 at most for the entire 50-80 span, ideally more like 6-8), and those new skills should not greatly alter the existing rotation except to expand on it with new cooldowns or traits.

You don't need to have loads of new skills to motivate people to reach the level cap, they are going to do that no matter what. The sacrifice of not getting so many new skills at high level is DEFINITELY worth the advantage of making low level and synced gameplay much more fun. One of the biggest complaints I hear about XIV from new players and veterans alike is that the combat takes FOREVER to get interesting. Locking away half the job toolkits behind level 50 (which for a new player will take them possibly over 100 hours of MSQ) is a huge turn-off, both for new players and veterans trying to level new jobs or do synced content. If XIV wants to keep retaining players this is something that desperately needs to be addressed in 5.0.