Some thoughts on Level Sync and Abilities

[Clouse_Cleyra]

People still arguin about this?
In a level 20 dungeon you will habe your job at level 20, if you dont like thay do a level 70+ dungeon.
Pretty simple

[frostmagemari]

They really should take a page from GW2 in how syncing down works.

Its significantly more elegant than "Lol guess you only have a couple buttons to press"

Personally, i wouldn't mind it if they took a page out of how Blizzard did it's scaling. They were able to change the legion mobs (especially in dungeons) where you would have a level 100 and a level 110 fighting a boss, and rather than the 110 just stomping the enemy, they would both act as if they're fighting a to-level version of the mob (both damaging it and getting damaged by it accordingly); and in the dungeons themselves, the inter-party abilities like heals would also get the same treatment (so a level 100 can heal a level 110 and heal them as if it was being tossed out by an appropriately leveled player). The only part where it fell short was accounting for ilvl, but that doesn't mean sqe couldn't try to improve it for that.

Either way though, whether they do something like this or something that is just their own; it needs to be improved to be better than it is. The higher the level cap go, the more the problems you encounter by doing lower level dungeons will be exasperated because all but a small handful of dungeons you can do are made for the max level players.

[Noitems]

To be fair, that was before the tank changes in 5.0. I haven't seen anyone saying that since.

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

[frostmagemari]

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

I think the worst thing that can happen in this discussion is assume that changes like this would happen in a vacuum and its almost dishonest to argue from a point where further changes wouldn't happen in tandem with the requested change.

[Barraind]

How will the level appropriate tank keep aggro on a lvl 80 BLM with all of their skills!

Because 14 scales everything by potency, which is based on synced ilvl and synced clvl.

Flare is only slightly more potency than the first tank AE on secondary targets (6 or 26 based on class), and thats before tank stance threat mods.


The levels that would be the hardest are those from 35-48, where your Brand New stuff is out-of-date and you arent going to have full sets of dungeon gear to replace them.

3) Doesn't leave people OP beyond belief.

That ship sailed years ago in low level instances.

You can walk into the first 5 or 6 dungeons in Brand New gear, ring, preorder earring, and friendship circlet over a helm with stats and you're still doing significantly more damage and better healing than anything was tuned for.


Syncing this way would affect the end instances of ARR and the leveling dungeons in HW far more than anything else.

[PyurBlue]

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

Try it. Go into a low level dungeon unsyced as a high level BLM with only a level 1 or so weapon. Then compare that to a synced PLD. The BLM is very easily going to lose once its stat drop enough.

[MariaArvana]

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

New tank stance is a 10x enmity modifier, making total eclipse a 1200 potency per GCD enmity battery. (Though factoring in tank damage penalties, its closer to 1000).

Unless its a barely geared tank, enmity is pretty much a non-issue. The bigger issue is as described on the 1st page:

Creating a system that:

1) Creates parity between low level and high level players for literally every single instance of the game, balancing around literally every single trait and skill you earn up along the way against every other potential instance you can get into.
2) Doesn't leave everyone weaker if they can't perfectly execute their rotation (normalizing potencies by targeting max level play)
3) Doesn't leave people OP beyond belief. (normalizing potencies by targeting mid level play, creating a huge power vacuum between players who don't know their rotations vs ones who do and leaving the good players severely overpowered in old instances)
4) can balance skills to still be used, but not rendered utterly useless. (Hallowed ground being OP to literally anything a low level GLD can do, Benediction/Tetra/Regens/Assylum annihilating anything a CNJ can do, etc.)

While not impossible, it's going to be far too much effort for too little gain in the dev's eyes. Not to mention they'd then have to literally revamp the entire system any time substantial changes to jobs happen mid-expansion, or completely re-write and re-do the system when the new expansion comes out due to it completely changing roations, etc.

From the times I've QA'd modular systems in other games and seeing the dead, lifeless eyes and frustrated groans of the devs there, I can pretty much guarantee the devs will stick with the syncing system they have to save themselves from a colossal nightmare inducing balancing headache.

[PyurBlue]

While not impossible, it's going to be far too much effort for too little gain in the dev's eyes. Not to mention they'd then have to literally revamp the entire system any time substantial changes to jobs happen mid-expansion, or completely re-write and re-do the system when the new expansion comes out due to it completely changing roations, etc.

But the old content doesn't need rebalancing despite the issues that you mention already existing. PLD for example went from not having AoE to getting it by the first dungeon. It hasn't really cause any balancing upsets. You're applying really right standards to balancing when the game doesn't.

From the times I've QA'd modular systems in other games and seeing the dead, lifeless eyes and frustrated groans of the devs there, I can pretty much guarantee the devs will stick with the syncing system they have to save themselves from a colossal nightmare inducing balancing headache.

No one is really in a position to say how hard it would be to add potency scaling to the game, coding wise, except SE. It's not really fruitful to bring up, at least in my opinion. Conceptually though, there isn't actually much to it. FF14 has a level curve already. What we're missing is something to scale down high level players to fit the curve. The game doesn't change drastically from level 1 to 80. Fighting mobs at either end is pretty much the same except at high level mobs have scaled HP.

[Verlyn]

The easiest point to make is that low level dungeons were never meant to be remotely difficult in the first place. Even in ARR, the penalty for not doing Orcatooth and Gyge's and Firemane's mechanics is inconveninece. You could heal through the adds if they spawn, or the party damage, and you have an absolute eternity before they do. Aside from possibly healers, I don't see a full skillset with reduced potency altering the already compromised "experience" of something like Sastasha or Halatali.

Balance starts to become more of a concern once you're approaching 45-50 and frankly there is no saving those dungeons. People walk through Praetorium and Wanderer's Palace and the like barely having to heal. Past 50, everything becomes much closer together so the extra skills can coexist more easily.

[Hasrat]

Balance starts to become more of a concern once you're approaching 45-50 and frankly there is no saving those dungeons. People walk through Praetorium and Wanderer's Palace and the like barely having to heal. Past 50, everything becomes much closer together so the extra skills can coexist more easily.

In fairness, those two instances (and others right around them) are sorta poor examples due to the wide ilvl range. Minimum for Prae is i42. Wanderer's is i45. Prae doesn't have a max sync, so most are running it synced to a hypothetical i130 or so (I assume), and through job quests players should be able to far surpass i42 with little effort or deviation. Wanderer's is synced to max i110, so, that's still a huge range, between pre-50 stats and what you can achieve with just a handful of Poetics.