Why can't sync just affect gear and stats...?

[hobostew]

I would rather them not waste time working/balancing old content and instead focus on more current stuff.

[Duskane]

just unsync 4head

[Seraphor]

This is 100% my take on it. Things melt anyway, we do wall to wall pulls already. I'd like to press more than 2 buttons please. Doing a dungeon and seeing 75% of my skills greyed out? No thanks.

I haven't done a leveling roulette in months because of it, and I normally tank / heal. So if you want faster queues, one of my conditions is keeping my skills while synced.

Side note: I keep seeing so many people talk about "Balance" in low level dungeons like that actually matters. Because finishing a dungeon in 10 minutes vs 15 apparently is terrible for some people /s. If anything, let the newbies see what real power looks like. It might motivate them to level certain jobs they might not have.

No one is going to be kicked because they didn't have the skills, and if they did, shame one the people who did that.
Hell, you might do it for only tanks and healers, it would definitely get more to play. But then I imagine the DPS would change their tune REAL quick if that were the case.

You're not talking 10 minutes vs 15 minutes when taking into account the 300% damage increase from 15 to 80.
You're talking 15 minutes vs 3 minutes.

You know how everyone hates Praetorium because of how all enemies go down in seconds and it's just all cutscenes? And how that's an awful experience for newbies, and basically turns the entire duty into a movie for them as they barely have a chance to hit anything before the next cutscene triggers?
Now imagine that format was applied to the entire rest of the game.
Not only is that boring, but it means players won't learn about mechanics until much later in the game, probably not until the 50-60 range, because they simply won't see any of them before then.

No one's going to be kicked? Well when you get used to clearing dungeons in 3 minutes and you end up with 3 newbies, you know its now going to take you 10 minutes instead of 3... Are you really going to stick around for that? It'd be quicker to disconnect and reload in for another attempt with a full party of level 80 players.

And if Sastasha takes 3 minutes while Dohn Mheg takes 20 minutes, why would you want to risk getting Dohn Mheg? Unequip all your gear for Levelling Roulette, and now everyone gets Sastasha! Yay!
It'll suck for anyone queuing up for level 50+ dungeons though, those queues will never fill.

Not to mention the fact that EXP rewards are tailored to the duration of the duty. If dungeons universally took only 25% of their current duration, you'd see EXP rewards, including the daily roulette bonuses, decreased by a similar margin. Now you definitely don't want to risk getting that 20 minute level 80-something dungeon if you're only getting 'paid' for 3 minutes of it.

[AceofRains]

Honestly they could have just implemented level slots for magic the same way they did in FFXI. For a game like XIV that has had level sync from the start of 2.0 you would think that would make sense.

[MariaArvana]

Side note: I keep seeing so many people talk about "Balance" in low level dungeons like that actually matters. Because finishing a dungeon in 10 minutes vs 15 apparently is terrible for some people /s. If anything, let the newbies see what real power looks like. It might motivate them to level certain jobs they might not have.

You say that, but the devs themselves have said they want to keep the level sync system somewhat balanced, so it matters to them to create an experience where mobs aren't getting nuked in 2-3 GCDs. Balancing itself may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but balance designed to create a certain expected game experience is the absolute basis of professional game design, and FFXIV's operandi is to standardize toolkits across all players of the same job in their dungeons so that player skill is the only factor.

The level sync system isn't ever changing, no matter how much people complain; and that's simple reality people have to acknowledge. You can already cap out your tomes through expert and spamming the latest dungeons; you can already level to max by queueing the on-level dungeon. No one has to touch level sync unless they want to on those fronts. There's infinitely more people still queueing those roulettes that your absence isn't missed.

[Deceptus]

You're not talking 10 minutes vs 15 minutes when taking into account the 300% damage increase from 15 to 80.
You're talking 15 minutes vs 3 minutes.

You know how everyone hates Praetorium because of how all enemies go down in seconds and it's just all cutscenes? And how that's an awful experience for newbies, and basically turns the entire duty into a movie for them as they barely have a chance to hit anything before the next cutscene triggers?
Now imagine that format was applied to the entire rest of the game.
Not only is that boring, but it means players won't learn about mechanics until much later in the game, probably not until the 50-60 range, because they simply won't see any of them before then.

No one's going to be kicked? Well when you get used to clearing dungeons in 3 minutes and you end up with 3 newbies, you know its now going to take you 10 minutes instead of 3... Are you really going to stick around for that? It'd be quicker to disconnect and reload in for another attempt with a full party of level 80 players.

And if Sastasha takes 3 minutes while Dohn Mheg takes 20 minutes, why would you want to risk getting Dohn Mheg? Unequip all your gear for Levelling Roulette, and now everyone gets Sastasha! Yay!
It'll suck for anyone queuing up for level 50+ dungeons though, those queues will never fill.

Not to mention the fact that EXP rewards are tailored to the duration of the duty. If dungeons universally took only 25% of their current duration, you'd see EXP rewards, including the daily roulette bonuses, decreased by a similar margin. Now you definitely don't want to risk getting that 20 minute level 80-something dungeon if you're only getting 'paid' for 3 minutes of it.

Holy hyperbole Batman! There's no way you're finishing any instance in 3 minutes.

The level sync system isn't ever changing, no matter how much people complain; and that's simple reality people have to acknowledge. You can already cap out your tomes through expert and spamming the latest dungeons; you can already level to max by queueing the on-level dungeon. No one has to touch level sync unless they want to on those fronts. There's infinitely more people still queueing those roulettes that your absence isn't missed.

Cool. Enjoy the queues on all those jobs you still need to level.

[Ammokkx]

Cool. Enjoy the queues on all those jobs you still need to level.

You only need to level 1 job. Anything else is player preference.

[Packetdancer]

Even with our current reduced abilities, some enemies already die too fast in certain old contents, and I don't see the devs making old fights harder to justify the use of a full max level rotation, so I think this would not be a worthwhile endeavor for the devs.

As much as level sync annoys me by messing with my muscle memory—my FC has a running joke about "Square-Enix presents... Oh, I Can't Do That Here: A Leveling Roulette Story"—I think it's better than the other options. The fact that we can level sync means we can go back and do early content with our friends without completely destroying any challenge they might experience. (And if they do want to do the content without challenge, that's what doing stuff unsynched is for.)

HOWEVER.

I really, really kind of wish they would periodically go back and re-tune the early "high-end" content for changed job kits, if nothing else. I know a lot of people who get to the end of ARR and get to Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium and... they've had all this buildup for fights where people just steamroller the enemies. Same thing is true with the Crystal Tower alliance raids.

It doesn't have to be punishingly hard, obviously, but I know a lot of people who have been disappointed by the fact that things have all this buildup like it will be a significant fight... and then opponents just get vaporized by people because the fights were balanced for kits that haven't existed for some time (and also because gear ilevel sync in this game is, uh... we'll go with "kind of unbalanced" and leave it at that).

Imagine Crystal Tower if WHM had Assize, and BLM had Xenoglossy, and so on. You'd get into World of Darkness and mister angry eyeball Angra Mainyu himself would have a lifespan of like 20 seconds. (Okay, no, it wouldn't be actually that short, but... hyperbole for dramatic effect here.)

And while that would probably be satisfying in a somewhat vindictive manner to anyone who's ever wiped to that fight (tanks, please don't spin the eyeball like a centrifuge; when people say to "use your rotation", that's not the kind of rotation they mean), that would probably also make the fight even more of a disappointment to actual first-timers.

(Meanwhile... "Cape Westwind (Unreal)", anyone?)

[Packetdancer]

It'll suck for anyone queuing up for level 50+ dungeons though, those queues will never fill.

So, my alt has never unlocked Crystal Tower, because she's not yet reached patch 5.3 and been forced to; she's about halfway through ShB, so can only get Mhach or Ivalice raids right now. If I queue solo for Alliance roulette on that character, I will usually wait over an hour before roulette pops. Sometimes upwards of two hours. (Queuing with others does reduce the time, though it's still pretty bad.)

Some of that is because there are people who do Crystal Tower (because it's now required to move on into Heavensward, and was required to move into 5.3) who have never bothered with other alliance raids. Some of that is because the game has had an influx of newcomers in the past months due to Pandemic Fire Hellscape World 2020 (seriously, screw this year) and because the free trial now extends through Heavensward, and so the playerbase is definitely weighted towards content below level 60 (and again, anyone wanting to progress into Heavensward now has to do the Crystal Tower raids).

But it's still painful. And that's queuing with six potential non-Crystal-Tower raids I can run. If I were queuing for, say, Orbonne directly, I hate to imagine how long the queue would be.

And when I try to mentally apply that same experience to people queuing to do a specific leveling dungeon they actually need for MSQ progression, I just have to wince.

[KadaRemnant]

It doesn't bother me at all and would like it stays the way it is. At least this way, the game can stay balanced and everyone can participate.
That's one of the main reason i love ffxiv because in a party, everyone can participate and not one killing solo.
You can use skills that are sync with the level content.

Let's not make ffxiv unbalanced please.
Thank you.