A potential rework to the level-sync system.

[Deceptus]

Weapon damage is irrelevant. Potency is the only value you need to look at to see how much damage two characters would deal when comparing rotations.

Let's take a look at WAR. We have a level 30 WAR & a level 80 WAR. We'll both give them all level 1 gear & level 1 weapon so when inside, their stats are almost identical and weapon damage between them is the same, so the only thing that matters is potency and nothing else.

Billy the level 30 WAR rushes in, pops berserk, does 5x overpower, plus 4x normal Overpower outside of berserk for good measure. Just for simplification, we'll make crits do 1.5x damage for damage.
Billy does (130 * 1.5(crit) * 1.2(DH)) = 234 potency for each of his initial 5 overpowers in Berserk, for a total of 1170 potency. his extra 4 overpowers bump it up to 1690 potency. Not bad Billy.

Chad the level 80 WAR rolls in and has 100 beast Gauge, 2x Infuriates and IR ready. He rolls in and pops IR, followed by 5x Decimate. He does (250 * 1.5 * 1.2) = 450 potency per hit. With his 5 decimates, he does 2250 damage. Already nearly 1.5 times as much damage as Billy did. But we're not even done yet.

During that IR, Chad got to use a free upheaval (450 potency) & Onslaught (100), meaning Chad has now done 2800 potency total, now closing in on nearly 2x as much as Billy. Chad does 2x more Decimate to drain his 100 beast gauge, adding another 500 potency, now up to 3300 potency. Chad now finally whips out his 2x Infuriates, doing 2x Chaotic cyclones. (400 * 1.5 * 1.2) = 720 potency, or 1440 potency total. Meaning Chad has now done 4740 potency, or nearly 3x as much damage as Billy.

Weapon damage literally matters to everything.

I did a test yesterday:

I unequipped everything on my PLD, equipped a lvl 1 sword (6 weapon damage) and shield and went into Sastasha.

I was doing 45 damage every aoe to mobs. They were going down SLOW.

Now, this was taking into account the LOTS of strength I innately gained by leveling to 80. I think I had 325 or so.

So I was lvl 80, had a LOT more STR than I would have when synched and STILL only did 45 damage to mobs. At LVL 80

POTENCY MATTERS, BUT WEAPON DAMAGE DICTATES LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Again. I think people are vastly underthinking just how much weapon damage actually effects damage numbers in ilvl synced content.

You know what would put this debate to rest?

A freaking Test Server. A place where the FFXIV developers could put out wild ideas just like this and see the ramifications.

[Raelsar]

To get to the point, I think the level-sync system should be changed so that when endgame players get placed in older, lower-level content, especially in roulettes, their character levels and item levels still get synced to match the content... but at the same time they still get to use ALL of their unlocked skills, and I mean ALL OF THEM, including their Lv. 80 skills.

While this is tempting, I think it would only create more problems.

The current level sync system really is the most fair and balanced approach you can take, as it means you aren't able to overpower content and involves no complicated ability balancing to compensate for different levels between other players and relative to the content you're doing.

That being said, the lack of abilities at lower levels is still something of an issue, and for more reasons beyond just how the level sync works. Low level gameplay simply isn't interesting because it's often over-simplified and it's back-ended with when you get various abilities. Just looking at how many jobs get fleshed out and far more entertaining to play in the level 50-60 range (gaining an ability every 2 levels) compared to before is staggering.

---

So I'd say the real solution is a re-jigging of when various abilities are learned, mostly involving pushing them to lower levels (the 1-30 class quests, having you learn something for completing each one would help). Changing a few abilities to be "upgrades" where it makes sense, like Inner Beast becoming Fell Cleave for WAR, allows for them to have more abilities at lower levels without increasing the total ability count too much.

The catch is making sure players don't become too powerful when doing lower level content, having too many abilities could result in them being too easy or at least easily steamrolled (more than they already are). Luckily, combining this with the stat squish which is already planned for Endwalker is the perfect opportunity to do this and have it fit in seamlessly.

---

There's still a problem being presented here, and that's the lack of abilities at lower levels... but the solution of giving players access to ALL of their skills while sync'd down results in too many other issues for it to be viable.

So we need a different, and more equitable approach; one which doesn't place lower level players at a disadvantage, nor would completely negate the intended difficulty of lower level content.

[Mikey_R]

Weapon damage literally matters to everything.

I did a test yesterday:

I unequipped everything on my PLD, equipped a lvl 1 sword (6 weapon damage) and shield and went into Sastasha.

I was doing 45 damage every aoe to mobs. They were going down SLOW.

Now, this was taking into account the LOTS of strength I innately gained by leveling to 80. I think I had 325 or so.

So I was lvl 80, had a LOT more STR than I would have when synched and STILL only did 45 damage to mobs. At LVL 80

POTENCY MATTERS, BUT WEAPON DAMAGE DICTATES LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Again. I think people are vastly underthinking just how much weapon damage actually effects damage numbers in ilvl synced content.

You know what would put this debate to rest?

A freaking Test Server. A place where the FFXIV developers could put out wild ideas just like this and see the ramifications.

Yes, weapon damage matters when calculating damage, noone says otherwise, however, when comparing damage across the same job, the potency is all that matters as that is how strong your attacks are irregardless of any other stats.

A 200 potency attack is twice as strong as a 100 potency attack, a 700 potency attack is 7 times stronger than a 100 potency attack, a 500 potency attack is twice as strong as a 250 potency attack etc.

Since the point of the post was to compare damage between a level 30 kit and a level 80 kit (in this case, ignoring all stats), the best way to do that is to compare the potencies. This gives an easy way to compare damage potential whilst ignoring all stats.

[Penthea]

I dont understand why people think a new player is getting overwhelmed about a simple 1-2 rotation in a low level dungeon. Like the gcd is super long for most players and combat isnt as engaging early on. I think the low level dungeons give wrong impression about whats to come late game. Low level dungeons are rather a scare off than a lure in.

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but as far as I'm aware most people are not saying players are getting overwhelmed by having two buttons. They're saying that there will be severe balance issues if players could use their full kit in all content regardless of what lvl it is. Completely different issue.

I personally don't think players can get overwhelmed by two buttons, even if they're brand new to mmos, and I would like for them to have more buttons...however...giving lower lvl player more buttons can either mean too much button bloat later on if the progression is consistent in how many skills you get, or to off-set the increased skills at lower lvl there will come a point in which players will get little to no skills to avoid button bloat later. So really the best way to balance is to give the lowest lvls the least amount of skills gained to make later progression feel more consistent without ending with a button bloat issue.

Low lvl class players are much less likely to get irritated by a small skillset when they're very low lvl because it makes logical sense for things to be this way given your character is new to the class. This is less irritating than finding yourself in a lvl bracket in which you get little to no skills to make up for getting more at a lower lvl. Getting a few new things very often feels better than getting a lot to begin with and then nothing for quite some time.

[lezard21]

Gonna chip in my 2 cents.

Stats being scaled down makes sense in a "reality ensues" kinda way. Spoilers aside, you are still technically a human (or cat/bunny person whatever). Getting run through with a sword or stepped by a giant should have the same impact on your overall health wether you are level 1 or 80. Stat syncing is a good way to artificially simulate that.

Skills becoming unavailable however should be removed. You get your skills, spells and abilities through training, you are supposed to be an experience adventurer, yet step into Sastasha and you don't even know which side to hold your Axe from anymore. Does the echo give the WoL aethzheimer?

So TL;DR keep the stat sync, scale down skill potency when syncing down, and begone with skill being unavailable.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

snip.

Of course you do pitiful damage, because you're a level 80 that unequipped all your gear, your pitifully small stats are getting annihilated by the AP function lvl scaling variable. That 323 STR you had is only 1/3rd of its actual strength post AP calculations. But:

a) you aren't wielding a level 1 weapon in Sastasha in actual content.
b) your weapon damage is already synced to what's acceptable for the dungeon anyway, so it's not like you're getting any advantage compared to anyone else. (hence my point on why its irrelevant; it affects all your skills the same way0 so its a static variable in any damage calculation between rotations & skills, WD won't suddenly make a 400 potency attack do less than double that of a 200 potency one.)

But that's not even the point. Here's the damage formula for FFXIV:

Direct Damage (D)
D1 = ⌊ Potency × f(ATK) × f(DET) ⌋ /100 ⌋ /1000 ⌋

D2 = ⌊ D1 × f(TNC) ⌋ /1000 ⌋ × f(WD) ⌋ /100 ⌋ × Trait ⌋ /100 ⌋

D3 = ⌊ D2 × CRIT? ⌋ /1000 ⌋ × DH? ⌋ /100 ⌋

D = ⌊ D3 × rand[95,105] ⌋ /100 ⌋ × buff_1 ⌋ × buff_2 ⌋

I could go into ultra depth and breakdown every single step and variable, but it's irrelevant when there's only one I need to talk about. You see that Potency variable on the first line?

It controls the base damage that then gets multiplied all the way through. You could solve every other variable in the entire equation but change potency from 200 to 400, and the final result would be double damage. A better way to look at potency is to assume 100 potency is base damage. Then, take any abilitiy's potency and / 100, and that's literally how many more time damage you'll do. Like, this isn't even a debate.

To even show you my point, I went into Sastasha, lvl 80 WAR, lvl 1 axe, no gear, same setup as your level 80 PLD, lvl 1 sword.

That 120 Total eclipse potency you did equaling 45 damage? My WAR's decimate did 106 damage in the exact same scenario (about 2.1 times as much damage...curious; 250 potency is also about 2.1 times as much as 120 potency...hmmm). His chaotic Cyclone will do 300 damage (Chaotic cyclone post DH-CRT is 720 potency; 6x as much potency, and also close to 6x as much damage...it's almost like there's an extremely obvious pattern going on here). My heavy swing did 77 damage in Berserk. My inner Chaos did 637 damage. You can set WD to whatever the heck you want, potency is the ultimate variable in the damage calculation. A 400 potency attack will deal 2x as much damage as a 200 potency attack, it's pure, cold, uncaring numbers.

Dungeons are designed for certain WD ranges, hence why they nerf your weapon down to the WD acceptable for that dungeon. They are NOT designed for characters that can deal literally 3-10x as much potency in the same number of GCDs. Chad will still be utterly crushing Billy into the ground, it won't even be a remotely close contest. While Billy will be doing 77 damage Heavy Swings in berserk, Chad will be doing 640 damage Inner Chaos's, and his IR will be filled with 425 damage FC's. When most enemies in sastasha have about 800-1000 HP....yeah. Chad could 2-hit kill a Sastash enemy synced while normally it takes about 2-4 GCDs of the entire party's damage combined. Once again, I need to re-iterate this is a WAR, not only a tank that does less damage than an actual dps, but is a slow, GCD bound one. NIN could literally delete an entire pack of enemies in 1-2 GCDs + OGCDs with the potency I was calculating on it before I stopped because of how hilarious it was getting.

You let level 80's use their full kits and they'll be unleashing infinitely more times as much potency as a level 30 can do, completely shattering any hope Billy has at ever obtaining parity with Chad, and completely destroying the purpose of the dev's intention with the level sync.

There is no system you could ever design that would allow access to a level 80's toolkit and allow them to maintain parity without making every single skill not found at that level non-existent (1 potency, 1HP shield, etc). And that's why you better get comfy, it's not changing. Period. They'll adjust the rewards on roulettes before they devote even a nanosecond of brain power to ever change their syncing system.

Credit to the Allagan studies and their lovely resource for the damage calculation formula: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...4lP1ZE08/edit#

[Frizze]

Does the echo give the WoL aethzheimer?

Ok, so in the story of this game you went into Sastasha once at around level 15(and you might have gone back at level 50 for the remix). Your character didnt make a return trip, let alone potentially dozens of them via leveling roulette. You didnt have a reason to, the pirates were found out and driven away. The echo allows you to see memories and essentially relive them. So thats what all those duty roulettes are from a story perspective - youre re-living the original run you made at level 16. From a gameplay perspective, as has been covered, leveling roulette is a way to keep lower level content active so that new players can get their clears and continue the story. Their perspective is the one that matters, and you being exponentially stronger then them is seen as a bad thing. So you go at the same level they do - this will not change. The devs have tools and reports that monitor how quickly roulettes/dungeons spawn and how populated the que's are at all times of day on all servers. If you think the rewards arent enough to deal with being synced down, stop running these duties. If enough people do that, the devs will boost the rewards until the ratios are back where they want them to be. The MSQ roulette has been boosted like this several times to keep castrum and prae from being the bottlenecks that end new players, and if leveling(or trials, or anything else) starts to become a problem they will do it again.

[Deceptus]

That 120 Total eclipse potency you did equaling 45 damage? My WAR's decimate did 106 damage in the exact same scenario (about 2.1 times as much damage...curious; 250 potency is also about 2.1 times as much as 120 potency...hmmm). His chaotic Cyclone will do 300 damage (Chaotic cyclone post DH-CRT is 720 potency; 6x as much potency, and also close to 6x as much damage...it's almost like there's an extremely obvious pattern going on here). My heavy swing did 77 damage in Berserk. My inner Chaos did 637 damage. You can set WD to whatever the heck you want, potency is the ultimate variable in the damage calculation. A 400 potency attack will deal 2x as much damage as a 200 potency attack, it's pure, cold, uncaring numbers.[/url]

I understand how potencies work, but those potencies are based on weapon damage and your main stat modifier. Those higher damage numbers you were bringing up? Wouldn't happen in synced content if we kept our skills. Because you were running on 323 strength and not the 75 strength you would be synced down.

You literally had 4.3 times the strength you would have normally. That's an extra variable in the math you're not taking into consideration, or are just ignoring to try to prove your point.

That matters. I'm not saying you'd be doing 4 times less damage to do the strength variable, but you'd be doing orders of magnitude less damage with 4 times less main stat.

I'd love to be able to do an undersized party with min ilvl checked just to do a realistic experiment but we can't for some reason. It syncs abilities down.

You let level 80's use their full kits and they'll be unleashing infinitely more times as much potency as a level 30 can do, completely shattering any hope Billy has at ever obtaining parity with Chad, and completely destroying the purpose of the dev's intention with the level sync.

(Emphasis mine) No need for hyperbole to try to make your point because it's just factually incorrect.

There is no system you could ever design that would allow access to a level 80's toolkit and allow them to maintain parity without making every single skill not found at that level non-existent (1 potency, 1HP shield, etc). And that's why you better get comfy, it's not changing. Period. They'll adjust the rewards on roulettes before they devote even a nanosecond of brain power to ever change their syncing system.

Again, no need for hyperbole. There are ways to make it work, you just need to think outside of the box a bit. For example?

If a group joins the roulette, and the dungeon is lower than all the members? Allow them to keep their old skills. A bunch of level 60s get stuck in Sastasha with no newbie bonus? Literally zero people are harmed letting them keep their skills.

[Mikey_R]

I understand how potencies work, but those potencies are based on weapon damage and your main stat modifier. Those higher damage numbers you were bringing up? Wouldn't happen in synced content if we kept our skills. Because you were running on 323 strength and not the 67 strength you would be synced down.

No. The potency, or power if you prefer, of an ability is static. Strength, Weapon Damage etc. only affect how much damage the ability does.

So the numbers Daeriion_Aeradiir posted are a direct reflection of how much damage you will do in that scenario.

As a comparison, if you go into Sastasha as a fully geared level synced PLD, your total eclipse does about 25 damage. From there you can extrapolate the damage from everything else.

Fast Blade = ~41
Riot Blade = ~62
Royal Authority = ~114
Goring Blade = ~205
Holy Sprit =~109 (Includes REQ buff)
Confiteor =~250 (Includes REQ buff)

From there, you can work out average damage per GCD for a rotation.

Level 15 ~52 damage per GCD
level 80 abilities ~105 damage per GCD

That is already double damage and that is not taking into account oGCDs and that also assumes the enemy can survive for the full minute of a level 80 PLD rotation.

So, at a minimum here, runs will go twice as fast.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I understand how potencies work, but those potencies are based on weapon damage and your main stat modifier. Those higher damage numbers you were bringing up? Wouldn't happen in synced content if we kept our skills. Because you were running on 323 strength and not the 75 strength you would be synced down.

You literally had 4.3 times the strength you would have normally. That's an extra variable in the math you're not taking into consideration, or are just ignoring to try to prove your point.

Not ignoring it, I already stated Your STR is being annihilated by the AP scaling formula, it looks like a big number compared to a level 15's 70~, but that 343~ STR really isn't that impressive as you think for a level 80. In the actual attack power formula, you effectively only have 100:

f(ATK), (level 80, tank): f(ATK) = ⌊ 115 × ( AP - 340 ) / 340 ⌋ + 100
I have 343 STR (my xaela) at level 80 with no gear & level 1 sword equipped.

(115 * (343-340) / 340)) + 100 = (115*(3) / 340) + 100 = (345/340) + 100 = 101

Contrast a level 15:

f(ATK) formula (1-50): f(ATK) = ⌊ 75 × ( AP - Level Lv, MAIN ) / Level Lv, MAIN ⌋ + 100
min ilvl synced gear, my PLD has 70 STR. Lv.Main for a 15 is 46.

Plugging in numbers: (75*(70 - 46) / 46) + 100 = 139.

That level 15 is getting more from his 70 STR in the damage equation than a level 80 is from that 343 STR due to scaling values and 'base' values which get subtracted during calculations (This is the same reason why you can have 380 DH, but have 0% chance to DH, because the 'base' is 380 which is then taken away during DH % calculations, or how you have 340 DET with no gear on, but it gives you literally zero bonuses). The only reason a level 80 with a level 1 weapon deals more than a level 15 is due to the fact the level 80's WD is worth more per point due to an increased lvlMain attribute and unfortunately there's no way to equalize that while keeping the 80's 343 STR the same which I'd love to test (which I'll agree with you on as far as a test server.) Theoretically if we could mix and match formulas to use the level 15's WD formula but the 80's AP formula, some quick napkin math would show that 343 STR would be about ~28% weaker than the level 15's 70 STR. (101/139) * 100 = 72%

TL : DR, Bigger number =/= always better. 340 CRT on a level 80 is weaker than 100 CRT on a level 15, as an example. The only thing that matters is the relativity between the numbers and scaling values for functions.

That being said, Mikey pretty much covered what else I wanted to say. potency is static. 400 is x2 stronger than 200, it's simple math, and all the formula show it. You could have 1,000,000,000 weapon damage or 1, that 1000 potency attack is going to do 5x as much as that 200 potency one with the same WD.

And when WAR can fling out 1600 potency attacks (Inner Chaos post CRT-DH), Chad will still be doing 3 rotation's worth of Billy's damage in a single GCD (Main + HS is 500 potency, 1600 potency / 500 = 3). You can even go into Synced content and verify it for yourself. I went into Sastasha and fast Blade & Riot blade were doing right around the damages Mikey listed (shocker!). For any given 45~ damage HS ( I checked with a synced WAR), Inner Chaos will be doing ~370 damage (400~ with SE). Again, with enemies that have around 800-1000 health. And that's just the tank alone. Yeah....you can see why the Devs will never, ever listen to such a request.

And you're the one complaining about Standard step doing so much when it only does about 250 damage to its first target in Sastasha when a single lvl 80 skill already does 1.5x as much damage as it? Mutiple level 80 jobs would be able to crush a lvl 15 DNC's output into the dirt if they were given their 80 toolkits. The fix isn't to slippery slope unleash the floodgates and let every job do OP damage, its to nerf skills like standard step at low levels.

If a group joins the roulette, and the dungeon is lower than all the members? Allow them to keep their old skills. A bunch of level 60s get stuck in Sastasha with no newbie bonus? Literally zero people are harmed letting them keep their skills.

Except now you:
1) inadvertly promote people kicking the one guy that's not synced to fish for a guy that is synced so that way everyone can keep their skills, on top of speeding up the run nearly 2-3x over. *clap*
2) promotes ilvl cheesing roulettes since the likelihood of getting a lower level dungeon increases your odds everyone is synced and thus, super fast runs.
3) Addendum to #2, inadvertly promotes making full parties and ilvl cheesing leveling roulette so that way you can blow through an ARR dungeon that was never designed with such hyper-inflated potency rotations in mind in 5 minutes that they can practically afk through than spend 15-25 on a more relevant one. Which means less randos queueing for leveling roulette on their own when they otherwise might have, which could actually hurt queues, much to your assumption otherwise.

Look no further than CT as a prime example of how people will by far and large choose the most efficient method if it is that much better than the alternative, or even Castrum <-> Praetorium.

Rule 1 of software design: You give people an inch, they'll take a mile, time tested unto eternity. You can continue to list ideas, and I'll take the 10s and use my own experience of software development to easily poke flaws in them that the devs would have thought about in 2011-2012 when they were first designing the sync system.

Unfortunately, this topic will continue to be brought up again and again, the exact same points will be spouted, the math will be put out that utterly curbstomps why they'd never implement such a thing, and it'll be a cyclical process. Which is a shame since there's far more important topics to discuss that actually have a chance at being changed/fixed.