Should Level Sync better not remove skills?

[Sesera]

We know this in the same way that we know that complainers will come with a bunch of 'brilliant' schemes with little or no thought to the amount of work necessary to accomplish balance.

Almost as though they work for Activision/Blizzard or Bioware.

Sorry they have to work to earn our money.

[Supersnow845]

We know this in the same way that we know that complainers will come with a bunch of 'brilliant' schemes with little or no thought to the amount of work necessary to accomplish balance.

Almost as though they work for Activision/Blizzard or Bioware.

Square must struggle so hard to balance the classes when they are all just copies of each other.

They make their jobs easier by making our experience worse and yet still somehow we are expected to feel sorry for how hard they have it

[DPZ2]

Square must struggle so hard to balance the classes when they are all just copies of each other.

SE doesn't balance any of the classes in leveling instances. What they'd have to do is ensure your level 90 Scholar can do no more healing/damage/mitigation with your level 90 action bar than a Scholar at level 32, 65 or 73. And do that same thing for every single job for every dungeon instance under 90.

As Packetdancer points out in their post.

snip

[Hasrat]

Do you have even the slightest idea the amount of work that would go into scaling a level 90 player to be equivalent to an at-level player throughout the entire game? We're not talking just a flat percentage reduction by level or anything. At every level the at-level player would gain a new skill or trait, you would need to recalculate the scaling equation entirely.

And that's just for the skills that function on equations to begin with. How in the world are you going to scale an invulnerability skill to be equivalent to an at-level player that does not have access to any such defense? How do you expect a full-heal skill to be scaled down?

What about temporary buffs? Is your BLM damage output, already scaled down, completely trashed because you're not using Sharpcast or Ley Lines on cooldown? Do you adjust to have the entire party take more damage because BRD/DNC should be using their defensive buffs?

And then there's skills with charges. Where do you even begin to balance a MCH with an additional use of Reassemble?

Job gauge resources. You're going to scale back a GNB with three powder charges to be equal to a beginner with only two?



In summation, no. The system in place now does a far better job of maintaining parity while requiring minimal developer resources. It might not be perfect. But the alternative is a nightmare.

[Jeeqbit]

Do you have even the slightest idea the amount of work that would go into scaling a level 90 player to be equivalent to an at-level player throughout the entire game? We're not talking just a flat percentage reduction by level or anything. At every level the at-level player would gain a new skill or trait, you would need to recalculate the scaling equation entirely.

This is a good point. You don't just have to scale the level and item level like happens now, but the potency of the higher level actions.

In Sastasha, a Paladin can do 200 then 300 with their combo attacks, so obviously it would not work for Requiescat to do 400 damage and allow Holy Spirit to do 540 followed by Confiteor which does 900. It could be designed to reduce the potency based on the level difference. The difference between Confiteor and Sastasha is 65 levels, so if we reduce the potency by 65%, we get 315 which would be better. But that assumes all of the potency information is easy for a sync system to access and not buried in the complex code of individual abilities.

[Curemefi]

Do you have even the slightest idea the amount of work that would go into scaling a level 90 player to be equivalent to an at-level player throughout the entire game? We're not talking just a flat percentage reduction by level or anything. At every level the at-level player would gain a new skill or trait, you would need to recalculate the scaling equation entirely.

And that's just for the skills that function on equations to begin with. How in the world are you going to scale an invulnerability skill to be equivalent to an at-level player that does not have access to any such defense? How do you expect a full-heal skill to be scaled down?

What about temporary buffs? Is your BLM damage output, already scaled down, completely trashed because you're not using Sharpcast or Ley Lines on cooldown? Do you adjust to have the entire party take more damage because BRD/DNC should be using their defensive buffs?

And then there's skills with charges. Where do you even begin to balance a MCH with an additional use of Reassemble?

Job gauge resources. You're going to scale back a GNB with three powder charges to be equal to a beginner with only two?



In summation, no. The system in place now does a far better job of maintaining parity while requiring minimal developer resources. It might not be perfect. But the alternative is a nightmare.

You are overthinking. WoW has done many "balancing" and it turned sour for the game. I don't want FFXIV to go that path. Balancing is good for current raids and high-end contents. But not the less important ones such as daily, old contents, FATEs, and stuffs.

[Deceptus]

I heard an interesting quote about "progress" the other day.

When in doubt just do it. People will either get used to it or people will get over it.

[kevin_satron]

no, don't. with current skill/spell/kits/utility, old duties will be a joke for everyone.

if they wanna do that, they have to check EVERY SINGLE SKILL/SPELL and EVERY SINGLE LEVEL from 16-90 just to make it not overpowered in a old dungeons/trials/raid

[DixieBellOCE]

Just play white mage.

Its no different from 15 to 90.

[TheDustyOne]

I feel like the best approach would be to instead change the order of when skills are obtained, including making more weaker versions of higher level skills; so that the lower levels can at least not be quite as dull in regards to class kit. Or at the very least having the bare basics of combat available by the time you reach Sastasha. Why is it that we can't do our most basic 123 combo and let every job have a spammable AoE by level 18?

It would be very nice for a job to at least feel 'put together' by level 50 or so with the core mechanics intact, with flourishes, nuances, and flashiness left for later levels. Why can't I have a weaker magic phase on my level 50 Paladin? Why can't I have Fire IV also at level 50 on my Black Mage? A lot of jobs would feel better at lower levels if they had something resembling their core rotation earlier.

As for the idea of syncing not removing skills at all, there's too many issues with it. Firstly, some abilities just don't sync down well at all. A tank invuln for example is going to make you invulnerable regardless, you can't make something only 'slightly invulnerable', because it would still be invulnerable. Secondly, it doesn't account for player skill differences, someone synced down with a full kit that's still trying to piece together how to best use their buttons will end up doing less damage with more buttons compared to the person next to them only pressing their 123 combo because that's all they've got. It makes progression feel awful like that when you have to put in thrice the work for the same output.

I could very well sing a different tune if such a thing got implemented well, but I think the best approach is to introduce core combat and class skills earlier than what we have now rather than letting a level 90 tank invuln their way through early dungeons while a new tank gets left in the dust.