My [nuclear] solution to skill unlock level balancing

[BunnyGirlPearl]

I'll open up with a couple disclaimers; one, this concept is incredibly nuclear and extreme and almost all content up to [max level at time of implementation] would be subject to significant rebalances and as a result that alone essentially makes this idea nigh on impossible. Two, it's also not of the absolute highest priority. While the game may have somewhat of a retention and engagement issue for new and low level players, it's obviously not enough of a barrier to stop people from getting far in enough to bypass this issue.

Essentially, i'm aware the risk and severity of this rework significantly outweighs the reward to be had from it. But, i wanted to document it anyway, because if it did somehow ever reach a point where it's necessary, i'd want my thoughts to be known!

That said; one of the biggest complaints i've heard about this game is how punishing and unenjoyable level sync feels. Especially with more skills pruned every single expansion, every job's rotations only get weaker, less involved, and less fun in low level content. I've been thinking a lot about how i would solve this issue myself, and i think i've come up with an interesting concept that allows for enough flexibility and choice over people's rotations at lower levels, whilst mitigating the risk of severe overpowering for old content, in a way i don't feel is too overwhelming to new players, and shouldn't break old content too severely.

The actual concept will be in the first comment to avoid size issues, because it exceeded the character limit on account of a detailed list of what i think the potential benefits and shortcomings are. Sorry SE. :P

[BunnyGirlPearl]

The base concept:
Skills are unlocked in one of two ways, with this. The first is the current method of reaching a specific level and getting specific skills.
The second are skills categorized as threshold skills- these skills all become available, at once, at a specific level threshold, of which there are multiple. Once you reach the threshold level, you gain access to all threshold skills between that threshold and the next.

How they work:
Threshold skills, unlike static unlocks, would not be affected by level sync, much like Role skills.
This is balanced out by Threshold skills being controlled by an AP system, requiring you to set what skills you want to be able to access up to your AP limit.
The AP limit is what would be affected by level sync- As your level increases, so does your AP, up until you can access all of the prior threshold skills. When level synced, it reverts to what it would have been at the synced level.

How do you ensure people know what to use?
That's what the first method of unlocks is for. The details would be up to the developers' prejudice, but core skills like combo skills and important job mechanics, such as gauge mechanics, would be controlled by level sync and unlocked at their respective levels, and disabled when synced to below that level. You would never and could not ever have a moveset that allows your job to function as it is intended to at its base level, to prevent trolls who would intentionally disable core skills, or worse, all of them.

[BunnyGirlPearl]

The benefits:
This system would allow more experienced players, who have had the extra time to understand their skills and core rotation to curate a more enjoyable experience in lower level dungeon based on their playstyle with the help of all the extra skills they've unlocked through their journey so far, that they wouldn't have had at the level of the lower level content. Whether it be prioritising extra weavable OGCDs, more utility, raid support mechanics, players can select their skillset based on what will help them enjoy content that honestly, is easy enough that it doesn't remotely depend on the current skillset of the level available to it.
It would also make the game more flexible and engaging at lower levels, providing a trickle of new skills controlled by the AP limit, allowing them to experiment with what matters to them and the players around them, skill by skill, until they eventually have access to and understand all the skills within that threshold. I genuinely believe it would foster a better, deeper understanding of the skillsets a player has, if they are able to make a wrong choice, be punished for it, and upon evaluating that wipe or that bad run, understand why another move was a better option.

The struggles:
As always, with any amount of player customization, there is the significant risk of the system being abused to ruin others' enjoyment of the game.
In this case, i feel like it comes at the risk of two things; one, potentially making old raid content significantly and unexpectedly easier [more than expected, at least]. I feel like this is also double-edged though in that it might foster extra engagement in old high-end synced content by creating this community of people with 90-level skills trying to run the most meta build they can.
...This, however, comes with the risk of equally fostering a community willing to punish people for making the 'wrong choices' with their skills, or worse, for joining lower level high-end content with only the skills unlocked up to that point.
There's also the issue of finding a solution to the obvious issue of 'what if people... don't set threshold skills at all?'. I feel like the solution isn't to lock-out duty finder until all AP has been set- It feels unnecessarily punishing for something that could be an accident.
Implementing a simple and digestible solution to picking what skills get synced out when you get synced down to a lower AP is difficult. Maybe it could be like Nier Automata's system in that the order of things placed into the AP bar matters when it shrinks, but that might still be on the complicated side for new players.
There's also the matter of balancing what skills are picked as static level unlocks and remain synced, and what skills are available to use in lower level dungeons. Too many, and it becomes too easy for it to become too punishing and too troll-able; too few, and the system may as well not exist, for all the difference it'll make.

[Shurrikhan]

While I wouldn't hate this, I'd honestly much rather just squish ability acquisition levels down so that early levels acquire skills very quickly, even if that means they're increasingly far more spread out over later levels.

I do not care if that makes later expansions feel like they lack skill "progression"; that's largely just a euphemism for taking overly long to give a complete and compelling kit. Given how much has been historically been stripped from the 1-60 kits just to pad out that 70+ "progression", it seems the only way the devs are willing to provide that is by proportionately emptying out earlier levels, which just means having an incomplete and/or unsatisfying kit until far too late into the game.

Let all the class skills available by 50 be available by 30 instead, introduced at roughly a linearly increased rate. Let 50 have most of the tools of 60, etc., with each expansion offering increasingly "less" (outside of basic upgrades) only in the sense that those additions are given and our kits thereby made complete that much earlier.


If we wanted to actually accomplish more than just reducing the gameplay loss from syncing down, I'd be all for an AP system, but --compared to just accelerating skill acquisitions-- it seems an unnecessarily convoluted solution that also avoids the low-hanging fruit of improving the new player experience.