Low level Combat gameplay and Job identity is HORRIBLE.

[Zadood]

On what metrics though? The higher your job level compared to the dungeon, the less damage output to make up for all the additional abilities? Jobs don't exactly have a linear progression in leveling, what would end up being fine in certain cases would go completely overboard either way in others.

On top of what people already brought up, you're literally introducing one more variable affecting damage (and wildly at that) on top of gear differences and skill level and you could end up with the same dungeons taking 30min with some groups and 5min with others.



I told you already, as a new player I would have absolutely hated:

1) a dungeon lasting barely 5min with mobs that keel over as soon as they get one hit
2) being essentially totally outmatched and useless compared to synced down players that come to run the roulette
3) rouletters are already speeding through everything like if their life depend on it, you'd essentially get the new praetorium sprout experience before they made cutscenes unskippable

Now, that's a valid point and reason I been asking for, but still, if combat system were fun to begin with, such issue would be significantly less likely happen.

Your logic also holds no ground whatsoever, if the combat and leveling design is dogwater, boring, janky unresponsive and not fun at all, then how is making the content skippable as fast as possible an actually good answer to it in any shape or form whatsoever? Fix the combat or at least the progression leveling system instead of making all the content skippable or bordering on unsync levels...

The design is boring and bad, instead of fixing it, let's just give players ways to skip through it all faster? I actually can't believe I read this.

If a disease can't be cured at all, might as well as ease the pain it wrought.

The thing is, the only way to fix it is to completely overhaul the combat system, something SQEX will rather shutdown FFXIV than actually overhaul it.
At this point, asking CBU3 for a glamour system overhaul, update the character creation is much more realistic wish compared to total FFXIV combat system overhaul.
So, with the total combat system overhaul possibility is completely out the window, let's ask for fix that actually within boundary of their ARR's spaghetti code.

If Yoshida-san didn't rush the FFXIV ARR to be launched within PS3 life's time, and instead, polish FFXIV ARR further more and release in PS4 life's time.
You and I would be complaining stuff other than this thread.

Another solution would be,
Let the player enter any dungeon with full job abilities, but at the time apply individual ilvl sync base on how much out-leveled players are compared to the dungeon they are in.

For example,
Satasha has 20 ilvl sync, if a player entered that is within 25lvl - 34lvl, the ilvl sync for that player would be 18 instead of 20, if 35lvl- 44lvl, the ilvl sync would be 16 instead of 20, and so on until 10 ilvl sync for folks that is max level

[Dhalya]

The ilvl sync formula is completely broken already, low lvl player doing a dungeon will deal like 2x/3x less damage than max lvl player joining, so I see no point crippling the high lvl player further into boredom pressing 1212.

They need to first fix the ilvl formula so bosses don't skip 80% of their mechanics and the remaining 20% can be completely ignored as they barely punish.

Then they need to review some jobs that are completely broken like low lvl DNC/RDM doing 3x the damage as low lvl BLM, or tanks doing more than some DPS. this doesn't make any sense.

Only then they can think about syncing high lvl skills into low lvl content too. And tbh that is way too much to ask, never gonna happen...

[Valence]

The main sore points with sync are in my opinion:

- Endgame synch just syncs most instances to the expansion cap, meaning you can see gaps of syncs between the MIL and the cap being above a whooping 100 ilvl (notably in raids). Some early endgame dungeons have hard syncs, please use more of those.
- Leveling dungeons are tighter and work fine overall, but the old ones are completely outcrept by powercreep, gear creep, mostly before ShB since earlier content was designed around a different battle system with way lower potencies and stats.
- More secondary but syncing down progressively fills up the substats of every piece of gear depending on how wide the gap is between the gear's ilvl and the instance's ilvl. Past a certain threshold players end up with synced gear that is somewhat similar to a full pentameld on every piece.

[Shikiseki]

I mean at some point they have to level squish the entire content so "level 50" will become the level where your skillset is complete.
Right now we're at its worst as our toolkit thinned out so much and when level 1-90 content is synced down with incomplete skillsets, it's normal that the early game 1-50 feels the worst (which is half the levels available soon and it feels like you have 20% of your kit)

[Azlith]

I think the solution here would be for cbu3 to reevaluate the entire leveling experience for all jobs. Allowing players to keep high level abilities when synced down comes with a lot of problems that go beyond simple potency issues. Tanks, for example, get a lot of defensive power as they level up. A level 20 marauder will be far more annoying to heal than a lvl 90 warrior. Healers too have the same problem where healing as a lvl 90 will allow you to do more dmg than healing as a lvl 20 (more ogcds to heal with.)
Even if we are just talking potencies though and turning a blind eye to all the tools lvl 90 players will have over lvl 20s we run into another problem, a problem that plagues WoW lvling: low level characters do broken amounts of damage. In WoW in order to compensate for lower level characters having access to less abilities they made low level abilities deal more damage to targets. A lvl 10 restoration shaman's chain lightning ability will kill everything it hits in 1, maybe 2 casts. a lvl 60 restoration shaman would take 20+ chain lightnings to kill something. Balancing low level content around syncing is already a huge pain and costs a lot of dev time with the current model. Trying to balance every ability at every level against every ability that a lower level version of the job would have at every level is just way too costly on dev time. Job X might be missing abilities A, B and C at level 40 but it may get ability B at level 42. Are we really going to be taking the time to balance the level 90 kit of job X at level 40 vs 42?

Like I said at the start, I think cbu3 should reevaluate the leveling experience as a whole. On the job design side of things they should take a leaf out of WoWs book but not with regards to syncing. Early on in WoWs life Blizzard learned that they need to give class defining abilities early and often so that people can embrace their class fantasy earlier and feel good about what they're playing. A retribution paladin, for example, feels like you are smiting your foes with holy strength really early in the leveling. Paladin in this game, however, well it just doesn't feel like a paladin until much much later, and even then the use of "holy sword" type abilities is so sparse (even at 90) but that's an entirely different issue. What the devs should do on this front is give access to job defining abilities, like requiescat and holy spirit, much earlier on so that players can actually feel like they are playing the job fantasy of w/e job they are playing much earlier.

[1313]

Have I got news for you! Come Dawntrail this is gonna be an even bigger problem! It's spread out over 90 levels now, just wait til it's spread over 100 levels! Currently every job is pretty dull and boring til the mid 70s, with one or two exceptions. Dawntrail will see that turned into the mid 80's, and without the road t o80 buff , the grind to level jobs is just way too tedious.

[Mikey_R]

Have I got news for you! Come Dawntrail this is gonna be an even bigger problem! It's spread out over 90 levels now, just wait til it's spread over 100 levels! Currently every job is pretty dull and boring til the mid 70s, with one or two exceptions. Dawntrail will see that turned into the mid 80's, and without the road t o80 buff , the grind to level jobs is just way too tedious.

From everything we have seen, the vast majority being added is just 1 button turning into another. If this is the case, they wouldn't have to take away from earlier levels.

[1313]

From everything we have seen, the vast majority being added is just 1 button turning into another. If this is the case, they wouldn't have to take away from earlier levels.

Imagine if they did ... wheeewwww yiiikes lmao. They might adjust the levels of certain abilities, as they usually do every so often. Let's hope that if they do, it's for better , not worse.

[PyurBlue]

The main sore points with sync are in my opinion:

- Endgame synch just syncs most instances to the expansion ca
- Leveling dungeons are tighter and work fine overall, but the old ones are completely outcrept by powercreep, gear creep
- More secondary but syncing down progressively fills up the substats

These are a separate issue in my eyes. At some point jobs are so simplified that they're boring even in challenging content. Level 50 won't be made interesting just by making encounters harder. At that point it's a mechanics simulator where you also press a damage button sometimes. An engaging rotation needs to be a part of the experience. Just look at the complaints around healers. Many of them are upset because they have nothing to do when not healing. That's level 50 if it remains as it is now and tighter syncing won't change that at all.

A level 20 marauder will be far more annoying to heal than a lvl 90 warrior. Healers too have the same problem where healing as a lvl 90 will allow you to do more dmg than healing as a lvl 20 (more ogcds to heal with.)

This isn't even new. Role actions for tanks can make a big difference in durability at low levels. Reprisal is up for every pull and Arms Length is a second rampart. Even with level sync you can have tanks that are much more survivable than others and that's even when comparing sub level 50 tanks. If we allowed the use of high level skills they can just be adjusted down in terms of mitigation, as DPS is. High level tanks would either need to chain defenses together or use them in combination to increase survivability. There are a lot of ways to make it work.

With healers specifically, CNJ cannot heal and DPS at once while AST, even synced, has a nearly full heal OGCD and the ability to maintain 100% uptime while healing. The uptime is not the biggest issue, it's having AoE abilities as opposed to not. But this is already an issue with DPS classes, so not even that would be a new problem.

Even if we are just talking potencies though and turning a blind eye to all the tools lvl 90 players will have over lvl 20s we run into another problem, a problem that plagues WoW lvling: low level characters do broken amounts of damage. In WoW in order to compensate for lower level characters having access to less abilities they made low level abilities deal more damage to targets. A lvl 10 restoration shaman's chain lightning ability will kill everything it hits in 1, maybe 2 casts. a lvl 60 restoration shaman would take 20+ chain lightnings to kill something. Balancing low level content around syncing is already a huge pain and costs a lot of dev time with the current model. Trying to balance every ability at every level against every ability that a lower level version of the job would have at every level is just way too costly on dev time. Job X might be missing abilities A, B and C at level 40 but it may get ability B at level 42. Are we really going to be taking the time to balance the level 90 kit of job X at level 40 vs 42?

This is overcomplicating things. DPS scaling is a simple fix and it doesn't need to be tailored for every possible situation. Don't look at individual abilities. Yes this will mean that there will be slight deviations from what damage "should" be, but not any more than what the system was designed to handle. We already have situations where a synced class may or may not have a given skill because the minimum level of the dungeon is lower than the level of the skill, while the sync level is not. It's not a new problem, nor a major one.

[HappyHubris]

The worst I've played is PLD:
1. Your gauge until level 64 is for an extra mitigation button that isn't needed for roulette content.
2. Until 64 your attacks are 1-2-3, two 30s oGCDs, and one 60s oGCD. With a 60s generic damage increase cooldown. So painful. Single-target damage spender at 64 and AoE spender at 72.