Please consider how level sync works

[lilmoon]

Currently, when you enter the lower-level dungeons, you scale down to a lower-level character.
But now, the level cap reached 100 and there are so many lower-level contents while characters have more skills across its level.
This makes it a particularly frustrating experience for certain jobs that were added later in the game with significantly higher starting levels.
For example, RPR feels incomplete until level 90 and VPR feels wrong until level 100 where it gets its identity skill.
Dev can try to go back and redistribute some of the skills to certain levels but it is a lot of tweaking and costs dev time.
Furthermore, how long are are they going to do this?
A new expansion or two?
Think what would happen when the level cap keeps increasing and new skills are added, new jobs at higher levels, and higher-level dungeons are added. And you got dropped to sastasha.
Is it fun? No one enjoys going to lower-level dungeons.
Just let the player enjoy their max-level job!
Instead, Dev can implement potency and HP scaling in addition to equipment level scaling to even things out. Yes, it will still favor high-level players with full skill sets but who cares? We steamroll the current lower-level dungeons anyway.
Another benefit of this method of scaling is that it can give Dev an opportunity to add higher difficulty mode dungeons that are meant for the max-level characters with good gear while recycling current lower-level dungeons. Dev can add new mobs, mechanics, high potency dmg, etc, and have players enjoy dungeon roulette.
This also helps the dev work on job balances as they only need to focus on max-level jobs, not mid-level due to certain mid-level contents.

[Rongway]

We literally have this discussion at least twice a year.

You know what isn't fun? Having to press five times as many buttons as the other person with the same job as you to do the same amount of damage because you syncked down to their level.

Also not fun, dungeons taking longer because people who are syncked down don't know how to play their jobs at their real levels, so they're only doing one fifth of the damage they should be doing because they're not doing their full real level rotations correctly.

There are too many sync issues to deal with when balancing people with no sync vs people with max level sync. It's far safer to just give everyone the same boring restricted button set at syncked levels.

[Supersnow845]

We literally have this discussion at least twice a year.

You know what isn't fun? Having to press five times as many buttons as the other person with the same job as you to do the same amount of damage because you syncked down to their level.

Also not fun, dungeons taking longer because people who are syncked down don't know how to play their jobs at their real levels, so they're only doing one fifth of the damage they should be doing because they're not doing their full real level rotations correctly.

There are too many sync issues to deal with when balancing people with no sync vs people with max level sync. It's far safer to just give everyone the same boring restricted button set at syncked levels.

Do people genuinely believe the fun comes from doing more or the same damage

If you gave me the option of PCT’s level 50 kit or its level 100 kit and doing the same damage regardless even if the level 100 kit introduces more fail states so I’d likely do about 10% less damage than an actual level 50 PCT id 100% take the level 100 kit because it’s more fun

There is no fun to me from doing more damage because I have an artificially restricted kit

[Banggugyangu]

You know what isn't fun? Having to press five times as many buttons as the other person with the same job as you to do the same amount of damage because you syncked down to their level.

Why, exactly? PCT is a perfect example of why I completely disagree with this statement. PCT at level 50 is so heavily neutered that you barely have 5 buttons to hit. You use creature muse and hammer muse, then you spam aetherhues for 60 seconds until your single charge motifs are ready again. It...Feels....awful..... I'd much rather have my full kit and being doing my level 100 rotation just to deal the same damage as I currently do in level 50 content than to have this horribly boring 5 button hotbar for content that used to be end game...

My question to you is: Is the fun only in the damage you're dealing? If so, that seems like a boring outlook for the game, to me. I would much prefer having a fun rotation over only finding fun in the big numbers.


*Edit* Also, it's not terribly difficult to rework level sync in a manner that would accommodate this. All that would need to be done is test the damage differences new abilities contribute to overall DPS (The balance team does this on a regular basis for balancing jobs anyway) and apply a multiplier that reduces damage by the same preportion when those abilities are not present. A simple mapping table for each job handles that data and is called when necessary. I'd even be ok with things being OVERTUNED toward lower DPS output for synced content, honestly. I'd love to return to the days where Scylla had Daybreak and Glassya Labolas was like playing Mirror's Edge.

[Alice_Rivers]

So how do we handle people who are not level 100? Do we sync them up to 100 and ruin their job learning experience? Do we have 75 different sync points of the same dungeon and say you can only run with people of your own level? or do we shrink that to 15 sync points and say you can only run with people within three levels of you? Either of the latter two would extend queue times for everyone who isn't level 97 to an insane degree.

[Payadopa]

We literally have this discussion at least twice a year.

You know what isn't fun? Having to press five times as many buttons as the other person with the same job as you to do the same amount of damage because you syncked down to their level.

Also not fun, dungeons taking longer because people who are syncked down don't know how to play their jobs at their real levels, so they're only doing one fifth of the damage they should be doing because they're not doing their full real level rotations correctly.

There are too many sync issues to deal with when balancing people with no sync vs people with max level sync. It's far safer to just give everyone the same boring restricted button set at syncked levels.

Speak for yourself. I'd love longer dungeons and more buttons. Anything but this boring design with zero challenge we currently have. If a dungeon is shorter but not fun then it's a bad dungeon. It's that simple.

[lilmoon]

You sync “down” the potency to match the level of the dungeon. And yes it will still favor the people with the max-level jobs since even with sync-down potency they still have all the skill sets available. But like I said, does it really matter? People steamroll the current lower-level dungeons anyway. SE can see this as an opportunity to introduce “savage dungeons” and can actually recycle the current dungeons with minimal work requirement to design them for max-level end-level content too.

[LilimoLimomo]

I like how classes have different rotations and skillsets at different levels. Playing a level 50 BLM is a different experience than playing a level 60 BLM, and the same goes for 80 and 100. This is part of what makes synced content feel distinct, and I wouldn't want to lose it.

[Banggugyangu]

So how do we handle people who are not level 100? Do we sync them up to 100 and ruin their job learning experience? Do we have 75 different sync points of the same dungeon and say you can only run with people of your own level? or do we shrink that to 15 sync points and say you can only run with people within three levels of you? Either of the latter two would extend queue times for everyone who isn't level 97 to an insane degree.

By my suggestion, you simply have a value mapped to each individual ability that roughly equates to the damage increase that said ability grats the job. If that ability becomes synced, then the value that's mapped is multiplied against all damage sources, which roughly balances out the damage output down to about where it currently is. Nothing would need to happen to anyone who isn't synced. (For instance, Rainbow Drip adds 1100 potency, and is used every 120 seconds, give or take. That's just under 10 potency per second, or 25 potency per GCD. This equates to about a 3% DPS increase overall. So when Rainbow Drip is synced, then there would be a reduction of 3% across all damage sources to balance rainbow drip out. The multipliers given for each synced ability would just be added together before multiplying to total up the overall reduction necessary to offset all synced abilities. (It sounds more complicated than it actually is, and the actual calculations necessary on the game's backend are extremely minor to handle it.)

Now, in the case of abilities being upgraded to higher tiers through traits, just nullify the traits that upgrade them, resulting in having the lower tier of the ability. For instance, Raw Intuition is upgraded to Bloodwhetting at 82, if synced below 82, then it would just always be raw intuition. Same with Aetherhue spells. If you're synced lower than the trait that upgrades their potencies, then just nullify the trait giving the potencies appropriate for that level, and nothing else is needed. (You still have the same number of abilities by doing this.)

[Banggugyangu]

I like how classes have different rotations and skillsets at different levels. Playing a level 50 BLM is a different experience than playing a level 60 BLM, and the same goes for 80 and 100. This is part of what makes synced content feel distinct, and I wouldn't want to lose it.

This argument is fine for jobs who have enough of a rotation at that level to be fun. BLM is also a unicorn, as it changes dramatically every 10 levels from 50 to 80. Using BLM as an example, though, the lowest level BLM that I actually ENJOY is 60. Everything before 60 just makes me want to drool on myself.