Level Sync feels worse every expansion

[Atreus]

I feel as though I've seen more discussion about level syncing since Endwalker and Dawntrail where people, in higher numbers, are thinking "wow, level syncing is feeling worse and worse", and I agree.

The experience of level syncing changes for each job and for each level bracket to the point that I have zero interest in doing most roulettes or older content, and I know I'm not alone. The restriction of job abilities makes old content extremely unfun and clunky.

Some examples of discussions held recently on this subject, obviously only scratching the surface:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...rked_it_sucks/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...d_more_boring/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...on_level_sync/


The concerns, and my responses

• Balance: jobs keeping their abilities when synced down will trivialize that content.
  
  It already doesn't exist between jobs when synced and each job has a vastly different experience when syncing, ranging from "passable" to "jesus this sucks". Also, almost all old content is faceroll at this point due to the massive gap between required item level and the sync cap.
  
  
• Culture: may breed toxicity toward players who are not synced or create an environment where they feel they are not contributing.
  
  You can't predict this, nor can you really account for it when trying to create a potentially more fun game experience. Again, balancing efforts are needed, but I do not see anything changing culturally. Just go to /r/TalesFromDF.

The most valid concern here, in my opinion, is the balancing aspect. You cannot just allow all abilities for jobs when synced down without some form of compensation. Many ideas have been discussed and the following bullets are individual and independent solutions, not to be combined.


Solutions that have been discussed

1. Reorganize abilities so that every job has the mainframe of their kit by level 50 (HIGH EFFORT)
   
   
2. Allow job abilities while syncing, and introduce traits that only activate when syncing, similar to the "Mastery" traits that increase potencies. The objective of these sync traits would be to cull the potencies of certain high-level abilities (HIGH EFFORT)
   
   
3. Allow job abilities while syncing, and severely cut the item level gap between what's required to complete a duty and what the cap is for that duty (LOW EFFORT, easiest method of testing and needs to happen anyway)

I recommend diving into the threads posted above, as they are filled with different perspectives and solutions that expand far beyond what I'm able to fit here.

All in all, I implore SquareEnix to revisit this system.