Please let us keep our abilities on sync down

[Hasrat]

By my point is simply the fact that benediction is so weak WHM could have it at level 1 and it would change nothing. Because the skill isn’t worth anything.

I get your point is “you can’t scale infinite HP restoration” but benediction is literally the only skill that functions like this (RIP ARR lustrate) and it’s so weak in the grand scheme of things it’s literally meaningless to even consider it as a noticeable factor

All other skills either scale from potency or from health of the user/target.

Hallowed Ground

I was not limiting my examples to healing only. It just serves as the most obvious.

[ovIm]

Hallowed Ground

I was not limiting my examples to healing only. It just serves as the most obvious.

This game has (if i counted right) 99 dungeons. 12 of those are below level 50, which means those 12 are the only dungeons where both Bene and Hallowed are not available. And with how fast you skip level 1-50 already anyhow, i am not sure if there is an argument to be made here. Skills like Nascent Flash are actually worse, but Nascents self heal in dungeons is already ridiculous, if we are all honest.

But also - we are not game designers. it is not our job to find a solution that works, that is what we pay Square Enix for. I'm sure a skilled game designer would have a few tools at hand to resolve the issue in a more satisfying way than what we have now.

[Mikey_R]

My immediate if was hired to be lazy is look at what id expected and then set a formula for floors and ceilings and curved in between. For example on burst, your issue is less if we are placing a ceiling. Level 30 has a burst of 500, level 90 has a burst of 900, ceiling the 900 and start to curve the rest of the job within the two bounds so we reach the approximate goal of potency per action / dps. If being lazy this would all be automatic too lol "why is my AOE 106 potency?" "Excel dictated it. :3"

But it is still a burst you don't have at lower levels. this is more impactful in dungeons when you have downtime between pulls, so you have more uptime in your burst. I think we have fundamentally different views on how the low level should be handled, which is fine and it might be a case of agree to disagree on this topic.

On an (almost) unrelated topic, do people like having their burst cut off when things die? Do a trash pull, pop everything, 4 GCDs later, everything is dead. For me, that is wholly unsatisfying. Bosses? die after the 20 seconds burst phase, I mean, you got the burst in, but not a lot else. Great way to practice a rotation isn't it. /s

As for the people who keep saying 'I'm not a dev, that is for the devs to sort out', I just want to say, why not put a bit of thought into suggestions? By thinking about the pros and cons, or thinking about how things might be affected, you might be able to fine tune a suggestion to make it easier/more realistic to achieve. If I asked for the game to be made into an FPS, someone else responded, not possible/realistic for a multitude of reasons, but I came back with, that's for the devs to figure out, it doesn't make the initial claim less silly. This should apply to all aspects of the game.

Now, the above is an extreme example to highlight a point. If we were to bring it down to this topic itself, then yes, I think most would agree that low level is boring and needs improving. However if some of us are coming back with concerns or reasons why we don't think it is realistic, then they need to be addressed and not just dismissed outright. A few of us have even tried to make more realistic suggestions that both improve the low level experience and makes it less jarring for higher level players to get synced down to. this system, once made, then not needing to be touched again, unless something changes fundamentally with the job itself. As opposed to a system that needs to be adjusted every expansion due to new tools and maybe even if potencies change.

[technole]

Well I'm a dev, personally it doesn't seem worth the hassle to implement a whole new database of downgraded skill potencies, nevermind all the QA that would have to be done to see what outdated or even sync'd content like criterion or ultimate ends up breaking as a result. Players would rather battle team spend their time doing job rehaul in 8.0 rather than this play-it-safe meta we got in 7.0

[Daralii]

As for the people who keep saying 'I'm not a dev, that is for the devs to sort out', I just want to say, why not put a bit of thought into suggestions? By thinking about the pros and cons, or thinking about how things might be affected, you might be able to fine tune a suggestion to make it easier/more realistic to achieve. If I asked for the game to be made into an FPS, someone else responded, not possible/realistic for a multitude of reasons, but I came back with, that's for the devs to figure out, it doesn't make the initial claim less silly. This should apply to all aspects of the game.

We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

[Buttobi]

It would be a huge time investment but I think when leveling up jobs by doing old content is such a large portion of the game, the devs should consider that maybe this huge investment is worth it. It feels worse every expansion to do old content cause of the gimped rotations.

[technole]

We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

That's a big one, they are likely in the design phase of what 8.0 job skills will look like. So now if you added a project for downgrades, we have to update every skill almost every two years, or anytime we overhaul a job at every level tier in the database 50/60/70/etc, that's a heck lot of work. Adding permanent steps that don't generate a lot of value in an MMO game where most old content is just on a shelf life timer, is probably not going to be considered.

[AmiableApkallu]

How does one scale down the power creep in support abilities? The incidental self-heals that tanks picked up in Endwalker? The sheer glut of heals the healers have by Lv.100? Etc. Etc.

If you just take that all as-is into lower-level content, spicy pulls won't be as spicy any more, for example, which strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

But really, this talk of scaling potencies and whatnot misses something: If it feels bad to have a "gimped" rotation when synced down, surely it also feels bad if you're actually in the middle of leveling? I'd rather see effort put into designing jobs so that the distribution of abilities and traits across the level range actually has some logic to it. At each of the major breakpoints (Lv.30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100), it should be clear what new "feature" gets added to the job. PCT gets this right, for example.

[Mikey_R]

We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

No, we don't, that is why we make realistic suggestions based on what we know is possible, or what we think is easy to implement. We know they can adjust potencies on skills based on their base action and traits, which givers you more control over potencies in certain level ranges. I guarantee that encounters in EW and DT will still feel the same as they do now as they have those traits in place, as opposed to ARR, where lower level duties are a joke compared to what they used to be.

We also know they are fully capable of adding new actions and traits wherever they want. There is no reason you couldn't enhance lower level gameplay by adding in old and unused actions and making them a weaker version of what we already have, like Steel Peak now being the Chakra Spender, or Wide Volley turning into Shadowbite.

What we do not know is whether a system can be put into place that can dynamically change potencies based on your current level and the level you are synced to. Or even if you don't want to mess with potencies and ruin balance even more, you don't even know if it is possible to easily change the code to allow you to use higher level actions at a lower level. Not to mention all the other problems that might arise with the system.

Reworking and rebalancing the low levels is a much more realistic goal based on what we know and as I said, this would be something they would have to do once and leave alone, barring any major job reworks like Summoner, as opposed to dynamically changing potencies that will likely need to be looked at every expansion.

[AvoSturmfaust]

How does one scale down the power creep in support abilities? The incidental self-heals that tanks picked up in Endwalker? The sheer glut of heals the healers have by Lv.100? Etc. Etc.

If you just take that all as-is into lower-level content, spicy pulls won't be as spicy any more, for example, which strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

But really, this talk of scaling potencies and whatnot misses something: If it feels bad to have a "gimped" rotation when synced down, surely it also feels bad if you're actually in the middle of leveling? I'd rather see effort put into designing jobs so that the distribution of abilities and traits across the level range actually has some logic to it. At each of the major breakpoints (Lv.30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100), it should be clear what new "feature" gets added to the job. PCT gets this right, for example.

There is not one spicy pull anymore when the tank knows what he does, you can even currently to save time pull the monster in the bossroom without issues, not one dungeons besides the 50 hard dungeons (and not all only 1-2 and that only because of the boss mechanics not because of the pulls) is challenging or has some spicy pulls to it.