Could Final Fantasy successfully adopt GW2 scaling system?

[neik]

Simple level scale down example.

• You loose your spells in Final Fantasy
• You retain your spells in Guild Wars 2

This could be a game changer in my opinion, I really enjoy freedom when I play GW2. If Final Fantasy could successfully adopt similar design philosophy to that of GW2, I can only imagine how amazing and incentivizing low leveling roulette would look for players who otherwise avoid them because your spells are getting taken away from you.

I personally avoid low level roulette, and do Deep Dungeon instead, or maybe queuing specific as soon as new bracket comes available. The freedom you get in GW2 to be able to use your all spells regardless your low level is truly liberating.

Thanks for reading.

[The Casualty]

Simple level scale down example.

• You loose your spells in Final Fantasy
• You retain your spells in Guild Wars 2

This could be a game changer in my opinion, I really enjoy freedom when I play GW2. If Final Fantasy could successfully adopt similar design philosophy to that of GW2, I can only imagine how amazing and incentivizing low leveling roulette would look for players who otherwise avoid them because your spells are getting taken away from you.

I personally avoid low level roulette, and do Deep Dungeon instead, or maybe queuing specific as soon as new bracket comes available. The freedom you get in GW2 to be able to use your all spells regardless your low level is truly liberating.

Thanks for reading.

Would you eschew balance?

If not, would a dragoon who has access to lets say, level 30 abilities do the same damage as a Level 90 dragoon who has access to their entire kit?

How would you balance against things like a max level tank with a full suite of abilities and an invuln versus a tank who does not have that, or a healer with their endgame amounts of oGCD heals versus a lower level healer? How would you balance a dungeon with the current design that assumes you don't have access to those abilities?

Aside from reworking when we get abilities and moving some things more toward traits - so you would at least not lose so many buttons or have an experience like BLM used to where their rotation changed drastically (As I understand it is somewhat better) every level bracket, I struggle to see how just giving people their entire kit wouldn't just be a step backward.

Either new/low level people feel useless against max level players, and rightfully so, or you have your entire kit and it hits like a wet noodle because you have to keep the potency roughly equivalent against a person at that level who doesn't have their full kit.

I am curious to see how you would solve those problems.

[MsSideEye]

Simple level scale down example.

• You loose your spells in Final Fantasy
• You retain your spells in Guild Wars 2

This could be a game changer in my opinion, I really enjoy freedom when I play GW2. If Final Fantasy could successfully adopt similar design philosophy to that of GW2, I can only imagine how amazing and incentivizing low leveling roulette would look for players who otherwise avoid them because your spells are getting taken away from you.

I personally avoid low level roulette, and do Deep Dungeon instead, or maybe queuing specific as soon as new bracket comes available. The freedom you get in GW2 to be able to use your all spells regardless your low level is truly liberating.

Thanks for reading.

Probably not going to happen, since 14 was specifically designed with fewer and less powerful abilities being available at lower levels in mind.

I get the reasoning behind it, since it doesn't feel the best having skills you love taken away. And for some classes? It completely takes the fun out of them (Looking at you, Bard and Dark Knight). But as it is, the low level roulette are pretty easy and all retaining our higher level skills would do would make that content even easier.

There's also another way to look at this: Retaining the old extreme content. One of the things that makes FF14 unique compared to other MMOS is that, for the most part, there are options in game that allow you to go fight old content at it's original intended difficulty. It's amazing to say 'Oh yeah, my friends and I went and fought Garuda with minimum item level and no echo', because that means you restricted yourself to as close as you could to what would have been available at that time. This doesn't even go into mentioning that you'd lose out on the Faux Hallows system they put in, where they bring back old bosses at the current level cap for players to work against.

I will say that with all this, Yoshi-P and his devs aren't afraid to shake things up and move things around to make classes feel better. Endwalker moved the system that Monks had for their chi down to the 30s where they were something you originally got at the 50s, so they're willing to experiment and see what works. Hell, I think 6.1 they even said some abilities are moving down a few levels to make it flow better for classes.

Overall, i feel the removal of spells may feel bad occasionally, but it's the right system for FF14.

[neik]

Would you eschew balance?

If not, would a dragoon who has access to lets say, level 30 abilities do the same damage as a Level 90 dragoon who has access to their entire kit?

How would you balance against things like a max level tank with a full suite of abilities and an invuln versus a tank who does not have that, or a healer with their endgame amounts of oGCD heals versus a lower level healer? How would you balance a dungeon with the current design that assumes you don't have access to those abilities?

Aside from reworking when we get abilities and moving some things more toward traits - so you would at least not lose so many buttons or have an experience like BLM used to where their rotation changed drastically (As I understand it is somewhat better) every level bracket, I struggle to see how just giving people their entire kit wouldn't just be a step backward.

Either new/low level people feel useless against max level players, and rightfully so, or you have your entire kit and it hits like a wet noodle because you have to keep the potency roughly equivalent against a person at that level who doesn't have their full kit.

I am curious to see how you would solve those problems.

Not a theorycrafter mate so don't have a mathematical solution at hand.

As a customer I'm allowed to dreaming big, and it's is always better to dream and ask for more than just being forced to enjoy eating scraps. This smug developer attitude applies to gaming industry in general at this day of age.

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Probably not going to happen, since 14 was specifically designed with fewer and less powerful abilities being available at lower levels in mind.

I get the reasoning behind it, since it doesn't feel the best having skills you love taken away. And for some classes? It completely takes the fun out of them (Looking at you, Bard and Dark Knight). But as it is, the low level roulette are pretty easy and all retaining our higher level skills would do would make that content even easier.

There's also another way to look at this: Retaining the old extreme content. One of the things that makes FF14 unique compared to other MMOS is that, for the most part, there are options in game that allow you to go fight old content at it's original intended difficulty. It's amazing to say 'Oh yeah, my friends and I went and fought Garuda with minimum item level and no echo', because that means you restricted yourself to as close as you could to what would have been available at that time. This doesn't even go into mentioning that you'd lose out on the Faux Hallows system they put in, where they bring back old bosses at the current level cap for players to work against.

I will say that with all this, Yoshi-P and his devs aren't afraid to shake things up and move things around to make classes feel better. Endwalker moved the system that Monks had for their chi down to the 30s where they were something you originally got at the 50s, so they're willing to experiment and see what works. Hell, I think 6.1 they even said some abilities are moving down a few levels to make it flow better for classes.

Overall, i feel the removal of spells may feel bad occasionally, but it's the right system for FF14.

Thanks for great insight, as a FF tourist I'm not really up to date what's really going on.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This could be a game changer in my opinion

It would be, and should be a standard feature across the themepark MMO genre. Sadly, great features don't seem to become standardized. It has been 5 years since GW2's award winning mount system released - the best iteration of mounts in any game, ever - and still no one else has adopted it.

Would you eschew balance?

"Balance"? This is supposed to be a casual JRPG, not a hyper competitive game revolving around world first raiding or esports PvP.

Overall, i feel the removal of spells may feel bad occasionally, but it's the right system for FF14.

The right system is the one that is fun. Job gameplay loops are designed around how they play at level cap. Jobs don't feel good to play unless you are at level cap... in a game where there is only a small handful of content you're going to be doing at level cap (the raid you do for 1 hour once a week, or maybe running an extreme trial for the first few weeks trying to farm for glamours, and that's it), while the vast majority of the game you're going to be playing is not at level cap (be it questing through a zone, or being scaled down while doing a roulette). That's not fun. The game should be fun to play at any level.

As a customer I'm allowed to dreaming big, and it's is always better to dream and ask for more than just being forced to enjoy eating scraps. This smug developer attitude applies to gaming industry in general at this day of age.

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Thanks for great insight, as a FF tourist I'm not really up to date what's really going on.

Yoshida is pretty notorious for saying "sorry, we can't do this. It would be too hard/expensive/would break the engine", and then turning around and implementing that thing later.

[neik]

Thanks, Val. Quality posting like always.

[MsSideEye]

It would be, and should be a standard feature across the themepark MMO genre. Sadly, great features don't seem to become standardized. It has been 5 years since GW2's award winning mount system released - the best iteration of mounts in any game, ever - and still no one else has adopted it.

Except in some games there's absolutely no place for it and, for others, it would require going in and redeveloping the entire thing from the ground up and that's not feasible for most games. Not only that, but I frankly find 14s mount system better. There's no 'ok, which one has water walking and which one is better on walls' stuff I've got to recall or know. It's 'Oh hey, I like this music, let me jam on it while I fly in the air on a giant metal bug or multicolored bird'. Just because something is award winning doesn't make it right choice for every game out there.

"Balance"? This is supposed to be a casual JRPG, not a hyper competitive game revolving around world first raiding or esports PvP.

Even causal games require some balance, because a game that requires no effort and is something that you can just turn god mod on can get boring real fast. And even if 14 isn't the same level of competitive 'challenging' that other games can be, that doesn't mean there's no skill required. Even Pokemon has balance (Not the best, but it does have it) and that's about as casual as casual can be.

The right system is the one that is fun. Job gameplay loops are designed around how they play at level cap. Jobs don't feel good to play unless you are at level cap... in a game where there is only a small handful of content you're going to be doing at level cap (the raid you do for 1 hour once a week, or maybe running an extreme trial for the first few weeks trying to farm for glamours, and that's it), while the vast majority of the game you're going to be playing is not at level cap (be it questing through a zone, or being scaled down while doing a roulette). That's not fun. The game should be fun to play at any level.

And this is where I'd have to completely disagree with you and I feel this is a distinctly WoW mindset, where 'Uhg, the game can't be fun unless I have ALL my buttons'. While yes, I've already pointed out in my previous post that there are some classes that for me personally DO suffer by not having certain skills that feel central to the class at lower levels, FF14 by it's design is made for you to do things as YOU want to play. The roulette are there for those who want the option of being a little more efficient in your experience gain by promising rewards while at the same time keeping the rest of the game populated enough so that everyone can enjoy, end game raiders and newcombers alike.

I've yet to see any other game, especially in the MMO side of things, keep it's old content as relevant as 14 does and that includes GW2.

Yoshida is pretty notorious for saying "sorry, we can't do this. It would be too hard/expensive/would break the engine", and then turning around and implementing that thing later.

Yoshi-P also says that because he never wants to go out and say 'We're doing a thing' only to disappoint players later on because it wasn't feasible to do. And in some of those cases? To do the stuff they did required the developers doing it in their own time.

Look at Flying in ARR content. That was NEVER something that the devs there had the money or ability to do while on the job. It legitimately took a bunch of the devs developing it in their own personal time to bring it to us, and that was because it was something they knew players had been wanting for ages.

Yoshida never, ever wants to make his players unhappy. And he knows that by saying 'Hey, we'll do this' to people means they're going to be expecting it, and will only get angry and upset when it doesn't show up or appear for an extended period of time. It's better to wait until you can guarantee something is going to happen and then surprise players with the change that took who knows how much time to implement then say 'Hey, we're going to be completely changing how Dark Knight works, see you next year when we actually implement it'.

[The Casualty]

"Balance"? This is supposed to be a casual JRPG, not a hyper competitive game revolving around world first raiding or esports PvP.

Balance does not have to refer to a hyper optimization, but all my previous points stand. You either have a situation where its an even more faceroll than it is now where new players struggle to find their place or to at the very least feel like their contribution is somewhat relevant to the party, or where you have adjusted potency of a full kit to match the potency per second of lower level classes, which ultimately feels real crappy, and still doesn't address things like invuln abilities or things like oGCDs on healer which fundamentally shift how the class is played. I never asked for super serious parity between leveling jobs while leveling, but the school of thought that it doesn't matter because the game is not an esport (as if balance can't exist outside of that), it significantly waters down the already easy experience.

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As a customer I'm allowed to dreaming big, and it's is always better to dream and ask for more than just being forced to enjoy eating scraps. This smug developer attitude applies to gaming industry in general at this day of age.

For sure, dream big, but this is far from the first time this has been brought up, and the discussion always seems to die right around the "how". Mathematics aside, I'm just curious how, even on a high level, it would work without making the situation worse.

[Swnem]

I mean... i would like it, yes.

But, i understand they do it cause of new players.

[Yarathir]

Would be great.

Just give people the ability to opt in. They can choose whether they want to lose their abilities and have only the abilities of that level, or have their full rotation- but their damage output will be functionally the same.

For me, it's very jarring to be put back into a 50 dungeon and lose half or more of my abilities.

[Myradin]

Isn't the GW2 scaling system effectively the wow one?

[Caprias]

"Balance"? This is supposed to be a casual JRPG, not a hyper competitive game revolving around world first raiding or esports PvP.

I don't get this smoothbrain take.

A basic amount of balancing is important for everyone and for shit to stay fun, in fact your casual player will be the first one to feel the repercussions of bad balancing and be among the first to complain, this has happend so many times in mmorpg history I just can't believe people still think this.

In fact the oh so antagonized hardcore crowd are the guys loving bad balanced stuff because guess what? They know the best on how to exploit it. (Tbf. probably not in this specific case)

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In fact I just thought of some specific cases to just show you and the OP how bad this would be.

Imagine Warriors scaling down to ARR content pulling ALL of the dungeon and not giving a single fuck, doing it all alone thanks to bloodwhetting and their offensive+defensive cooldowns, must be hella fun for the sprout healer.

Or the Gunbreaker Instant deleting packs with no mercy+double down, I'd personally smirk like I've biten into a lemon. once.... idk. about those sprout dd's though.

Same for any dd's with all the later on AoE upgrades, ARR/HW dungeons are already anticlimactically fast for the newbies but this would take shit to another level.

Like... idk. man, this takes 5 minutes of thinking why this is probably a bad idea.

[shadowmatrix]

Isn't the GW2 scaling system effectively the wow one?

GW 2 scales players to match the area while WOW scales the area to match the player up to a level limit. Haven't played GW 2 in a few years so it might have changed.

[eschatological]

I've been leveling alts since January. Didn't notice it on my main job in December (because I went 1-90 on it before touching alts), but low level in FFXIV just feels awful, man. Like, somehow worse than WoW awful at low levels. And then around 70, it just gets crazy. I was not prepared for how complex some jobs get around 60-70, but that I don't mind, cause I can get used to that.

What grinds my gears is that the most efficient way to level is GC squadron dungeons from like 20-50 if you're DPS, which is already clunky as shit cause you have to control the shit AI on the squadrons, but also sucks ass for your own personal playstyle.

Hell, even doing level 50 Main Scenario queues (RIP in pieces) kinda suck because most jobs are super incomplete even at 50, which is the end of a whole expansion. As a monk, you don't get nadis til I believe 70-something, which is literally like the whole point of Perfect Balance, an ability you get some 30 levels earlier.

[dope_danny]

Its nice for the individual on paper but you have to remember this is a multiplayer game. You could throw a beginner healer in with tanks and dps doing shit designed for level 90 content and they are no longer being eased into the role but being thrown in headfirst and either doing very little as experienced players use a toolkit dungeons were never designed for to cheese so many mechanics or struggling to understand whats going on.

Like imagine you have played FFXIV for like 4 hours and you get into Sastasha and you have a Paladin, Bard and Summoner all doing their level 90 toolkit. Its the dungeon meant to teach you how to do you role and now its a visual nightmare because those beginner players aren't going to know you can turn down spell effects yet let alone what those skills are doing.

You gotta remember the scaling down is to keep our endgame tome farming varied but also to pad queues for lowbies and keep those dungeons populated, its not a game designed just for the max level.

[Gibblewink]

I can see how it feels bad to loose all the max level toys, but allowing their retention would mean a fundamental change in dungeon play in FFXIV: Low level players would become a liability.

Getting a low level tank or healer means the run would be a lot slower because they simply do not have the tools available.

And while you could give all DPS an AoE at 15 to make up for that particular shortcoming, it also faces the issue of whether you want throughput balance between the synched and at-level players. If there is to be balance it means that the whole 90 DRG kit in Sastasha would do no more damage to a boss than the level 19 LNC 1-2-1-2 stabby-stabby, and that I suspect would feel crap as well. Eschew balance and characters below cap are slowing down the clear considerably and I fear that would cause friction.

I understand the bad feeling of loosing your kit, but the consequences of retaining it could (and likely would) be worse.

[NineSpine]

These two games work so wildly differently in terms of gaining abilities that this comparison is totally off. GW2 is all about having lots of build options and tons of horizontal build progression. FF14 has neither of those things.

[neik]

Thanks gamers for chipping in with your opinions and insights. My point is that developers should at least start doing something rather than nothing, because currently high level player experience in playing low level roulette is truly debilitating.

While the notion of bonding with new players is a good idea. As a max level character I'm still not convinced to commit to leveling roulette, because I'm not interested in a criple gameplay, it's just as simple as that.

Any stubborn developer should meet the players at least in a half way, it's a good rule of thumb.

[Myradin]

Thanks gamers for chipping in with your opinions and insights. My point is that developers should at least start doing something rather than nothing, because currently high level player experience in playing low level roulette is truly debilitating.

While the notion of bonding with new players is a good idea. As a max level character I'm still not convinced to commit to leveling roulette, because I'm not interested in a criple gameplay, it's just as simple as that.

Any stubborn developer should meet the players at least in a half way, it's a good rule of thumb.

The halfway is you dont have to do leveling roulette with your max level character. You can cap the latest tome just doing expert roulette a few times each week.

[NineSpine]

Thanks gamers for chipping in with your opinions and insights. My point is that developers should at least start doing something rather than nothing, because currently high level player experience in playing low level roulette is truly debilitating.

While the notion of bonding with new players is a good idea. As a max level character I'm still not convinced to commit to leveling roulette, because I'm not interested in a criple gameplay, it's just as simple as that.

Any stubborn developer should meet the players at least in a half way, it's a good rule of thumb.

They already did meet you halfway. That old content is not required.