Level Sync - Your opinions?

[Plan-of-Exit]

Ok, it has been a few weeks now of people playing level sync and we should all be well versed in its positives and negatives.

 

Any opinions as of late?

 

Mine is that it should be optional except in a few chosen spots - where it should be mandatory. It should be mandatory in pvp designated spots (tatt), and I believe it should be mandatory in the heroic areas (to keep the same system and not allow a 65 character to barrel through all the lowbie heroics for great rewards).

[LordFell]

Level sync is necessary for the regions where we gain our new companions on the pre-expansion planets.

 

...it actually solves other problems as well. No longer can a max level, raid geared character wander over to a Lowbie planet and massacre all the quest givers, or gank flagged lowbies. Another thing... previously, all the Guards on those lower level planets were level 60 Champs. Leading to the question "why am I the only one who can do this heroic thing, when that guard over their could solo the planet???" Now, the guards are the same level as sync'd players.

[Kiesu]

I like it and see zero issues with it on planets ++ would play again.

 

The only thing it doesnt seem to be ideal for is tactical flashpoints, as apparently 4 low lvl dps quing for Korriban will get raepd on trash without defensive abilities or healy boxes. Absolutely nothing wrong with world sync though.

[Muljo_Stpho]

I was just looking over character and companion stats a bit last night and noticed something on the subject of the "overpowered companions" debate.

 

Presence is irrelevant now. Summoning a companion with rank 1 influence vs summoning a companion with rank 10 influence, there was no difference between them. There was no sign of the boost that the rank 10 should have been getting from the extra presence I gain with that one out. There was nothing in the mouseover tooltips for the companion's endurance, health, bonus damage, or bonus healing mentioning that any portion of what they had was coming from presence. So any issues that might exist with companions is entirely due to something in the new system for automatic stat allocation, not presence.

 

And it is certainly possible that there could be something wonky going on with that. The companion I was looking at was stated as having mastery and endurance both set to around 5500 points as the base values with no bonuses, while my character's mastery and endurance were both closer to around 3500 or so (around 500-600 base values and then the rest is all listed as a bonus and it's the sum of the stats on my gear). This was at 65 with a character that was mostly in 178s from Yavin (just leveled 58-65 on Rishi/Yavin with that one, haven't run Ziost with this one yet). I'll have to look again with my character that has been through KotFE and has a mix of 190 and 208 stuff to see how wide that gap is with something closer to being geared for 65. I don't expect that full 208s or better would come close to closing that gap though, and that does seem questionable. There are also the observations that people have made about how companions have zero armor rating and zero damage reduction when you're affected by level sync, as well as companions set to tank role having no shield chance or percentage to absorb under any sync conditions. (So all that excess health that they have compared to player characters just melts away when faced with any real pressure since they can't mitigate the damage that well.)

 

Anyway, as for level sync? As I expected while so many were whining endlessly about it since they heard the first rumors about it, it really wasn't that big a deal for the most part.

 

I do think it's weird that it's universally applied planet-wide rather than being region-specific. I think it's kind of dumb that they rescaled bonus series / dread seed / etc. down to regular leveling ranges instead of selectively applying different syncs as buffs that appear / disappear as you wander (like we see with debuffs for exhaustion zones and fires and toxic lakes). But whatever.

 

I hear that this has created a major facepalm worthy moment with the end of class story chapter 3 final boss fight for the Sith Warrior since you go back to Korriban for the fight and this means that it's been scaled down and synced down to level 12, turning the boss into a total pushover instead of being the (from my personal experience with the 8 class stories) single toughest boss fight of them all by a large margin. Because the downscaling of the boss's level means that it has fewer abilities / doesn't use all of its abilities / doesn't use them as effectively, which kills the intended fight mechanics. That is something that probably should have been avoided somehow. Like maybe change that chamber into a totally separate map that we load into so that it can be synced to 50? Load screens may not be fun, but seriously. Situations like that, where we're going back to an old planet for class story (or even companion story) content, probably ought to be synced to their originally intended level instead of lowering them to the planet's level.

 

But where content like planetary heroics are concerned, people definitely overestimated the impact of level sync on our ability to go back and solo lower leveled group content. We've still got our high level abilities of course, meaning that compared to characters actually at the lower level we've got more tools to deal with our enemies and we've got better passives enhancing the tools at our disposal. They made it clear that that would be the case. What wasn't so clear before 4.0 went live, we know now that the sync treats our damage as if we've got a lower rating barrel/hilt equipped and that mastery, endurance, and power get cut down while all other equipped stats go untouched. So our health and damage are effectively cut down to be comparable to a character that's actually at that low level but if we've got a lot of crit / accuracy / alacrity / defense / shield / absorb equipped (which we will if we're geared for our actual level) then we're getting a benefit there that a character at that lower level for real would not have access to (at least not to anywhere near the same magnitude).

[Malox]

This subject has been beaten to death. It's here to stay so let a dead dog lie

[ImmortalLowlife]

I didn't think I'd like it at first. After playing with it (using different characters, with different ACs, & various levels) I find that I barely notice it. It hasn't changed my play style at all. I wanted to hate it, but I honestly still do everything I did before 4.0.

[JumperPenn]

Level sync is necessary for the regions where we gain our new companions on the pre-expansion planets.

 

...it actually solves other problems as well. No longer can a max level, raid geared character wander over to a Lowbie planet and massacre all the quest givers, or gank flagged lowbies. Another thing... previously, all the Guards on those lower level planets were level 60 Champs. Leading to the question "why am I the only one who can do this heroic thing, when that guard over their could solo the planet???" Now, the guards are the same level as sync'd players.

 

Incorrect.

 

A max level raid or pvp geared character massacring the quest givers was really only a thing when any idiot could do it and that was when BW forgot to upgrade the guards at the bases on shared worlds. Outside of that I've never seen it happen they just don't live long enough. I'll freely admit I don't know how it might have changed with planetary conquest where they want you to take a group to kill the base commanders at the entrance. I ran those several times and I don't see it being a problem.

 

If you are talking about the latest exploit that's an issue where once again BW screwed up allowing cross faction travel to lowbie starting planets that shouldn't have even happened.

 

If you're wondering 'why am I the only one who can do this' you should stop playing because that's the game. You are constantly running into incompetent people who can't do anything and only you can do it, except the dozen people talking to that mission giver at the same time or the half dozen running around doing the mission the same time you are.

 

 

As for my opinion of level sync I'm against it because cheapens my work to get to max level. I'll admit I like I can go back to do grey missions I would have ignored till my log got full or I felt like clearing them out as the only missions I abandon are heroics/weekly/daily (ones I can do again later). But at some point I'll hit 65 and won't gain xp and I'm sure I'll still have stuff in my log that I've 'overleveled' but still have to deal with local mobs and knockback and stuns that are just timewasters.

 

Level sync to me is the biggest violator of why I canceled my sub but it isn't the only one. Crafting changes are part of it, no new ops and the less than great ops and how they were handled in the last patch are another, changes to companions another, etc. KOTFE story/experience (so far on one character) I think is great, but the changes overall to the game don't warrant or need me to subscribe. I have a timecard I bought on sale and will use it for the next chapter 'burst' if not the one after that assuming that happens. There is just no need to keep paying a monthly sub with what I do, what is here and what is being offered.

 

Level sync and overpowered companions diminish my heroic feeling which is what this game tried to sell us on as part of our SW experience in addition to story. Now my story is a generic one where I stare at my back saying nothing and am called commander while my companions are so OP they can heal/tank/dps with me standing there like 'hey guys can I play?'. That's inbetween grinding old heroics with everyone else wasting time because I'm level synced and grinding old content is 'new content'.

 

For KOTFE story I love my companions are OP(like I set it on toddler easy level) and I have no concern over dying etc, but it is a complete disconnect from the game I started beta testing in 2011.

Edited November 7, 2015 by JumperPenn