Why was level Syncing implemented? Serious question.

[VarnieTsk]

This is a serious question that maybe some here can enlighten me on. I left before the first expansion so I was not here when it was implemented and have no clue what was going on in the game that prompted it.

 

So, what exactly was going on in the game that was so detrimental to the game that they felt the need to do level syncing? ..........(edited out level *capping* for clarity. Not talking about the end-game level cap)...........

 

What problems were happening that this supposedly solved? What exactly was supposedly accomplished?

 

I ask because as far as I can see since I've been back, it has completely ruined the experience I was expecting when I decided to return.

 

So maybe someone can enlighten me as to how the game is better with it.

Edited November 25, 2019 by VarnieTsk

[Gelious]

What happened is this game has nowhere near enough new max level content for people to play. So in order to give people something to do it sends them to do old content. But when you do content that is far below your level you just one-shot everything and don't get any exp. Cue the level sync, so you dont one-shot everything and actually get more exp.

 

As for the level lock at 70... that's new, it only happened with the latest expansion when they raised the cap to 75. I am assuming devs just can't be bothered to update all existing content from 70 to 75 and instead downgraded the player cause it was simplier for them.

 

So basically devs got no resources to make new content and can only make old content less old.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Gelious

[Lhancelot]

What are they supposed to do, have limitless levels? I am confused.

 

Obviously they have to have level caps to keep abilities and skills from rendering the content useless. Every game I know of has a level cap. They only raised it from 70 to 75 btw.

[Gelious]

What are they supposed to do, have limitless levels? I am confused.

 

Obviously they have to have level caps to keep abilities and skills from rendering the content useless. Every game I know of has a level cap. They only raised it from 70 to 75 btw.

 

She obviously wasn't asking about the natural cap on player's level, come on.

[VarnieTsk]

Well, maybe my terminology is incorrect. I've only just returned, and have no characters anywhere near 70 so when I say *capped* I'm referring to on the lower planets where you're over level and so no amount of equipment upgrades, or stims, or buffs, or anything else makes any difference and in fact your stats go down in many cases rather than up.

 

What I'm interested in knowing, and the reason for this thread, is the history of what was happening that prompted implementing it in the first place. Not interested in what *could* happen if we didn't have it.

Edited November 25, 2019 by VarnieTsk

[Gelious]

Well, maybe my terminology is incorrect. I've only just returned, and have no characters anywhere near 70 so when I say *capped* I'm referring to on the lower planets where you're over level and so no amount of equipment upgrades, or stims, or buffs, or anything else makes any difference and in fact your stats go down in many cases rather than up.

 

That's because when you are max level you are expected to return to those planets to do Heroics for credits and crates. Only level sync dont care what your actual level is, only that it's higher then the level Bioware set for the planet.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Gelious

[Tsillah]

Seems to me that they only did half of what they intended to do since they were supposed to go back to their original levels and not all at 70. It's probably less work for them than upping all ops to the new level cap each time. That's what I think most of all. It also avoids new bugs if you can just leave them as they were and not mess with the fights themseslves.

 

Of course people got a scare at first but get 306 gear and the veteran's edge to 30 and you burn through those opses like no tomorrow. That's been my experience the last two weeks anyway. It only goes awry with old level 70 content that's not instance because then you don't have the veteren's edge buff. That's why the Ossus WBs are a lot harder than before but DP in SM is embarrassingly easy.

 

But bottom line is that it's less work for them and fewer chances of creating new bugs if they leave content as it is and just adjust the player stats to keep the content active for max level.

 

However, as people have noticed it does make level 75 gearing a bit crappy because of how the level lock works and there's very little content where your actual level 75 stats really work. It's the new ops essentially and ops are a bit screwed anyways because they give no rewards that anyone really cares about because you can already get those in FPs and other places that are quicker.

 

The theory if this idea is not bad but the implementation leaves much to be desired I think and it's a shame.

[phalczen]

you're over level and so no amount of equipment upgrades, or stims, or buffs, or anything else makes any difference and in fact your stats go down in many cases rather than up.

 

So this isn't true, just for clarification. Your tertiary stats, which include all the tanking stats as well as accuracy, alacrity, and critical ratings, are not synced down. They are retained, which means that a level 75 player, with say 2500 critical rating, will have more critical chance and critical multiplier (which used to be known as Surge and was a separate stat) will be able to do more damage than a level 40 player even if both are level synced down to, say, 25.

 

Furthermore, 6.0 introduced new level scaling tech, so that when you are at maximum level 75, you get stacks of a buff called "Veteran's Edge" which depends on how much higher your average item rating for all gear slots is, above the baseline of 270. This buff directly affects and increases the Endurance, Mastery, and Power caps set by the level lock/level sync. It does bug sometimes, in that it doesn't show up unless you take off and then re-equip any piece of gear, but, just like your tertiary stats, it does allow you to go over the natural level caps and thus makes a difference.

 

If you have a set bonus, something you may have on your level 50 tionese/columi/rakata gear if you have it from 1.x, it will still work until you are level 75. And there are new set bonuses to acquire at level 75. The set bonuses are part of your gear and they still work even in level locked/level synced areas.

 

So, that's three ways right there that your equipment does still matter. You're right about some buffs, but any buff that affects a tertiary stat will still work just fine.

 

I'm pretty sure Presence isn't level synced down either, which means your companion is more powerful the better your presence is no matter what planet you are on.

 

Finally, higher level characters have access to utilities and sometimes even whole abilities that are more powerful than lower level characters even of the same class.

 

Therefore, even in level sync'ed content, things still matter.

Edited November 25, 2019 by phalczen

[Tsillah]

So this isn't true, just for clarification. Your tertiary stats, which include all the tanking stats as well as accuracy, alacrity, and critical ratings, are not synced down. They are retained, which means that a level 75 player, with say 2500 critical rating, will have more critical chance and critical multiplier (which used to be known as Surge and was a separate stat) will be able to do more damage than a level 40 player even if both are level synced down to, say, 25.

 

Furthermore, 6.0 introduced new level scaling tech, so that when you are at maximum level 75, you get stacks of a buff called "Veteran's Edge" which depends on how much higher your average item rating for all gear slots is, above the baseline of 270. This buff directly affects and increases the Endurance, Mastery, and Power caps set by the level lock/level sync. It does bug sometimes, in that it doesn't show up unless you take off and then re-equip any piece of gear, but, just like your tertiary stats, it does allow you to go over the natural level caps and thus makes a difference.

 

If you have a set bonus, something you may have on your level 50 tionese/columi/rakata gear if you have it from 1.x, it will still work until you are level 75. And there are new set bonuses to acquire at level 75. The set bonuses are part of your gear and they still work even in level locked/level synced areas.

 

So, that's three ways right there that your equipment does still matter. You're right about some buffs, but any buff that affects a tertiary stat will still work just fine.

 

I'm pretty sure Presence isn't level synced down either, which means your companion is more powerful the better your presence is no matter what planet you are on.

 

Finally, higher level characters have access to utilities and sometimes even whole abilities that are more powerful than lower level characters even of the same class.

 

Therefore, even in level sync'ed content, things still matter.

They matter but they made the thresholds higher for those tertiary stats so you have to get more than before to get the same effect.

 

What makes more difference than anything is the veteran's edge buff. And because the stats like endurance, master, power are reduced it also makes certain relics less effective in that content but not in the level 75 content, I mean the one ops and one FP. So if you really want to go for harder modes for the heck of it (cause rewards aren't really worth it as they are essentially the same) then you have to gear at least a little differently for the level 75 stuff and level 70 stuff which is less than ideal.

 

So you're right about the stats by itself but there are some additional issues and as I said above the veteran's edge buff doesn't work everywhere for level 70 content which is another issue.

[VarnieTsk]

So this isn't true, just for clarification. Your tertiary stats, which include all the tanking stats as well as accuracy, alacrity, and critical ratings, are not synced down. They are retained, which means that a level 75 player, with say 2500 critical rating, will have more critical chance and critical multiplier (which used to be known as Surge and was a separate stat) will be able to do more damage than a level 40 player even if both are level synced down to, say, 25.

 

Furthermore, 6.0 introduced new level scaling tech, so that when you are at maximum level 75, you get stacks of a buff called "Veteran's Edge" which depends on how much higher your average item rating for all gear slots is, above the baseline of 270. This buff directly affects and increases the Endurance, Mastery, and Power caps set by the level lock/level sync. It does bug sometimes, in that it doesn't show up unless you take off and then re-equip any piece of gear, but, just like your tertiary stats, it does allow you to go over the natural level caps and thus makes a difference.

 

If you have a set bonus, something you may have on your level 50 tionese/columi/rakata gear if you have it from 1.x, it will still work until you are level 75. And there are new set bonuses to acquire at level 75. The set bonuses are part of your gear and they still work even in level locked/level synced areas.

 

So, that's three ways right there that your equipment does still matter. You're right about some buffs, but any buff that affects a tertiary stat will still work just fine.

 

I'm pretty sure Presence isn't level synced down either, which means your companion is more powerful the better your presence is no matter what planet you are on.

 

Finally, higher level characters have access to utilities and sometimes even whole abilities that are more powerful than lower level characters even of the same class.

 

Therefore, even in level sync'ed content, things still matter.

 

Bear in mind, as I said, I have no character that has made it past Belsavis (before I'm so disgusted with my increasing ineffectiveness as I level). Highest character is 49. All my, gear is from drops going through the class story and quests. No sets of anything. No bells & whistles on any character. In effect, it's the newb experience even though I did play back at launch, so I think I can speak for at least a few newbs who tried this game and didn't stick around.

 

If I'm understanding everyone correctly, it seems pretty clear that everything got balanced around end-game, even the supposed newb planets, and not for people just starting out. And here I was thinking that the whole syncing business was put in to solve some problem or something. lol.

[sayNih]

What problems were happening that this supposedly solved? What exactly was supposedly accomplished?

 

Low-level players were complaining about competition from end-gamers.

 

A low-level player would ask his end-game friend to help him level faster. They would group and run content. The end-gamer would do so much more damage, his leveling friend would get no EXP from mobs, and would level slower.

[TUXs]

This is a serious question that maybe some here can enlighten me on. I left before the first expansion so I was not here when it was implemented and have no clue what was going on in the game that prompted it.

 

So, what exactly was going on in the game that was so detrimental to the game that they felt the need to do level syncing? ..........(edited out level *capping* for clarity. Not talking about the end-game level cap)...........

 

What problems were happening that this supposedly solved? What exactly was supposedly accomplished?

 

I ask because as far as I can see since I've been back, it has completely ruined the experience I was expecting when I decided to return.

 

So maybe someone can enlighten me as to how the game is better with it.

Because 99% of the games content became trivial, at best, because of the leveling system. Only the most current operation was a challenge.

[Transcendent]

Because 99% of the games content became trivial, at best, because of the leveling system. Only the most current operation was a challenge.

 

Oh that's not true. I mean the community were seeing which operations we could 2 man prior to level sync... some were more than challenging like that

[Rolodome]

I don't know what their given reason was at the time (if they gave one at all) but generally speaking about video game design in MMORPGs, level sync enables you to take content that becomes dull and empty when people level significantly past it and turn it into something that is close to their current level of power. This in turn allows you to tie level-relevant rewards to the content that are persistently relevant, no matter how high level people get, without creating a scenario where people go to the level 20 zone and farm mobs there for level-relevant rewards and one-shot them all day, while being incapable of taking damage.

 

In other words, it becomes a question of, "Do people get nothing useful from repeating this content when they are overleveled? Or do we level them down to make the difficulty of it more in line with their current level and give them useful rewards from repeating it?"

 

Problems can arise though, when level sync becomes something that is so imbalanced in its design, that it makes you significantly weaker than you probably should be to handle the given content. The result being that instead of feeling like you're getting a level-appropriate difficulty for repeating rewards, you can feel like you're getting an out-of-place higher difficulty for repeating rewards. Which can kill the enjoyment and/or accessibility of doing the old, repeat content and defeat the point of level sync.

[DawnAskham]

General reason - to increase the amount of 'relevant' content.

 

Specific reason - in 4.0, they did not create any operations or flashpoints, so by scaling everything, they were able to recycle all the old flashpoints and operations as relevant end game content. They also recycled all the old planetary heroics as repeatable level cap content by scaling players down on all the planets.

[phalczen]

A low-level player would ask his end-game friend to help him level faster. They would group and run content. The end-gamer would do so much more damage, his leveling friend would get no EXP from mobs, and would level slower.

 

I think this played a role in the motivation. But remember that Level Sync was introduced with 4.0 KOTFE. So, I also think that the trivialization of NiM mode ops by being 5-10 levels above was a concern. I also think they needed a way to make planetary heroics somewhat challenging, since companion effectiveness was getting, and people were going to be repeating the heroics for alliance supply crates.

 

What makes more difference than anything is the veteran's edge buff. And because the stats like endurance, master, power are reduced it also makes certain relics less effective in that content but not in the level 75 content, I mean the one ops and one FP. So if you really want to go for harder modes for the heck of it (cause rewards aren't really worth it as they are essentially the same) then you have to gear at least a little differently for the level 75 stuff and level 70 stuff which is less than ideal.

 

But that's not unique to this implementation. Devastating Vengeance and Relic of the Eternal Combatant (from the Arcann fight KOTFE Ch. 16) were always BiS over FR/SA for level synced content. And I've noticed that the clicky relics were beefed up quite a bit for this expansion. I know I haven't done the math, and the alacrity rating clicky Relic (Primeval Fatesealer) still isn't enough to break the 1.1s GCD on most classes, but for cast-heavy classes it might just be interesting enough. The 306 rating one gives 2270 rating, if i recall correctly, which if you have 2355 alacrity rating can give you 30 seconds of a 1.2s GCD, enough for 3 more GCDs during that window. For scoundrels/operatives it might be helpful, since Pugnacity/Stim Boost only gives 10% alacrity percentage. At any rate, I've been playing around with Ephemeral Mending which has been inferior to either SA or FR since, well, 3.x, to see how that performs, especially since I'm running less alacrity now on my sage than previously for force management reasons.

 

Anyway, a little off-topic. But back on-topic:

Bear in mind, as I said, I have no character that has made it past Belsavis (before I'm so disgusted with my increasing ineffectiveness as I level). Highest character is 49. All my, gear is from drops going through the class story and quests. No sets of anything. No bells & whistles on any character. In effect, it's the newb experience even though I did play back at launch, so I think I can speak for at least a few newbs who tried this game and didn't stick around.

 

If I'm understanding everyone correctly, it seems pretty clear that everything got balanced around end-game, even the supposed newb planets, and not for people just starting out. And here I was thinking that the whole syncing business was put in to solve some problem or something. lol.

 

Again, a little incorrect. The experience reward for the main class story and the planet-based story arcs were greatly increased for precisely the goal of making it easier for new players to progress through the story. They added new purple mission designations over quest-givers to distinguish the main story from side missions. They removed the requirement of companions to have their own gear, making their stats based on their influence rank ... These were all changes to make the new player experience better.

[Tsillah]

But that's not unique to this implementation. Devastating Vengeance and Relic of the Eternal Combatant (from the Arcann fight KOTFE Ch. 16) were always BiS over FR/SA for level synced content. And I've noticed that the clicky relics were beefed up quite a bit for this expansion. I know I haven't done the math, and the alacrity rating clicky Relic (Primeval Fatesealer) still isn't enough to break the 1.1s GCD on most classes, but for cast-heavy classes it might just be interesting enough. The 306 rating one gives 2270 rating, if i recall correctly, which if you have 2355 alacrity rating can give you 30 seconds of a 1.2s GCD, enough for 3 more GCDs during that window. For scoundrels/operatives it might be helpful, since Pugnacity/Stim Boost only gives 10% alacrity percentage. At any rate, I've been playing around with Ephemeral Mending which has been inferior to either SA or FR since, well, 3.x, to see how that performs, especially since I'm running less alacrity now on my sage than previously for force management reasons.

I've been away for a year and a half or so and the last I knew was that everyone was still running SA and FR relics. However, in 5.0 we had level sync for lower level content where it didn't really matter but all endgame was raised to level 70. So that's why nobody cared about running anything else but SA and FR. Now we have a split where most ops and FPs are level locked, which is not the same as level sync as far as I understand it and you have one new Op and FP that is level 75 content.

 

They brought in veteran's edge to offset the loss of primary stats it seems but that makes you start at the low end where people really struggle (hence the complaints at the start of 6.0) but once at r30 you are totally OP for SM content, including Operations. It's to the point where groups can break boss fight mechanics now. That's very similar to in the past Ops not being raised to max level (pre 4.o) and people obliterating them but also not getting good rating rewards for the new level cap.

 

The irony is that they might as well have left them at level 70 and let people obliterate them because veteran's edge 30 comes quickly and you can do it just the same. Which again goes to the point of why and this then brings me back to a poor implementation because I don't think it has the effect it should have.

 

In the end I haven't tried those older ops in HM/NiM yet but also not sure why I would. I've done them many times. Have most of the achievements (save some 16 man ones but whatever) and there is no better loot to get there. So I really struggle to understand what their vision was on this because in its current state I can't make a whole lot of sense out of it.

[merovejec]

As the people already said, there was just not enough content. Imagine that by the time you were level 60 there were still level 50 operations where if you entered you could have 1-2 manned the operation as you werent receiving any damage from bosses (it was all resist/miss).

 

This is not WoW, there is not much to do at endgame, its still the same flashpoints, operations etc. In order to make the game content still relevant they introduced level sync and also scaled the operations. Like it was mentioned however, they synced the players, but didnt adapt the rewards in the content. So for example the World bosses drop near to nothing useful and are again hard to defeat (they were soloable before). If we had soooo much old content like in WoW then this would not be needed. Players always play the newest content and old areas are pretty much dead, but in case of swtor the old areas are still being used.

 

They changed the way heroics worked for example and it was possible to farm credits using them. It would have been too easy without level sync. Would be pretty much pointless if you went to do heroics on dromund kaas as a level 60...... All the other bonus content like HK missions, Macrobinoculars, Seeker droid etc was too easy to do since people were overleveled.

 

So in short, level sync was due to lack of game content. Even now, to get to highest gear rating of 306 you are farming Hammer station flashpoint........

[VarnieTsk]

 

Again, a little incorrect. The experience reward for the main class story and the planet-based story arcs were greatly increased for precisely the goal of making it easier for new players to progress through the story. They added new purple mission designations over quest-givers to distinguish the main story from side missions. They removed the requirement of companions to have their own gear, making their stats based on their influence rank ... These were all changes to make the new player experience better.

 

Ok, maybe they *think* they made it easier for newbs, and yes the xp gain in very fast which in the end only serves to put you way over level without the high level companion, without the high level gear, without the high stats in things that don't get gimped, etc., and yet still sync'd as if you had all that. The reality, in-game, boots-on-the-ground so to speak, *real* newbie experience is something else altogether from what (maybe) they were trying to do. This is not about the high level characters returning to do content. And even for them, it doesn't appear to be balanced either, but that's another subject.

 

People keep saying that it's only the endurance & mastery that's sync'd, and maybe another like power maybe? And keep naming all these (to me) astronomically high numbers of alacrity, crit, etc. The reality for a newb is very, very low numbers on any of those stats if you have any at all. Meanwhile the xp keeps shooting you higher and higher so the only stats you're gaining are getting sync'd so eventually it's zero noticeable gain.

 

What I've seen happening in my case once I started paying attention to it, is that at the very low levels you do get a few drops here and there that actually give you a small amount of stuff like defense, alacrity, crit,. And then you get to (for instance) Hoth or Belsavis with a big whopping 0 to 15ish defense, 0 to 30ish alacrity, 0 to 15ish crit, etc. depending on RNG along the way. Oh and a lvl 15-20ish companion.

 

At that point, say I get lucky and get a drop like I did yesterday with a crit increase of 19, that nearly doubles my crit number BUT it drops my defense to zero because the new piece has no defense stat while the existing one did. May have been alacrity, I forget now. But the point is, that new piece of equipment was not truly an upgrade because at least with the old piece of equipment I had a few numbers in all the stats rather than boosting one and dropping to zero in others. But then if I don't equip it so as to not lose all of one stat, then I don't get the benefit of the increased armor, etc. Soooooo, this happens a few times with a few pieces of equipment, until I end up with zero on all those stats that I had a few piddling pts in to begin with, each one keeps going down down down, while one or more goes up and eventually the only ones going up are the ones that are getting gimped with being sync'd.

 

This is what happens for a new player, at least it's been my experience so far. Meanwhile, the mobs are getting harder and harder and you don't have those 1000s of alacrity, 1000s of crit, 1000s of defense, 1000s of all those things people keep saying isn't sync'd, and assuming everyone has, and so everyone's supposedly equal. Not to mention all the gear and their lvl 50 companions.

 

So I'll say again, and I really don't think I'm wrong on this, they have balanced it all around end-game-level players. *Real* newbies appear to have been left out of the calculations. Whether intentional or not is pretty irrelevant really.

 

Yikes, turning into a wall of text here. I apologize and really hadn't intended on going into a lot of that stuff in this particular thread since I've already grumbled elsewhere. lol. I really did just want to know what happened, historically, to bring about this misguided system in the first place since it wasn't a *thing* when I played all those years ago.

 

 

edit: Also I can see now that there were no incidents or playstyles they were trying to thwart. Apparently it was an attempt to (rightly so) keep the existing player base and give them something to do. I agree that those folks who stuck with it through thick and thin should be accommodated. But I also think, after reading through the many posts on this subject in this thread and elsewhere, that they've been very short sighted and failed to see the impact on the *actual* newbie experience. And as much as it's desirable to keep the core group of existing players, it should be equally desirable to get (and keep) new players. I see tons of people on the starter planets. All running around and appearing to have fun. I have fun on the starter planets as well. Yet as the planets fly by, the populations drop drastically. So either these are mostly *real* newbies who never make it very far, or established players trying to do the whatever is required of them to get a new character up where their others are. Maybe a little of both. *shrugs* Either way, the drastic population drop *seems* to imply a loss of new players, to my mind at least. Just as I doubt I'll ever make it to end game myself because the fun-factor drops off drastically as well.

Edited November 26, 2019 by VarnieTsk
spelling