Attention all players and Devs - 4.0 most complained about new feature. LEVEL SYNC

I have no problem with level sync being optional as long as
A) It is forced on players on PVP servers to give lower-levels a fighting chance in world pvp
B) It is forced on you whenever you group up with a lower-level player outside of an area where that player is bolstered to ensure that you wont be robbing XP from that player

Personally I like lvl sync but I still see it as a failure. What Bioware SHOULD have done is just removed that god-awful resist function. That thing is an affront to gaming and totally pointless. If they had just removed the resist function they could get the best of both worlds: happy high-levels with all their power (minus the stupid invincibility) intact, and low levels who can 2-man group content by grouping with an amazingly strong lvl 65 with massive HP and damage.

Even in world pvp removing the resist function would still work. While lower levels wouldn't be able to stand toe-to-toe with capped players, they could group up in groups of 2, 4, 8, or however many it takes to bring the capped player(s) down. This would make much more sense as players are often required to group up to face enemies too powerful to face alone: Heroic Champions, FP bosses, Ops bosses ect. Plus it would be a great way for capped players to test their powers to the max against other players without having to que for a Warzone and just end up being nerfed anyway in the interest of fairness.

It would also give players like me a look from the other side of the mirror: How the boss (Champion, FP boss, Ops boss) sees us. I've always wondered what it felt like to be an operations boss with so much HP and powerful skills compared to the weaklings opposing me. Personally I think I would enjoy going back to Alderaan, sneaking into House Organa and waiting for a mob of level 28-32's to swarm in like an ops group, ready to try and take me down. I have no doubt battles like that would get more people interested in world pvp and would give high-end players the adrenaline rush and power trip they look for from pvp.

With lower-level players finally having a reason to attack higher-level ones (albeit in a group), higher levels would enjoy the feeling of being so powerful they could take on multiple players by themselves (or with a companion) while they would also be grateful (I would hope) for the opportunity to actually face lower-level players in a "fair fight" with the deck stacked in their favor. Lower-level players (with the resist function active) will never attack a high-level with the intent to win. High levels as well, mostly don't like attacking lower levels because its not a challenge. They know they can't be beaten so whats the point?

Also lets not even talk about how immersive a lack of resist would be. In the real SWU, you are not invincible just because the power difference between you and your opponent is so massive (exhibit A: The power difference between Darth Maul and Obi-Wan in Phantom Menace). If I'm a Sith apprentice and you are a Jedi Master, and I take a swing at you with my lightsaber while you just stand there and let it hit, doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DEFEND YOURSELF then according to SWU physics, my lightsaber is going to make contact with your body and inflict damage. Its not going to simply bounce off of you because you are so much more powerful and/or experienced then me.

Sure if you had a Force shield (like Force Armor or Force Barrier) erected around yourself at the time my attack would be especially ineffective because your knowledge and mastery of the Force would make your shield much stronger than a shield of a lower-level Jedi/Sith. But the fact that you are invincible simply because you are one or two planets ahead of me in your story makes no sense, breaks immersion fantastically, and leaves me with little (if any) motivation to be involved in open-World PVP (RP or not) at any level.

Not to mention the PVE implications. Without resist your gear and skill would be a factor in determining whether or not you can complete a planet (streamlining the leveling process even more for those of us who like that sort of thing) instead of level being the end-all be-all determining factor of whether or not you can progress further. So I guess you could come to the conclusion (Like I have) that Bioware could have avoided all the work of stream-lining the leveling process by modifying XP gains and fiddling with this and that just by doing one...simple...thing: REMOVING THAT DAMN STUPID RESIST FUNCTION! Almost every other MMO I can think of (especially all the newer ones) has no such thing as a resist function. The higher your level the more health and skills you have and the more damage you do. This is much more immersive and realistic than making higher-level players invincible. Wouldn't you agree?

Making our companion's GOD mode is not something i would consider a good thing. It proves my point with YOU'R, MY character is Darth Lord and still your main character is weaker then your companion, what a joke! How can Bioware fail so miserably with this update!?

Greatly dislike level sync. Make it optional or get rid of it.

So does not making it optional, I find this argument invalid, as it can be applied to both sides equally.


This is the only argument I have seen. Frankly having spent all my play time last night doing older content, this just doesn't wash. We are *faster* now, more powerful, *and* the loot is better.

Please give us one concrete, "I went here and couldn't do this" example, so we can have an actual discussion.

Seriously, check the other threads, login and try to do something quickly. Its a face roll. I did the whole Ilum string in about 30 minutes, didn't get knocked off once. I had zero trouble driving around mobs I did not want to kill.

However, I realize that is my personal impression, and not very helpful to this argument. So, here is my concrete example to argue against, even using your vague and hazy example.

Level Sync on: Person you help gets 125,000 XP
Level Sync off: Person you help gets 2000 XP


You named one, and it was more of a generalization than an argument. I saw no examples of content you have trouble with now, issues with gathering nodes, just a general "its not as good" statement.

You say you want a an open and mature discussion, so please, elucidate your concern. My personal experience with lower content is that it is even easier than it was before, so your assertion baffles me.

Post 65 the content is on the existing planets.

For expansion in the future they can design more instances, planets, new areas, and the backstory for them.
Or
Change them game world so they can tell stories in the existing universe

Level Sync effectively allows encounters to be designed without having to spend all that production time and money. They now have a giant area in which to tell stories and publish new chapters with out worrying if the new area will be barren in 4 months when the next bit comes out.

Look at the history:

Makeb
CZ-198
Oricon

Lots of effort went into these places for them to be a ghost town.

The game is about the STORY

1 - Level sync turns the whole game into a medium to tell star wars stories
2 - Level sync turns turns operations and flash points into something that can scale, which means less work for new ones, now hopefully they won't have to "redo" them every time there is a level cap increase.



PVP arguments either way are irrelevant, I agree. Neither side will make a good point here.



There is no challenge. I skipped mobs just as effectively on Makeb, Ilum, Oricon, and Alderaan as I did pre sync.
Clearing an area is easier.

Please tell me what would change if it was switched off. This is a straw man argument I cannot have a response to, as having it on does not make things any more difficult. Please, show me or tell me where you are having difficulty. I can't find anywhere.

The main point is this is a major change that is going to allow more story content to get added. I would hate to see it get screwed up trying to implement some sort of toggle.

It isn't something they did to gimp you; this is made obvious by the fact that everything is still face rolled.

It a MAJOR game change; there are lots of facets other than the number above your head changing.

Where to put them, how to determine difficulty of encounters.

So to summarize that into a reason against a toggle:

Right now, every battle has a baseline. Every player will be within X power, X health, X accuracy etc. As a result, every battle can be incorporated as a STORY element. Anywhere.

As you level , you gain Passive and active abilities ; these never go away, you will always be able to face roll when you are synced.

To enable a toggle, now each encounter has to be set to a certain power level. so WHERE the encounter is, is level dependent. Now there is a lot of game world that is unusable. Which is where we were last week.

So, in a nutshell, the best reason to not have level sync toggle is:

We will get more story. More Content. and previous content will no longer be taken away from us.
The trade off is ... well, nothing, it is easier to float through older content than before.

Its a mechanism, not a punishment. The number beside your portrait literally means nothing as far as fighting mobs. (Until you are talking about higher levels, as you do not sync UP)

At this point I would summarize my argument as "Level Sync is working, allows more content to be published"

So what reason would make the additional work of re coding encounters to be single level again would be worth losing Tython / Belsavis / Hoth / Korriban / Hutta as place we can go back to for fresh story?

To clarify, by re-coding encounters, I mean the additional work that is making sure the high level mobs dont agro under level players, adding terrain features so low levels don't wander in, setting up another loot table for each new bit of story, etc)

I am trying to be ordered and polite, but I am getting tired writing :P

I will probably write a summary post later in this thread that will hopefully be more succinct and getting people to maybe reconsider sync toggling.

Level sync is just bad,dosent matter how long wall of text we read with most eloquent,most intelligent and most "clear"
words.Is not matter of explanation --{BRAIN WASHING}-- how good level sync and new companion system is.
We dont like it and we whant old LEVELING AND COMPANION SYSTEM back.
We need more posts here to BW see this is a big problem and we must force them by writing here to bring back what they teake awey.
Level scaling can be best thing in this world,but a lot of peoples dont like it and prabably start leaving,sooner or later,we fell like lost control of our characters,just leave leveling system alone next work on comanions because is not single player game and now is far too easy.SW after 4.0 dont fit me,i pay for this game and i be spam here on evry occasion to manifest my discontent.

Is my first MMORG, been playing a little over a year. I play solo, took pride in upgrading my characters and companions to be successful at leveling up...spending a lot of time learning to craft and augment...lost all that time, effort and expense with the 4.0 patch. Levelsync sucks too. I am not a happy camper. Looking ... waiting ... hoping for a better game now.

I 100% agree, well said.