Contradictions, Double Standards, Counterintuitive Design

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Originally Posted by Renathras

"or maybe" nothing. On ANY other forum it's not as bad as here, and you're arguing a SUBJECTIVE POSITION. It's a matter of opinion and many of us find what we have fun AND engaging.

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Maybe because... that's an official forum so if feedback has to be given it's probably here more than anywhere else..?
The "If I don't see it it doesn't exists" argument is weak.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

What if I told you...

if they actually designed the healer kits well, nothing's stopping you from spamming Glare and Medica a gazillion times and having "fun" while the rest of us play a game that isn't Cookie Clicker. Just like nothing's stopping Paladin mains from spamming Fast Blade over and over again if they don't want to touch the rest of their rotation.

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I think the biggest problem is that while Sylphies say they just want to play their way, play for fun and aren't evil elitist tryhards ...they actually do care about their performance in a way. They read these posts and don't like that thought at the back of their mind that they're actually perceived as playing badly. They resent it.

However, Sylphies also don't want to put effort in. So instead of learning their job and becoming a better player, they literally want the entire role to be destroyed and simplified to the point where spamming 1 button and Medica II is seen as optimal. Then in their bubble they can imagine they're perceived as a good player without changing their zero effort playstyle.

The Devs cater to this and protect it. Simplification is done so the bad player can feel like a good one, without being asked to play their job well. Even the anti-parser policy plays into this, shielding the bad player from potential proof that they're even playing the simple version badly and making it so other party members have nothing to gauge them on other than "is my health bar full?".

Healer is basically the role SE has assigned to bad players who can't even handle dps, as an easy mode option to carry them through content while making them feel like a piece of the team. Which is why when we come along with logic, threatening to burst that imaginary bubble and asking for change, they aggressively defend that "simple" playstyle at all costs and will go through every hoop possible to cling to it. They don't want to just be the Glare and Medica II spammer in the corner while we get new buttons and master them. They'd rather everyone was forced to be a Glare and Medica II spammer too and dragged down to their level to keep it equal. It's not healthy and it's incredibly poor design to cater to it.

It's even more dumb than that, since every time there is a self-identifying sylphie and people are actually able to pull up their logs, they are in fact DPSing 80% of the time just like everyone else. So in practice they are the exact same green DPS elitists they rail against. They just don't want the green DPSing to be any kind of fun out of some weird hang up on a "healers should heal" principle, even though they themselves are an example of why it has never been true. Or spamming that 1 button 30 seconds straight doing nothing else is apparently something they've just convinced themselves is fun.

I just wanna know why we have mechanically interesting classes like BLM and RDM who have a specific playstyle for people and they don't change despite people wanting them to be something they aren't, yet classes like SB SCH/AST/BRD changed in ways the original fanbase disliked.

They had audiences and people who like that playstyle. Why in the world would you change them into something they dislike instead of taking the foundation you had and giving QoL fixes?

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

I just wanna know why we have mechanically interesting classes like BLM and RDM who have a specific playstyle for people and they don't change despite people wanting them to be something they aren't, yet classes like SB SCH/AST/BRD changed in ways the original fanbase disliked.

They had audiences and people who like that playstyle. Why in the world would you change them into something they dislike instead of taking the foundation you had and giving QoL fixes?

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The developers play those jobs. Comparatively, they don't play SCH/AST/BRD, etc, so it's not really seen as an issue to them when they take away the playstyle.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

It's even more dumb than that, since every time there is a self-identifying sylphie and people are actually able to pull up their logs, they are in fact DPSing 80% of the time just like everyone else. So in practice they are the exact same green DPS elitists they rail against. They just don't want the green DPSing to be any kind of fun out of some weird hang up on a "healers should heal" principle, even though they themselves are an example of why it has never been true. Or spamming that 1 button 30 seconds straight doing nothing else is apparently something they've just convinced themselves is fun.

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"Healers should heal" has been true to some extent in ARR coils and extremes until they started to add the ridiculous echo buff stripping any semblence of difficulty.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

"Healers should heal" has been true to some extent in ARR coils and extremes until they started to add the ridiculous echo buff stripping any semblence of difficulty.

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Even in ARR and coils healers were first and foremost green dps (even more true for scholar). It's just that the lack of oGCDs and mitigation tools meant that you sometimes cast GCDs, especially when new on a fight.

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Originally Posted by Teno

Even in ARR and coils healers were first and foremost green dps (even more true for scholar). It's just that the lack of oGCDs and mitigation tools meant that you sometimes cast GCDs, especially when new on a fight.

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In fairness, that kind of depends on the content.

Dungeons? Absolutely, in 2.0 I actually used to make double WHM parties for the fastest WP grind before we figured out the whole locking mobs out of the boss area with the barrier thing.

Savage and Trials? Not so much, not because we didn't have opportunities to DPS, high tier healers would generally be maintaining dots where possible, but because resources were much scarcer than they are now, and that includes GCDs themselves. Tanks could potentially get wiped out in the span of a couple of GCDs with bad crit luck, MP evaporated if you started spamming much of anything and falling behind was risky because we just didn't have the same kind of ability to catch back up like we do now.

You used to see a lot of standing around canceling casts and hard MP conservation in harder content.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

In fairness, that kind of depends on the content.

Dungeons? Absolutely, in 2.0 I actually used to make double WHM parties for the fastest WP grind before we figured out the whole locking mobs out of the boss area with the barrier thing.

Savage and Trials? Not so much, not because we didn't have opportunities to DPS, high tier healers would generally be maintaining dots where possible, but because resources were much scarcer than they are now, and that includes GCDs themselves. Tanks could potentially get wiped out in the span of a couple of GCDs with bad crit luck, MP evaporated if you started spamming much of anything and falling behind was risky because we just didn't have the same kind of ability to catch back up like we do now.

You used to see a lot of standing around canceling casts and hard MP conservation in harder content.

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Man, that was back when I legitimately used Ethers to even out my MP too in addition to Shroud. You simply just did not have the MP to GCD heal AND Dps constantly as a White Mage, unless Mages Ballad was up. Standing and doing nothing WAS a strategic choice to regain Mp.

Both hate and miss those days.

Don’t you find it odd that they don’t care to play healers as mains even though it’s part of their job to know the one and outs of each job and how it plays live?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

In fairness, that kind of depends on the content.

Dungeons? Absolutely, in 2.0 I actually used to make double WHM parties for the fastest WP grind before we figured out the whole locking mobs out of the boss area with the barrier thing.

Savage and Trials? Not so much, not because we didn't have opportunities to DPS, high tier healers would generally be maintaining dots where possible, but because resources were much scarcer than they are now, and that includes GCDs themselves. Tanks could potentially get wiped out in the span of a couple of GCDs with bad crit luck, MP evaporated if you started spamming much of anything and falling behind was risky because we just didn't have the same kind of ability to catch back up like we do now.

You used to see a lot of standing around canceling casts and hard MP conservation in harder content.

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Don't say all that, all these little nuances make me miss it even more now.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Well considering their mindset on not adding more dps options for healers is because they don’t think the players can handle it….

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Flip side. I personally don't think Heals should have more dps options, they should have less. they should always always always do much less damage than a pure DPS job does, like a Tank should as well and I don't buy that they need it to clear solo content, that's just lazy. A Healer has high survivability and can keep themselves up and running longer than a dps, so they SHOULD have to work at killing something for longer than a pure DPS should in solo content. It's a given, a price paid for the gifts given just like a DPS should have to pour out the damage fast to bring a mob down before it can lay enough damage onto them to kill them. Players should use skill, not streamlined homogenized structure of a job in order to do solo things. You don't over pull, you don't rush if you can't heal yourself, or don't have mitigation abilities like a tank to prevent damage. DPS learn to be careful, Tanks learn to mitigate and tank through, Healers learn to heal on their feet through mechanics and still get heals off or...they die. It's all skill building. Give any class too many tools from another classes toolkit and you remove that sharp crisp feeling of the class all together. A healer should never be seen as a DPS contribution significant enough to justify interrupting their main function or as something relied on to clear content. Neither should a healer be optional in group content, DPS and Tanks shouldn't have heals that can see them through pulls in group designed content...period. Marginalizing a class so some others can feel like superpowers doesn't make players happier, it makes them feel...marginalized and like their efforts in their chosen class are not appreciated or respected.

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Originally Posted by Desna

Flip side. I personally don't think Heals should have more dps options, they should have less. they should always always always do much less damage than a pure DPS job does, like a Tank should as well and I don't buy that they need it to clear solo content, that's just lazy.

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Healers and tanks already do half the damage a DPS can output. Adding a few extra buttons isn't going to change that much.

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Originally Posted by Desna

A Healer has high survivability and can keep themselves up and running longer than a dps, so they SHOULD have to work at killing something for longer than a pure DPS should in solo content.

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They have no issues with tanks having high survivability, high self healing (Warriors LOL), and an interesting dps rotation. But for some magical reason that same standard can't apply to Healers?

More buttons to press to DPS =/= More total DPS dealt

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

More buttons to press to DPS =/= More total DPS dealt

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Without higher damage it just turns into doing more work for the same result which is an issue in itself.

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Originally Posted by Desna

A Healer has high survivability and can keep themselves up and running longer than a dps, so they SHOULD have to work at killing something for longer than a pure DPS should in solo content. It's a given, a price paid for the gifts given just like a DPS should have to pour out the damage fast to bring a mob down before it can lay enough damage onto them to kill them

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What game are you playing?

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Without higher damage it just turns into doing more work for the same result which is an issue in itself.

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Then the answer is to make everything exactly the same. Nothing left out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a little bit of damage variance (maybe from 0.1% to 3% or whatever sweet number that is), so long as the whole roster is viable to clear regularly & it only start to matter at the mountain top of speedkill-minmaxing purposes. Right now the best reward to me would be not getting bored out of pressing 1 button as much as melees do their auto-attacks. :(

Again, why should healers deal only 40%-60% of the damage a DPS job can do when every type of content can and has been cleared without any healers?

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Originally Posted by Katoar

Again, why should healers deal only 40%-60% of the damage a DPS job can do when every type of content can and has been cleared without any healers?

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Because having that level of a safety net while also being able to match the DPS numbers of equally skilled DPS jobs invalidates those other DPS jobs. MCH already has a hard enough time just competing with BRD and DNC as is without suddenly having to worry about a Healer completing taking their job as well. I could understand increasing Healer/Tank DPS numbers to be at least 75% of a DPS job but there needs to at least be enough of a difference to not cause DPS jobs to be invalid as well.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Because having that level of a safety net while also being able to match the DPS numbers of equally skilled DPS jobs invalidates those other DPS jobs. MCH already has a hard enough time just competing with BRD and DNC as is without suddenly having to worry about a Healer completing taking their job as well. I could understand increasing Healer/Tank DPS numbers to be at least 75% of a DPS job but there needs to at least be enough of a difference to not cause DPS jobs to be invalid as well.

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The solution is simple. Make optimized Healer DPS dependent on the presence of DPS party members. This can be done through unique buffs and unique traits. Machinist is competing against melee jobs as their buttons do not do anything different than those of a melee job. Everything is the same "Deal x amount of potency to target" with a different skill animation.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

The solution is simple. Make optimized Healer DPS heavily dependent on the presence of party members. This can be through unique buffs and unique traits. Machinist is competing against melee jobs as their buttons do not do anything different than those of a melee job. Everything is all the same "Deal x amount of potency to target" with a different skill animation.

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No machinist is competing with BRD and DNC because of the 5% buff you wouldn’t give up a melee for a MCH or vice versa

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Without higher damage it just turns into doing more work for the same result which is an issue in itself.

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It's an issue how? If you take a really complex DPS job I like and reduce it to smashing 1-1-1-1 for the same damage, my reaction isn't "awesome! the effort-to-damage ratio for this job is great now!"

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

No machinist is competing with BRD and DNC because of the 5% buff you wouldn’t give up a melee for a MCH or vice versa

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You would give up a melee for 2 ranged jobs if they did more DPS. But they are artificially gimped to make for the range they have despite mechanics allowing for 100% melee uptime.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

It's an issue how? If you take a really complex DPS job I like and reduce it to smashing 1-1-1-1 for the same damage, my reaction isn't "awesome! the effort-to-damage ratio for this job is great now!"

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Because if one job does 1K dps spamming one button, 30 times a minute and another job does 1K dps pressing 15 buttons 4 times a minute the 2nd job has carpal tunnel for the exact same output.

More effort is supposed to reward with more dps. That's pretty much the standard. High APM jobs are supposed to do high damage. It's like the old DRK's. Every other action was [DARK ARTS!] and it just got old REALLY fast.

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Originally Posted by Katoar

You would give up a melee for 2 ranged jobs if they did more DPS. But they are artificially gimped to make for the range they have despite mechanics allowing for 100% melee uptime.

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I mean if MCH and melees did the same DPS why would you ever bring a melee, in its current form MCH only competes with BRD and DNC and that tends to work well even if melee get uptime way too easily

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean if MCH and melees did the same DPS why would you ever bring a melee, in its current form MCH only competes with BRD and DNC and that tends to work well even if melee get uptime way too easily

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the difference still shouldnt be so stark anyways. if they cut the gap between pranged and melee+blm to 1/3 it would be fine

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean if MCH and melees did the same DPS why would you ever bring a melee

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For the 1% party buff increase.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because if one job does 1K dps spamming one button, 30 times a minute and another job does 1K dps pressing 15 buttons 4 times a minute the 2nd job has carpal tunnel for the exact same output.

More effort is supposed to reward with more dps. That's pretty much the standard. High APM jobs are supposed to do high damage. It's like the old DRK's. Every other action was [DARK ARTS!] and it just got old REALLY fast.

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That's not how the game has been balanced since ever. And even if you did feel the need to apply damage boost to the "complex" DPS healer, it wouldn't need to be more than the usual couple percent compared to the simplest healer, which is not an issue at all. People really don't care as long as the bar on fflogs looks slightly longer.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

That's not how the game has been balanced since ever.

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And DRK's complained about being the busiest tank while also having the worst mitigation suite for a long time.

And MCH (and to a small extent DNC/BRD) complained about being some of the busiest DPS while their dps is at the bottom.

"It's always been that way" is generally a terrible excuse from any design perspective. It does nothing but hinder future growth potential. Progress almost always demands changing the current models.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean if MCH and melees did the same DPS why would you ever bring a melee

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Why wouldn't you if they do the same dps? There's no downside, they both do the same. If the melee is more fun for you, you'd play the melee. Quite a few players simply don't like ranged.

FF14 players really aren't that obsessed with meta. As long as they can clear content and have their 5% bonus, most of the time they'll bring whatever jobs they can get. Ranged tax is completely unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And DRK's complained about being the busiest tank while also having the worst mitigation suite for a long time.

And MCH (and to a small extent DNC/BRD) complained about being some of the busiest DPS while their dps is at the bottom.

"It's always been that way" is generally a terrible excuse from any design perspective. It does nothing but hinder future growth potential. Progress almost always demands changing the current models.

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Wouldn't the answer then be to make each job equally busy in different ways though?

Take old AST and SCH as examples.
AST didn't really have many DPS skills to begin with but rather supplemented their DPS thru group buffs.
SCH's nuke was secondary to maintaining their DoTs as the bulk of their DPS was DoT based.

So why didn't this philosophy get expanded upon?

Let's say that SE reverted AST and SCH back to their prime. Royal Road, 5 DoTs, the whole song and dance.
How do you make SGE and WHM equally busy?
Give SGE several oGCD attacks that all align in 1/2 minute burst windows.
Give WHM a rotation of self buffs that they need to maintain, with tools that allow them to heal without compromising that rotation.

That's all SE needed to do. Instead, we just have every job having 2m burst windows with no variations other than one job giving carpel tunnel and the other being so smooth brained it would make a Neanderthal question their level of intelligence.