My thoughts on Healing in FFXIV as a new player

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Originally Posted by LalaLuna

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." - Soren Johnson (2011), source: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369

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This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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This I also agree with. It's how the word "balance" has become a dirty word for me. Balance IMO should only go as far as "can this job be used to do this content competently?"

I don't care if it means one job it's harder to do the content competently, if anything that gives options for players who want more challenge....this to me has always been the advantage of multiple jobs fulfilling the same role, some can be more beginner friendly, whereas others can be more complex. Thus how enjoyable a job is should take importance.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

It's just that healers often either stand around idle when no healing is required, or heal in super inefficient ways, and need to be told that they can do more than just keep people upright to nudge them into improving. Better still, these changes often make for better healing as well (staying active means a better reaction time, and knowing how to use your kit effectively means when emergencies DO happen they can turn what would have been an opening for DPS into more healing.)

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I couldn't agree more. I don't know how often I've been in duties with (not new) heal-only healers who were completely overwhelmed with healing when people messed up mechanics and they had to do more than just randomly cast a Cure or Medica. Those healers often don't use their toolkit at all. Like when they are WHM they use 2 Afflatus heals at max and one Tetragrammaton, and the rest of their casts are Cure I, and for AoE either Medica II followed by Medica or even another Medica II. So if people now mess up and two players need healing very fast before the next raid-wide AoE goes out, they just cast Medica somewhere in the back, unable to save them. I've seen situations like this SO OFTEN. Because in normal situations it's enough to spam Cure I on the tank and randomly cast Medica II, they don't even know their other spells and abilities.

So it's not only that they don't know how to heal efficiently though, a lot of them don't know how to properly heal at all.

And I just don't understand why. After all this time I know that there are healers who refuse to dps for various reasons. But why do they also ignore like 90% of their healing actions, only to be unable to keep up when needed? Is it really because they aren't needed if everything goes right in easy content?

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

This right here. Something I've certainly noticed a long time ago. Most complaints about the game only exist because people try to optimize the heck out of everything. If they would stop doing that, their issues would immediately stop being issues.

I don't try to optimize anything since I don't care. I'm here to play Final Fantasy 14, not Spreadsheet Simulator 2020.

Do I dps every chance I get when I'm healing? Of course I do because I enjoy doing it. I do not and will not try to squeeze out every possible bit of damage however as that isn't fun.

Have I done savage content in the past? Yes I have. Got clears? Yep. The obsession with optimization is what drove me out of it.

FF14 isn't a job, it's a game and that's how I'm going to treat it.

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Note that in context that quote does not blame the players for optimizing, rather this is something that the developers need to keep in mind when designing their games. Some players have fun optimizing, and you should never take that from them.

There was a GDC talk by one of the people who work on Magic the Gathering where he says that it is the dev's job to ensure that the most optimal, and the most fun options are the same. He likens it to the shot clock in basketball iirc (Before it was implemented, players would get the lead, and just kind of hold on to the ball. Boring, but optimal). Honestly, I'd imagine this train of thought was the reason why AST cards were changed, because many people had fun using all the cards, while it was optimal for sufficiently skilled groups to fish for the damage increases. So they brought the two inline to... mixed results.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

Note that in context that quote does not blame the players for optimizing, rather this is something that the developers need to keep in mind when designing their games. Some players have fun optimizing, and you should never take that from them.

There was a GDC talk by one of the people who work on Magic the Gathering where he says that it is the dev's job to ensure that the most optimal, and the most fun options are the same. He likens it to the shot clock in basketball iirc (Before it was implemented, players would get the lead, and just kind of hold on to the ball. Boring, but optimal). Honestly, I'd imagine this train of thought was the reason why AST cards were changed, because many people had fun using all the cards, while it was optimal for sufficiently skilled groups to fish for the damage increases. So they brought the two inline to... mixed results.

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Optimization and minmaxing will happen whether devs want it or not. There will always be a rotation that maximises damage for each class.

That being said, you can optimize around anything any rotation or gameplay, so why not just design classes with an engaging set of skills and forget about what players will optimize around.

1 button spell spam is not engaging.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Optimization and minmaxing will happen whether devs want it or not. There will always be a rotation that maximises damage for each class.

That being said, you can optimize around anything any rotation or gameplay, so why not just design classes with an engaging set of skills and forget about what players will optimize around.

1 button spell spam is not engaging.

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I agree, but while they may have been thinking of this concept when working on AST cards, I think the 1Dot/1Filler design comes from another desire entirely.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

I agree, but while they may have been thinking of this concept when working on AST cards, I think the 1Dot/1Filler design comes from another desire entirely.

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They wanted to streamline the process of alternating between damage and healing. While the process is boring from an optimization standpoint. It was not a decision with the higher tier players in mind, but the lower tier players who are responsible for all the feedback about bad scholars who think their fairy can handle everything without actually using cooldowns to facilitate that. Yes good scholars look like they're just dpsing the whole time, but so do bad ones.

I'm aware that my example focuses on scholars but the sentiment does apply to whm and ast as well.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

They wanted to streamline the process of alternating between damage and healing. While the process is boring from an optimization standpoint. It was not a decision with the higher tier players in mind, but the lower tier players who are responsible for all the feedback about bad scholars who think their fairy can handle everything without actually using cooldowns to facilitate that. Yes good scholars look like they're just dpsing the whole time, but so do bad ones.

I'm aware that my example focuses on scholars but the sentiment does apply to whm and ast as well.

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A a healer that heals all the time would probably end up grossly overhealing/not using his kit to its full extent. That would also be an example of a bad healer.

The fact that most fights have long stretches of healing downtime doesn't help either.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

A a healer that heals all the time would probably end up grossly overhealing/not using his kit to its full extent. That would also be an example of a bad healer.

The fact that most fights have long stretches of healing downtime doesn't help either.

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Yes I'm aware of this. My understanding of the situation is more of a theory then truth tbh. But even talking to some of my friends, I find they complain that healers never heal or res or the like gives me the impression that was the kind of feedback the devs where getting, scholar was too busy dpsing and putting the work on the other healer, so they simplified the dps toolkit in an attempt to reduce the distraction and gave them more heals in the hopes that scholar picks up the slack.

Ast only fished for balance was the feedback they likely received, therefore all cards are balance and the rng is placed in its potency as opposed to whether or not you got it off.

Whm is the trickier one for me to speculate on. My guess is that the Lilies where an attempt to answer the feed back of Lilies being useless and whm having poor mobility and weaving options. So they did both while keeping their desired fantasy of making whm the big powerful gcd healer. Misery was probably a way to motivate people to actually take part in the mechanic by giving then an award.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Yes I'm aware of this. My understanding of the situation is more of a theory then truth tbh. But even talking to some of my friends, I find they complain that healers never heal or res or the like gives me the impression that was the kind of feedback the devs where getting, scholar was too busy dpsing and putting the work on the other healer, so they simplified the dps toolkit in an attempt to reduce the distraction and gave them more heals in the hopes that scholar picks up the slack.

Ast only fished for balance was the feedback they likely received, therefore all cards are balance and the rng is placed in its potency as opposed to whether or not you got it off.

Whm is the trickier one for me to speculate on. My guess is that the Lilies where an attempt to answer the feed back of Lilies being useless and whm having poor mobility and weaving options. So they did both while keeping their desired fantasy of making whm the big powerful gcd healer. Misery was probably a way to motivate people to actually take part in the mechanic by giving then an award.

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In other words, when looking for healer feedback, SE listened to tanks and DPS. Not healers.