Have we given up on SCH?

If it makes you feel any better I have played in months due to changes they made to my three main classes (MNK, DRK, SCH). I’m just not having as much fun anymore due to how dumbed and samey everything is starting to feel.

Still here, waiting for revisions to our job. Still wish Seraph had more power, still want a full return of our dps toolkit, and I still wish they would give us back Selene's unique abilities!

Well the only thing mentioned in the live letter about healers was how the devs were going to adjust Noct sect for Astro........

Honestly I'm starting to wonder why even post here anymore. They dont even seem to notice all the problems everyone is having with their new class changes.

5.1 is pretty much a dps overbuff but even then the ranged classes are going to be hurting.

I just dont know anymore.

After playing it for the first time in over a year, and I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm going to praise league of legends. Now, I absolutely hate that game, it is just, ugh. But, they have the right mentality when it comes to design, one I wish SE would adapt "fun and unique FIRST balance SECOND, and never sacrifice the first for the second, no matter how easy of a route that is" and while that game still has a ton of issues, credit where it is due, no 2 champions feel anything alike, even if they do the same job, which is saying something when they have so many characters. I honestly wish SE would adapt the same mentality.

Seriously, you know it's bad if I'm saying league did it better than you, that game is garbage coded onto a computer.

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Originally Posted by Almostward

Honestly I'm starting to wonder why even post here anymore. They dont even seem to notice all the problems everyone is having with their new class changes.

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Pretty sure they don’t have any healer mains on the dev team, or at least anyone who heals at an ex/savage level.

they might as well remove the pets and make the scholar do the animation instead, if it has to be on their hotbars to begin with and use a gcd then it might as well be the SCH doing it altogether, what is the point of the pet if the pet doesn't have its own actions on its own hotbar?

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

Pretty sure they don’t have any healer mains on the dev team, or at least anyone who heals at an ex/savage level.

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A single healer main on staff would solve 90% of our complaints in one divine QoL patch.

"Let's make Horoscope easier to use"
"Let's make Sleeve Draw less hostile for controller players"
"Let's take a look at SCH weaving/fey lag, and see how we can make it smoother"
"Let's reimagine Synastry since every single data point we have suggests that even optimal use of this ability amounts to nothing. Players are also saying they need more healing on AST, can we treat this as an opportunity to solve two problems with one elegant solution?"
"Let's give WHM some interactivity between spells and abilities, and while we're at it, some low-key utility that adds to the feel of WHM-as-powerhouse, because we want to really fix AST cards, and to do that every healer will need a bit more rdps oomph."
"Let's update cards! We don't have resources for a rework, but how can we give the player more ways to use all those cards?"
"Let's offer SCH some faerie choices. What if we tied Fey Wind to the same cooldown as Whispering Dawn? What kind of potency/duration would it need to comfortably take second seat to WD as necessary?"
"Let's give WHM back all the stuff we've taken from them over the years. How can we implement (an innovative, unique) Stoneskin in a way that isn't just a shield, and doesn't change tanking rotations/priorities?"

The not-response we've gotten from them suggests to me (more and more) that they've never considered asking these questions. Let alone look for answers.

First they break it, then fix the most glaring issues. GG, kthxbye.


Healers were their lowest priority since the beginning, because they can't market them apparently. Y'shtola went BLM because being a healer is not cool enough. Can't put a healer on the cover of an expansion, you know! That would be absolutely ridiculous!

If anything, ShB's mishandling of SCH has given me time to check out other games and activites. Might've missed Astral Chain or not relived moments in a 15 year old MMO which are just fun to play around in. Story, music, presentation in FF are all still great, but beyond the superficial I miss the time I also put "playing scholar" among those pros.

Would love if I knew they were listening or said they had something entirely new and exciting lined up for the job and role, but Live Letters and lack of SE presence here makes the impression they are either unaware of healers or just don't see it as an issue.

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Originally Posted by tesni_g

A single healer main on staff would solve 90% of our complaints in one divine QoL patch.

"Let's make Horoscope easier to use"
"Let's make Sleeve Draw less hostile for controller players"
"Let's take a look at SCH weaving/fey lag, and see how we can make it smoother"
"Let's reimagine Synastry since every single data point we have suggests that even optimal use of this ability amounts to nothing. Players are also saying they need more healing on AST, can we treat this as an opportunity to solve two problems with one elegant solution?"
"Let's give WHM some interactivity between spells and abilities, and while we're at it, some low-key utility that adds to the feel of WHM-as-powerhouse, because we want to really fix AST cards, and to do that every healer will need a bit more rdps oomph."
"Let's update cards! We don't have resources for a rework, but how can we give the player more ways to use all those cards?"
"Let's offer SCH some faerie choices. What if we tied Fey Wind to the same cooldown as Whispering Dawn? What kind of potency/duration would it need to comfortably take second seat to WD as necessary?"
"Let's give WHM back all the stuff we've taken from them over the years. How can we implement (an innovative, unique) Stoneskin in a way that isn't just a shield, and doesn't change tanking rotations/priorities?"

The not-response we've gotten from them suggests to me (more and more) that they've never considered asking these questions. Let alone look for answers.

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Don't worry! Everything will be fixed comes 6.0!

Each healer will just have the same 350 main spell that's an aoe and has a 60s dot attached to it, and one healing spell that's a 600 potency aoe! No more button bloat!

SCH will have Seraph turned into a third fairy skin, and Embrace's potency will be reduced to 75!

WHM will once again contribute to the healer role as a whole, by making Fluid Aura a healer-only emote!

And AST will be able to draw cards and pretend they're useful, for a most comedic effect!

Please look forward to it!

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

I dont believe they are going to do significant changes, for the devs healers are (like balance) an afterthought and something that they do not know how it is played. I'm starting to doubt they even read this forum because the lack of communication is incredible, and honestly I would prefer that to the other option that is that the devs are actively ignoring healers because for them we are a minority of second class players.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Don't worry! Everything will be fixed comes 6.0!

Each healer will just have the same 350 main spell that's an aoe and has a 60s dot attached to it, and one healing spell that's a 600 potency aoe! No more button bloat!

SCH will have Seraph turned into a third fairy skin, and Embrace's potency will be reduced to 75!

WHM will once again contribute to the healer role as a whole, by making Fluid Aura a healer-only emote!

And AST will be able to draw cards and pretend they're useful, for a most comedic effect!

Please look forward to it!

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I laughed and then I cried.

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Originally Posted by Schan

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

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For the record...

SCH:
-Merging of two dots
-Removal of unique dot spreader (Bane)
-Replacement of unique aoe dot by generic aoe (Miasma II > Art of War)
-Removal of Fairy!Largesse (Rouse)
-Removal of MP management/aetherflow spender tool (Energy drain)
-Removal of one of the two pets and all its attached abilities

AST:
-Removal of unique buff extenders (Time Dilation & Celestial Opposition)
-Removal of card management tools (Spread & Royal Road)
-Replacement of 26 possible card uses with 1
-Button bloat (Draw turned to Draw & Play, Undraw has litterally no use)
-Disappointing numbers (the healer that requires the most work, and yet is the weakest class in the entire game)

WHM:
-Removal of aoe damage & dot (Aero III)
-Useless skill made even more useless (Fluid Aura)
-Job gauge whose only purpose is to ignore the newly implemented charge system
-Addition of two new skills that are just free and instant cast versions of existing skills (Afflatus Solace & Rapture)
-Continued the tradition of taking a WHM skill and giving it to every healer (Repose)

General:
-Removal of three defensive abilities (Eye for an Eye, Largesse, and Protect.)

And what did we get again...?
Ah yes, a hundredth upgrade to our main spells, identical dots for each class and standardized aoes, so offensive gameplay across all healers is exactly the same now.
Oh, and we got maybe one or two interesting OGCDs.


Yes, I am jaded. My excitement pretty much died when I saw these changes, went back up when playing the story, then died again as soon as I remembered how boring the role has become.
And each passing Live Letter without a single word on healers only comforts me in my decision to stop playing this cursed role.

I wanted to have fun while healing, but apparently SE thinks healing should be as easy and mind-numbing as possible. So be it then, I'll go play something else.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Snip

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And that's just the changes from SB to ShB. I still miss the days when SCH had 3 single target DoT's, their DPS moves had status effects on them and we had better handicaps to better differentiate how healers felt to play and WHM being the healiest healer actually meant something. And I even miss stance dancing with Cleric Stance. ;)

Only thing we've got back is Energy Drain.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

And that's just the changes from SB to ShB. I still miss the days when SCH had 3 single target DoT's, their DPS moves had status effects on them and we had better handicaps to better differentiate how healers felt to play and WHM being the healiest healer actually meant something. And I even miss stance dancing with Cleric Stance. ;)

Only thing we've got back is Energy Drain.

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Indeed, I forgot to add "And all in a day's work". Because not only it's probably the time it took them to design those changes, it's also how the changes happened.

"We're gonna do this and too bad if you don't like it, also don't ask us why we did that because we don't know."

If anything, the SB changes feel less insulting to me because they're for a good part tied to the removal of cross class skills, and not targeted dumbing down of an entire role like we have now.

And yes, Energy Drain. The thing you have to learn as ACN, unlearn upon equipping your class stone, and then relearn as a completely different system at level 45-ish. Seriously, can the healer changes look any more half-assed?


I honestly can't tell who has it worse right now. Between SCH who lost the entire ACN kit, AST who lost the entire AST kit (these are not cards, it's a slot machine now), and WHM who lost the right to complain because it's overpowered...

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Indeed, I forgot to add "And all in a day's work". Because not only it's probably the time it took them to design those changes, it's also how the changes happened.

"We're gonna do this and too bad if you don't like it, also don't ask us why we did that because we don't know."

If anything, the SB changes feel less insulting to me because they're for a good part tied to the removal of cross class skills, and not targeted dumbing down of an entire role like we have now.

And yes, Energy Drain. The thing you have to learn as ACN, unlearn upon equipping your class stone, and then relearn as a completely different system at level 45-ish. Seriously, can the healer changes look any more half-assed?


I honestly can't tell who has it worse right now. Between SCH who lost the entire ACN kit, AST who lost the entire AST kit (these are not cards, it's a slot machine now), and WHM who lost the right to complain because it's overpowered...

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I notice I end up repeating myself a lot as it has been said before by me and others. There doesn't seem to be any content where all this healing will remain necessary. It came at handy the first few times freshly arriving at level 80 in the first pull of Anyder and in the Extremes, but as gear has increased, less healing was needed. What is left to do is one spell and one dot. Not to mention low-level dungeons became even less interesting as they remained unchanged, but SCH got even less skills available seemingly so they could adhere to the strict "one skill every two level after 50". Skill bloat could be the issue, but the hotbars have even more holes than ever. Moving Aetherflow and ED is still baffling.

Suppose I keep posting my displeasure in hopes SE will at some point interact with the us across all the Healer subforums in different languages (who I can only guess wonder about these changes as much as we do) and ask why we aren't happy with current iteration.

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Originally Posted by Schan

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

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Sorry if I come across as bitter about current SCH, as with jade this attitude didn't come over night.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

And what did we get again...?
Ah yes, a hundredth upgrade to our main spells, identical dots for each class and standardized aoes

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dont forget AST's "upgrades" to malefic and combust are what they used to be at lv 70 in SB cuz they decided to retroactively nerf all of asts dps since lv 1 for absolutely no reason.

also the new standarized aoes were also a huge nerf for holy and gravity, because apparently not taking forever in dungeons is a bad thing

I have not given up in SCH, and the reason is because the level I'm affected by the changes is next to zero. I miss Bane and Shadow Flare as much as anyone else, but these are DPS skills tied to a healer class. At the end of the day, what matters to me with SCH and what makes it fun is that I feel engaged during combat. What I need for that is players needing to be healed.

The only thing making me frown currently is Art of War. I think SCH needs an AoE that is casted like Holy and Gravity. They can take AoW away to give SCH this. It's a bit more on the homogenization side of things, but the skill feels like it isn't doing anything.

I don't get why nobody is excited about the new healer changes. I mean you get to choose between white mage, white mage with pet, and white mage with yu-gi-oh cards.

What's not to love? Now no matter what healing job you play, you won't go "Man.. I sure wish I was playing WHM right now.." because you can enjoy the benefits of playing a white mage as a SCH and as an AST with the occasional card or shield thrown in to spice things up.

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Originally Posted by Schan

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

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I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

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I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been. People just seem quick to think otherwise because they're bored, salty, w/e. Did the devs homogenize them in order to accomplish this balance? Yeah, they did, and I feel it was necessary because what they were working with was a total mess of six years fiddling around with healers instead of actually dissecting what was wrong with them. What was crystal clear to me, was healers like SCH were very far from their vision of the role, while WHM was closer to it.

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do. In this sense, I can totally understand why healers are frustrated. But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

This does not mean I think healing is just fine, because it's not. The main point however is a lack of DPS skills is hardly the cause of the problems we have and more like a symptom of poor encounter design. To just give healers more DPS skills is to sweep the problem right under the rug and head right back to where we were before ShB, and that's not going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been..

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Balance doesn't equal fun. Right now healers are boring.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do.

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This is exactly right. The stated developer vision is to make healers more healing focused but they're not willing to change the battle design to meet that vision. IMHO, that goes back to developer competency. You can't say you want to do something and completely fail to do it. Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

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Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.



Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

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I wouldn't say completely failed. I am much more inclined to say that they are working on it, but in order to get healing where it needs to be, homogenization of our healers was necessary. Wipe the slate clean so to speak to have fresh ground to work on. It is still early into the expansion and if anyone thought they would get healing right out of the gate or even by 5.1 might be new to the game, or otherwise unaware of how things have worked in FFXIV historically.

Two months in now, the dev team should have solid data from not only savage, but content outside of it to start making some decisions. Player feedback is important as well, and they do take it in when it is constructive and not whiny rants filled with 'I' statements. I just think we really need to stop demonizing the dev team as far as healing goes. They are not sitting in recliners, smoking cigars laughing at the misery. They want to get it right to where it fits their vision and is also fun and engaging for players. It is just really difficult because of the way encounters have been designed since early 2.0.

tbh i don't like that homogenization making all the healers the same, it makes me feel there is only one healer and 2 healer skins to choose from.
the point of different classes is different play style not have all be identical up to the last skill. balance shouldn't come at the expense of turning all identical but rather have 1 healer kit complete the other.

maybe they will show healers a glimpse of hope in October but until then lets rant and give our feedback so it will be taken into account for 5.1 and beyond(hope not beyond).

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Snip

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Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0. I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players. Arguably they could still do this with a tiered system, it works for casters, RDM is easy (and still fun, it was my main DPS in SB and I am getting it to 80 at the moment), BLM has more to manage and less mobility and SMN has a more complicated rotation newbies might find harder to understand.

The thing is, they already have a great foundation for making healers fun and arguably don't need a clean slate or to homogenise them. One of the main issues here is that their main balance philosophy is to patch weaknesses instead of making strengths worthwhile over said weaknesses. It's why 2.0 SCH and WHM worked together. As soon as they patched SCH's weakness, SCH became OP and also made WHM's identity as "the healiest heal" redundant (an identity they've continued to give WHM since without giving them something else). To make it less OP, they've weakened what made it fun and strong, instead of giving it its weakness back. And then they based AST's design over this relationship and to be able to swap beween heal styles, which they inadvertently made redundant by patching SCH's weakness. So it put WHM in a bad place back then, but WHM, SCH and AST were still fun to play (though I didn't like being OP). Though understandably this was the first of issues where WHM seemingly started to be loved less by the devs.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

I think if they went as far as to communicate that they're at least aware of the problem and are working on it, they'd have a bit more faith from people in the healer communities, something they've done with other roles. At the moment the extent of acknowledgement is that "no" they won't change AST's card and they'll update SCH's tooltips.
This was why my question for one of the "asks" was over better communication, I wasn't rude to them because I know overall the dev team does a fantastic job (and I expressed that), which is why it's even more frustrating healers feel so bad. I've changed jobs to enjoy the content.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0.

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Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes", then you're going to be waiting a long time. When I speak of historic in terms of SE, I'm talking about how some jobs are horrendous when a new expansion is released, but SE will take in player feedback and make changes within reason. This expansion has already seen SCH getting Energy Drain back, Hagakure was returned to SAM, healing potencies were fixed for AST, damage potencies adjusted for NIN, among others. These 'less than meaningful' changes have improved these four jobs greatly.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

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And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. It doesn't mean we should be content with it, but goal post moving at the very least means that the issue is still being addressed and worked on, instead of being complacent. It's better that the goal posts move, than stay in the same position. This is true even for jobs that players are happy with. Just because something is good, doesn't mean it can't be improved; and just because something is 'bad', doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players.

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This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

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There was next to nothing wrong with WHM until AST was implemented into the game. The over-tuning of AST to make it viable and kick WHM right out of the meta was probably the biggest indicator of the devs not knowing what they were doing when it came to healers. We can keep revisiting this for the sake of having something to talk about, or we can move forward to the here and now. The devs nuked SoTL2, got rid of CD reduction that was the previous lily system, and made WHM better. By all accounts, I would say they listened. However, if players were saying, "Please don't take away SCH DPS skills!" Then they most certainly did not. SCH as far as being able to meet healing requirements while keeping up steady damage really has not changed (this is how the devs see things). You just have less buttons to push to accomplish this now (this is how players see things).

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

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Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. It's a daunting task to create something from your vision and shape it in a way that is marketable. Now even though nothing gets ignored, not everything gets heard. That is something to really take in. The dev team is not obligated to share information. What is actually communicated between a developer and consumer is serious business. That seriously needs to be understood. If you were to actually know what we hear in comparison to what is going on over there, you would likely be blown away.

Patience.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Patience.

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At what point do we get to stop being patient? When they finally remove every DPS ability? when healers have to literally stand still and do nothing in fights? Like, I don't understand that mentality of "just keep taking the punches, they'll MAYBE stop and pat you on the head a year or two down the line" as for any major changes coming? That's not happening until 6.0, the biggest changes we're going to get this expac is potency adjustments, MAYBE if they're feeling REALLY spicy they might change a timer or two. Anything that would actually change how the classes feel and would genuinely make them fun to play again? lol.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes" -snip-

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Not just major overhauls, but general design changes. SE don't tend to do them in patch cycles.

To make healers more interesting again. They'd either have to revert changes, which they're unlikely to do. They've already said "no" to AST's.

Or rework some of the design and add in new things to replace what's lost. This isn't something they tend to do until an expansion. Whilst I accept it is possible, but we are still very much in the dark.

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And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. -snip-

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I don't mean dev shifting goal posts. Goal post shifting is what people do when the point of their argument hasn't been proven when a goal post set is hit, so they move the goal post and tend to ad infinitum. From what I hear from WHM's, this is the exact experience they had with 4.0 and are still having (and to an extent 3.0).

I have been guilty of the "wait and see" mentality. There comes a point when you're Sisyphus pushing his rock.

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This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

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Nothing has indicated this and I've not seen it on MMO's. If this is what they're doing, they'd say something? They normally do when they acknowledge there's a problem.

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Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. -snip-

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I feel a lot of people underestimate what consumer demands means. Sure consumer demand drives sales and pays bills, but there is plenty of wiggle room. I worked for years in the consumer facing side of a business with millions of customers globally. I can say that yes, they get ignored. Even people who say we've lost a customer come back. The mentality is often they can't please everybody, so they won't. If it's going to impact sales, then they're more likely to listen. That is, if we're talking business. It's a bigger issue for smaller businesses with smaller customer bases.


I was also in the community when 1.0 was in BETA and watched as an FFXI player as complaints came to the forums. Again, people were like "it's only BETA, wait until launch" and "the point is for feedback, they'll fix it for release", but didn't and it was only after financial failure that they listened.

But these days, I'm a developer, not in the game industry, but ecommerce. So I know that even what seems like a simple straight forward thing, might not be and things take time and resource. I can appreciate this.

But this is where communication helps us a great deal. We don't have to go into depth or detail. It curbs complaints. And SE does this already. When they've acknowledged something is a problem, they usually tell us, so the silence is more of an indicator they don't recognise it as such than "maybe they're working on it in quiet".

I'm not down with the "clean slate" theory because that basically means we're just a beta test over the course of years to develop the role so that in 7.x it might feel complete.

The problems we warned about when 5.0 previews were released are still... there. We saw it then by reading tooltips. We said "these new kits don't work with current encounter mechanics and damage patterns".

The developers don't need to collect data in the next two years of ShB to define a role they created six years ago, in order to "gut everything in order to rebuild." The gutting and rebuilding should not happen in gametime, leaving healers a work in progress for at least two years. It should have begun a while ago and happened completely inside of development/testing.

I am a patient person but healers are playing an inferior version of the game and whenever I switch roles I'm reminded how absolutely fun and full the other classes are. There's no comparing the feel of a DPS class to healers--one is a complete, well-greased machine and the other is... a nuke and a dot.

Our requests are fairly reasonable. Healing, tanking, and dps are all pivotal roles in the game, from the first level 11 guildhest to Savage. Healing as a role is required and makes up about 25% of multiplayer content in a game with millions of players. We shouldn't be beta testing at this point, not in the slightest. Developers need to do that on their own time, like they do with all other classes.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

snip

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

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It's fine and understandable to be frustrated and upset over the changes. It's not fine to ooze sarcasm and demonize the devs and starting to spit vitriol (not saying that you are in this particular instance).
It's fine to complain and list the issues the jobs have. it's not fine to

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

"just keep taking the punches, they'll MAYBE stop and pat you on the head a year or two down the line"

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No. Complain. Some form of feedback is reaching them be it by number crunching ( which is what companies rely on heavily) or what the community managers tell them (apparently they sit around reading stuff and making reports). It's their choice to take it on board or not. We must not be completely jaded. On the flip side we are very good at listing problems but not as good at listing solutions and even then I doubt they would look into the English forums for that. Futhermore even when people list their ideas there are several people for or against them just in the forums (which is a tiny sample of the population) so how can they figure out which ones are ideas that will be accepted by the majority of players?

I am particularly sad with the lack of communication but then again there is a lot of stuff to fix this expansion and technically healers were part of the urgent priorities of "stuff to fix" once the expansion rolled out. It's not what people wanted but the tweaks are there and they did help.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I don't mean dev shifting goal posts. Goal post shifting is what people do when the point of their argument hasn't been proven when a goal post set is hit, so they move the goal post and tend to ad infinitum.

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Well that's nice and dandy except for the fact that this is a forum. I would agree with you if you meant a person is goal post shifting but applying that to a whole community with different expectations is a bit too much and for me on an argumentative point of view has no value.
What I do is try something out, complain, hope my complaints are part of the majority that are reaching the devs' ears. If it is, cool. If it isn't I need to deal with the fact that my opinion was part of a minority and I need to suck it up.

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Originally Posted by tesni_g

I'm not down with the "clean slate" theory because that basically means we're just a beta test over the course of years to develop the role so that in 7.x it might feel complete.

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I mean... as an online game it will never be complete because otherwise they wouldn't be able to give us more content. Cuz you know... it's complete.

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Originally Posted by Schan

Well that's nice and dandy except for the fact that this is a forum. -snip-

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I still feel shifting the goal post is a fair description, maybe not put such a heavy weight on individuals, because that's unfair, but the point I was making, at each goal post we hit, somebody else comes along and then they set it somewhere else. I don't point it out for the sake of trying to illustrate a logical fallacy, but to highlight "this is not the first time".

Hence my point about Sisyphus, whilst we can go for a "wait and see" ad infinitum, but there becomes a point when you're pushing a rock for eternity. Hence why I am vocal about the issues, rather than just "hoping" stuff gets fixed.

And I have tried it out. But what we said during the media tour was not wrong. A lot of people will say "wait and see before you complain". But we play our jobs a lot, they're out mains, we've played them for a long time and we've played the game for a long time. The media tour gave us tonnes of information about the job changes and skills, so people can look at them and deduce what it means in terms of play. For people to have been wrong would have meant SE pulled something really unexpected.

In some cases, it's fair comment, like with Blue Mage, where we didn't know much about what Limited Jobs would entail - granted, Blue Mage had problems anyway, but I think in cases like that "wait and see" with a hint of scepticism is still a fair argument.

But there are things we did know and plenty of people who knew what they were talking about when it came to the media tour.

Regardless, I still gave it a chance on the off chance SE did do something different with the encounters (though it wouldn't have made a different for anything pre-ShB) and wanted to enjoy it, I found things that I did like and I could see the potential, but it still felt boring overall.


As for being in the minority. I've already accepted that my vision of Scholar could well be in the minority. I've discussed with Scholars who have differing opinions, I've spoken to ones who agree. I am totally okay with that. My vision of Scholar is the 2.0 one, but as an example I have a guy in my FC who fell in love with the 3.0 version, which already had some differences in how it played - at least in terms of what I got from it and what he got from it as we had some different ideas on how Scholar should be designed. There will be people who also fell in love with SCH at 4.0 and even 5.0. However, where I've compromised at is "don't make it monotonous".

If I have a lot of down time and my only options are to spam Broil or Art of War with the occasional Energy Drain or Biolysis then that's monotonous. I've even gone as far as suggesting instead of weaving DPS moves why don't we weave in debuffs instead or buffs - a little like AST already does. That's not my vision of Scholar, but I figured it'd be a compromise as SE seemed to want to give a simpler DPS rotation. So I offered something more supporty.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I still feel shifting the goal post is a fair description, maybe not put such a heavy weight on individuals, because that's unfair, but the point I was making, at each goal post we hit, somebody else comes along and then they set it somewhere else. I don't point it out for the sake of trying to illustrate a logical fallacy, but to highlight "this is not the first time".

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So... generalizing an entire forum with different people who have different expectations is fair? From my point of view that is what is unfair, but I see your point. I just don't like the way you generalize it. Not everyone changed their minds and kept postponing their opinion.

I agree with everything else especially regarding the media. Doesn't really help that most "influencers" do not play Healer. Only Momo comes and mind aaaand he's a min-maxer so... he's doesn't really cut it for several people.

With that said I am advocating for people to complain and voice their concerns so keep doing a good job.

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Originally Posted by Schan

So... generalizing an entire forum with different people who have different expectations is fair? From my point of view that is what is unfair, but I see your point. I just don't like the way you generalize it. Not everyone changed their minds and kept postponing their opinion.

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I'm not sure where I'm generalising an entire forum? My comment was simply "but people keep moving the goalpost on this one" & gave examples of different goal posts. Then I had to explain goalpost shifting as a concept in a follow-up post, because the response I got didn't make much sense.

"People" is indefinite. I was intentionally non-specific. I was addressing the overall "wait and see" argument, rather than a whole forum or even specific people, because each time we hit goalposts people set, we still get presented with the same argument, but with a different goalpost. The "people" here can be anyone at all and any number, because I've not specified any.

Maybe I'm personifying an argument too much? But it does feel like we're just arguing semantics.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

I'm not sure where I'm generalising an entire forum? My comment was simply "but people keep moving the goalpost on this one" & gave examples of different goal posts. Then I had to explain goalpost shifting as a concept in a follow-up post, because the response I got didn't make much sense.

"People" is indefinite. I was intentionally non-specific. I was addressing the overall "wait and see" argument, rather than a whole forum or even specific people, because each time we hit goalposts people set, we still get presented with the same argument, but with a different goalpost. The "people" here can be anyone at all and any number, because I've not specified any.

Maybe I'm personifying an argument too much? But it does feel like we're just arguing semantics.

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and how about people do both. I very much sit on the "wait and see" crowd. Doesn't mean I won't complain and keep bringing issues to light while I wait. One must keep themselves busy while they wait.

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Originally Posted by Schan

and how about people do both. I very much sit on the "wait and see" crowd. Doesn't mean I won't complain and keep bringing issues to light while I wait. One must keep themselves busy while they wait.

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Absolutely no issue with people doing both. I’ve yet to see somebody refuse to the try healers with the new changes. I’ve already said I’ve given a SCH a chance. And with whatever changes SE may bring, we have little choice but to wait and see anyway.

But you’re not making these “wait and see” arguments as a counter argument to people’s complaints, but instead doing seemingly what most people who are complaining are doing. Complaining whilst waiting and seeing if the problems get acknowledged or fixed. However, the person I was responding to was making it as a counter argument.

I do miss the DOTs but its not stopping me from playing SCH. The true essence of the job is still there. I do think the job was more engaging when you could manage all of those DPS abilities, I do agree that it is a bit dumbed down now.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I am much more inclined to say that they are working on it, but in order to get healing where it needs to be, homogenization of our healers was necessary..

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As respectfully as possible, they've had 6 years to do something and the result is to break them completely. While other jobs move forward, we've had to start back from square one.

We didn't get a healer last expansion because they "needed to rebalance tanks and heals they currently have" and the current iterations are the result of that. Homogenized and boring.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I just think we really need to stop demonizing the dev team as far as healing goes.

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Quite frankly, again 6 years in, as a healer the SE development team has lost my trust and they have to earn it back.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

... We didn't get a healer last expansion because they "needed to rebalance tanks and heals they currently have" and the current iterations are the result of that. Homogenized and boring. ...

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amen. ._.
I miss my old scholar so so much that I don't really log in much anymore.
Tried WHM, its okay, but I still hate that I have to try other classes as a potential main cause they killed mine. ><

/ObligatoryPostOfUnhappyScholarSoTheyKnowI'mStillUpset

I agree with you. There are those who keep saying we just need to wait, or the homogenizing of healers was necessary, but these devs had 6 years to work on them.

Now people are saying just wait till the next expansion. Then healers will be fun again, but how long do we have to wait all because the devs keep ruining our classes?

Also, if i had to guess when we get a new healer its going to be something so basic since that's what all the healers have become....basic