Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

Suggesting that hardcore raiders needed jobs to be changed to fit into the meta is missing one key detail.

Hardcore raiders would just switch to the job that was needed/best for the job at hand.

Show me a one trick player and I'll show you someone who isn't a hardcore raider.

Granted, it's fairer to say that SE saw things like 2/3 BRD teams in BCOB and felt like something needed to be done about it, but that's not really fair to pin the blame on progression raid teams.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Suggesting that hardcore raiders needed jobs to be changed to fit into the meta is missing one key detail.

Hardcore raiders would just switch to the job that was needed/best for the job at hand.

Show me a one trick player and I'll show you someone who isn't a hardcore raider.

Granted, it's fairer to say that SE saw things like 2/3 BRD teams in BCOB and felt like something needed to be done about it, but that's not really fair to pin the blame on progression raid teams.

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Tbh both can be true. They could switch jobs while also whining very loudly about how its awful and bad that the game is forcing them to switch jobs and that it shouldnt be like that.

Why is it the only modern MMO with a full armoury system is the one so obsessed with such rigid balance all the classes play the same anyway

If SCH is in the toilet for one patch play SGE, in casual content it doesn’t even matter anyway

What’s the benefit of the armoury system if people will just camp on one job anyway they whine till it gets buffed at the expense of any diversity that makes it worth playing more than one job

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Tbh both can be true. They could switch jobs while also whining very loudly about how its awful and bad that the game is forcing them to switch jobs and that it shouldnt be like that.

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Saying that some would gripe about how bad a job was is fair. Suggesting that they would complain that the game is forcing them to switch isn't so much, at least not at a proper hardcore level.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to raid alongside some of the best players in EU over the years, genuine worldprog hardcores that are attached by the hip to a specific job were the minority. Most that were '1 tricks' were focusing in on a role rather than a specific job and had zero issues flexing within that niche as needed. And importantly, as Snow mentions above, the armoury system means that as long as you remember to get your niches levelled at the start of an expansion, gearing that job for a new tier is a few hours work for a strong team or FC. Crafted/melds/primal weapon/done.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Why is it the only modern MMO with a full armoury system is the one so obsessed with such rigid balance all the classes play the same anyway

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Precisely that, it absolutely boggles my mind that SE don't lean on this more to prolong people's enjoyment of the game by diversifying the jobs within a role and giving them their own niches where they can excel. I had an absolute blast in Midas alternating AST and WHM depending on the floor and it really mixed things up for me despite the torrid circumstances I was playing in at the time.

FFXI often took a similar path, I'd routinely start Sky raids on SCH to cover a bunch of roles until the groups had filled out, then I'd flex to BLM, BRD or WHM as the evening progressed. As a result no two raids were the same, something FFXIV would do well to learn from.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Why is it the only modern MMO with a full armoury system is the one so obsessed with such rigid balance all the classes play the same anyway

If SCH is in the toilet for one patch play SGE, in casual content it doesn’t even matter anyway

What’s the benefit of the armoury system if people will just camp on one job anyway they whine till it gets buffed at the expense of any diversity that makes it worth playing more than one job

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That's because the design philosophy is opposite of what you're describing. It's not about adding armory system too allow content to be restrictive on kinds of jobs your can bring, it's there to support further the core design principle of "you can do anything as any job" and generally "your can engage any content without being locked out because of your job choices. And that's what armory system is for, to enable people to even go as far as to be able to play other jobs if they so wish. Armory system exists to make everything accessible to everyone, and that core philosophy also applies to design of jobs and fights. They can't make something bad for just one job because thatd be making something that can't be done as specific job (or is so much more difficult as that job compared to others, that community outcry about balance is inevitably)

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

That's because the design philosophy is opposite of what you're describing. It's not about adding armory system too allow content to be restrictive on kinds of jobs your can bring, it's there to support further the core design principle of "you can do anything as any job" and generally "your can engage any content without being locked out because of your job choices. And that's what armory system is for, to enable people to even go as far as to be able to play other jobs if they so wish. Armory system exists to make everything accessible to everyone, and that core philosophy also applies to design of jobs and fights. They can't make something bad for just one job because thatd be making something that can't be done as specific job (or is so much more difficult as that job compared to others, that community outcry about balance is inevitably)

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Then what’s the point of having the ability to swap between jobs when they all do the same thing, no job is allowed to have a niche, every job must be able to do everything equally competently, if anything that discourages interaction with other jobs because people know that either their job can already do everything or if it can’t that square will just buff it till it can and even if they swap they are still functionally playing the same class it’s just the other class might do 2% more damage

Square needs to respond to buffs and nerfs faster than they do but there is nothing inherently wrong with certain fights biasing certain classes when certain classes have particular niches and how they respond to different mechanics, because if your class is bad for turn 2 you can swap to another class for turn 2

for example what did SGE add for SCH mains, the classes are almost exactly the same; in that case the armoury system provided no benefit because in the pursuit of balance square just copy pasted SCH and made it a new class; especially since there is no fight where either offers a real niche over the other since they removed niche optimisation (like how SCH AST could ignore wall orbs in E10)

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Square needs to respond to buffs and nerfs faster than they do but there is nothing inherently wrong with certain fights biasing certain classes when certain classes have particular niches and how they respond to different mechanics, because if your class is bad for turn 2 you can swap to another class for turn 2

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I'd rather have it on a 'fight mechanic' basis, rather than a whole fight by fight basis. IE, where you suggest that a class (lets say AST vs WHM), WHM is bad at turn 2, so you go AST, then AST struggles on turn 3, you go WHM, I'd rather it be more akin to P3S. AST being able to 'lol Macro' and completely remove Life's Agonies as a mechanic is cool. The issue was not that AST could delete a mechanic, the issue is that WHM had no mechanic elsewhere in the fight where IT could invalidate it, and AST had to work harder. If we had, for example, Fountain of Fire, or Firestorms of Asphodelos (the tornadoes) be quite technical for an AST to deal with, but WHM is able to 'lol Lilybell' and completely ignore it, then the fight would have one mechanic that is easily resolved by one healer, and another mechanic that is easily resolved by a different healer. And since these two healers (currently) can't do early prog due to a lack of mits, we can be sure (until SE decides the split is not really working so well) that a team has either a WHM OR an AST, not both. So one mechanic of the two has to be resolved 'properly', or potentially both, depending where the group decides to use Macro/Lilybell

The way P3S was, where AST had a mechanic it could do incredible things to resolve, and WHM having nothing by comparison, lead to the issue that I'd suggest the above to avoid: anecdotal, I know, but of all the clears of P3S I did, I don't remember a single one of them being as WHM. If I had to pureheal, I went AST despite being much worse at it, because I did not want to burden my shielding cohealer pug with 'sorry you have to spam Succor for this'

I mean the whole "It WaS MaDE for ThE HaRDcoRe" discussion has been debunked since the beggining. Just look at Mr.Happy's interview with yoshi P and besides how depressing is as healer to hear what he says he never mentions the changes being made for the hardcore players but the new (and less skilled) ones.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I'd rather have it on a 'fight mechanic' basis, rather than a whole fight by fight basis. IE, where you suggest that a class (lets say AST vs WHM), WHM is bad at turn 2, so you go AST, then AST struggles on turn 3, you go WHM, I'd rather it be more akin to P3S. AST being able to 'lol Macro' and completely remove Life's Agonies as a mechanic is cool. The issue was not that AST could delete a mechanic, the issue is that WHM had no mechanic elsewhere in the fight where IT could invalidate it, and AST had to work harder. If we had, for example, Fountain of Fire, or Firestorms of Asphodelos (the tornadoes) be quite technical for an AST to deal with, but WHM is able to 'lol Lilybell' and completely ignore it

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I mean...wasn't that pretty much what WHM was able to do? Just drop Lillybell in the middle during Fountain of Fire and have it heal everyone to full on every puddle explosion.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I mean...wasn't that pretty much what WHM was able to do? Just drop Lillybell in the middle during Fountain of Fire and have it heal everyone to full on every puddle explosion.

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Roe’s point was more that healing that segment as astrologian was not particularly technical or hard. Sure, white mage did have the ability to pop the lily down, but that’s not the same as astrologian literally negating Agonies as a mechanic.

I would add to their point though that I also think it’s fine if white mage doesn’t have a particular advantage in P3S in the same was astrologian does, but can have advantages elsewhere in the tier. A suggestion I’ve made for unique white mage utility in the past was Float: a buff that allows your party to walk on air and become temporarily unaffected by floor hazards and puddle damage excluding deadly arena edges. If white mage had that, then astrologian might have an edge in P3S, but white mage would have an edge in P2S. Limit cut, for example, would be far easier to execute if the party could just cut through the center of the arena without fear of getting dropsy’d.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

I mean the whole "It WaS MaDE for ThE HaRDcoRe" discussion has been debunked since the beggining. Just look at Mr.Happy's interview with yoshi P and besides how depressing is as healer to hear what he says he never mentions the changes being made for the hardcore players but the new (and less skilled) ones.

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Yoshi P: "Though hardcore players are the majority that are pushing back against the homogenisation, we have to also think about the people in the middle, who we call the intermediates."
The community: "tHe HaRdCoRe PlAyErS aSkEd FoR tHiS"

Idk man.

If the goal is to foster an environment where both the hardcore and the “intermediates” can reliably eat harder content, then wouldn’t it make more sense to have savage fights allow intermediate players to make more mistakes rather than have them demand near-perfection, then just sanding away vigorously at every job’s gameplay to try and childproof them so that mistakes cannot be made?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

If the goal is to foster an environment where both the hardcore and the “intermediates” can reliably eat harder content, then wouldn’t it make more sense to have savage fights allow intermediate players to make more mistakes rather than have them demand near-perfection, then just sanding away vigorously at every job’s gameplay to try and childproof them so that mistakes cannot be made?

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It's part of the reason why shifting all the complexity into the fights is an unsustainable design. Current savage demands that the entire party execute the fight perfectly or you die, that's likely to be way harder on the middle skill level playerbase than straightforward fights with complex job kits (especially since the players on the weaker side can be carried to a certain point when the fights aren't body checks on top of body checks).

This basically was proven by P10S. Look how many complained about P10S. It's not even a particularly hard fight, but it has way more body checks than a 2nd floor fight has any right to have, and that's a big problem.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

If the goal is to foster an environment where both the hardcore and the “intermediates” can reliably eat harder content, then wouldn’t it make more sense to have savage fights allow intermediate players to make more mistakes rather than have them demand near-perfection, then just sanding away vigorously at every job’s gameplay to try and childproof them so that mistakes cannot be made?

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The way they adding so much body checks kinda makes me think that they have ran out of ways to counteract the amount of 'support/mitigation/recovery' options they've given us as a whole. As a last resort they turn to "You do it X way or you die Idc" which frankly feels really bad to have that agency taken away from players' hands.

Could dual cast or some other mechanic like it work for WHM? Like, WHM gets dual cast, and it also gets chunky stone, and aero spells to use it on -- they could even give them cleave to be hotbar space efficient. Or casting Glare grants stacks of Tranquil Hearts or something which reduce the cast/recast time of specified spells like the previously mentioned aero, and stone spells as well as healing spells. I've mentioned this in an other 'boring healer DPS' thread, but I feel like if there were any jobs that WHM could take inspiration from to create a potential DPS rotation they would be either RDM or BLM.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Then what’s the point of having the ability to swap between jobs when they all do the same thing, no job is allowed to have a niche, every job must be able to do everything equally competently, if anything that discourages interaction with other jobs because people know that either their job can already do everything or if it can’t that square will just buff it till it can and even if they swap they are still functionally playing the same class it’s just the other class might do 2% more damage

Square needs to respond to buffs and nerfs faster than they do but there is nothing inherently wrong with certain fights biasing certain classes when certain classes have particular niches and how they respond to different mechanics, because if your class is bad for turn 2 you can swap to another class for turn 2

for example what did SGE add for SCH mains, the classes are almost exactly the same; in that case the armoury system provided no benefit because in the pursuit of balance square just copy pasted SCH and made it a new class; especially since there is no fight where either offers a real niche over the other since they removed niche optimisation (like how SCH AST could ignore wall orbs in E10)

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As people like to complain a lot "every job is just a reskin!". Yeah, yeah, thats the point of armory system, different jobs are very different aesthetically in visuals of how they play. Gameplay wise, every single one has been a rigid rotation since ARR, just that the rotations in question got more similar as expansions went on because main feedback was the desync between party buffs. Frankly, I may be the perfect audience in this regard, because, yeah, I am excited for Viper and Pictomancer not because I expect totally radically different gameplay, but because I love aesthetics of both jobs. Jobs within same role being too different to the point of reduced viability has proven itself to lead to proportionally louder and more frustrated community outcry than it does when they are too similar like now. So I don't expect much changes there.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Could dual cast or some other mechanic like it work for WHM? Like, WHM gets dual cast, and it also gets chunky stone, and aero spells to use it on -- they could even give them cleave to be hotbar space efficient. Or casting Glare grants stacks of Tranquil Hearts or something which reduce the cast/recast time of specified spells like the previously mentioned aero, and stone spells as well as healing spells. I've mentioned this in an other 'boring healer DPS' thread, but I feel like if there were any jobs that WHM could take inspiration from to create a potential DPS rotation they would be either RDM or BLM.

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The main problem of dualcast is that it would compromise the times you heal as you woudn't want to spend the skipped cast on a heal with normal GCD but the tranquil hearts idea could work. I also personally think that Whm and all healers in general could take notes from how casters and other dps jobs are designed but in Whm's case I always thought of it as a job that could lean into being the BLM of healers in the sense of being very GCD reliant and with low apm

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b3/20...501d1a8c3e.gif

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

The main problem of dualcast is that it would compromise the times you heal as you woudn't want to spend the skipped cast on a heal with normal GCD but the tranquil hearts idea could work. I also personally think that Whm and all healers in general could take notes from how casters and other dps jobs are designed but in Whm's case I always thought of it as a job that could lean into being the BLM of healers in the sense of being very GCD reliant and with low apm

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This is my take for WHM as well. I'm fine with it being the 'low OGCD count, big focus on healing via damage neutral GCDs' healer, as that can be a functional identity, but what it needs is simply more damage neutral GCDs to use, rather than adding more OGCD tools like Aquaveil/Lilybell/probably some traited upgrade to Asylum next expansion. Wouldn't it be interesting if 'optimization' for WHM was to have several damage neutral healing tools, and working around their refunds so that your healing rotation lines up in just the right way, that ALL of the 'refunds' (Misery as an example, but other tools would have their own refunds too), ALL land within raidbuffs, making WHM into the 'compile damage and blast in raidbuffs' healer? With a GCD focused gameplay style, it means that the overall APM can stay low, lending to the 'new player friendly' appeal, while also contributing to that appeal by having simple, easy-to-understand healing moves. Unlike it's competitor AST, where you have to either wait for HOTs or wait for Star to charge up, WHM is appealing because you can smash Rapture and the healing is sorted out in an instant burst. That simplicity is nice, but it also gets stale after a while, hence the 'damage refund compile/spend' gameplay would offer some extra depth to the class

The example I gave a while back (with Quake, Flood, Tornado) in... I don't remember if it was this thread or one of the others, meant that the suggested healing tool was damage neutral with one Glare cast. This means that, should a player go into raidbuffs without charges of Quake/Flood/Tornado, the total damage 'lost', across three GCDs (to actually spend those three skills) would be, not one Glare, but 'the difference between one Glare inside raidbuffs, and one Glare outside of raidbuffs', extremely forgiving for any player who doesn't care about doing the absolute toppest best damage, but still something for players to work around in their gameplay if they DO want to do the toppest best damage

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Jobs within same role being too different to the point of reduced viability has proven itself to lead to proportionally louder and more frustrated community outcry than it does when they are too similar like now. So I don't expect much changes there.

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Kindly prove this claim by showing any form of discontent back in HW/SB that's louder than what we have now. The only loud discontent I remember from that era was that PLD was really quite bad in HW.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Kindly prove this claim by showing any form of discontent back in HW/SB that's louder than what we have now. The only loud discontent I remember from that era was that PLD was really quite bad in HW.

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I was going to say the same thing.

3.0 AST and 4.0 SCH were both basically broken dead shells of a job on those expansion drops. They both had horrible issues and gaping holes in their kit across a wide variety of content yet in both cases I can't remember things being anything like as bad as they are now.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I was going to say the same thing.

3.0 AST and 4.0 SCH were both basically broken dead shells of a job on those expansion drops. They both had horrible issues and gaping holes in their kit across a wide variety of content yet in both cases I can't remember things being anything like as bad as they are now.

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While current SCH is mechanically boring at least it has it's mana regen abilities back that the job designers stupidly took away in Stormblood and the energy drain nerfs in Shadowbringer.

It can't be overstated just how bad 5.0 was for SCH, outside of the DPS ability purge:

Aetherflow (their main mana regen outside of Lucid) moved from lvl 6 to lvl 45
Energy Drain, which supplemented mana regen, had it's mana regen removed
Quickened Aetherflow removed from the game.

So you had a job that lost all of it's tactical identity weaving dps and heals combined with terrible MP management and a clunky fairy that didn't work right.

I still have no idea why they removed quickened aetherflow, that was both somehow the least offensive and also the best feeling ability in SCH’s kit and they lost it for absolutely zero return

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I still have no idea why they removed quickened aetherflow, that was both somehow the least offensive and also the best feeling ability in SCH’s kit and they lost it for absolutely zero return

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Because in SE land, there is no such thing as gameplay rewards, only gameplay punishments for doing something "wrong." The Shadowbringers/Endwalker mentality is remove as many ways to fail from the job as possible (except for Black Mage).

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Because in SE land, there is no such thing as gameplay rewards, only gameplay punishments for doing something "wrong." The Shadowbringers/Endwalker mentality is remove as many ways to fail from the job as possible (except for Black Mage).

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Honestly, we talk about how BLM is Yoshi P's favourite, but BLM did get neutered in some ways too. Enochian management used to be way harder, Thundercloud and Firestarter procs being extended also made movement easier, and they also buffed standard rotation to the point where alternative lines aren't that big of a gain anymore.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Honestly, we talk about how BLM is Yoshi P's favourite, but BLM did get neutered in some ways too. Enochian management used to be way harder, Thundercloud and Firestarter procs being extended also made movement easier, and they also buffed standard rotation to the point where alternative lines aren't that big of a gain anymore.

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Enochian refreshes giving diminishing returns upon each B4 refresh, aggro management, apocatastasis required fight knowledge and targeting specific party members, old manafont [convert] would take a portion of health so it could potentially line up with a raidwide and kill you, manashift again rewarded fight knowledge and paying attention to who needed resources when you were going into UI, manaward and manawall were separate abilities and even tho the one that blocked 2 phys attacks was largely useless i remember it having some niche defensive uses - hell, even raging strikes was another cooldown to keep track of. BLM is still in a really good spot but we've also lost a LOT of really interesting stuff.

Edit: we could also cast lethargy which caused slow and heavy and was part of dealing with og Living Liquid, additionally Blizzard 2 also caused a heavy or a slow at some point. We also had Break but little to use it on.

Maybe it's a cultural thing with Japanese Game development...

Looking at some Nintendo titles... Advance Wars: Reboot could have offered way more depth, extra Units, Online PvP rank system, but they didn't. Megaman Zero games were quite more Brutal if you choose to master its combo's and the hardmode vs the infantilized renditions of it later. Fzero fans have been waiting for 20+ years for a new up to date graphical Fzero game that had the same complexity as FzeroGX, only to get Fzero99 where you don't have as much of it at all just to name a few examples. FFXIV seems no different.

" Go play Ultimate " is not a solution for players who crave a slither of Job depth. Sitting hours in PF, finding Statics & Raiding Discords, learning & reviewing Strats, wiping for hours at the same prog points - is not gameplay complexity that everyone desires... Sometimes? players love doing things right that are not necessary in a casual setting. Gameplay not hours of waiting away? but around the corner, be it a monster they have to hit in a Fate or a Dungeon taking 5 min to queue up for. A feels good to do that tiny bit extra that no one asked off them to do... not even the game i.e...

" Optional Depth " from Jobs that can be optionally applied to nearly all PvE combat activities. Feels like this is slowly being erased, making casual content where the mechanics are already laughably dull extra braindead.

Square obviously won't increase difficulty of mechanics in Casual content and it doesn't seem they have meaning MSQ/Dungeons/Normal Trials/Raids/Alliance Raids all of which are a cakewalk. Square has not shown to give any Job Depth in return after they culled Job Skills away or even after some are Reworked.

Some players also give feedback of changes they desire that would drop both the skill-floor and skill-ceiling:
- Removing Combo buttons
- Removal of Positionals
- Gauge management simplified further
- Compression of Job Skill kits
They might all look like Quality of Life changes and making room for something better in the future? but again... After Square has removed anything from Jobs, they have not shown to replace it with more Job Depth ever

Lets not forget combat changes in Endwalker
Dungeon mobs have been increased in Size so some Jobs got AoE rotation simplified. Boss hitboxes got increased as well, some taking up half the space of the arena. Bosses seemingly teleport to the center of the Arena more often, pulling Bosses as a Tank made easier. The reach of Heals and Buffs have been increased, so you don't have to think as much about where you position when you cast them.

Not to say all these changes weren't welcome or bad? it's just that you can translate what has been happening to XIV as " XIV has been simplified & simplified & simplified & simplified &... " and you can't quite tell where they will stop, except fight engagement at Ultimate. No one is going to be against keeping the Skill-Floor below the Earth's-Crust, but to constantly drop the Skill-Ceiling of Jobs? takes away the satisfaction of mastering a Job you love or encouraging players to do anything remotely better on any Job.

Are you in Casual Content? Faceroll your Keyboard. Don't like that? Go play Ultimate - there seems to be no clear middle-ground for Midcore players. But money talks... Majority of players are Casual, and not just in XIV. It's best to cater to your biggest demography. Even if Square could easily create a side-dish to cater to Midcore players like Job Depth that is completely optional... Sadly, why would they? They have a better solution for that already then improving gameplay which is -> Just go play Ultimate

Potentially really whacky idea, but what if they removed auto regen?

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Potentially really whacky idea, but what if they removed auto regen?

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The 1% of max HP (or however much it is) per 3s that you naturally regenerate while in combat? Wouldn't change a thing, I'd expect

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The 1% of max HP (or however much it is) per 3s that you naturally regenerate while in combat? Wouldn't change a thing, I'd expect

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Maybe a regen has to be pressed once more in an Ultimate or smth

Feels like most games offer an Easy and a Normal mode anymore but not hard. The easy mode is for the storygoers and non-grinders. Feels like there is no hard mode in games anymore unless it's New Game Plus.


FFXIV is kind of the same. The MSQ and Normal Mode content is the Normal. The Easy mode is the easier mode option for solo duties in the MSQ and the trust system. The Hard mode is always existing content but harder, the "New Game Plus" feeling. I admit I reached a bit but I couldn't help but notice the connections.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...feedback-is... Just bring this up here as the forefront over here.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...feedback-is... Just bring this up here as the forefront over here.

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Good thing I quit healing.

Can't wait for Yoshi-P to beg players to play healer again on stream when PF is dead waiting on healers again.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Good thing I quit healing.

Can't wait for Yoshi-P to beg players to play healer again on stream when PF is dead waiting on healers again.

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I remember looking over there shortly after I made this post a long time ago.

What I noticed was: The healer forum was largely empty. One new post every few weeks. Looking at it again, not much has changed.

Last posts on certain topics: 3 posts in January, 6 posts over a 4 month period

So no, I don't take what they say seriously at all.

Reoh
01-25-2024,

chamfer
01-19-2024,

Pyonko
01-06-2024,

chamfer
12-14-2023,

Miso
10-19-2023,

3 posts in January, 4 posts over a 4 month period

So no, I don't take what they say seriously at all.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

Feels like most games offer an Easy and a Normal mode anymore but not hard. The easy mode is for the storygoers and non-grinders. Feels like there is no hard mode in games anymore unless it's New Game Plus.


FFXIV is kind of the same. The MSQ and Normal Mode content is the Normal. The Easy mode is the easier mode option for solo duties in the MSQ and the trust system. The Hard mode is always existing content but harder, the "New Game Plus" feeling. I admit I reached a bit but I couldn't help but notice the connections.

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Engineered extreme Difficulty is a weird thing tied to business strategy more than anything else the majority of the time. In normal games it has no purpose to exist except as a novelty, since it only appeals to small numbers of people. Arcades primarily used difficulty to make people spend more money, but when arcade culture began dying out due to consoles there was no longer a need for high difficulty, and people created cheat devices like the gameshark, ultimately because it opened up new ways to play games and often circumvent overly difficult sections. Games as services present a unique set of problems involving difficulty since people can't use cheat devices or they get banned, and most of the time the difficult content requires more than one person so there is a huge amount of preparation tax going on to even engage in it.

EDIT: I had to update this a bit since it sounds like I'm talking about difficulty in general when I mean extremely pushed difficulty, usually for the sake of designing or engineering a specific success rate or learning period before clearing.

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:snipped:
3 posts in January, 4 posts over a 4 month period

So no, I don't take what they say seriously at all.

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I wouldn't put it past the devs to take the lack of feedback and silence on the JP side of the forums as an "everything is great since there are no complaints." I believe even their Chan website shared the same sentiments regarding healers needing to "stay in their lane".

It's clear they don't care what kind of feedback they receive from the West side regarding healers (or anything else for that matter).

We won't truly know until they show the new job actions and any possibly gameplay changes when DT approaches, but I'm not holding my breath with a dev team that boots a healer from the test group because "they got too good".

The main issues I'm seeing is when the gear level matches content and level sync gets involved sage has problems keeping people up even with the one button rotation, because it's healing is based off of DPSing and you have no way to keep that up when a tank is pulling down a hall. It's one of the first times I've seen a job where it depends on the tanks having self healing to survive completely, unlike the scholar that has firehose healing fairy. So any argument against additional dps actions on the front of needing more healing buttons is kind of moot: They already have problems on the shield healer side even with the skills they got. The other issue is that they are using enrage mechanics, which signals going more "face meet fist" caveman approach to combat vs tactical combat that most games have which lack the enrage mechanics. No matter how many puzzle box type of things they put into fights it is just healing output vs damage taken and dps output vs timer. There is only so much design space inside of a tab target MMO to work with and eventually it starts turning into designing novelty over function.

Ultimately, I don't see people here wanting to turn healers into DPS as much as having healing kits that are simple and easy to work with, so healers have more options for handling the movement mechanics and keeping up a rotation like the other jobs in the game are. I've seen so much healer stagnation that being a healer gives faster queues than tanks almost all of the time, and the healer role is insanely hard to fill on PF in any kind of end game duty finder. People would probably even be willing to take new healers into savage given the state of things because there isn't any choice. Even collapsing the raid community onto aether isn't cutting it anymore. When the game picks up again we'll see the same illusion of the land of plenty with healers but I doubt anyone is going to really fall in love with them and stay long term on team green.

^SGE has the highest HPS of the 4 healers and it’s not particularly close and this is true at almost any level, the only time that kardia really has any sort of impact on SGE as a class is sub level 30 content when your healing options consist of kardia or diagnosis. Going any higher than that your main tools become SGE’s overpowered free regens that work on top of its mitigation

If kardia was actually impactful to SGE’s healing potential (say for example physis was AOE kardia, kerechole’s mitigation only snapshot like CU but refreshed each time kardia ticked and pan/haima gave a 15 second window where you had to charge each stack by proccing kardia) then the consideration of SGE struggling to do much more than DOT while running would actually be valid but as of right now SGE doesn’t even need kardia

Sage is NOT: A DPS-oriented barrier healer.

Sage IS: An OGCD healing oriented regen healer.

Sage's most used healing resources are Kerachole, Ixochole, and Physis II. What do they have in common? All three have nothing to do with DPSing other than enabling you to spam Dosis III more and nothing to do with barriers period. Meanwhile, Kardia, the thing that is supposed to be the heart of Sage's healing identity has no way to interact with it, no way to address different healing requirements, and almost no reasons to ever actually pass it around to other party members. There are certainly situations in which you can swap it to other party members, but the effect is too slow and too weak to have any meaningful applications in tighter healing requirements in which healing resource management actually can be an important choice to make. So the only times where passing Kardia around to heal actually can be used is situations in which there is no pressure on your other healing resources anyway. Sure you can use Kardia, but you could also use literally 20 other buttons for the same thing. In fact, using your Addersgall may very well be a better use of resources than Kardia anyway since you're more often than not drowning in Addersgall that you'd like to spend on actual healing to restore your MP rather than either wasting the healing when no one needs it for the MP or just foregoing the MP altogether.

And that doesn't even go into how little Sage relies on barrier application as a "barrier healer." Haima and Panhaima? Cool, but also niche and on long cooldowns. Holos? The barrier was added as an afterthought and is also a long cooldown resource. Eukrasian Diagnosis/Prognosis? You mean the two objectively worst healing actions you can possibly use other than vanilla Diagnosis/Prognosis or Pepsis: the skill that's utterly garbage specifically because it relies on having the barriers from the almost equally garbage GCD barrier heals that a good Sage never touches?

I would really like the shield healers to lean into actual shields and visible mitigation (such a protraction) over invisible mitigation because it feels more impactful

Think on the visible mitigation side
-SGE has haima (2 minutes), panhaima (2 minutes) and holos (2 minutes) (and holos shield was added because of the dominance of critlo in DSR)
-SCH has seraph (2 minutes) and protraction (1 minute)

Meanwhile on the invisible mitigation side
-SGE has kerechole (30 seconds), taurochole (45 seconds) and holos (2 minutes)
-SCH has sacred soil (30 seconds), fey illumination (2 minutes) and expedience (2 minutes)

The game strongly encourages you to use invisible mitigation over visible mitigation (especially with how dominant kerechole is) even when it feels less impactful, I really wish at least one of the shield healers leaned more heavily into actually producing visible shields and HP up as mitigation (especially when that leads to interesting interactions like shake it off being double buffed by protraction) because being shielded for 50% of the hit via a spreadlo feels way more impactful than taking 50% less damage because stacked 4 mitigations