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

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Originally Posted by rawker

To be fair, of the 4 lv89 healer sets, SCH has got to be the closest thing that doesn't make my highlander look feminine.. if only there's a way to cut off those ribbons.

Also, if they stuck up with ARR/HW SMN, they could have simply upgraded Enkindle via trait to tranform the egis to its primal forms to do their signature moves then dissipates and puts the summon egi in a lengthy cooldown. And when all egis are used up, Carbuncle is the "filler" pet.

Also the dreadwyrm trance could have also been upgraded to summon Bahamut. Plus make the summoning have requiments other than it off cooldown.

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Those ribbons on the back of the 89 sett are literally the only downside to what’s otherwise a really good “commander coat”

No idea why they thought to include them

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It really isn't hard to make a more masculine/gender neutral healer artifact set.

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Its not as if they don't know how.

AST is a perfect example until Shb:

HW
https://gearsets.eorzeacollection.co...male-front.png
https://gearsets.eorzeacollection.co...male-front.png

SB
https://gearsets.eorzeacollection.co...male-front.png
https://gearsets.eorzeacollection.co...male-front.png

Hell even SCH looks fairly gender neutral if you replace all of the skirts on female with pants.

They just see healer as the stereotypical women's role and thus design it that way.

...Y'know DESPITE how CNJ's mentor is male (E-Sumi Yan).

Or SCH's (both Alka Zolka and Suito Curito).

Or even AST's (Jannequinard and Kyokuho).

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

...Y'know DESPITE how CNJ's mentor is male (E-Sumi Yan).

Or SCH's (both Alka Zolka and Suito Curito).

Or even AST's (Jannequinard and Kyokuho).

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Or how the only scions that heal are men: Alphinaud, Urianger, and G'raha. After seeing the DPS side, Y'shtola only agrees to heal if there are literally no other candidates who can. And does so by performing her Sorceress/Black Mage rotation anyway.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Or how the only scions that heal are men: Alphinaud, Urianger, and G'raha. After seeing the DPS side, Y'shtola only agrees to heal if there are literally no other candidates who can. And does so by performing her Sorceress/Black Mage rotation anyway.

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Yeah I don't get it. I don't have an issue with it since my WoL is supposed to be a more effeminate man... but he's still A MAN. I have the option to slap on a robe and call it a dress (with some exceptions that I want but aren't gonna happen because of aformentioned gender differences in gear). I'd like for others who want more masculine healer clothing to have their options to.


...SO YoshiP allow us to glam regardless of class when?

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

Its not as if they don't know how.

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That's the weird part. They've done so well to fit the job gear designs to male and female up until SB.

Between lacking job gear designs and the beginning of job simplifications, it really does seem like ShB onwards is receiving much less attention despite bringing in more money than before.

They've just been throwing bland robe after bland robe at the healers recently. I think the only reason SCH gets something passable for male characters is because they're military-based.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

That's the weird part. They've done so well to fit the job gear designs to male and female up until SB.

Between lacking job gear designs and the beginning of job simplifications, it really does seem like ShB onwards is receiving much less attention despite bringing in more money than before.

They've just been throwing bland robe after bland robe at the healers recently. I think the only reason SCH gets something passable for male characters is because they're military-based.

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If I were to guess... and this is me giving the benefit of the doubt...

POSSIBLY they don't want to make gendered gear only for the community to ask for the gear to be unlocked because coding headache. Take the Neo-Ishgardian one for instance. I know people with female characters who want the male look and I personally want the female one myself. I don't see either becoming a lv1 glam option. Ever.

Doesn't explain why they just don't make more gender neutral stuff but I can see the above issue being a reason for why all the sets are more... uniform across sexes. Otherwise they'd have to do what they did with the Valentoine's 2023 set and make two. For ARMOR. I really don't see that going over well either.

I find it kind of annoying in general that there's no experimentation with artifact gear. Every expansion, the theme is the same. "Traditional." And like, we already have multiple years worth of Traditional artifact gear. Why not be more ambitious with it. I like the new Summoner gear for DT because it actually looks like it's regionally inspired to some degree, but why don't we see more of that? Or if not regionally inspired, inspired by a particular final fantasy. Imagine how epic it would've been if Shadowbringers gave us artifact gear inspired by FF8: 90s Contemporary sets. Sure, not everyone would like them, but so what? You'd do a different theme for Endwalker, and the old sets aren't magically being deleted.

I would love to see a future expansion give us some 'jobs if they were in Spira' artifact armor, taking inspiration from the cast of FFX and the FFX-2 Dresspheres. It'd be so fun and different. Way more exciting to me than Classic 5.0.

Blatantly gender biased AF gear contributes but it’s not the entirety of the problem I have with healers never feeling like the main character

Now I’m not going to explicitly go into “gender stereotypes” but it’s hard to ignore that WHM feels excessively feminine (I’m not saying that heroes can’t be female just that my WOL is male; a gay male; but male nonetheless) but the biggest problem is just that our attacks feel so unimpactful and we come off as a joke

Like a walk into this important battle with a world ending threat and I proceed to glare at the boss for 20 minutes which hit like wet farts while the tanks and the DPS are throwing midares and blade combos and fire 4’s at the same boss, even our drawn weapon stance feels like a bad joke (SGE Is actually fine on this front)

The aesthetic design and the impact of the modern healer kits doesn’t make you feel like you are the WOL; the strongest person on the three great continents and arguably the entire planet of etheryis

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I find it kind of annoying in general that there's no experimentation with artifact gear. Every expansion, the theme is the same. "Traditional." And like, we already have multiple years worth of Traditional artifact gear. Why not be more ambitious with it. I like the new Summoner gear for DT because it actually looks like it's regionally inspired to some degree, but why don't we see more of that? Or if not regionally inspired, inspired by a particular final fantasy. Imagine how epic it would've been if Shadowbringers gave us artifact gear inspired by FF8: 90s Contemporary sets. Sure, not everyone would like them, but so what? You'd do a different theme for Endwalker, and the old sets aren't magically being deleted.

I would love to see a future expansion give us some 'jobs if they were in Spira' artifact armor, taking inspiration from the cast of FFX and the FFX-2 Dresspheres. It'd be so fun and different. Way more exciting to me than Classic 5.0.

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/shrug I'm pretty satisfied with AST's artifact gear aside from EW's and what we're supposed to be getting in DT.

HW's, SB's, and Shb's all have a theme yet still look different enough. EW's top is fine... and so are the bellbottom bottoms I guess, but the headdress is very similar to SB's (which Shb also had). I don't get why it has to be BLACK. The night sky can look dark blue too.

WHM's need serious work though lmao. The peak design was ARR (because its the iconic gear). And SCH... WHY do they need to look like a graduate student? They're supposed to be a militant tactician right? You couldn't change it up to give them some sort of commanding officer's uniform?

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Blatantly gender biased AF gear contributes but it’s not the entirety of the problem I have with healers never feeling like the main character

Now I’m not going to explicitly go into “gender stereotypes” but it’s hard to ignore that WHM feels excessively feminine (I’m not saying that heroes can’t be female just that my WOL is male; a gay male; but male nonetheless) but the biggest problem is just that our attacks feel so unimpactful and we come off as a joke

Like a walk into this important battle with a world ending threat and I proceed to glare at the boss for 20 minutes which hit like wet farts while the tanks and the DPS are throwing midares and blade combos and fire 4’s at the same boss, even our drawn weapon stance feels like a bad joke (SGE Is actually fine on this front)

The aesthetic design and the impact of the modern healer kits doesn’t make you feel like you are the WOL; the strongest person on the three great continents and arguably the entire planet of etheryis

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The only way I'll ever see AST feeling like a WoL is if we draw cards to do damage. Like, Balance is a fire attack, Ewer Drowns the target in water (etc).

WHM and SCH I'll agree can certainly look more like a WoL or just a main character in general if you gave them more impactful looking abilities. WHM especially.

Even if we don't get our elemental attacks back, pretty sure you can make Light aspected abilities look frightening and a bit less frilly.

I'm just saying...

https://i.imgur.com/9vkUba9.png

Make that dress an open coat with pants, change the top a little, and that'd be a pretty cool white mage set.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

If I were to guess... and this is me giving the benefit of the doubt...

POSSIBLY they don't want to make gendered gear only for the community to ask for the gear to be unlocked because coding headache. Take the Neo-Ishgardian one for instance. I know people with female characters who want the male look and I personally want the female one myself. I don't see either becoming a lv1 glam option. Ever.

Doesn't explain why they just don't make more gender neutral stuff but I can see the above issue being a reason for why all the sets are more... uniform across sexes. Otherwise they'd have to do what they did with the Valentoine's 2023 set and make two. For ARMOR. I really don't see that going over well either.

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Honestly, if that was their excuse, it's not a particularly good one.

They could plausibly just make both the M and F styles, then make each a set of gear that can be equipped by either gender. Then they can add the option to exchange one style with the other from the calamity salvager. After all, we can already exchange M to F (and vice versa) for the cash shop outfits.

It would also open up more creativity by matching, for example, the M style top with F style gloves.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

Honestly, if that was their excuse, it's not a particularly good one.

They could plausibly just make both the M and F styles, then make each a set of gear that can be equipped by either gender. Then they can add the option to exchange one style with the other from the calamity salvager. After all, we can already exchange M to F (and vice versa) for the cash shop outfits.

It would also open up more creativity by matching, for example, the M style top with F style gloves.

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Like I said, its a possible reason they could go with.

In my honest opinion the real reason for the feminine looking gear is that "men don't want to play healer, its a woman's job may as well design it to what women may like".

Which again is hilarious as Ty and I both mention the amount of male healers the player interacts with that seem to be their way of saying "men can be healers too; its fine".

Just give me more trench coat like gear and I'd be fine.

To be fair, the healers that can lean into a more masculine set are SCH and SGE

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Originally Posted by rawker

To be fair, the healers that can lean into a more masculine set are SCH and SGE

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To which I say refer to SB AST's male set.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

Which again is hilarious as Ty and I both mention the amount of male healers the player interacts with that seem to be their way of saying "men can be healers too; its fine".

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Honestly, each of the caster quests actually feature an important male NPC:

WHM: A-Towa-Cant
SCH: Surito Carito
AST: Leveva's grandfather
SGE: Loifa
BLM: The lalafell brothers
SMN: Tristan
RDM: X'rhun Tia

So I don't know why they wouldn't design for them too.

All the more reason for them to just effin’ get rid of the role restrictions off the glamour system. Not only it’ll benefit healers, it’ll benefit everybody else.

I personally have no issue wearing the conventionally feminine gears. They’re just a piece of clothing to me—they don’t necessarily define much of my character. I do have issue if that is what they come up with 9 out of 10 times when designing new set of gears while at the same time having good amount of diversity reserved for other roles instead. I don’t need anymore favoritism/double standard happening outside job gameplay design space. Istg we’re given white tablecloths perfectly represents how our entire role is made of salt.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

All the more reason for them to just effin’ get rid of the role restrictions off the glamour system. Not only it’ll benefit healers, it’ll benefit everybody else.

I personally have no issue wearing the conventionally feminine gears. They’re just a piece of clothing to me—they don’t necessarily define much of my character. I do have issue if that is what they come up with 9 out of 10 times when designing new set of gears while at the same time having good amount of diversity reserved for other roles instead. I don’t need anymore favoritism/double standard happening outside job gameplay design space. Istg we’re given white tablecloths perfectly represents how our entire role is made of salt.

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Yes, unlock role restrictions.

DNC looks so good in scouting gear, but they're stuck sharing trenchcoats with MCH.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

Because previous iteration of summoner where you just spam ruin and press a button for your pet to swing a little harder once a minute felt extremely engaging and varied. Now it's also ruin spam, but at least there's some impact to the summon attacks and actual tangible feeling like summoning is happening and it's relevant to the job in some way.

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This person clearly never played summoner before EW. There was a lot to juggle besides spamming ruin and hitting a pet rotation every minute.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Enough players stopped playing healers that Yoshi-P literally begged people to "try healer" on a live letter.

So, they know there is an issue, now we see if it's enough to change course or keep going in the failed direction.

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The problem is that he sees the solution as making healing easier and asking newbies to try it, instead of retaining experienced healers. I've been healing MMOs for decades now, and he can't get me to heal. Because of the bad design. I'm not waiting five more years for another expansion to maybe fix encounter design and healing.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

One thing that I don’t think gets bought up enough with healers amongst the other 10,000 issues they have is that the modern healers don’t feel like classes a WOL would use

Can any of us legit imagine meteor in the wedding cake gown AF gear throwing out UWU lily spells. We don’t even feel like WOL’s we feel like the actual WOL’s UWU cheer squad here to remind them of the power of friendship in their darkest hour

How is it in a game that goes to such lengths to characterise what the WOL is they just utterly fail to make all classes feel like classes the WOL would actually play

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Honestly, my WHM feels like a WoL - impressive casting animations. It's just that there aren't enough attacks to really feel like someone who would dominate a battlefield.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

All the more reason for them to just effin’ get rid of the role restrictions off the glamour system. Not only it’ll benefit healers, it’ll benefit everybody else.

I personally have no issue wearing the conventionally feminine gears. They’re just a piece of clothing to me—they don’t necessarily define much of my character. I do have issue if that is what they come up with 9 out of 10 times when designing new set of gears while at the same time having good amount of diversity reserved for other roles instead. I don’t need anymore favoritism/double standard happening outside job gameplay design space. Istg we’re given white tablecloths perfectly represents how our entire role is made of salt.

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I even *like* the pretty robes. My issue is that 95% of them aren't pretty. Most robes look like pretty dresses on female characters but on male characters it looks like a hideous potato sack.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

But I'm saying that no amount of simplifying draws in enough people in that hypothetical. The state of DF gets critical due to lack of healer participation because almost no one is willing to put up with the boring gameplay.

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Counterpoint: why are they all flocking to SMN which is essentially the same boring gameplay? Why the most played healer by far has always consistently been WhM, the most boring of them all? Why every time something gets dumbed down to oblivion, the playing rates dramatically increase?

( the questions are rhetorical )

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I even *like* the pretty robes. My issue is that 95% of them aren't pretty. Most robes look like pretty dresses on female characters but on male characters it looks like a hideous potato sack.

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They look like potato sacks on Lalafell too.

I was looking for a nice dress to wear and being a WHM main it should be easy I thought.

But there actually are no dresses, just oversized robes.

It’s obvious the modern healer job gear designer designs almost exclusively around the shorter non lala female races (so hyur, miqote and au ra)

The robes hug them relatively well and pieces are designed to complement each other

On males the robes that hug the females sit in baggy waves and any sort of short skirt or shorts designed to accentuate the boots are replaced with baggy pants

I’m generally of the opinion that no non lala specific gear looks good on lala’s but long flowing robes and gowns certainly looks the worse

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

This person clearly never played summoner before EW. There was a lot to juggle besides spamming ruin and hitting a pet rotation every minute.

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Not necessarily. I have experienced many many man smn that only ever spammed ruin and ignored all dots and everything else between ARR and ShB. Talking with a few ruin smns usually their thought process was since they didn't read or couldn't comprehend the tool tips and they couldn't see dot damage as readily as ruin, that dots didn't really do enough damage so they were pointless to use as were anything associated with them. Other moves like Shadow Flare were "too hard" to place so that was out. Basically they just didn't take the time to learn the class and made a lot of assumptions and then complained about the class being too simple or boring. Kinda like ice mages, songless/dotless bards, cure1 only whms or rdm who don't use their physical rotation.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Not necessarily. I have experienced many many man smn that only ever spammed ruin and ignored all dots and everything else between ARR and ShB. Talking with a few ruin smns usually their thought process was since they didn't read or couldn't comprehend the tool tips and they couldn't see dot damage as readily as ruin, that dots didn't really do enough damage so they were pointless to use as were anything associated with them. Other moves like Shadow Flare were "too hard" to place so that was out. Basically they just didn't take the time to learn the class and made a lot of assumptions and then complained about the class being too simple or boring. Kinda like ice mages, songless/dotless bards, cure1 only whms or rdm who don't use their physical rotation.

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Any class is boring if you use 25% of the toolkit. Indeed on new SMN you could just spam ruin and ignore the summons.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Counterpoint: why are they all flocking to SMN which is essentially the same boring gameplay? Why the most played healer by far has always consistently been WhM, the most boring of them all? Why every time something gets dumbed down to oblivion, the playing rates dramatically increase?

( the questions are rhetorical )

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Honestly, I preferred healing on WHM, because it scratched that Final Fantasy / generic fantasy aesthetic so, so much better than the other classes. Mechanical complexity didn't have much to do with it, and SCH never felt like it had enough extra complexity over WHM to use it instead. When the fights mean that you're mostly blasting your 1 key, it's sort of moot.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Counterpoint: why are they all flocking to SMN which is essentially the same boring gameplay? Why the most played healer by far has always consistently been WhM, the most boring of them all? Why every time something gets dumbed down to oblivion, the playing rates dramatically increase?

( the questions are rhetorical )

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Because once a healer gives up on healing they can pick SMN and it's like playing healing but without worrying about the health bars. Similar situation when a melee player gives up on crit savage and just chooses a phys range so they can autopilot and brain off.
Also WHM is not the most played healer by far, its barely above the rest in TOP, 2nd in DSR, 3rd on Savage raids, and equal to Sage in easier stuff like Zeromus.

I refuse to believe that the SMN bloated numbers of players is due to ex healers picking a new job... But who knows.

I mean you can see the same pattern on every job rework. PLD has higher numbers than before the rework. It's not that huge but it's there. MCH has more numbers than before SHB. DNC has never been as popular as well. MNK doesn't, because it hasn't been dumbed down. It's not just because healers decide to pick up easy DPS jobs.

Occam's Razor would probably be more about 2 main reasons:
- Path of least resistance, especially in raiding (I don't have casual numbers anyway, unless we look at alliance raid charts maybe).
- The majority of people don't give a crap about job intricacies, which incidentally tends to make SE right with the current direction they give to the game...

SMN is absolutely the #1 choice for supports that want to dps but have never done it before or have next to zero experience, I was just facetious about quitting healing or tanking, there could just be no spots left for them or they want to do non-standard comps. You want to prog ultimates fast in pf? Play a support, in the rare occurrence those are taken then SMN autopilot baby.
Being able to perform adequately without even looking at a guide, requiring zero experience, casts?, zero knowledge of cooldown management, MP management, 2min sync, while being extremely tanky is SMNs bread and butter. It really is just a healer without having to worry about keeping people alive.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Counterpoint: why are they all flocking to SMN which is essentially the same boring gameplay? Why the most played healer by far has always consistently been WhM, the most boring of them all? Why every time something gets dumbed down to oblivion, the playing rates dramatically increase?

( the questions are rhetorical )

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I imagine the jobs we'd see in influx of would be red mage and dancer the most. Not because they're easy, but because they offer a taste of support-oriented gameplay. Red Mage has Magick Barrier and can instant raise in a pinch, and Dancer has Curing Waltz, Shield Samba, and Improvisation.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I refuse to believe that the SMN bloated numbers of players is due to ex healers picking a new job... But who knows.

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Easy, intuitive, hard to F* up rotation that does decent DPS. It's not hard to figure out why casuals flock to it.

Wow it's been a while since I made the mistake of shouting into the void (here in the EN forums)

Also waiting for media tour info/job action trailer to see what is going on with healers. I've been progging TOP as a Phys Ranged and, in a shocking turn of events, it's fun to have a rotation instead of 'press 1 until boss die'. Who knew? Not SE if the past 4 years are anything to go by, so if nothing seems to change for the healer role (or they say they'll 'try' something that clearly won't work), I'll very likely be dropping the role come 7.0, maybe I'll look at being a Tank main like SB, if they bring back some of the old elements of Tank gameplay like 'position the boss appropriately for the mechanic to allow for more uptime'. Or maybe I'll continue being a Phys Ranged, where I get to 'support' the team (part of the reason I want to enjoy Healer), but with the added bonus of having actual gameplay. Doubly so since there's going to be so many Viper and Picto one-tricks, so chances are there will be quite a shortage of Phys Ranged in the PF

As for SMN, my opinion is simply that it's the right design at the wrong time. What we have now is perfect gameplay and kit... for Stormblood. If this rework was done then, and we had SHB and EW add 2 expansions worth of extra stuff to it, it'd be a much more solid gameplay experience. My main gripe with it is that we empower Rites with the primal powers, but they're all just... X Rite, they have varying cast times (or lack thereof) and potencies, but there's nothing that really sets one as being 'this one is Garuda themed' other than the colour of the VFX. You could colour all of them purple, darkblue and skyblue and say 'look, Ramuh/Levi/Shiva Rites!' What I would have preferred to see is that, upon summoning the demiprimal, we gain a physical aspect of its form, Ifrit's claws (for the melee attack), Titan's fists, and Garuda's wings. I also don't know why all of the 'Rites' had to be how the rotation is, when we could have had eg Titan's 'chunk of rotation' be Landslides and Mountain Buster (tableflip), still allowing us to cast from range but thematically more Titan than 'floating rocks appear', or Ifrit's being that we punch the ground to cause Eruptions on the enemy instead of Ruby Rite. IDK SMN just feels like a case of 'right direction, but needs to go back in the oven for a bit', and by that I mean it needs 2 expansions worth of extra stuff, plus the extra stuff of DT. Doesn't help that half of the animations I'd like to see on SMN's kit, and would fit with SMN's kit, have been stolen by BLU

See you all when any new info drops for another round of 'SE has no clue what they're doing' doomposting

But they started it as a pet job, alongside SCH. They drew in players that liked the playstyle. Had issues and hoped for improvement, but what did they do... they gut it out.

That's something a lot of players here will never understand.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Easy, intuitive, hard to F* up rotation that does decent DPS. It's not hard to figure out why casuals flock to it.

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ex healers or support flocking to it =/= casuals flocking to it.

Also it's not just casuals, the raiding numbers are there to show for it.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

As for SMN, my opinion is simply that it's the right design at the wrong time. What we have now is perfect gameplay and kit... for Stormblood. If this rework was done then, and we had SHB and EW add 2 expansions worth of extra stuff to it, it'd be a much more solid gameplay experience.

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MCH begs to disagree, nothing has changed since the rework. I do not trust SE anymore to wipe out a job to a dumbed down clean slate and then count on them to improve upon that base the next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Valence

ex healers or support flocking to it =/= casuals flocking to it.

Also it's not just casuals, the raiding numbers are there to show for it.

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It's because SMN was built with mobility in mind. It makes it so much easier to prog savage/ultimates if you can just run to your spot directly instead if thinking about slidecasting.

It's also worth mentioning that SMN was just straight up better than RDM in everything except chain-ressing for about 3 patches.

Yes, the point I was trying to make is that I fundamentally disagree with the fact that SMN somehow is the dumping ground of washed out support and healer players that don't want to deal with complex rotations. I do feel it's indicative of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants, and they don't like job constraints.

And it depresses me.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Yes, the point I was trying to make is that I fundamentally disagree with the fact that SMN somehow is the dumping ground of washed out support and healer players that don't want to deal with complex rotations. I do feel it's indicative of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants, and they don't like job constraints.

And it depresses me.

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Well, the general playerbase enjoys current WAR. That tells you all you need to know, really.

What it boils down to with warrior and summoner isn’t that the average player feels that their job design is interesting or engaging, because the average player is not playing FFXIV for the combat system, and that’s the key distinguishing factor. Most people are here for the story and the aesthetic. Warrior and summoner just happen to be the paths of least resistance to experience those. It also helps that both are level 1 jobs. You don’t need to learn anything new at a later level like with red mage or dancer.

I just don’t think that’s a compelling argument for restricting jobs to that level. Because the average player doesn’t need a hyper simplistic job to get through all the core content of FFXIV. That same group of players had little difficulty getting through Heavensward core content despite jobs being a lot more technical. That’s why we should be seeking a happy medium where each job offers something to the players that are looking to engage with the game’s combat system at its level while still making it easy for the person not interested in the combat system to still cruise through core content smoothly. You know, what we had before Shadowbringers anyway.