Mr Happy Interview with Yoshida: Glare Mages

So Mr. Happy asked about the problems with healers and DPS skills... Yoshida's response was... DPS skills will not be significantly changed or added due to pressuring casuals and basically... go play Sage >.>;

https://youtu.be/jXkyq_yUMjI?t=365

someone asked at long last and we get a response??? I must be dreaming

oh wait, they basically confirmed "fuck you veteran healers. Only new healers matter. Don't like it? play sage" is the attitude of the devs.

Disappointing. Expected, but disappointing.

It seems they didn't learn from what caused the 1.0 demise and all they said about listening to feedback. If new healers are only what they cater to there wont be veteran healers and without veteran players of 1 of the 3 required roles the overall experience will suffer, besides is not that a job that is newbie friendly and has an actual skill ceiling doesn't exists they just need to care and put effort into it

Keep lowering the skill ceiling and you'll reach a point where its the same as skill floor and nobody can live in a place where the ceiling is as high as the floor

Looking forward to people recommending sage to new healers, and almost nobody playing legacy healers save for those who want to afk glare. I'm also looking forward to the scholars numbers in a few months.

We finally have a clear answer.
That's not what we wanted, but finally, we have it.

I was suspecting this to be this reason.

This is sad however that such a large % of healer player get this answer. "Get used to that playstyle because casual".
Because others more technical jobs kept their difficulty regardless of who plays it.

Oh boy. I expected this but... dang that was heartbreaking to hear.

Look, guys, I will always respect Yoshi-P and the devs for their work on this game, but there are times when I have to question their decision making and criticize it.

Judging from their response, it sounds like they are ignoring healer feedback, which confirms the worries of many healer mains (especially in these forums).

I'm not against making Jobs simpler to play. There's nothing wrong with that. However, making a game simpler does not outright mean you can make content engaging and fun for players new and old.

This may not be a good example since some of you guys may not play fighting games; but Guilty Gear Strive and Melty Blood Type Lumina are games where the devs simplified their game mechanics for newer players. Were the vets upset... yes, but the gameplay was still engaging enough for everyone to keep playing (though the latter did it better).

The problem with healers is that the game isn't engaging enough (in my opinion). Having too much downtime and little heal checks (aside from the occasional Extreme and Savage fights) do not provide a good healer metagame. Eventually, it becomes boring and the vets will leave the game entirely, which some have already had.

It's disappointing really. But my rant is over. I'm dropping the WHM that I started when I was new to the game to AST.

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Originally Posted by currentlemon

This may not be a good example since some of you guys may not play fighting games; but Guilty Gear Strive and Melty Blood Type Lumina are games where the devs simplified their game mechanics for newer players. Were the vets upset... yes, but the gameplay was still engaging enough for everyone to keep playing (though the latter did it better).

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DragonBall FighterZ is another example of this. Extremely easy and fun as hell to get into, but super deep if you want it to be.

Besides, if I may...

Why not just go in the Lily route/Sage cardia/addersting route ?
Instead of just making a drastic gap between the healing toolkit and dps toolkit, why not making them work together? So you get healing from dps and dps from healing? It would not be about pressuring people.

I'd also like to add something really important that Yoshi P may or may have not seen.
You could have 10 dpsing spell or 1... If someone doesn't want to touch any dps spell... the number or button won't change anything.
This problem persist for nearly as long as the game exists.

All it does is reiforcing that mentality of "dpsing healer VS non dpsing healer" and the gap between player.
I'm not sure this is the good approach. But I'm not game director or developper...

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

So Mr. Happy asked about the problems with healers and DPS skills... Yoshida's response was... DPS skills will not be significantly changed or added due to pressuring casuals and basically... go play Sage >.>;

https://youtu.be/jXkyq_yUMjI?t=365

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Which is freaking hilarious (and insulting) because SCH USED to be the go to DPS healer and it was nerfed into the ground and had it's DPS options removed.

Only for SE to say that Sage is now the new DPS healer. OK, if you want to differentiate between "pure healers" and "barrier Healers" then let BOTH of the barrier healers be DPS oriented, not just the new flashy job.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

DragonBall FighterZ is another example of this. Extremely easy and fun as hell to get into, but super deep if you want it to be.

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That game is another good example, yes. Though I brought up Guilty Gear Strive and Melty Blood Type Lumina because their past games were extremely complex. Both great games despite being simplified for new players. And heck, Strive is getting an update on Friday with the devs stating that it will make the game more fun. We've yet to see the changes though.

There should be a pure healer that is engaging.

AST kinda felt like busywork than engaging imo in ShB...I'm going to try again in Endwalker though

The change to Thin Air also pretty much shows the view on healers DPS'ing. 12 second duration, but only one spell? It is like they want healers to just stand there and use oGCD's with that change.

I wonder, is the reason they won't give SCH a single target oGCD barrier due to the fact that Seraphic Veil exists ? Every other healing class has at least one... right ?

So we can blame the casuals for healer design lmao. half joking of course

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

The change to Thin Air also pretty much shows the view on healers DPS'ing. 12 second duration, but only one spell? It is like they want healers to just stand there and use oGCD's with that change.

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Thinking about it, the Thin Air Change makes zero sense. Between oGCD heals and Lilies, WHM's rarely have to rely on GCD heals that cost MP. Were they thinking of this as a rezing tool?

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Which is freaking hilarious (and insulting) because SCH USED to be the go to DPS healer and it was nerfed into the ground and had it's DPS options removed.

Only for SE to say that Sage is now the new DPS healer. OK, if you want to differentiate between "pure healers" and "barrier Healers" then let BOTH of the barrier healers be DPS oriented, not just the new flashy job.

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Well...I don't know, that would mean that the pure healer in many statics would be forced to play a boring job. At least it seems that in EW we'll have 1 decent pure healer (AST) and 1 decent barrier healer (SGE) machanically speaking.

But yeah, the two legacy healers look soooo boring :/

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Thinking about it, the Thin Air Change makes zero sense. Between oGCD heals and Lilies, WHM's rarely have to rely on GCD heals that cost MP. Were they thinking of this as a rezing tool?

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They've never directly talked about this, but based on how the healers have evolved over time, I can't help but feel that they just don't get how healers prioritize actions. I firmly believe they see your Cure, Cure II, Medica, Medica II, Adloquium, Succor, etc. healing spells as the core of your healing that you resort to most frequently and that we save OGCDs for emergencies. It makes so much sense when you think about their perspective that way. It couldn't possibly be more wrong, but that's what it seems to be like.

Think about this too, they divided healing into categories not unlike the categories of Melee, Ranged DPS, and Magical DPS for the DPS role. Look at the drastic differences in playstyle from one of those to the other. They seem to think that the difference in playstyle between "pure healers" and "barrier healers" is akin to that of the difference between Melee DPS and Magical DPS, yet the only actual difference between the two is basically whether they have a Cure II, Regen, and Medica II or Adloquium and Succor. These are some of our least used actions on the hotbar these days, and the designers seem to think they are role-defining.

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

I wonder, is the reason they won't give SCH a single target oGCD barrier due to the fact that Seraphic Veil exists ? Every other healing class has at least one... right ?

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And WHM even got a 2nd single target shield.

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

And WHM even got a 2nd single target shield.

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It's only a 15% damage reduction on a single target with a 60 sec cd, is actually kind of sucks lol.

Edit: you were probably talking about the 2nd divine benison mb.

I've said this in other threads before but this attitude completely geared toward new, casual, inexperienced players is actually hurting everyone. I had to quit tanking permanently after the live letter because the whole thing was "your easy boring role will be even easier and more boring in ew because new people!" The tanking I've witnessed over the last week or so is on a level of bad I've never seen before and it hurts everyone involved. Same goes for healers. I've asked questions and said some things on the forum that people probably think are dumb but unlike the majority of society I actually care about quality and optimization and am open to learning how to do difficult things rather then expecting them to be handed to me. This pandering mentality in game design seriously needs to stop because ew is not looking good outside of dps roles right now and im genuinely worried about even clearing basic dungeons.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

They've never directly talked about this, but based on how the healers have evolved over time, I can't help but feel that they just don't get how healers prioritize actions. I firmly believe they see your Cure, Cure II, Medica, Medica II, Adloquium, Succor, etc. healing spells as the core of your healing that you resort to most frequently and that we save OGCDs for emergencies. It makes so much sense when you think about their perspective that way. It couldn't possibly be more wrong, but that's what it seems to be like.

Think about this too, they divided healing into categories not unlike the categories of Melee, Ranged DPS, and Magical DPS for the DPS role. Look at the drastic differences in playstyle from one of those to the other. They seem to think that the difference in playstyle between "pure healers" and "barrier healers" is akin to that of the difference between Melee DPS and Magical DPS, yet the only actual difference between the two is basically whether they have a Cure II, Regen, and Medica II or Adloquium and Succor. These are some of our least used actions on the hotbar these days, and the designers seem to think they are role-defining.

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To me the difference seems to be pure healers get GCD regens and oGCD shields, barrier healers get GCD shields and oGCD regens. Both get oGCD's of their core like Asylum on WHM and Sacred Soil on SCH.

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

To me the difference seems to be pure healers get GCD regens and oGCD shields, barrier healers get GCD shields and oGCD regens. Both get oGCD's of their core like Asylum on WHM and Sacred Soil on SCH.

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In a way, that's basically what I'm saying. Pure healers get a Regen, Medica II, and Cure II type of GCD spell in contrast to Adloquium or Succor, but the OGCD part isn't true. AST and WHM have OGCD regens and SGE has OGCD barriers, so going off of the Pure and Barrier labels, the GCD is the only difference.

I really do have to wonder how they think healing is fun. As someone who started right at ShB launch, I don't know what healing was like before ShB but I've never once thought while playing healers "I wish I had MORE buttons to deal with this situation" because functionally 80% of any healing kit deals with something the exact same way. When a majority of the problems you face can be solved by hitting one or two buttons, how does that "feel good" to have dealt with it? If anything, healing feels more procedural because of it. You react, press your very powerful heal, and you get back to spamming Glare/Broil. If they don't intend to add any sort of complexity that makes you actually have to use your kit to a fuller extent outside of the final stages of Savage and Ultimate, what's the point? A majority of the content that the vast majority of people interact with on a daily basis isn't Savage and up.

I get that they want all roles to be welcome to "casual players", but are they implying that until Shadowbringers, healers weren't? That doesn't seem right to me. You can clear every bit of MSQ/normal mode content without having a clue at what you're doing or if you're even doing it properly. But having a fully fleshed out kit makes it feel rewarding when you DO know what you're doing. When you're playing as a DPS and doing everything right, it feels good even if your teammates don't know what they're doing. They don't affect my enjoyment of the gameplay. Healers are contrary to this, where the better you get/the better your team gets, the less fun you're allowed to have? How does that pass as good design to anyone?

"There is a healer now with a much greater focus on DPSing."

So Phlegma III. You get to go melee for a couple of gcds and use the two charges, then go back to Dosis spam. Toxikon is a DPS loss unless you use it for movement, wich then becomes neutral at best. Addersting works against iself. If you barrier crits, your tank uses mitigation or the other healer shields the tank, your steady flow of Adderstings gets interrupted. You might not have the addersting for the next time you need to move.

That doesn't seem like a healer focused on DPS.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

In a way, that's basically what I'm saying. Pure healers get a Regen, Medica II, and Cure II type of GCD spell in contrast to Adloquium or Succor, but the OGCD part isn't true. AST and WHM have OGCD regens and SGE has OGCD barriers, so going off of the Pure and Barrier labels, the GCD is the only difference.

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I think you misread what I meant in "Both get oGCD's of their core". That meant barrier healers get barrier oGCD's and pure healers get regen oGCD's. The now sad thing is that WHM has to wait to level 30 for its first oGCD in Presence of Mind, but the change on making it a 2 minute CD instead of 2 minute 30 Second CD is good. I think it is now also the only job that doesn't get an ability at level 15 when the game tells you abilities are locked behind job/class quests.

Though it's not on the top ten list at the moment, the WHM boost is one of the most popular items in the Mogstation. WHM is among the most played jobs in the game and always has been.

THIS is how Sylphies have been "asking" for the stupidification of the role. With their wallets. According to bean counter metrics, all of WHM's downward slide in the realm of engagement has been well-received. What's that veteran healers? I can't hear you over these fat stacks of Yen.

Maybe we should drag the entire role down to this level of "gameplay". It's just. So. Popular. I gave up and went DPS in Shadowbringers because I realized that quitting the role is both the only way the message would get through, and it would also never happen because the tidal wave of Sylphies who luu-huu-huuuuv WHM at its bare-bonesiest and one button spammiest would convince Squeenix that GlareBroileficosis mage was the bestest design evar.

i'm also confused as to how sage is a healer that you play if you want "more involved dps"
sure, dosis also heals, so technically it's a "dps focused" healer in a sense you can dps even longer with it before resorting to healing gcds; but, unless i'm missing something, the dps kit looks as small as whm one? for comparison, part of ast kit that deals damage in one form or the other is twice that; shouldn't ast have been the "more involved dps" healer?

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

I think you misread what I meant in "Both get oGCD's of their core". That meant barrier healers get barrier oGCD's and pure healers get regen oGCD's. The now sad thing is that WHM has to wait to level 30 for its first oGCD in Presence of Mind, but the change on making it a 2 minute CD instead of 2 minute 30 Second CD is good. I think it is now also the only job that doesn't get an ability at level 15 when the game tells you abilities are locked behind job/class quests.

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But both also get OGCDs of the other's core. Pure healers have Divine Benison, Celestial Intersection, and Neutral Sect, and Barrier healers have... a lot of regens. Sacred Soil, Whispering Dawn, Fey Union, Embrace in a sense, Kardia in a sense, Physis, Physis II, and Kerachole. Yeah I see no value in the Pure healer label.

Basic Nuke: Glare III-Broil V-Fall Malefic-Dosis II
Use on CD: Assize-Energy Drain/Dissipation?-Minor Arcana 50% chance-Phlegma II
DoT: Dia-Biolysis-Combust-Eukrasian Dosis
Movement Tool: Afflatus Misery-Ruin II-Minor Arcana 50% chance- Toxikon II
Damage+heal (Not really a DPS tool since damage is equal to Nuke): N/A-N/A-Macrocosmos-Pneuma

I can't believe I am saying this but SCH seems more interesting in terms of DPS still than Sage. Barely. Phlegma III being the only "extra" that suddenly makes Sage into a super technical High skill job for advanced healer players. Energy Drain still gives you "choices" and interactivity the SGE kit doesn't really have. Kardia is essentially a target focused Embrace. Nothing else really interacts with it. If you mantain a steady flow of GCD nukes and damage spells, it will heal the target 170 potency every 2.5 seconds.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Basic Nuke: Glare III-Broil V-Fall Malefic-Dosis II
Use on CD: Assize-Energy Drain/Dissipation?-Minor Arcana 50% chance-Phlegma II
DoT: Dia-Biolysis-Combust-Eukrasian Dosis
Movement Tool: Afflatus Misery-Ruin II-Minor Arcana 50% chance- Toxikon II
Damage+heal (Not really a DPS tool since damage is equal to Nuke): N/A-N/A-Macrocosmos-Pneuma

I can't believe I am saying this but SCH seems more interesting in terms of DPS still than Sage. Barely. Phlegma III being the only "extra" that suddenly makes Sage into a super technical High skill job for advanced healer players. Energy Drain still gives you "choices" and interactivity the SGE kit doesn't really have. Kardia is essentially a target focused Embrace. Nothing else really interacts with it. If you mantain a steady flow of GCD nukes and damage spells, it will heal the target 170 potency every 2.5 seconds.

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Actually there will be times where you'll want to save Phelgma II for party buff windows so you can dump 2 hits of it during that timeframe, so there is a bit of room to optimize for that.

So same as Energy Drain then. Or Assize. My point is it doesn't make Sage into a "Distinctively" dps oriented healer, it doesn't make it more interesting than WHM or SCH or AST, since nothing in its kit is a dps gain beyond their Phlegma tool (Which the other healers also have an equivalent).

As someone who has healed many MMOs and who really wants to enjoy healing in this game - WHM just gets class identity perfect - that was really depressing.

You can have easy and tough content in the same game, and there's no reason why I should be solo healing level-synced Savage content while spamming glare. If you want dungeons and normal raids to be glorified cutscenes for healers fine, but why not boost incoming damage in challenging content? Just add more non-telegraphed damage to these fights and give us something to do...

Welp, I guess I can just go DPS.

Not shocked. This is not gonna change until people just stop playing the role. Despite the amount of newbies who flock to the role I still know plenty of veteran healers who keep gaining the job (my partner included) because it's what they love based on aesthetics. While the casual player balloons the healer numbers plenty, there is still plenty of healers filling out spots in raid statics, mount farms, and all other end game content. Until those duty finder looking for is permanently on healer for all roulettes, until raid teams start struggling to find players to do healing during progression, this attitude from the dev team will not change, because in their mind the massive amount of healers out there still doing endgame content as healers cant all just be casuals.

Look at 5.0 MCH. 4.0 BRD. 5.1 NIN. 5.4-6.0 MNK. Significant reworks only happen when players STOP playing a job (or if your Summoner). The numbers have to dwindle so much that it forces the dev team to finally address the problem and look at feedback. And the overtly casual players don't give feedback. So instead they turn to the veteran player base. Sometimes it doesn't match up to the player bases ideas for it (5.0 MCH), but sometimes it's a flawless dream of what vets were looking for (4.0 BRD).

But this is more then just one job that players are looking for changes on. It's a whole damn role. So veteran healers, if you want this to be changed, vote with your job choices. Stop playing the role. Let SE see how the numbers look after that and see if they are then so willing to discount your opinion.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Not shocked. This is not gonna change until people just stop playing the role. Despite the amount of newbies who flock to the role I still know plenty of veteran healers who keep gaining the job (my partner included) because it's what they love based on aesthetics. While the casual player balloons the healer numbers plenty, there is still plenty of healers filling out spots in raid statics, mount farms, and all other end game content. Until those duty finder looking for is permanently on healer for all roulettes, until raid teams start struggling to find players to do healing during progression, this attitude from the dev team will not change, because in their mind the massive amount of healers out there still doing endgame content as healers cant all just be casuals.

Look at 5.0 MCH. 4.0 BRD. 5.1 NIN. 5.4-6.0 MNK. Significant reworks only happen when players STOP playing a job (or if your Summoner). The numbers have to dwindle so much that it forces the dev team to finally address the problem and look at feedback. And the overtly casual players don't give feedback. So instead they turn to the veteran player base. Sometimes it doesn't match up to the player bases ideas for it (5.0 MCH), but sometimes it's a flawless dream of what vets were looking for (4.0 BRD).

But this is more then just one job that players are looking for changes on. It's a whole damn role. So veteran healers, if you want this to be changed, vote with your job choices. Stop playing the role. Let SE see how the numbers look after that and see if they are then so willing to discount your opinion.

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We did it last expansion. There are too many Sylphies who love one-button spam jobs. Vet healers are outvoted- the FFXIV toxic "I only want to HEAL!" casual "you don't pay my sub" fanbase is much larger than its logging endgame raiders. You want an engaging job? That's for DPS and tanks. You want an engaging healer? Yoshida just told us that ain't gonna happen.

Props to the interviewer for directly asking; shame that the response is disappointing though.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

We did it last expansion. There are too many Sylphies who love one-button spam jobs. Vet healers are outvoted- the FFXIV toxic "I only want to HEAL!" casual "you don't pay my sub" fanbase is much larger than its logging endgame raiders. You want an engaging job? That's for DPS and tanks. You want an engaging healer? Yoshida just told us that ain't gonna happen.

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You say that and yet in every static, every savage weekly party finder clear I joined, every mount farm I was in, it was never the healers that were what we struggled to fill. It was the tanks and shockingly enough the ranged of the DPS that I always found to be wanting on. There are veteran healers I've played with since ARR who can't stand the role now but KEEP PLAYING IT even now, and are saying they may still hold their spots on statics in endwalker even though nothing excites them about the job.

The overtly casual players don't fill these positions. The vets do. They are the ones who give the most constructive feedback, but that feedback will never be listened to if they keep enabling the devs decision making.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

So same as Energy Drain then. Or Assize. My point is it doesn't make Sage into a "Distinctively" dps oriented healer, it doesn't make it more interesting than WHM or SCH or AST, since nothing in its kit is a dps gain beyond their Phlegma tool (Which the other healers also have an equivalent).

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Thank you. It's so weird that people are losing their minds over Sage and calling it the DPS healer and all that. It is really not that different.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

We did it last expansion. There are too many Sylphies who love one-button spam jobs. Vet healers are outvoted- the FFXIV toxic "I only want to HEAL!" casual "you don't pay my sub" fanbase is much larger than its logging endgame raiders. You want an engaging job? That's for DPS and tanks. You want an engaging healer? Yoshida just told us that ain't gonna happen.

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As Rika said, the Sylphies don't matter in this case, since they never do anything harder than roulettes anyway.
We're significantly outnumbered by people who love mindless 1-3 button spam as long as it has flashy blinking lights attached to it, in every single role.

But veterans are what is still filling all those ex and savage parties, despite them absolutely hating their job, this needs to stop.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

Not shocked. This is not gonna change until people just stop playing the role. Despite the amount of newbies who flock to the role I still know plenty of veteran healers who keep gaining the job (my partner included) because it's what they love based on aesthetics. While the casual player balloons the healer numbers plenty, there is still plenty of healers filling out spots in raid statics, mount farms, and all other end game content. Until those duty finder looking for is permanently on healer for all roulettes, until raid teams start struggling to find players to do healing during progression, this attitude from the dev team will not change, because in their mind the massive amount of healers out there still doing endgame content as healers cant all just be casuals.

Look at 5.0 MCH. 4.0 BRD. 5.1 NIN. 5.4-6.0 MNK. Significant reworks only happen when players STOP playing a job (or if your Summoner). The numbers have to dwindle so much that it forces the dev team to finally address the problem and look at feedback. And the overtly casual players don't give feedback. So instead they turn to the veteran player base. Sometimes it doesn't match up to the player bases ideas for it (5.0 MCH), but sometimes it's a flawless dream of what vets were looking for (4.0 BRD).

But this is more then just one job that players are looking for changes on. It's a whole damn role. So veteran healers, if you want this to be changed, vote with your job choices. Stop playing the role. Let SE see how the numbers look after that and see if they are then so willing to discount your opinion.

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I don't think that any level of avoidance will create healer changes. They're clearly terrified of the possibility of healers leaving due to challenge, even if it's at the cost of a very slim group on progression content. There are enough people out there that demand the latest glamours and mounts but would struggle to heal through demanding content with an echo...