Hypothetical ultimatum: Yoshi P comes to the forums

He comes into this very forum on his official account. Coming to us all right now (via translator), he says:

"We will change 3 healers and leave 1 the same. This is non-negotiable. Choose which."

Which would you pick to leave as it is, and why that one?
Which would you pick to change, and why those three?

You want WHM changed to a former incarnation.
You want SCH changed to a former incarnation.
You want AST changed to a former incarnation.
SGE has had no former incarnation, but you also want to have it for your class fantasy.

So which would you pick to not change?

Note that the alternative is NOT to change all four: If you don't pick one, then all four will remain as they are today.

Note that "not picking" isn't an option, unless you would prefer NONE changed to only three changed. Sort of a "If I don't get everything I want, I'd rather get NOTHING" extreme absolutionist position.

If so: Why would you prefer the current system over one where three Healers were changed?

SGE stays as is, being as it has no 'previous incarnation' to work off of

Two years later, SGE is also reworked to match the depth available to the other three, because of player outcry about it being an outlier becoming too prominent to ignore (this has nothing to do with my choosing here, it's just what would likely occur should I make said choice)

Like I said on the other thread, this is like a "what would you do if you were stranded on a desert island" question. It's a useless question because that is not an ultimatum we are given, nor will we ever be given.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Like I said on the other thread, this is like a "what would you do if you were stranded on a desert island" question. It's a useless question because that is not an ultimatum we are given, nor will we ever be given.

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You're right in a way: The ultimatum you've been given is "This is what we're doing with Healers. You can like it or not, but this is what we're doing and doubling down on with each subsequent expansion."

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

SGE stays as is, being as it has no 'previous incarnation' to work off of

Two years later, SGE is also reworked to match the depth available to the other three, because of player outcry about it being an outlier becoming too prominent to ignore (this has nothing to do with my choosing here, it's just what would likely occur should I make said choice)

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It's possible, but not as likely as you think. SE has this weird propensity to stick to their guns for years on things, and if something is still viable (which the Job left alone would be), it won't be changed. If anything, the other three not working well enough or people complaining about having to do "more work to get the same reward" would see them slowly brought back to where they are now over time.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Actually it's not. All the healers suck, and they continue to suck. We're not being offered 3 good healers at the cost of 1 bad healer. All of them are tone deaf, shit design.

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No, I mean the ultimatum that's been given is: All 4 Healers will be this way. What you fail to understand is that your position isn't the dominant position in the discussion. You consistently argue from it as if it were a position of strength and that you hold all the cards, but you don't.

What we've seen from the Devs, both in the ShB changes, their explanations given for it, and that the doubled down super hard "all-in" going from ShB to EW means that this is the direction they've chosen. While they might change, there aren't massive Healer shortages (Healers are often the first slots to fill in PFs across many of the DCs, and Healers are still not AIN as often as Tanks, even having several minute waits for groups during some periods of time, while DPS ques remain in the 3-10 min range and Tank ques remain instant) to force the issue. The people who really really hate Healers right now have largely swapped to either dual maining a Healer and DPS/Tank, or just outright swapping to maining DPS (often DNC, RDM, sometimes SMN, and WAR or PLD if Tanks), the ones that offer them Support feel and options with gameplay they find more engaging.

The community as a whole, and the healer subsection of that community, may not overall be in love with it, but they aren't repulsed by it to the level you are, nor the level you would need them to be to have the leverage you act like and think you have.

It's the reason that changing some of the Healers SHOULD appeal, but it doesn't because you fundamentally overestimate the strength and ubiquity of your position in the playerbase as a whole, and think you have no reason to settle or compromise, on anything, for any reason. Instead of seeing that as an avenue to get something you want, you think you already can get everything you want and have no desire to give away some of what you think you already have...when you have none of it.

This fundamental misassessment is the core of the issue, and why the things you argue for aren't realistically going to happen or be adopted.

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Can this change in the future?

Probably, but the base of Healer players who are, at worst, at least content with the present system is sufficient to sustain it. Whether Yoshi P and the Devs decide to change that is up to them, but their actions so far have shown they have no interest and see no need to do so, and their metrics are better than ours.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

You're right in a way: The ultimatum you've been given is "This is what we're doing with Healers. You can like it or not, but this is what we're doing and doubling down on with each subsequent expansion."

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That's not an ultimatum. That's a sentence

Also, are you okay?

You've come out swinging hot and emotional today, with no cause. You replied in a thread we'd been having a cordial conversation in with "I don't give a shit!" as your first reply of the day to me anywhere, out of the blue, and have been just as rage angry in most of your replies since. Are you feeling alright?

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Originally Posted by Renathras

It's possible, but not as likely as you think. SE has this weird propensity to stick to their guns for years on things, and if something is still viable (which the Job left alone would be), it won't be changed. If anything, the other three not working well enough or people complaining about having to do "more work to get the same reward" would see them slowly brought back to where they are now over time.

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This is one of the few places I agree with you, and is one of the strongest reasons I have for changing all four of them. The Great Shadowbringers Lobotomy was the result of having one craptastic simplistic healer with two high skill ceiling competitors, and Square couldn't (wouldn't) do the obvious thing and make WHM interesting, fun, and competitive to play too. Whether it's because WHM's popularity remained high enough for Square to think they struck gold, or laziness, or Savage complaints, or 2ch crying the other two healers were too haaaaaaaaard, we'll never know. But from experience, it's plain to see that having all but one healer designed with nuance, an expansive kit, strong potencies, etc just makes that one goober of a healer stand out all the more, and not in a good way. If players complain that the obvious effort difference between Glarespam Medica2mage and having a full kit of abilities with opportunities for improvement and skill expression necessitates clearly lower output from Jethro over there, then you have two (probably more, but the two most obvious from the context) choices: you can design the outlier with skill expression and nuance in mind while keeping the "raw oomph" aesthetic, or you can beat all of the other healers over the head until they're just as barebones. I want the former. Square chose the latter. Because none of them play healers, so they don't have to suffer the jobs they curse to boredom.

I think leaving one healer as-is will doom the role to permanent stupidity. It's the choice they made in Stormblood; I see no evidence to suggest they wouldn't do the same if given the same circumstances again.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

This is one of the few places I agree with you, and is one of the strongest reasons I have for changing all four of them. The Great Shadowbringers Lobotomy was the result of having one craptastic simplistic healer with two high skill ceiling competitors, and Square couldn't (wouldn't) do the obvious thing and make WHM interesting, fun, and competitive to play too. Whether it's because WHM's popularity remained high enough for Square to think they struck gold, or laziness, or Savage complaints, or 2ch crying the other two healers were too haaaaaaaaard, we'll never know. But from experience, it's plain to see that having all but one healer designed with nuance, an expansive kit, strong potencies, etc just makes that one goober of a healer stand out all the more, and not in a good way. If players complain that the obvious effort difference between Glarespam Medica2mage and having a full kit of abilities with opportunities for improvement and skill expression necessitates clearly lower output from Jethro over there, then you have two (probably more, but the two most obvious from the context) choices: you can design the outlier with skill expression and nuance in mind while keeping the "raw oomph" aesthetic, or you can beat all of the other healers over the head until they're just as barebones. I want the former. Square chose the latter. Because none of them play healers, so they don't have to suffer the jobs they curse to boredom.

I think leaving one healer as-is will doom the role to permanent stupidity. It's the choice they made in Stormblood; I see no evidence to suggest they wouldn't do the same if given the same circumstances again.

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In other words, the "leave 1 healer alone" argument is destined to fail.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

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I'm still of the opinion that the lobotomy happened as much down to a lack of creativity within the team as it did any of the wildly varied player feedback.

Back in ARR healers had healing kits that were well tuned to the content on offer at the time. SCH and WHM both had advantages over each other whilst also covering each other's key weaknesses superbly. Outside of Infirmity arguably favouring SCH a little too heavily, neither job truly stepped on the other's toes as SE were evidently able to commit enough time to polish and balance both relative to each other.

Both HW and SB's launches demonstrated that SE were clearly struggling to tune and test things effectively as we got more jobs and in turn, more complexity within each job. What we have now is the solution to that problem. You don't have to worry about a job ending up in the same state 3.0 AST did when all of them have wildly overtuned healing kits. And you don't have to worry about a job ending up in the same state that 4.0 SCH did when all of them share virtually the same core kits.

Having 3 nuanced and complex healers vs 1 that can achieve functionally the same result by face rolling the keyboard is a balance and tuning nightmare that SE have demonstrated they don't have the manpower nor desire to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

He comes into this very forum on his official account. Coming to us all right now (via translator), he says:

"We will change 3 healers and leave 1 the same. This is non-negotiable. Choose which."

Which would you pick to leave as it is, and why that one?
Which would you pick to change, and why those three?

You want WHM changed to a former incarnation.
You want SCH changed to a former incarnation.
You want AST changed to a former incarnation.
SGE has had no former incarnation, but you also want to have it for your class fantasy.

So which would you pick to not change?

Note that the alternative is NOT to change all four: If you don't pick one, then all four will remain as they are today.

Note that "not picking" isn't an option, unless you would prefer NONE changed to only three changed. Sort of a "If I don't get everything I want, I'd rather get NOTHING" extreme absolutionist position.

If so: Why would you prefer the current system over one where three Healers were changed?

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First I would have nothing to say to him other than read the damn Healer mega post. You say you read, its clear you don't. Get a translator and READ like you SAY YOU DO.

Second and more close to your question SGE.

Sorry SGE fans but

1. We didn't need SGE. We needed WHM, SCH and AST fixed first and become fleshed out healers before we got another one who took away something from one of the original three (AST) because SE can't use their brains and make diverse healers.

2. No one asked for SGE to be a reskinned SCH or even the same crappy game play as the other 3. SE had the chance to give us at least ONE (1) healer that we've been asking the return of since the start of ShB and failed. Well since it isn't even new other than effects it can stay that way. Fix the other 3.

3. No healer should be left behind. If the "ultimatum" is to leave one or leave none, I'll do you one better: remove the role from the class if you can't design ANYTHING from dungeons to Ultimate where the "healer must heal kit as decreed by people who don't know how a healer plays in this game" kit doesn't fit and do what ESO does and let every class do everything.

If you don't care about healers, their wants, their whole role being worth more than a glorified green dps because you're oh so afraid of Savage and Ultimate turning them away with high amounts of healing, then don't make them. Remove them and replace them with something else you ACTUALLY care about and want to work on then.

First contender would be definitely Scholar, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to revert it to Stormblood days, having an actual DOT system and DOT spread, Faerie skills being usable during GCD casting, Shadowflare. The only thing I'd not want from those days is the original 100 potency Ruin II, that one sucked.

Astrologian probably 2nd, but I wouldn't go carbon copy from Stormblood because my main gripe with it was that offensive and defensive cards shared the same draw, therefore being an inconsistent utility. And even if, I still think them being the original 2-button-rotation Healer will forever feel awful, so I wish there to be more... substance during downtime DPSing.

Last slot is a good question. On one end, I want decent GCD usage that doesn't suck for DPSing similar how WHM has it, on another I want a meaningful DPS rotation or DPS tools which both could use. Maybe with WHM if Thin Air was returned as a buff window rather than single use I'd be cool if there was another button that burns excess MP for increased damage (+50-100% MP cost increase for +x% damage). Dunno, third slot is a difficult pick.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

He comes into this very forum on his official account. Coming to us all right now (via translator), he says:

"We will change 3 healers and leave 1 the same. This is non-negotiable. Choose which."

Which would you pick to leave as it is, and why that one?
Which would you pick to change, and why those three?

You want WHM changed to a former incarnation.
You want SCH changed to a former incarnation.
You want AST changed to a former incarnation.
SGE has had no former incarnation, but you also want to have it for your class fantasy.

So which would you pick to not change?

Note that the alternative is NOT to change all four: If you don't pick one, then all four will remain as they are today.

Note that "not picking" isn't an option, unless you would prefer NONE changed to only three changed. Sort of a "If I don't get everything I want, I'd rather get NOTHING" extreme absolutionist position.

If so: Why would you prefer the current system over one where three Healers were changed?

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I don't know and I don't care.
What do you think of the Pampers characters?

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Originally Posted by Naoki34

I don't know and I don't care.
What do you think of the Pampers characters?

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If you don't care and don't intend to contribute , why are you here? And what is up with that cringe off-topic question? Yikes.

Sure I'll play along.

I'd throw AST under a bus. Largely because it's the one I have the least amount of confidence in them redoing well.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

If you don't care and don't intend to contribute , why are you here? And what is up with that cringe off-topic question? Yikes.

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I'm not even sure what that question means. Though I do appreciate your post, thank you.

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Originally Posted by Icecylee

Sure I'll play along.

I'd throw AST under a bus. Largely because it's the one I have the least amount of confidence in them redoing well.

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The irony being, that's the one they are going to redo in 7.0, and intended to redo, lest we forget, in like 6.2 or something. I'm even a little scared for it, and it's the one I play the least.

Having to push it back the rework that far certainly didn't install *more* confidence in me, no. lol

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Originally Posted by Icecylee

Having to push it back the rework that far certainly didn't install *more* confidence in me, no. lol

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At this point I'm just hopeful for whatever changes they made to the job toolkit. Surely AST's update should be pretty substantial if they're willing to delay the release of AST until 7.0.
Hopefully there's at least some changes to lightspeed - either gain charges and/or lower the cooldown to be more readily accessible as in the case of BLM's triplecast because weaving on AST can feel terrible when there's a bunch of abilities you want to use simultaneously, but don't have the weave slots to do so without drifting.

Well.... if we're using a technicality.... AST is already getting a rework, then I'd rather see changes on SCH and SGE. I'm not sure if there's any former incarnation of WHM's gauge that's better than the current Endwalker lily system, but disregarding that -- changes to WHM would also be nice to see.

Surely throwing AST under the bus is fine because it's not possible to make AST even worse than it is already in 7.0? Don't quote me on this.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

If you don't care and don't intend to contribute , why are you here? And what is up with that cringe off-topic question? Yikes.

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For the same reason of you, Why are you ugly?

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Surely throwing AST under the bus is fine because it's not possible to make AST even worse than it is already in 7.0?

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Oh it absolutely is with this dev team. 5.0 and 6.0 have proven that.

'The people who got the class into this mess are going to be the sole arbiters of what will get the class out of this mess' is not exactly a thought that inspires confidence in me either

All we can do is hope they have enough common sense, and enough willpower to put their damn pride out of the way for once, and admit 'ah yes, the class was more popular in 4.0, and stopped being as popular in 5.0. Maybe something more like 4.0 would be better'

Instead we're going to get a third rework to cards, which still keeps the Seals system and it'll still feel super tacked on

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Surely throwing AST under the bus is fine because it's not possible to make AST even worse than it is already in 7.0? Don't quote me on this.

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<monkey's paw intensifies>

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Instead we're going to get a third rework to cards, which still keeps the Seals system and it'll still feel super tacked on

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As you know, I'm a self-described anti-expert on AST (that is, state often how little I know of it and its history); didn't they add the Seals in ShB to replace Cards having different effects being lost? I unlocked AST way earlier, but didn't actually level it until ShB.

I do think the idea someone had of having damage cards and defensive/healing/utility cards be on two separate things would be a good idea (like imagine if Minor Arcana Lady gave you Celestial Intersection and Lord gave you Exaltation), and though the old AST Cards wouldn't all work, things like MP Regen are still valid (e.g. RDM had to use some Verraises or you just raised yourself or the other Healer and Lucid isn't up), and we can see from BRD that you can have different buffs that are appreciably equal. Yes, some are a bit mathematically better, but 1% flat damage, 3% direct hit rate, 2% crit rate are not RIDICULOUSLY far apart in effectiveness. So AST cards doing something like X% damage, 1.5-2X% crit, and 3X% or so direct hit could be cards a bit different that are still useful and reward knowledge of which classes and at which part of their rotations find which ones the most useful. (Not saying those ratios, but saying it should be...possible, maybe?)

The Seal system just seems not to work. They tried it with Divination, and they've now tried it with Astrodyne, and in both cases, it just seems to be a flop. Seems to be one of those "sticking to their guns even when it's clearly not working" things.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

All we can do is hope they have enough common sense, and enough willpower to put their damn pride out of the way for once

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Pride is what caused them to double down on all their terrible decisions lately, I highly doubt they'll ever swallow their pride and listen to the playerbase unless there's a unified outcry. But hey, maybe 7.0 AST will pleasantly surprise us and actually not be a total mess of disjointed systems tacked onto each other and are only vaguely related while also giving the player carpal tunnel every 2 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

As you know, I'm a self-described anti-expert on AST (that is, state often how little I know of it and its history); didn't they add the Seals in ShB to replace Cards having different effects being lost? I unlocked AST way earlier, but didn't actually level it until ShB.

I do think the idea someone had of having damage cards and defensive/healing/utility cards be on two separate things would be a good idea (like imagine if Minor Arcana Lady gave you Celestial Intersection and Lord gave you Exaltation), and though the old AST Cards wouldn't all work, things like MP Regen are still valid (e.g. RDM had to use some Verraises or you just raised yourself or the other Healer and Lucid isn't up), and we can see from BRD that you can have different buffs that are appreciably equal. Yes, some are a bit mathematically better, but 1% flat damage, 3% direct hit rate, 2% crit rate are not RIDICULOUSLY far apart in effectiveness. So AST cards doing something like X% damage, 1.5-2X% crit, and 3X% or so direct hit could be cards a bit different that are still useful and reward knowledge of which classes and at which part of their rotations find which ones the most useful. (Not saying those ratios, but saying it should be...possible, maybe?)

The Seal system just seems not to work. They tried it with Divination, and they've now tried it with Astrodyne, and in both cases, it just seems to be a flop. Seems to be one of those "sticking to their guns even when it's clearly not working" things.

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Yep, it was added in SHB as a way to try and keep 'play cards that are not Balance, please' as a thing. Instead of making the cards have unique and interesting effects, and encouraging the player to partake of some non-Balance effects, instead we got 'all balances' and the encouragement was by making Divination scale in potency based on how much you played the Seal minigame. After they decided, for whatever reason, that tying 'the potency of the raidwide buff' to RNG was a bad idea, now we instead have it as 'it powers a selfbuff that contributes so little to your damage over the course of the fight, crit variance is a bigger threat to your barse'

For the second paragraph, I've given an example of how they could make unique, interesting effects for each card, while also keeping them relatively balanced between each other by making them singletarget only, as they are now. As I've harped on about before, AOE Balance was not the whole issue. AOE Balance was the issue. By keeping them singletarget, it'd give them room to tweak relative potencies easier. For example, say you have Balance as 5% damage for everyone, and Spire as X% magic damage for everyone. How do you work out what X should be? Is it going to be balanced around having 2 healers, one caster? What about if there's 2 casters, or what if there's PLD/DRK instead of WAR GNB and they get some extra mileage too?

So once again, my solution would be this:
Balance - 10% damage up (use on anyone, the 'wildcard' as it were)
Arrow - Massive autoattack speed increase (use on melee, ranged, maybe on PLD to give them an extra Sheltron for funny meme strats)
Spear - 10% Crit rate increase (with the changes to how Crit can overcap now, best used on 'guaranteed crit' type classes like SAM)
Bole - 20% mitigation, also applies a barrier which, when struck, counters with a damage of X potency (tune as needed, best used on tanks but still grants RDPS to the AST from the reflect)
Ewer - MP restoration, if used on a healer it also grants a 'spell reverberation' effect where using a GCD damage skill causes an additional hit of X potency (cannot crit/dhit for balance reasons)
Spire - 10% magic damage (balance but caster specific basically)

Now they have some flavour, some decision-making to do based on your comp/the role the card is best on, and you don't need to worry about the potential issue of 'oh what if you draw Ewer, Ewer, Ewer and cry' because Redraw doesn't let you get a card of the Seal type that the one you're binning is. So Redrawing a Ewer means you can't get another Ewer or an Arrow.

I do agree with their thinking, that if they're going to make the cards all be 'Balance in effect, but with different names' then there needs to be SOMEthing that makes you think about what cards you want to use. The Seals system seems to be that, in theory at least. But the issue with it is that in it's first incarnation, the punishment (lower raidbuff potency) was too strict to be governed by RNG, and in the second (Astrodyne) it feels like it's just not worth the effort. I would have to have a live version to test, but my hypothesis is that if the cards have unique, cool role-based effects to play around (such as being able to make a Monk autoattack once per second with Arrow+ROW) will make people enjoy the card minigame way more, and partaking in 'get the right seals too' would happen naturally from playing the class, rather than it being 'the system the AST player is focusing on'.

In this proposed system, I'm assuming the Seals still exist, and still contribute to Astrodyne. Which means, to 'optimize AST' and actually play into Astrodyne as a system, the AST would not be able to find 'the best card' and just fish for that. Instead, the cards would theoretically be balanced to be roughly equal amounts of RDPS contribution (eg, increase/decrease the value of X for the Bole reflect as needed), and thus the AST would have to play at least one of each pair still. They could still get Balance, Arrow, Spear and just throw everything on the DPS as with current, but if they get Ewer, Bole, Spire as their three draws during raidbuffs, then suddenly the 'optimal choice' for card targets is not necessarily to throw them all on DPS players. Instead, it'd be a healer (no seriously), a tank (yes really) and the caster (or if you're in some casual content like a 24man and have no caster somehow, a healer again lmao)

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Originally Posted by Aravell

giving the player carpal tunnel every 2 minutes.

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I hope there is no carpal tunnel involved, the ring/little finger on my right hand has been feeling weird since prog, and I imagine my doing blackjacking in OSRS is not helping it recover

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Originally Posted by Naoki34

For the same reason of you, Why are you ugly?

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I'm going to assume you simply are having a terrible time in life right now, which explains why you are just here to stir up shit and look for a fight.

I wish you best in dealing with whatever is currently bothering you, consider consulting family members if you need people to talk to.