Boring design

Why are healers so boring! Who in their right mind thinks it's fun to cast glare x8 times /w a dot in the middle over and over while questing through content...this is such a braindead, sleepy, and boring experience!

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Originally Posted by Truen

Why are healers so boring! Who in their right mind thinks it's fun to cast glare x8 times /w a dot in the middle over and over while questing through content...this is such a braindead, sleepy, and boring experience!

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It’s because square enix decided 2 things

1) healers absolutely cannot be a fail point on a party so their solution was to just make healers irrelevant
2) non BLM casters and phys ranged can’t be the main character so they get the least interesting upgrades

Healers are stuck as the result of both of these changes. Tanks constantly get buffed to do the healer role for them and square is still convinced the average healer is absolutely terrible so can’t handle any difficulty so we get this terrible design

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Originally Posted by Truen

...cast glare x8 times /w a dot in the middle....

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Eh... make it 11-12 Glares/Broils/Malefics/Doses if you want to maximize the DoT duration.

They're hoping that all the healers that remember better times give up and leave.

Fun isn't a consideration when designing healers. Lack of friction is.

With a healer you at least get to move a lot. Play a melee dps or a tank and all you do is just stand there pressing your attacks.
I actually get really bored playing those compared to a healer since I have so much to juggle at once.

It goes directly in line with everything that they have removed and could be seen as a cause of "friction" between players, including but not limited to: aggro management, party resource support (mp/tp), enemies being able to crit the tank, enemies autocritting the tank from behind, and essentially everything that when failed by a specific player would directly threaten the survival of the party. The only thing they couldn't remove was healing, so they made sure to lessen its weight so hard that nothing relevant is remaining.

They have decided that this is too problematic for their game and opted to focus 110% on encounters and fight mechanics as a result.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

2) non BLM casters and phys ranged can’t be the main character so they get the least interesting upgrades

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What do you mean? (I dont disagree but I'm trying to see the link with healers)

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Originally Posted by Valence

It goes directly in line with everything that they have removed and could be seen as a cause of "friction" between players, including but not limited to: aggro management, party resource support (mp/tp), enemies being able to crit the tank, enemies autocritting the tank from behind, and essentially everything that when failed by a specific player would directly threaten the survival of the party. The only thing they couldn't remove was healing, so they made sure to lessen its weight so hard that nothing relevant is remaining.

They have decided that this is too problematic for their game and opted to focus 110% on encounters and fight mechanics as a result.



What do you mean? (I dont disagree but I'm trying to see the link with healers)

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I’m looping in healers as non BLM casters

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Originally Posted by Rozeee

Fun isn't a consideration when designing healers. Lack of friction is.

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SE really loves to assume frictionless healers in a Vacuum huh?

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Originally Posted by Sani2341

SE really loves to assume frictionless healers in a Vacuum huh?

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Healers are a spherical cow apparently

Without being dramatic, I just feel that for the dev (or just Y.P?), the healing progression is just "figuring out how to optimally heal the fight" and it stops here.
As in, a DPS needs to optimise its rotation to the constraint of the encounter (most iconic example would be BLM) to dish out optimal damage.

For healers, our DPS is directly correlated to our ability to optimise healing. The more optimised your group is, the more glare you'll be able to dish out until you effectvely have 99.8% uptime with the bare minimum amount of gcd heal.

Which is sound I mean... this is exactly what happens. Until we reach that point, having extra DPS button could be seen as irrelevant as we're already busy figuring out how to optimise the fight.

The issue is that once that point is reached, DPS have a busier rotation which keeps the game more engaging. However, when we do, we're left with a rather boring format of 1111111111.
And on top of that, as other players help with mitigation and we get more gear, we end up doing less and less.

It's kind of sad that the most engaging Extreme fight are the one where everyone is kind of bad, as in, tank don't do any mitigation, DPS collect vulnerability debuff like pokémon cards and your other buddy healer only healing knowledge seem to be, spamming Medica1 and Cure1. (And dying a lot)

Basically, healers have a diminushing return on fun.
The better we get, the more gear we have, the boringer it gets.

Copying my post from another thread.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Why cant they design healers to have low entry points for the casual healers and have high ceiling to incentivize skilled players?

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Originally Posted by rawker

Copying my post from another thread.

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It seems to be the same design philosophy that drives WAR

People who would benefit from the low entry don’t like knowing that there are parts of their class they aren’t skilled enough to fully utilise, BLM is as usual about the only class that avoids this because most of BLM’s true optimisation is so unintuitive that people think just doing the standard line is good enough (which to be fair it usually is). People don’t seem to want to play AST like WHM when they know there is parts of the class they aren’t using even though playing AST like WHM is still good enough for almost all content

They would prefer to have a dead easy class they can play and also have that dead easy class be strong as hell

Indeed. A good design choice leaves room for players to learn, and get better. It gives a sense of achievement and progression where one started off as a scrub but grew better in time. The problem with let's use SMN as an example, you're just stuck to that same rotation until current expansion level cap. There is no room for optimization/improvement from the player. Basically, the floor and ceiling are low.

Honestly, my mindset is "If derplander can't look cool playing as it in a trailer, that's a problem" because that tells me the devs don't know how to show off that job/role to the audience versus just telling us about it, loosely. ┐(´～｀)┌

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Honestly, my mindset is "If derplander can't look cool playing as it in a trailer, that's a problem" because that tells me the devs don't know how to show off that job/role to the audience versus just telling us about it, loosely. ┐(´～｀)┌

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DT was the perfect opportunity to make meteor even a SMN given considering it’s a book class SMN has a lot of dynamic casting animations

They need to stop making him a melee every single expansion

Melee tend to get artifact gear that just generally looks cool. Caster gear on the other hand just has to stay absolutely recognizable for that job, for some reason. The side effect is that it also makes the gear look like a goofy caricature every time, which isn't very box art friendly.

Unless someone from the dev team starts playing healer full time don't expect things to change. I'm convinced devs think of healer players as we're some e-boys/e-girls not capable of playing REAL jobs (dps ahem), so they have to make it easier for us so we can "uwu beeg heawls im being sooo usefuwl ^_^". You can't change my mind on that. In yoship's mind I'm just a stupid little twink not capable of pressing buttons or thinking at all, for that matter.

How rude me being a stupid little twink is totally independent of my ability to play hard jobs

/s

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Originally Posted by Theox

Unless someone from the dev team starts playing healer full time don't expect things to change. I'm convinced devs think of healer players as we're some e-boys/e-girls not capable of playing REAL jobs (dps ahem), so they have to make it easier for us so we can "uwu beeg heawls im being sooo usefuwl ^_^". You can't change my mind on that. In yoship's mind I'm just a stupid little twink not capable of pressing buttons or thinking at all, for that matter.

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I've said as much a long time ago as well. They're designing healers to be overshadowed by the other roles. You're not there to have fun, you're there to make sure the other roles have fun (except now WAR can always have fun in dungeons, with or without you).

You can see the push for this by SCH being pushed from being a stratagem-based healer with a bag of tricks into becoming an uwu fairy mage.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

DT was the perfect opportunity to make meteor even a SMN given considering it’s a book class SMN has a lot of dynamic casting animations

They need to stop making him a melee every single expansion

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Imagine DerpLander throwing holy flowers as a WHM! (not AST / SGE cuz it's already taken by other npc).

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Originally Posted by Theox

Unless someone from the dev team starts playing healer full time don't expect things to change. I'm convinced devs think of healer players as we're some e-boys/e-girls not capable of playing REAL jobs (dps ahem), so they have to make it easier for us so we can "uwu beeg heawls im being sooo usefuwl ^_^". You can't change my mind on that. In yoship's mind I'm just a stupid little twink not capable of pressing buttons or thinking at all, for that matter.

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I highly doubt this to be the case.
In fact, I feel the opposite is true.
Y.P said in an interview that they wouldn't add more dps skills to healer to not intimidate new healers by making them feel like they have to heal AND do a DPS rotation.

The fact of the matter is, healing (not roulette healing obviously) is quite intimidating to most players. The idea that any fuck up can lead to a wipe, or that your death is more impactful is scary.
In most EX and Savages, if a DPS dies, you rez him. If a healer dies, unless there's no AoE coming soon, it can lead to a wipe.

It's really to keep the floor and ceiling lower.

I feel like the floor for healing is low enough. I really can't see how a daily roulette can be considered challenging to heal... A fairy on autopilote can heal most bosses.

The issue is the ceiling, we want a higher ceiling, they don't.
What I don't understand is, why keep the ceiling low?

Bad players still do bad dps with only 1 button, it's not like adding extra will change anything.
Mid players would do their best and usually, their only flaws would be to cast a bit too many gcd heals... (but if you wipe on savage week 10+ because your healer did 5 medica2, the 5 lost glare are definitely not the reason you enraged) so extra dps skill should be fine... Like, they'd use it but still overheal.
And good players would just be less bored.

I don't feel they'll ever change that but it's such a shame that we're denied extra dps skills to avoid, according to them, frighten newbies healer (who would probably don't even notice those skills anyway)

It's more likely for derplander to be RDM

RDM is also taken by an NPC

the only jobs that aren’t NPC jobs exclusively (so ignoring like graha plays functionally as a PLD if you make him a tank) and that meteor hasn’t played already are

-WHM
-SCH
-BLM
-SMN
-BRD (though he has played ARC)
-DNC (if you don’t count lyna)
-MCH
-NIN

If SCH artifact armor will make derplander look more military or general, there is a possibility

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Originally Posted by rawker

If SCH artifact armor will make derplander look more military or general, there is a possibility

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The fairy... Not derpy enough for derplander

It's not just limited to healers anymore either. It now applies to tanks as well who had every role responsibility sandblasted off and are now so stuffed with safety nets that you need to actively try to fail. It's even slowly bleeding over into the dps jobs at this point.
They just seem to have an incredibly low opinion of their players' ability to handle any kind of friction...which unfortunately isn't unfounded, just remember the complete meltdown people had over not being able to faceroll the "In from the Cold" quest.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

It's not just limited to healers anymore either. It now applies to tanks as well who had every role responsibility sandblasted off and are now so stuffed with safety nets that you need to actively try to fail. It's even slowly bleeding over into the dps jobs at this point.
They just seem to have an incredibly low opinion of their players' ability to handle any kind of friction...which unfortunately isn't unfounded, just remember the complete meltdown people had over not being able to faceroll the "In from the Cold" quest.

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The thing about tanks is that at least tanks still get decent skill upgrades and retain a lot of their “casual fun” even if their role responsibilities are getting shaved off

Like compare the blade combo to getting 5 more potency on broil. The difference is night and day

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The thing about tanks is that at least tanks still get decent skill upgrades and retain a lot of their “casual fun” even if their role responsibilities are getting shaved off

Like compare the blade combo to getting 5 more potency on broil. The difference is night and day

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I don't see them as too different for a very simple reason, there is no thought involved in the blade combo either. Sure it looks flashier than spamming a slightly bigger Broil, but in execution it is just "press Requiescat, spam Confiteor button 4 times".

But somehow this always succeeds in distracting people, make the animation and VFX flashy and suddenly everyone ignores how braindead the new ability actually is.
Warrior is the biggest example of this phenomenon. Most people consider a job that has to work for nothing and gets a majority of it's damage from just being able to press a cooldown every 60 seconds "well designed", it's baffling to me.


Now there is no denying that you are still pressing more buttons than a healer during your average gameplay, especially in casual content.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I don't see them as too different for a very simple reason, there is no thought involved in the blade combo either. Sure it looks flashier than spamming a slightly bigger Broil, but in execution it is just "press Requiescat, spam Confiteor button 4 times".

But somehow this always succeeds in distracting people, make the animation and VFX flashy and suddenly everyone ignores how braindead the new ability actually is.
Warrior is the biggest example of this phenomenon. Most people consider a job that has to work for nothing and gets a majority of it's damage from just being able to press a cooldown every 60 seconds "well designed", it's baffling to me.

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I mean there is a lot to be said about how visually impactful your rotation feels and tanks do this infinitely better than healers and they retain alot of their DPS complexity while also getting quite good upgrades (I hate the short CD’s for what they did to tank healer balance but damn do they feel impactful when you use them) that fill gaps in their kits, healers continue to get more of what they don’t need

Tanks certainly aren’t flawless but you just have to look at the job action trailer to see, tanks get a new 1-2-3 upgrade or an AOE version of one of their best abilities and healers get medica 3

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean there is a lot to be said about how visually impactful your rotation feels and tanks do this infinitely better than healers and they retain alot of their DPS complexity while also getting quite good upgrades (I hate the short CD’s for what they did to tank healer balance but damn do they feel impactful when you use them) that fill gaps in their kits, healers continue to get more of what they don’t need

Tanks certainly aren’t flawless but you just have to look at the job action trailer to see, tanks get a new 1-2-3 upgrade or an AOE version of one of their best abilities and healers get medica 3

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The big question is, how does that actually change gameplay?
We don't know yet but for the examples you listed I'd argue there is no difference between getting a flashier version of your filler and medica 3, neither changes how the job plays, one just "looks" fancier.

Healers will still never use their new ability and tanks will still spam the same filler between bursts.

Just think of this. A lot of people have been asking for PvP combos on jobs like tanks, making their 1-2-3 filler into a single button. If that happens you're suddenly looking at tanks also just spamming the same button for something like 60% of a fight, sounds familiar.
A lot of the gameplay difference is nothing but smoke and mirrors to make you think you're getting more interesting gameplay than you actually do.

Granted I am taking the most uncharitable interpretation of upgraded 1-2-3 here.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

The big question is, how does that actually change gameplay?
We don't know yet but for the examples you listed I'd argue there is no difference between getting a flashier version of your filler and medica 3, neither changes how the job plays, one just "looks" fancier.

Healers will still never use their new ability and tanks will still spam the same filler between bursts.

Just think of this. A lot of people have been asking for PvP combos on jobs like tanks, making their 1-2-3 filler into a single button. If that happens you're suddenly looking at tanks also just spamming the same button for something like 60% of a fight.
A lot of the gameplay difference is nothing but smoke and mirrors to make you think you're getting more interesting gameplay than you actually do.

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That’s what I’m saying there is a lot to be said about how impactful your rotation actually feels even if it’s smoke and mirrors, like if I gave you the option of getting the blades combo or giving you rampart 2 would you really prefer the latter just because the former is technically just a more visually pretty version of old Holy Spirit spam before confitier. This is of course also ignoring the fact that your normal tank rotation is 40-50% not 1-2-3, even if you ignore the 1-2-3 as 1-1-1 in disguise there is still a lot more complexity in tank kits than healer kits

You can argue (and I mostly agree) that jobs need something that actually changes their playstyle ever since things have become so flat and beige since ShB but given the design space we are in I’ll take the blades combo over 5 more potency on broil

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

That’s what I’m saying there is a lot to be said about how impactful your rotation actually feels even if it’s smoke and mirrors, like if I gave you the option of getting the blades combo or giving you rampart 2 would you really prefer the latter just because the former is technically just a more visually pretty version of old Holy Spirit spam before confitier.

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It would depend. If Rampart 2 actually opened up some new gameplay options I'd gladly take it over a flashier version of "more of the same", even if it had no visual effect at all, but I also know I would be in the minority.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You can argue (and I mostly agree) that jobs need something that actually changes their playstyle ever since things have become so flat and beige since ShB but given the design space we are in I’ll take the blades combo over 5 more potency on broil

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This is what makes me question why they so vehemently refuse to give healers more dps abilities. They could absolutely apply the same design principle to healer dps to make it "feel" like you're doing more without actually making you do more. Probably would've quietened some of the complaints for a while, but instead they choose to stubbornly cling to the same design philosophy that has been proven to not work.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

They could absolutely apply the same design principle to healer dps to make it "feel" like you're doing more without actually making you do more.

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Is that not part of the problem, though? That SE doesn't want to make healers "feel" like they have to do DPS? And in that view, I'd guess that "more buttons" vs. "more animations" are just two sides of the same coin.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

But somehow this always succeeds in distracting people, make the animation and VFX flashy and suddenly everyone ignores how braindead the new ability actually is.
Warrior is the biggest example of this phenomenon. Most people consider a job that has to work for nothing and gets a majority of it's damage from just being able to press a cooldown every 60 seconds "well designed", it's baffling to me.

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I mean, a lot of people seem to consider SMN to be a well-designed DPS job, and we all know SMN plays closer to a healer than a DPS.

You ask what people like about SMN though, and all they can tell you is "It feels like a summoner". Just like when you ask people what they like about WAR and they say "I don't have to care about the healer". Neither of these jobs are ever praised for their job design (or rather lack thereof).

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Originally Posted by Aravell

You ask what people like about SMN though, and all they can tell you is "It feels like a summoner".

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Whenever someone says this, i get irritated. If these people just waited and didn't WAR their way out to gut pet management off the job, we could have gotten it anyway while having functioning pets.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Is that not part of the problem, though? That SE doesn't want to make healers "feel" like they have to do DPS? And in that view, I'd guess that "more buttons" vs. "more animations" are just two sides of the same coin.

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With the current design direction they pretty much are, because new skills are rarely anything more than either spammable filler or "press to do X potency" with either a gauge cost that you build up within 120 seconds or it's fire-and-forget with a divisor of 120 as a cooldown.

I guess it's time to introduce Addendum: Black and Addendum: White on SCH so when addendum: black is active, broil iv becomes broil v, etc while being in addendum: white increases the barrier given by adlo and succor, etc.

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Originally Posted by rawker

I guess it's time to introduce Addendum: Black and Addendum: White on SCH so when addendum: black is active, broil iv becomes broil v, etc while being in addendum: white increases the barrier given by adlo and succor, etc.

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I would LOVE to have FFXIV's scholar take some inspiration from the FFXI iteration. Stance dancing with addendums, kaustra/embrava, helixes, actual stratagems. So much stuff, so many varied mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

The fairy... Not derpy enough for derplander

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9.0 Eos gets a gun.

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Originally Posted by rawker

I guess it's time to introduce Addendum: Black and Addendum: White on SCH so when addendum: black is active, broil iv becomes broil v, etc while being in addendum: white increases the barrier given by adlo and succor, etc.

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This is basically Cleric Stance but SCH themed and I like it. Although wouldn't having a DPS and healer stance make more thematic sense on SGE? XI SCH seems pretty cool from what little I played of it, so I wouldn't mind SCH having it instead though.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

I would LOVE to have FFXIV's scholar take some inspiration from the FFXI iteration. Stance dancing with addendums, kaustra/embrava, helixes, actual stratagems. So much stuff, so many varied mechanics.

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Could you elaborate on what some of those do?