Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[RiyahArp]

I've done it, countless times for this and many other MMOs. I envision:

A model where incoming damage and healer potency is lower, but comes much quicker and in more various forms to create a steady MP drain (i.e. FINITE resource, currently it is near infinite). You'd have more frequent damage to tanks, less predictable damage (i.e. on who and when) to throw wrenches in triage. To compensate for this healer toolkits would have spells that handle different functions with differing utility/efficiency tied to it. I.e. faster cast heals with higher MP drain for emergency healing, heals with more range, less cost, but maybe slower speed or less power, etc.

The idea would be that as damage ramps up (be it from mechanics, failed mechanics, avoidable damage, unavoidable damage, etc.) healer decisions would be less binary and more dynamic. Ideally, I'd like to see some defensive utility added to non-healer jobs to supplement this paradigm. This also allows vuln stacks to be more impactful, as well as other mechanics that impact party stability. This means that a healer can't easily delete mistakes, but allows mistakes to be more dynamic and less pass/fail.

I don't think players as it is can react much quicker to incoming damage. Both benediction and hallowed ground can misfire simply due to animation lag or latency, popping off and not activating in time. Part of the reason this game is so scripted in encounter design is that there is an upper limit to player reaction time, and older games which used that style of healing mitigate it by much slower gameplay, and ordon't limit the number of healers for raids as much as ffxiv does.

Even if we did put this in, it is a significant jump in difficulty for healers over any other class. You mention adding functions to others, but we already have trial abilities like that; my red mage can use erase to esuna a DPS debuff, and surecast to prevent knockback. You'd be surprised how few people use either, especially since surecast can prevent things like tidal wave or Kefka's knockbacks totally. DPS and tanks in general really struggle with using abilities on others.

Except, you gave one mere example, and it's an awfully slow and boring one. You can have a builder/spender style of gameplay that happens in a much more rapid pace as well offering choices in spenders and builders to add to the gameplay form.

Again, if you increase speed you increase difficulty. They are slow for a reason.

Don't be so petty and dismissive...

I'm serious, something like this is a massive change that's worse than Bard in HW. at least BRD being changed didn't affect your parties ability to clear or required every boss to change to deal with it. There's very strong "break the game" potential in changing healing.

Yes, I am asking healers to heal, so they aren't mistakenly called green DPS. While YOU personally may not see a benefit, there is a benefit to making healing more engaging with actual choice and consequences. There is a benefit to de-homogenizing some of the current healing jobs and carving out more defined playstyles.

This sounds to me more that the raiders want healing to be much harder because they are bored with spamming stone.

I don't think there is any benefit at all. I think if anything, this might make people like healing less because the difficulty of being one would explode. Again, the thing about spamming stone is that it is optional; a healer who isn't as good just does less DPS. A healer under pure healing would just fail much more often.

I don't know where you got this concept of "strict healing rotation". I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, and isn't something anyone is advocating for as best I can tell.

The more cures you add, either builder ones or what have you, the more healers become like DPS if content remains the same. If you made it so you had to chain cure 1-2-3 to proc tetra charges for a tank buster, that's a rotation because the fight generally is static. But with more heals, the stricter your rotation is, since you can miss a stone cast, you can't miss a builder heal.

Just because something is fine, doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean it can't be better, or shouldn't be improved.

The defined goal would be to switch healers away from a paradigm where they cast boring one dimensional DPS spells 80% of the time to one where dynamic healing decisions and consequences are available.

It's really easy to break a game if you chase perfect instead of good.

And ugh, again you are asking healing to be much harder if you do this, if the fights themselves remain at the current level. Healing as it is already has a lot to screw up; just because raiders are bored with it doesn't mean making it harder will help anyone.

And how can they truly fail if the second DD and the healer and tank can carry one really bad DD through everything in normal content? Most of the dungeons that I saw failing happened thanks to an undergeared tank or a really bad healer. A bad DD makes it often just longer and I cant remember any tight DPS check in SB dungeons. You only fail as an DD when the tank is bad, the healer is only healing and the other DD is bad too. But more often you will have situations where you simply drag that one bad DD with you and everyone has to put in more effort to clear. Because as long as healers and tanks have time to DPS too, the DDs will never have to be at least good to finish normal content.

You need enrages to make sure dps aren't carried, and you need to make it so no one can be carried, everyone has to be doing their job to proceed. However you also need to make it so people can actually finish the thing in a roulette and won't get kicked en masse either, or wont get annoyed at other players who need to fail the content to learn it. Again, this is Feast, and compared to other modes of pvp it has gone over like a lead balloon.

I think people don't realize what they ask for sometimes.