The fun in healer DPS

[EaMett]

I'm going to start with the following statement as it seems to be core for you :

The opinions of those who provide feedback are just that. They do not represent anything else than their own voices.

This is just simply wrong.
If it were true we wouldn't care for CSAT, CES, NPS, TGW and other similar metrics. If you don't know what they are feel free to google but if that's the case, odds are you aren't knowledgeable enough to make claims on what the real scope of forum feedback is (edit: not meant as an attack, just giving perspective. Also a few metrics don't define customer satisfaction as a whole, but those are a good place to start). The fact is that for every person who voices their opinion on a forum or complain there are x number of people who don't say anything and that are just as dissatisfied. One complaint isn't just that one person, it's a bunch of other people who don't comment but feel the same way. Each industry and type of product will have varying degrees of participation from the community but for some reference numbers, 96% of unhappy customers usually won't complain. So the negative feedback you do get comes with the context that there are a lot of users behind each and every complaint you receive. The ratio of which depends on your other metrics.
There are also such metrics for satisfied customers and if you understand the customer feedback (and service) industry you'll understand how the context of publishing ShB data and getting forum feedback plays into that.
Of course other things need to be considered like CAC, LTV, etc, or complaints deltas over time etc...

The cool kid "vocal minority" gets a bad rap because media likes to cherry pick the most ridiculous and sensational stories. And then we all get a good laugh at how bat s* crazy the "vocal minority" is and how it doesn't represent the people. But that's definitely not how it should be generalized and certainly not what is happening here given the context mentioned above. Forums after an expansion news release acts similarly to a few different feedback channels all in one and should be taken seriously.

Beyond all this there's also what you do with the data and that follows a whole other set of principles. Including game design principles, a couple of which were thrown out the window for ShB healers. (There's way more to product design which I will not get into now)

Why do I talk about Scholar in a thread with people mostly discussing about how SCH is getting impacted by the changes? I don't understand your question...

You originally said way more people would be playing SCH? I don't see how that relates to anything? The only way I made sense of it was if you were referring to all the SCH complaints we currently have somehow reflecting the ratio of SCHs to WHMs to ASTs out there. Which of course isn't true, as you said. Though you implied that what I said somehow entailed this (and for which I will refer you to the above or my previous post as an answer)

The card system is a few button presses every 30s without much thoughts behind it. Not only you are not spamming them like you would for DPS skills, but cards are definitly not something to use exclusively during downtime.

There might be a semantics issue here. Healing downtime is everything that essentially isn't a healing cast. So that includes cards, DPS, fairy placement/dissipation/recast, doing mechanics, etc.

To the argument that you only use them every now and then. That's exactly what the SCH skills that were pruned provided. Shadowflare was once every 60s, ED on average I would say was once every 45s for the demanding content, obviously more often if you had less to heal and/or were optimized. Not that different from cards.
In addition this allowed the dps gameplay to not suffer any clipping and/or missed weaving opportunities. AST still has these options because of the malefic cast time and cards.

Also my numbers come from FFXIV census (Statistics for May 2019, "Active" character classes)
And are CNJ vs SCH vs AST so no they don't mix up SCH and SMN.
Also worth noting your numbers don't look right considering fflogs alone has 40k healers clearing some alphascape before echo in standard comp (13k of which are WHM). To which you need to add all those that did it after the echo or with a non standard comp, didn't parse or are hidden, those that got their eureka weapon, those that cleared the last two ex trials (50k healers before echo with standard comp on Seryu) and those that just made a crafted weapon.

[Fyce]

I'm going to start with the following statement as it seems to be core for you :

This is just simply wrong.
If it were true we wouldn't care for CSAT, CES, NPS, TGW and other similar metrics. Actually one could say your statement also negates the value of surveys as well. If you don't know what they are feel free to google but odds are you aren't knowledgeable enough to make claims on what the real scope of forum feedback is. The fact is that for every person who voices their opinion on a forum or complain there are x number of people who don't say anything and that are just as dissatisfied. One complaint isn't just that one person, it's a bunch of other people who don't comment but feel the same way. Each industry and type of product will have varying degrees of participation from the community but for some reference numbers, 96% of unhappy customers usually won't complain. So the negative feedback you do get needs to keep in mind that there are a lot of users behind each and every complaint you receive. The ratio of which depends on your other metrics.
There are also such metrics for satisfied customers and if you understand the feedback and customer feedback (and service) industry you'll understand how the context of publishing ShB data and getting forum feedback plays into that.
Of course other things need to be considered like CAC, LTV, etc, or complaints deltas over time etc...

The cool kid "vocal minority" gets a bad rap because media likes to cherry pick the most ridiculous and sensational stories. And then we all get a good laugh at how bat crazy the "vocal minority" is and how it doesn't represent the people. But that's definitely not how it should be generalized and certainly not what is happening here given the context mentioned above. Forums after a game news release acts similarly to a few different feedback channels all in one.

Beyond all this there's also what you do with the data and that follows a whole other set of principles. Including game design principles, a couple of which were thrown out the window for ShB healers. (There's way more to product design which I will not get into now)

You obviously seem to be way more knowledgeable than me on the technical details on the matter. But your explanation absolutly doesn't say why players' claims often doesn't correspond to actual ingame data of players habits. If I understood it correctly, you basically just said "if someone is unhappy and voice their opinion, they are not alone thinking that". Which is also true for satisfied people, who are actually less likely to actually express themselves.

I cannot be happy as long as this discrepency isn't solved. Aka.: If people dislike the poor variety in a Healer DPS kit, as it doesn't satisfy their need of getting enough challenge and engagement, then why are the majority of people playing WHM?

You originally said way more people would be playing SCH if we went by the forums? I don't see how that relates to anything? The only way I made sense of it was if you were referring to all the SCH complaints we currently have somehow reflecting the ratio of SCHs to WHMs to ASTs out there. Which of course isn't true (and for which I will refer to the above or my previous post)

That was not what I wanted to say, sorry if it wasn't clear. What I meant to say was: given WHM's superior popularity, SCH would logically be more popular if it was more like WHM. Another way of saying it would be to say that what some people like in SCH's kit is actually what puts a lot of people off.
That's something SE is very likely watching closely, because for them, it doesn't really matter if people leave the job if it then get picked up by a different demographic. They'd have got their adjusments completed to open the path for a much easier paradigm to develop stuff with, while not changing drastically how much people play the job.

There might be a semantics issue here. Healing downtime is everything that essentially isn't a healing cast. So that includes cards, DPS, fairy placement/dissipation/recast.

To the argument that you only use them every now and then. That's exactly what the SCH skills that were pruned provided. Shadowflare was once every 60s, ED on average I would say was once every 45s for the demanding content, obviously more often if you had less to heal and/or were optimized. Not that different from cards.
In addition this allowed the dps gameplay to not suffer any clipping and/or missed weaving opportunities. AST has these options still because of the malefic cast time.

Also my numbers come from FFXIV census (Statistics for May 2019, "Active" character classes)
And are CNJ vs SCH vs AST so no they don't mix up SCH and SMN.
Also worth noting your numbers don't look right considering fflogs alone has 40k healers clearing some alphascape before echo in standard comp. To which you need to add all those that did it after the echo or with a non standard comp, didn't parse or are hidden, those that got their eureka weapon, those that cleared the last two ex trials (50k healers before echo with standard comp) and those that just made a crafted weapon.

For AST cards: that's more a subjective issue. Even if it slightly plays on your APM and keeps your fingers a little bit more busy than a WHM during downtime, I clearly don't value that system as having such a higher engagement level as you do. At least currently. I definitly find the new ShB card system way more engaging. But that's another story. But even then, if Draw is on cooldown when comes a downtime... You're left with one DoT and one ST spell.
Whatever the case, I don't really need AST metrics to be able to claim how many people like WHM compared to SCH. If anything, AST is just the middleground.

FFXIV Census is quite incomplete. Max levels SCH include every single SMN who just unlocked the job, as SCH would be max level by default. This screws up the metric quite a lot. Which is why I pointed at weapons instead, as people collecting high iLv weapons for a job are definitly a better way to see if they actually play it.
FFlogs is also not a good metric when it comes to analysing how many people actually play the jobs, as it almost only covers the (parsing) raiding scene, which is itself quite small compared to the rest of the playerbase. Not even talking about Ultimate where numbers go down even more. This is also why I added the bit about the meta, which weights much more in a raid environment. I'm more interested in the FFXIV playerbase as a whole, in all content.

Check this instead: http://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurvey...m?world=Faerie
Since it's quite long to load pages, here's a pull from all servers when it comes to now many of each respective healer have a i380+ weapon.

9th Feb does mean that this census isn't as up to date as FFXIV Census, but for our purpose it's more than enough, as players habits when it comes to playing jobs shouldn't change much in the course of a few months without patches. I'd even say it's more relevant, as you don't have as much people going "I'll collect every weapon for every job, even if I don't play them" and "I'll level every job to max even if I don't play them", which happens a lot during content drought.

Point is: WHM is definitly very popular, despite the "boringness" forum people claim it is. So, if that "boringness" is fine for a lot of people, I think you can understand why I don't necessary trust the "vocal minority" when it makes a general claim such as "the community don't like the changes". And excuse me if I repeat myself, but Gordias is the prime example of the vocal people screwing everything for the actual majority. I don't really want something like that to happen again, so taking everything with a grain of salt is probably the safest bet.

[EaMett]

Which is also true for satisfied people, who are actually less likely to actually express themselves.

Yes this is absolutely correct. And similarly, it can be quantified. The ratio of satisfied posters to satisfied "silents" is higher than it is for unsatisfied posters too.
This is a little outside the scope of this forum's feedback but there are some caveats that come with it if you're curious. The main one being that an unsatisfied customer statistically will impact your company negatively enough to counterbalance the effect of a satisfied one. I can't remember the numbers that are usually thrown around but off the top of my head I think you need 2 satisfied to make up for 1 unsatisfied. It's obviously not as straightforward as that but you get the idea.
Also worth noting it isn't binary. You can be "meh" or you can be "cancel your service" levels of unsatisfied (and anything in between).

Other important things can be how many more complaints are here compared to SB release. Or how many more are in the healer forum than in the tank/dps ones? What is the nature of the complains (minor things, major gameplay complaints, change suggestions, angry mobs)? What language is used? etc..
All of these can be factored in to get a better idea. I urge anyone to have a look around the Tank and DPS forum. It's a different tune completely compared to the healer forum. And no it's not because "healers like to whine".

And of course IG player behavior. But this also comes with caveats since user behavioral patterns aren't always easy to interpret. A lot of new accounts are starting their healer career with WHM for example but how much of it has to do with the fact it's the default healer and how much has to do with the fact it's more straightforward to play? etc. Stuff like that.

Another way of saying it would be to say that what some people like in SCH's kit is actually what puts a lot of people off.

Census data aside, this is one of the sticking points. Game design theory would dictate that diversity within roles is good because you get to play the role you want but you have options depending on what you like (dots, weaving, nuking big skills, rng, etc. something easy or something harder but more rewarding). Balancing through homogenization however is always a bit of a design pitfall. Not to say it can't work but the contexts in which it does are limited. "Boring gameplay", "lack of options", "lack of player expression" (ability to take risks for rewards), and so forth are some of those pitfalls. All 3 of which we're currently dealing with.
With that said this is complex and it also has to factor in whether you want your class to have better design or be more popular.
Obviously people complaining today want better design.

I clearly don't value that system as having such a higher engagement level as you do

The real issue is that a lot of us have been asking for more engagement during downtime. Instead we got less. So at this point clinging to a semblance of what we had sounds better than nothing.

FFXIV Census is quite incomplete. Max levels SCH include every single SMN who just unlocked the job, as SCH would be max level by default.

[...]

FFlogs is also not a good metric when it comes to analysing how many people actually play the jobs, as it almost only covers the (parsing) raiding scene, which is itself quite small compared to the rest of the playerbase

Ok, I finally understand what you're getting at about the census. That sounds fair. With that said I can't bring myself to trust your data as it is either, because as you stated, FFLogs is a subset of the playerbase but still has more individual healers logged for Alphascape/seryu than your source seems to claim are even active. Something is off.

Furthermore this doesn't deal with the fact that the raiding community represents the playerbase that is most sensitive to nuances in gameplay and balancing in addition to being the defacto playerbase for a large portion of the content. Not exactly something you can overlook even if it's 1% of your playerbase because it's a significant portion of your content patches (savage, ex trials, ultimate). Which btw if it were really 1% SE wouldn't even have bothered with ultimate raids (I'm not saying this for you but there are others who really think it's 1%).

[Shurrikhan]

Scholar AoE:
1) Before: Miasma, Bio II, Bane, Miasma II spam
2) After: Art of War spam

If you think that "1" is engaging, but "2" is a snoozefest, I don't know what to tell you.

1) An man with a missing arm. Still bleeding.
2) A man cut in half. Also bleeding.

I don't think we have to agree that "1" is fine and healthy just to note that "2" is even less so.

True. But when every post I see is "Healer dps gutted, healer dps destroyed, healers no longer fun", that is the impression I get. A certain implication that these changes are responsible for healer dps not being fun. And they're not - it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

So what's my point? The fun does not come from the number of different buttons you press and these changes make healers very trivially less engaging.

Trivially less is still... less. We have no reason to be content with shrinkage or downgrades in the course of an expansion. And it hurts all the more when the gameplay was already... trivial.

But, let's put some perspective on this. Cleric Stance's rework was, in all honesty, a trivial change at best; it provided no difficulty, only bloat and convolution. Losing half your AoE dps kit, a third of your single target dps kit, and up to three quarters of your utility, on the other hand, is a significant change.

[LariaKirin]

1) An man with a missing arm. Still bleeding.
2) A man cut in half. Also bleeding.

I don't think we have to agree that "1" is fine and healthy just to note that "2" is even less so.

True. But when every post I see is "Healer dps gutted, healer dps destroyed, healers no longer fun", that is the impression I get. A certain implication that these changes are responsible for healer dps not being fun. And they're not - it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

So what's my point? The fun does not come from the number of different buttons you press and these changes make healers very trivially less engaging. The bulk of the fun comes from the content you do (which will hopefully be designed around our new overpowered healing kits) and the act of balancing your healing and dps.

[althenawhm]

it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

Yeah, Stormblood was bad enough, Shadowbringers is making it worse.

[Knoahl]

Yeah, Stormblood was bad enough, Shadowbringers is making it worse.

Agreed, shadowbringers is really a regressive expansion for us at a glimpse so far.. and seeing Aplhinaud cast DPS as our healer in trusts and I swear if our role quests include dpsing, I'm just going to be like er.... wut.