Shadowbringers - How can we fix this?

[Priya]

I see no problems with healers being made to heal more as long as the developers create fight mechanics to compensate; this is a trinity mmo after all. By that I mean there should not be these peaks and valleys in raid/tank damage where healers can get everyone up and then spend a while dps'ing before the next damaging mechanic; if there is not more persistent healing needed, I can understand being upset with the changes. Healers DPS while healing in every trinity MMO, but this is the only one that typically behaves more like a non-trinity.

[Pokefan5]

I see no problems with healers being made to heal more as long as the developers create fight mechanics to compensate; this is a trinity mmo after all. By that I mean there should not be these peaks and valleys in raid/tank damage where healers can get everyone up and then spend a while dps'ing before the next damaging mechanic; if there is not more persistent healing needed, I can understand being upset with the changes. Healers DPS while healing in every trinity MMO, but this is the only one that typically behaves more like a non-trinity.

The thing is, I did the new EX trials and I still spend most of my time doing DPS, throw a oGCD here shield the tank there, back to glare I go. And it's not like I'm giving my co-healer hell by not healing, they spend just as much time as me doing DPS. That said I'm not even using my full healing toolkit for the most part, because the damage just doesn't call for it.

[Xieldras]

Thing is this is a videogame. I'm happy they dumbed it down and I'm sure these changes are going to bring in more players. For most people this isn't the only game they play and they have a life outside the game.

I'm also very pleased with the simplifying of bard. I'm enjoying content much more now that I'm actually looking at the battle and not staring at my UI the entire time waiting for straight shot proc to be up again.

There is always a few proc tells, not only in the UI, but on your character's VFX as well. Off the top of my head: the buff bar, the obvious hotbar, the party list, a small audio cue and the VFX around your character when the proc is up. With the amount of tells available, you didn't have to laser focus the UI. If you did have to laser focus, then maybe rearranging your UI so it could be easier to see everything at a glance would've been better. A lot of classes in the game use procs and if you had trouble focusing on the fight because of that, sorry but that's on you, not the game.

Bard as well was a class where you did have to check your party's MP as well as checking the enmity and cast bars to give out appropriate buffs (in other words, you had to check the entire battle UI from time to time) and not a solely DPS-focused class.

As for the classic "People have a life outside the game" excuse to lobotomize every complex thing in the game, here's the thing : your personal schedule shouldn't affect how the game plays for everyone else. I work the classic 9-5, go out for drinks sometimes and still manage to find the time to play a MMO (you know, one of those games that require a lot of time sink) at least 4 hours a week. It's also rather ironic to say that when I can't leave the game for a few months without losing the ultra rare in-game resource that is...a house.

Dumbing down the game to attract more players is the wrong way to go. Without fun, complex and challenging content (including gameplay), new players might come in but veterans and existing players will leave and might not recommend the game to would-be players because of how bored they were. And when your friends or FC mates leave, a domino effect can occur.
Don't reward lazy play.

The best thing Square could've done here instead of simplifying everything was actually upgrade their in-game teaching system (Novice Battle Hall or something, I barely used it and there lies your problem) so that I'm not stuck in a lv70 dungeon with a BLM that spams Ice spells or a tank that can't keep aggro despite me using Tactician and panic Refresh (apologies to healers when that happens ; I've Bard tanked more than I should have in my FF14 career).

*Edit : You also have the actual skill's icon appear next to your character for a few seconds when the proc is up

[Priya]

The thing is, I did the new EX trials and I still spend most of my time doing DPS, throw a oGCD here shield the tank there, back to glare I go. And it's not like I'm giving my co-healer hell by not healing, they spend just as much time as me doing DPS. That said I'm not even using my full healing toolkit for the most part, because the damage just doesn't call for it.

Yeah, it's certainly on SE to create an environment that requires the healing kits they're creating. They tend to do a lot of pass/fail one-shot mechanics, and boss auto-attacks that barely hurt. If they want to steer everyone away from healers being a "dps who occasionally heals," they need to create fights that warrant it.

[MPNZ]

Tbh you best let go of the "dps healer" mentality soner than later. Healer have been shifted towards more focus on the actual healing, so as Long as you keep clinging to you dps past you're Just gonna be holding the group back.

Um, Stone Vigil and 1000 maws of Totorak are like equally terrible because it's basically one extreme or the other. It's just going from stressfully casting Benefic II for forever to mind-numbingly casting Malefic infinitely. Both are super bad at max level

Also, I despise the very idea that hlrs and buffing classes have to be just useless and unable to level without big, strong axemen and armored knights just to be treated as "silly heal/buff slut". It's just way too illogical to have a military or combat role like a combat medic and not offer to train them to use weapons, and I refuse to just sit and wait for for you to get a booboo to do something. So, if I have any down time: I'm using malefic, AB, or buffs

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Some times you need to get your teeth kicked in... How else would we know that we need to improve on anything in life?

Not going to lie- I think most players from other mmos will find this game too difficult. Every other mmo on the market doesn't have mechanics in content outside of raids- on occasion there might be a boss with one mechanic, or a very easy to avoid pool of fire or AOE- while this game throws back to back AoEs and adds at you all the time. And after 15 years of WoW, even having a boss with a single 'firepool' mechanic is too difficult to handle, even after people have seen the fight twenty times. This game? I get the 'new player, bonus tomes' message every time and people still figure out mechanics midfight, it's great.

Don't get me wrong, I love that. I'm just on Heavensward content right now, but so far I'm very pleased that dungeons are mechanically given the same treatment that every other MMO saves solely for raids.

Still, having mechanics be prevalent in the game early on is a better thing, it teaches people what to expect and to learn to avoid damage or do certain things. If the game was simply based on 'do x dps, do x hps, maybe step out of the fire' like 99% of dungeon content in WoW, what do you learn? A rotation? Admittedly, this game actually has interesting rotations that require more than 3 buttons to hit upper tier dps- but even so, this game having so much more early focus on learning mechanics rather than just getting better gear for more number output has made this the best leveling experience I've ever had in an mmo.

And I definitely sympathize if classes are being reduced in complexity, the class design in this game is amazing compared to what I've seen elsewhere. I also, as someone who loved disc priest in WoW and really am enjoying healing and dpsing in this game, hope they reconsider making healers here just healbots.

But, most players from other games are going to have enough trouble with this game as is- there's already your savages and extremes and raids and all those side hardcore zones. Why would you want to put a wall up to new players, and players that just want to enjoy the game for things like story or community? If this content's too easy for you, fine, you only have to do MSQ once, and so far it seems like most of the great fights have a harder difficulty anyway.

[Xieldras]

New players and difficult game

But that's the thing about games: you learn and get better.
Did I fail hard when I started playing FF14? Of course I did. But I learned, actually read my tooltips and job quests, watched videos of rotations, asked questions to other players and got a better understanding of what to do. I came from another MMO called Eden Eternal and, while it's true that FF14 has more stuff going on, I ultimately adjusted.

While I commend the way harder fights are designed (Normal mode teaching you the basic mechanics of the EX fight and additional mechanics throughout the fight itself), the way the game teaches you falls apart when it comes to basic mechanics you see throughout the game and how to play a class or role. It doesn't help either that people can use Jump Potions to skip to current content without learning anything.
I still see people fail stack markers or stack when they should spread at current level and that is not good in any multiplayer game where people have to work together to clear content.

I think that when it comes to difficulty in the game, people are not asking for Ultimate or Savage level of MSQ. Usually they're asking for a reasonable level of difficulty where you have to actually use your head to clear the content and not clear while watching Netflix on the side (or you know, having a real hard time to clear while watching Netflix).

Another thing of worthy mention is the attitude of the community. The community is cool (mostly), but there is a prevalent problem of "You don't pay my sub so you can't tell me what to do" going around. People play for themselves while ignoring the way their performance affects the group: no job crystal, gear too low to clear, bad rotations where the healer or tank does more damage than you, placing mechanics in a way that hurts or wipes the team, etc. You only have to read the venting thread in General Discussion to see what I mean.
Now, if they are new I easily forgive and move on but if they do not ask for help or tips on how to do things then I have less patience. What I have no tolerance for is players expecting a carry or being dead weight for laziness' sake.
And players trying to help those people can get snapped at or reported for Harassment (and play style differences count as Harassment now if I remember). Even kicking a bad player carries a risk now.

Rewarding the lowest effort possible is bad MMO design in my opinion because it causes a too great disparity between low and higher skilled players. And those play style differences cause problems when going into more mid-core and harder difficulties, which is usually end-game-till-new-patch content.

*Edit : NPCs in dungeons now do mechanics as well so that is a nice touch from S-E's part.

[Varushkin]

Some of you all are starting to point out some of the finer points where this discussion is concerned.

I as a player want to be engaged no matter what I'm doing. Healing, Tanking, DPSing it's all the same to me and all of it I push as hard as I can. Due to being exposed to the higher level of play at the end of 2.0-4.0 I have developed a certain mentality. That mentality is demonstrated even when I'm doing those dungeons I'm examining every part of it. Where can I heal, where can I get away with standing in an AoE to slide cast one last Ruin or Fire I. Boss is about to do something big ok treat it like the ultimate attack from <insert any primal fight here> throw down Sacred Soil use shields something to mitigate the incoming damage.

I've said it before and I'll say it again if you are the kind of player that doesn't want to DPS as a healer or tank then that's fine. Make sure that you are still fulfilling your job with it's utility. In regards to some of the responses concerning "older" content I say this. When the devs take away some of the things that we've had before it feels almost unbearably boring. As a Scholar I used to be able to apply my dots bane keep those dots up while healing the party all the while spamming my oGCDs inbetween to keep things rolling smoothly. Since they've taken that away from us I'm standing there waiting for damage to come out... yay... I feel that the older content as we are pushing forward with all of the newer stuff is neglected severely. Sure it's not supposed to be complex and it's kind of there to show you what the rest of the game has in store for you as a new or returning player.

Look at it like this. Take the changes made to surecast and I'm sure the other anti-knockback abilities. Fights like Shinryu that almost require you to use such abilities would now feel nearly impossible to do effectively. 2 mins? You'd barely be able to get it back up before here comes the next tidal wave. All of this is of course if your are syncing the content down. Oh right who in the world would do that? I know that I personally would just to teach whoever wanted to learn that fight.

I'm trying really hard to not sink to the level of saying "git gud". That statement or retort doesn't do anyone any good if you can't simply take just a little time and explain a fight or how a class/job plays. I won't say that the idea of teaching newer players falls solely on the shoulders of Mentors. I do however feel like it is the responsibility of those players who have experienced the content to educate the other players that have not. Those with discord servers and those with discord accounts should and probably are actively using it to help reduce the walls of text when trying to explain something.

So here's the question. What can we suggest to the devs to help make the most content feel more engaging at any level?

[Varushkin]

Another thing that I've stated before is that I've taken the time to actively teach other players how things work on every last one of their classes. Why because I see them not utilizing even half of what they have.

Other player: Hey I want to tank as a Paladin with you.
Myself: Ok let's see how you do.
Myself: calls out for Divine Veil/Shake it off or something else...
Other player: doesn't do it...
30 mins later
Other player: OOOOH THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT?!?!?!
Myself: double-face palm with a long sigh...

<insert this wherever> I found the cap of how many characters these post can have lol.

[Deceptus]

I think SCH's have gotten to the point they have TOO many heals. Someone else pointed out we have 19 skills with heal potency on them.

That's entirely too much.