Have we given up on SCH?

[Deceptus]

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

[Gemina]

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been. People just seem quick to think otherwise because they're bored, salty, w/e. Did the devs homogenize them in order to accomplish this balance? Yeah, they did, and I feel it was necessary because what they were working with was a total mess of six years fiddling around with healers instead of actually dissecting what was wrong with them. What was crystal clear to me, was healers like SCH were very far from their vision of the role, while WHM was closer to it.

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do. In this sense, I can totally understand why healers are frustrated. But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

This does not mean I think healing is just fine, because it's not. The main point however is a lack of DPS skills is hardly the cause of the problems we have and more like a symptom of poor encounter design. To just give healers more DPS skills is to sweep the problem right under the rug and head right back to where we were before ShB, and that's not going to happen.

[Deceptus]

I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been..

Balance doesn't equal fun. Right now healers are boring.

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do.

This is exactly right. The stated developer vision is to make healers more healing focused but they're not willing to change the battle design to meet that vision. IMHO, that goes back to developer competency. You can't say you want to do something and completely fail to do it. Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.

But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

[Gemina]

Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.



Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

I wouldn't say completely failed. I am much more inclined to say that they are working on it, but in order to get healing where it needs to be, homogenization of our healers was necessary. Wipe the slate clean so to speak to have fresh ground to work on. It is still early into the expansion and if anyone thought they would get healing right out of the gate or even by 5.1 might be new to the game, or otherwise unaware of how things have worked in FFXIV historically.

Two months in now, the dev team should have solid data from not only savage, but content outside of it to start making some decisions. Player feedback is important as well, and they do take it in when it is constructive and not whiny rants filled with 'I' statements. I just think we really need to stop demonizing the dev team as far as healing goes. They are not sitting in recliners, smoking cigars laughing at the misery. They want to get it right to where it fits their vision and is also fun and engaging for players. It is just really difficult because of the way encounters have been designed since early 2.0.

[CrimsonGunner]

tbh i don't like that homogenization making all the healers the same, it makes me feel there is only one healer and 2 healer skins to choose from.
the point of different classes is different play style not have all be identical up to the last skill. balance shouldn't come at the expense of turning all identical but rather have 1 healer kit complete the other.

maybe they will show healers a glimpse of hope in October but until then lets rant and give our feedback so it will be taken into account for 5.1 and beyond(hope not beyond).

[Saefinn]

Snip

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0. I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players. Arguably they could still do this with a tiered system, it works for casters, RDM is easy (and still fun, it was my main DPS in SB and I am getting it to 80 at the moment), BLM has more to manage and less mobility and SMN has a more complicated rotation newbies might find harder to understand.

The thing is, they already have a great foundation for making healers fun and arguably don't need a clean slate or to homogenise them. One of the main issues here is that their main balance philosophy is to patch weaknesses instead of making strengths worthwhile over said weaknesses. It's why 2.0 SCH and WHM worked together. As soon as they patched SCH's weakness, SCH became OP and also made WHM's identity as "the healiest heal" redundant (an identity they've continued to give WHM since without giving them something else). To make it less OP, they've weakened what made it fun and strong, instead of giving it its weakness back. And then they based AST's design over this relationship and to be able to swap beween heal styles, which they inadvertently made redundant by patching SCH's weakness. So it put WHM in a bad place back then, but WHM, SCH and AST were still fun to play (though I didn't like being OP). Though understandably this was the first of issues where WHM seemingly started to be loved less by the devs.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

I think if they went as far as to communicate that they're at least aware of the problem and are working on it, they'd have a bit more faith from people in the healer communities, something they've done with other roles. At the moment the extent of acknowledgement is that "no" they won't change AST's card and they'll update SCH's tooltips.
This was why my question for one of the "asks" was over better communication, I wasn't rude to them because I know overall the dev team does a fantastic job (and I expressed that), which is why it's even more frustrating healers feel so bad. I've changed jobs to enjoy the content.

[Gemina]

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0.

Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes", then you're going to be waiting a long time. When I speak of historic in terms of SE, I'm talking about how some jobs are horrendous when a new expansion is released, but SE will take in player feedback and make changes within reason. This expansion has already seen SCH getting Energy Drain back, Hagakure was returned to SAM, healing potencies were fixed for AST, damage potencies adjusted for NIN, among others. These 'less than meaningful' changes have improved these four jobs greatly.

I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. It doesn't mean we should be content with it, but goal post moving at the very least means that the issue is still being addressed and worked on, instead of being complacent. It's better that the goal posts move, than stay in the same position. This is true even for jobs that players are happy with. Just because something is good, doesn't mean it can't be improved; and just because something is 'bad', doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players.

This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

There was next to nothing wrong with WHM until AST was implemented into the game. The over-tuning of AST to make it viable and kick WHM right out of the meta was probably the biggest indicator of the devs not knowing what they were doing when it came to healers. We can keep revisiting this for the sake of having something to talk about, or we can move forward to the here and now. The devs nuked SoTL2, got rid of CD reduction that was the previous lily system, and made WHM better. By all accounts, I would say they listened. However, if players were saying, "Please don't take away SCH DPS skills!" Then they most certainly did not. SCH as far as being able to meet healing requirements while keeping up steady damage really has not changed (this is how the devs see things). You just have less buttons to push to accomplish this now (this is how players see things).

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. It's a daunting task to create something from your vision and shape it in a way that is marketable. Now even though nothing gets ignored, not everything gets heard. That is something to really take in. The dev team is not obligated to share information. What is actually communicated between a developer and consumer is serious business. That seriously needs to be understood. If you were to actually know what we hear in comparison to what is going on over there, you would likely be blown away.

Patience.

[Billythepancake]

Patience.

At what point do we get to stop being patient? When they finally remove every DPS ability? when healers have to literally stand still and do nothing in fights? Like, I don't understand that mentality of "just keep taking the punches, they'll MAYBE stop and pat you on the head a year or two down the line" as for any major changes coming? That's not happening until 6.0, the biggest changes we're going to get this expac is potency adjustments, MAYBE if they're feeling REALLY spicy they might change a timer or two. Anything that would actually change how the classes feel and would genuinely make them fun to play again? lol.

[Saefinn]

Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes" -snip-

Not just major overhauls, but general design changes. SE don't tend to do them in patch cycles.

To make healers more interesting again. They'd either have to revert changes, which they're unlikely to do. They've already said "no" to AST's.

Or rework some of the design and add in new things to replace what's lost. This isn't something they tend to do until an expansion. Whilst I accept it is possible, but we are still very much in the dark.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. -snip-

I don't mean dev shifting goal posts. Goal post shifting is what people do when the point of their argument hasn't been proven when a goal post set is hit, so they move the goal post and tend to ad infinitum. From what I hear from WHM's, this is the exact experience they had with 4.0 and are still having (and to an extent 3.0).

I have been guilty of the "wait and see" mentality. There comes a point when you're Sisyphus pushing his rock.

This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

Nothing has indicated this and I've not seen it on MMO's. If this is what they're doing, they'd say something? They normally do when they acknowledge there's a problem.

Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. -snip-

I feel a lot of people underestimate what consumer demands means. Sure consumer demand drives sales and pays bills, but there is plenty of wiggle room. I worked for years in the consumer facing side of a business with millions of customers globally. I can say that yes, they get ignored. Even people who say we've lost a customer come back. The mentality is often they can't please everybody, so they won't. If it's going to impact sales, then they're more likely to listen. That is, if we're talking business. It's a bigger issue for smaller businesses with smaller customer bases.


I was also in the community when 1.0 was in BETA and watched as an FFXI player as complaints came to the forums. Again, people were like "it's only BETA, wait until launch" and "the point is for feedback, they'll fix it for release", but didn't and it was only after financial failure that they listened.

But these days, I'm a developer, not in the game industry, but ecommerce. So I know that even what seems like a simple straight forward thing, might not be and things take time and resource. I can appreciate this.

But this is where communication helps us a great deal. We don't have to go into depth or detail. It curbs complaints. And SE does this already. When they've acknowledged something is a problem, they usually tell us, so the silence is more of an indicator they don't recognise it as such than "maybe they're working on it in quiet".

[tesni_g]

I'm not down with the "clean slate" theory because that basically means we're just a beta test over the course of years to develop the role so that in 7.x it might feel complete.

The problems we warned about when 5.0 previews were released are still... there. We saw it then by reading tooltips. We said "these new kits don't work with current encounter mechanics and damage patterns".

The developers don't need to collect data in the next two years of ShB to define a role they created six years ago, in order to "gut everything in order to rebuild." The gutting and rebuilding should not happen in gametime, leaving healers a work in progress for at least two years. It should have begun a while ago and happened completely inside of development/testing.

I am a patient person but healers are playing an inferior version of the game and whenever I switch roles I'm reminded how absolutely fun and full the other classes are. There's no comparing the feel of a DPS class to healers--one is a complete, well-greased machine and the other is... a nuke and a dot.

Our requests are fairly reasonable. Healing, tanking, and dps are all pivotal roles in the game, from the first level 11 guildhest to Savage. Healing as a role is required and makes up about 25% of multiplayer content in a game with millions of players. We shouldn't be beta testing at this point, not in the slightest. Developers need to do that on their own time, like they do with all other classes.