Has anyone quit healing?

[Jirah]

I might if they ruin Astro with the rework of Sleeve Draw. WHM is boring and SCH lacks the vigor of eld, but still decent to play.

[ItMe]

He was talking about fighting games, but the idea applies to gaming in general. If you dumb things down, lowering the skill ceiling and removing depth, then people might join, but they'll get bored easily and won't stick around. This applies regardless of whether your game is a fighting game, an MMO, a TTRPG, a platformer, a beat 'em up, or whatever.

Yes, but my point was that people go to a fighting game for the competitive skill based challenge.
A theme park MMO? Not so much.

[Billythepancake]

Yes, but my point was that people go to a fighting game for the competitive skill based challenge.
A theme park MMO? Not so much.

And, what exactly does this prove? Just because it's a "theme park" MMO doesn't mean it can't have any depth? You can't have any level of skill when playing classes? Is that what that implies? Because that's nonsense. The entire point of the "theme park" is that there's several rides and there's surely one that fits your fancy. Some people enjoy simple classes, sure, let them have some simple classes, maybe 1 per each role. Other people like classes with more depth to them, that take time to truly get down, and they should have a class that fits their taste. The problem with ShB is that there isn't a class for the latter player anymore, specifically for the healer role. Where do you go if you want depth in your healer? AST is the closest thing, and their depth is just "try not to give yourself carpal tunnel during your sleeve draw windows" and that's about as far as that goes. The rest of the time it's spam your 1 button in sadness.

I'm not going to pretend SB healers were the most complex things in the world, but god damn, they had SOMETHING. There was things to actually pay attention to, several timers to watch, and overall they were a very solid foundation to build off of. Shame ShB just threw all of that in the garbage.

[MintnHoney]

Yes, but my point was that people go to a fighting game for the competitive skill based challenge.
A theme park MMO? Not so much.

Even carnival games have their experts.

[ForteNightshade]

Yes, but my point was that people go to a fighting game for the competitive skill based challenge.
A theme park MMO? Not so much.

The whole purpose behind a theme park MMO is offering something for everyone. Once again, I'll use tanks as an example. Dark Knight catered more towards players look for a greater degree of depth as it relied heavily on procs, MP and Dark Arts management; Warrior was the "DPS tank," and Paladin somewhat simplistic for those looking to ease themselves into the role. This created a nice dynamic for three different types of players. Two expansions later and all three of these tanks have become somewhat shallow copies of themselves. Yes, they still have differentiating abilities but their overall gameplay is near identical. Ironically, Paladin differs the most, and is arguably one of the hardest tanks to optimize. Healers have similarly become copies of each other—in some ways worse than the tanks who still have their baby DPS rotation to fall back on. Scholar is probably the most "complex" if only because shield healing differs a fair bit from regens. Nevertheless, they generally play the same.

To borrow a theme park analogy. Instead of having a handful of "thrill seeker" rides, everything goes no faster than the little roller coaster circling around a track because people would complain they can't go on every ride otherwise.

[Absurdity]

Scholar is probably the most "complex" if only because shield healing differs a fair bit from regens.

Are they really though? Their shields are so gimped and not required for any kind of incoming damage, if everything goes as planned, that you can just disregard them entirely most of the time. The group will take enough damage, even through your puny shields, that you will have to spend resources healing them anyway so you might as well skip the shield part and just spend the resources you would've had to spend anyway to heal them back up for the next mechanic.


Unless we're talking about savage prog where you're playing it safe or ultimate.

[QooEr]

id argue sch gets its depth from maximizing energy drains and minimizing ruin 2 casts rather than the shield healing part

[ItMe]

The whole purpose behind a theme park MMO is offering something for everyone.

Even carnival games have their experts.

And, what exactly does this prove? Just because it's a "theme park" MMO doesn't mean it can't have any depth? You can't have any level of skill when playing classes? Is that what that implies? Because that's nonsense. The entire point of the "theme park" is that there's several rides and there's surely one that fits your fancy. Some people enjoy simple classes, sure, let them have some simple classes, maybe 1 per each role. Other people like classes with more depth to them, that take time to truly get down, and they should have a class that fits their taste.

I'm not suggesting that the jobs should or need to be easier.
I'm (poorly) trying to suggest that instead of the jobs needing to be harder or more complicated, they just need to be more interesting (not that these are mutually exclusive).
The fighting game philosophy brought up is fair... to a point. But it's not 1:1 relevant with an MMOJPG.

In part because a fighting game is two characters against each other in a vaccume.
In FF14 it's a gaggle of characters against a boss (and I I feel like what needs to be complex is the fight, not the jobs.)

In fighting games those characters have toolkits they freely use to respond to each other.
In FF14, like, every job but healer has a rotation. You do the same roughly 2 minute loop over and over and over again, and instead of that being more difficult to be engaging as the fighting game comparison suggests, I think it's more important the rotations be more interesting and unique for each job.

[ZeSeKa]

I love healing and I always queue as CON or WHM and healing is my life. For me, there is nothing better than getting everyone through stuff healthy and alive.

I tend to overheal, though. Gotta work on that.

[ForteNightshade]

Are they really though? Their shields are so gimped and not required for any kind of incoming damage, if everything goes as planned, that you can just disregard them entirely most of the time. The group will take enough damage, even through your puny shields, that you will have to spend resources healing them anyway so you might as well skip the shield part and just spend the resources you would've had to spend anyway to heal them back up for the next mechanic.


Unless we're talking about savage prog where you're playing it safe or ultimate.

I was more referring to someone who isn't too experienced with shield healing trying to pick it up. I feel there's a bigger entry curve to Scholar since Astro has way better tools to ease you in. But that may be my own experiences speaking.

snip

As you said, they aren't mutually exclusive. If they can make the jobs fun without making them difficult, by all means. The issue is you can't make healers actually feel like healers without increasing the required healing they do. That, in turn, inevitably makes the jobs harder. If they go the DPS route and simply give them a rotation. That only bumps them up to tank status, which isn't in the best spot either. Simply put, there needs to be some complexity to each job so they stand out. Black Mage arguably has the most basic rotation yet you feel its complexity due to having to know how to position yourself, when to hold things like Triple Cast and moving at the last second. While a healer can slide cast, that's about all they have going for them. And I don't think a 123 combo into Misery will fix that.