Famitsu Interview: Tuning encounters for healing

[Kabooa]

If the concern is not meeting dps checks due to lowering the average healer's output, then the devs could just lower the requirements to account for that(insert the outdated "we don't take healer dps into account in dps checks" quote), and it would actually make the "pure healers" happier at the same time since they wouldn't be expected to deal high dps, so it'd cater to more than one type of player simultaneously.

Doubt.

They made it easier to perform the minimum required because having these disparities lead to more exclusionary practices.

You can't possibly tell me you'd be happy taking the healer player doing 40 damage (what the devs tune and expect), when the average is 80 damage and the max potential of the job is 100. Not a chance.

Dungeons are the lowest requirement of instanced content, and people still lose their minds there.

[Dogempire]

They are pretty much gone now, so why would you think they would revert to old systems, especially when they didn't work?

Old healers were far more interesting and engaging to play than current healers are. They actually took some semblance of skill to play optimally, even in normal dungeons, and with the additional rotational complexity at least it meant you had something to improve on other than glare uptime.

Also the old systems did work, SE just decided that it's more important to cater to the braindead curebots than it is to make veteran healers happy by making actually meaningful balance changes.

When I think about the healers who were actually capable of optimizing their kits while keeping everyone up in comparison to your every day run of the mill healer, there were only a handful.

Yup, and now they're playing other roles. Great job design, right? Kicking out the veterans to make room for the newbies who have to Medica II every time they take 100 damage?

[Gemina]

Having more than one button to press 75+% of the time is "gatekeeping"?

Having one button to press 75+% of the time "gatekept" me out of the role. Oh but thank god I made way for a hundred Medica 2 spammers; that's what was really missing from the role.

This overreaction and taking what I'm saying out of context is exactly what I would expect from the typical 'bored' healer whom is so easily offended that they immediately go on the defensive instead of seeing where the other person is coming from. I recommend this video if you're lost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewXLUwEjXo

Not only is having only one button to spam not the problem, adding DPS skills isn't the solution. If this is your thought process, have fun chasing your tail.

They didn't work - how exactly? Were those more complex healer kits and MP making it impossible to clear content? Nah, every tier before SHB has been cleared just fine so that certainly worked. Were they unattractive for majority of the healer playerbase? Don't think so, given how many people are asking for them to be back, I also don't recall any requests to "remove healer dps spells" in Stormblood. There have always been people complaining about being expected to dps while healing, but that's caused by traditional healer mentality, not the complexity of rotations and is in fact "worse" with the simplified damage kits, as people are even less forgiving to "pure healers" now that dps is so easy to do - and so these people are still unhappy about being pressured to dps.

Ah, you're operating under the mindset that if the content can be cleared, then there is no problem. So if as a BLM, I choose to remain in umbral, but the content can be cleared, there is no problem? And you don't have the majority asking for these skills back. You have a loud minority that exists in a forum crying to have them back. This is exactly what I mean by gatekeeping. You are so entrapped in the meta, that you don't even realize the exclusion you are creating. If you want to know how they didn't work, you can search up topics of old pertaining to Cleric Stance, MP issues for WHM, early implementation of AST, the healer DPS debates, leap frogging of healers in highend content; the list goes on.

It's not exclusivity at all though. Increasing the healing requirements drastically to reduce the downtime would be gate keeping, since you'd need to actually get better at healing to continue participating in content at all. If the damage rotations were made more complex again, then the less skilled healers could still clear encounters like they do now, they would just do less dps which is not their primary role - and even they could eventually simply get better with practice.

I find it funny how their primary role in a party changes depending on the agenda. I have always stood by their primary role in a party is a healer, and heals come first - damage second. Now it is somehow acceptable for them to do less damage because it's not their primary role? That's not the impression I get from the game's optimizers. The impression I get is damage first, heals second, and GCDs used on heals is bad, bad, oh so very bad. I mean going by this logic, content can be cleared as is, so why change anything?

Adding complexity to the healer dps is the only way to increase the skill ceiling - and thus enjoyment for the masses of disgruntled veteran healers - without making the healing itself more difficult and actually hurting the role's accessibility.

If the concern is not meeting dps checks due to lowering the average healer's output, then the devs could just lower the requirements to account for that(insert the outdated "we don't take healer dps into account in dps checks" quote), and it would actually make the "pure healers" happier at the same time since they wouldn't be expected to deal high dps, so it'd cater to more than one type of player simultaneously.

I doubt that. I don't consider myself someone of high skill, and even I can pick up just about any optimal DPS rotation and get it down on a dummy with enough practice. I can also take those rotations and apply them to combat quite easily as well. All it takes is practice and getting to know the encounter. All it is memorization. The skill ceiling, at least for me comes in when things go wrong, or I make a mistake and now I have to improvise in order to get the accelerator going again. This is what separates good healers from bad healers, and great healers from good healers. The issue is the good and great ones want a style of gameplay that excludes a lot of healers of lower skill. That's the gatekeeping.

Think of it this way, do you increase accessibility for a roller coaster by increasing the height requirement, or lowering it? The devs have a whole lot more to think about than a group of healers who want and think optimal and high skill ceilings = fun.

[Satarn]

Doubt.

They made it easier to perform the minimum required because having these disparities lead to more exclusionary practices.

You can't possibly tell me you'd be happy taking the healer player doing 40 damage (what the devs tune and expect), when the average is 80 damage and the max potential of the job is 100. Not a chance.

Dungeons are the lowest requirement of instanced content, and people still lose their minds there.

Of course not doing damage in a dungeon is going to rise some eyebrows when you can easily heal said dungeon with zero gcds even in nowhere near best gear and a tank who doesn't know what Rampart is, while your damage "rotation" boils down to spamming a single AoE spell over and over. However even with that I will just roll my eyes maybe and still not say anything, because who cares - it's just a stupid dungeon.
Given the performances I generally see in dungeons and the silence alongside it, I'm inclined to believe that majority of players share my attitude of "silently judging but not being too bothered". I'm sure some people do indeed "lose their minds" if you say so, but given that I've never encountered it I doubt it's particularly prevalent.

As for savage, I guess you'd be surprised how many healers perfectly get by doing less than half their job's potential rDPS. In PF nobody will complain unless the group keeps hitting enrage and it's obvious that healers are at fault - and even then you will often still see a lot of people jump to defend them as "that's not their job, the DPS should stop blaming healers" - but keep in mind that is while:
1) basic healer dps revolves around casting one damage spell and one DoT whenever there's nothing you need to heal, which is extremely little to ask
2) the current dps checks actually do require healers to output a bit of damage.
The ease and the requirements are why people expect you to do something at least as it's far easier for group's healers to just start dpsing a bit instead of standing around, than for the DPS players to suddenly get better.

It's not about being "happy", but about what is seen as "acceptable", so my personal feeling in regard to somebody's competence is irrelevant.

You are so entrapped in the meta, that you don't even realize the exclusion you are creating.

I don't think you actually understand what meta means if you believe that. It stands for "most effective tactic available" and generally refers to whatever playstyles or group compositions are the most effective. Adding more complexity isn't really a meta-oriented suggestion, especially when I'm coming from the perspective that it's okay for less skilled players to perform worse(aka less effectively). They're not even in the same "category", as meta has more to do with balance than gameplay - ex. how much damage you can deal, not how you go about dealing it. The stance of "it's okay as long as you can clear" is pretty much the opposite of meta.
If anything, being upset over a prospect of doing less damage at your current skill level is more meta-oriented, since it suggests being afraid of losing effectiveness.

Allowing for a bigger skill gap between players while still letting them all clear isn't excluding anyone, from the content at least. It will exclude them from the meta, but majority of players will always be excluded from it by meta's very nature of being defined by peak efficiency.

As for healer's primary role it has always been healing, I don't think anyone is ever disputing that. People just generally expect the healers in FFXIV to also perform their secondary role - which is dps - on top of that, especially now that one can do so with such ease. It has nothing to do with "agenda".

[Dogempire]

I doubt that. I don't consider myself someone of high skill, and even I can pick up just about any optimal DPS rotation and get it down on a dummy with enough practice. I can also take those rotations and apply them to combat quite easily as well. All it takes is practice and getting to know the encounter. All it is memorization. The skill ceiling, at least for me comes in when things go wrong, or I make a mistake and now I have to improvise in order to get the accelerator going again. This is what separates good healers from bad healers, and great healers from good healers. The issue is the good and great ones want a style of gameplay that excludes a lot of healers of lower skill. That's the gatekeeping.

Think of it this way, do you increase accessibility for a roller coaster by increasing the height requirement, or lowering it? The devs have a whole lot more to think about than a group of healers who want and think optimal and high skill ceilings = fun.

The skill floor for healers isn't dps, the floor is being able to heal the encounter without anyone dying to unavoidable damage. You can literally beat the main story by just standing around spamming various levels of single target heals whenever someone takes damage. Giving healers more damage skills isn't going to affect a healer's ability to cure spam and stand around.

Just because new/bad players can't handle more than a 2 button rotation while healing doesn't mean they should reduce the skill cap to that, that just encourages new players to pick it up and more advanced players who can handle complex rotations to just avoid it because it's boring.

[Risvertasashi]

The skill floor for healers isn't dps, the floor is being able to heal the encounter without anyone dying to unavoidable damage.

Every time my static's had an off week or something and I went to pug savage, or when just helping people for page clears or after the weekly lock is removed...

It just shocks me every time how many healers can't even do this. It's not even a rare thing.

[KDSilver]

Every time my static's had an off week or something and I went to pug savage, or when just helping people for page clears or after the weekly lock is removed...

It just shocks me every time how many healers can't even do this. It's not even a rare thing.

Unreal trial has a lot of these as well.

[EaMett]

That's not the impression I get from the game's optimizers. The impression I get is damage first, heals second, and GCDs used on heals is bad, bad, oh so very bad. I mean going by this logic, content can be cleared as is, so why change anything?

Optimizing in FF14 is about how little healing you can do. That's all. At its core, it's completely unrelated to DPS. DPS is only the fallback task because SE gives us infinite mana and doesn't provide anything else to do while we sit around and twiddle our thumbs.

The core of the problem is that the cognitive flow for healers drops off significantly the better you get. This is a design flaw, not a design choice. Cognitive flows should be linear for all levels of gameplay in a well-designed system.
Furthermore. Most people have been asking for more DPS options because SE won't change their encounter design (damage output). It's just never going to happen. Why? Specifically, because they want to be as inclusive as possible. Like others have said in this very thread. It's amazing how many people can't even cover the basics. Switching healing up to a point where it's, say, 30% of our casts (which is crazy low already) is never going to happen because that's exactly what ultimate content is and that's way too hard for your average player.

So people come here with the easy solution of asking for more complex dps rotations. Beginners can ignore it or use them haphazardly and veterans can get a more complex execution for their class. I'm sure anyone here would gladly accept some other form of downtime activity, but we aren't keeping our hopes up.

[Mortex]

They didn't work - how exactly? Were those more complex healer kits and MP making it impossible to clear content? Nah, every tier before SHB has been cleared just fine so that certainly worked. Were they unattractive for majority of the healer playerbase? Don't think so, given how many people are asking for them to be back, I also don't recall any requests to "remove healer dps spells" in Stormblood. There have always been people complaining about being expected to dps while healing, but that's caused by traditional healer mentality, not the complexity of rotations and is in fact "worse" with the simplified damage kits, as people are even less forgiving to "pure healers" now that dps is so easy to do - and so these people are still unhappy about being pressured to dps.

The only thing I absolutely despise and hate about stormblood raids is that they had the audacity. To give me a addon we’re they gave me 2 raid tier endfights with living dead mechanic. And then also Almagest. Like when the pinnacle of healer design mechanics is to heal too 100 % or dispell 6 debuffs or you die or in shiva case always the same roles get what you have to dispell. I miss some cool mechanics only for healer in a fight. Like take for example TEA you as healer do always the same stuff until final Alex with like 2 minor things like water or formation stuff.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm sure anyone here would gladly accept some other form of downtime activity, but we aren't keeping our hopes up.

I strongly prefer dps as my main downtime activity. I'd definitely like more healing requirement but while buffs and debuffs and such are great you can't fill all the downtime with them. Dps is always useful to your team, it can be designed to flow with rotations and priority systems. Buffs and debuffs have set durations, you generally can't spam them. Healing is only useful when it's needed, which varies based on many factors, even if you bump damage intake up. It's extremely difficult to design a game where you always have 100% uptime with healing, buffs and debuffs, but dps always works to fill every moment of an encounter.

So I'd definitely like to see more engaging dps (in addition to things like more to heal and utility). It just works.