The Problem With Healers as a Role Withing FFXIV

[Dearche]

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

It reminds me of that saying: the moment you make something idiot-proof, they'll invent a better idiot.

[ForteNightshade]

The gap between skilled and unskilled players in this game is gargantuan. I'm not even saying it to be snobbish, nor am I claiming to be a world first master of my job. I've met fellow players who think the 5.3 trial is too difficult to include in the MSQ. The QTE wasn't even their only concern. Having to remember which element imbued Coruscant Blade for the what, 15 seconds between the imbue and the cast was too hard for a story trial. Not SoS extreme, mind you. Story. The one where the element is a binary choice between fire and ice. A level of object permanence you normally test for in toddlers.

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

The sheer excuses people will make to justify why they can't do better never fails to amuse either. "They don't have the time!" Is always funny since they certainly have the time to complete all the story content, side quests and even farm several relics.

[Dearche]

Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

The sheer excuses people will make to justify why they can't do better never fails to amuse either. "They don't have the time!" Is always funny since they certainly have the time to complete all the story content, side quests and even farm several relics.

Ah, this reminds me of Steps of Faith as well.

That was one trial that went from fun to pants on head retarded in the span of a month or two.

I really wish that SE just made a good way to reset instead of nerfing it to the ground. Maybe have mechanic checkpoints that causes instant wipes if you ignore them.

[BungleBear]

Let us never forget the screaming and crying Shinryu caused during his relevancy. I was about to mention a thread decrying it but actually managed to find it. So... enjoy.

I looked at the thread you linked and I saw very little "screaming and crying". The responses were overwhelmingly in disagreement with the OP. Judging by that thread, the vast majority of players felt that the difficulty of Shinryu Normal was fine.

[Liam_Harper]

There will never be a skill floor too low for the FFXIV community. I really wish the design team would stop chasing it.

This is very true. Certain players will always have a "bare minimum" attitude and no matter how easy you make something, they'll do the bare minimum of that and struggle.

If you made healers one button for raidwide healing, one button for dps and a rez, they'd ignore the dps button, wear the absolute minimum gear, ignore and die from most of the mechanics and let party members die while watching Netflix. Not even exaggerating. There will always be players with that mindset and lowering the bar only makes them play worse.

[ForteNightshade]

I looked at the thread you linked and I saw very little "screaming and crying". The responses were overwhelmingly in disagreement with the OP. Judging by that thread, the vast majority of players felt that the difficulty of Shinryu Normal was fine.

I was referring to the OP and people like them. This is one of several threads. Kotaku even made an article because so many people whined over Shinryu's being too hard.

[Irenia]

For good or for ill, this is a trend started back in heavensward, where Alexander got it's normal mode. That, and they allowed coil to be unsynched, a decision which got alot of people amgry at the time. In the end, we not have story content and challenge content, in general.

Easy story content isn't going anywhere. But easy content can be fun... which is where the issue lies right now.

[Deceptus]

Ah, this reminds me of Steps of Faith as well.

That was one trial that went from fun to pants on head retarded in the span of a month or two.

I really wish that SE just made a good way to reset instead of nerfing it to the ground. Maybe have mechanic checkpoints that causes instant wipes if you ignore them.

Steps of faith was bad because:

1) If you failed you had to wait 10 min or so for the entire scenario to play out before you could try again.

2) And they gated an expansion behind it.

[Semirhage]

Steps of faith was bad because:

1) If you failed you had to wait 10 min or so for the entire scenario to play out before you could try again.

2) And they gated an expansion behind it.

Those important design considerations aside (failing fast is a good thing after all), Steps is another shining example of that skill gulf I was talking about. The boss is -almost- a mobile training dummy. You have to avoid its feet, but there are very few mechanics to look out for. You can use the cannons and the dragonkillers if you want, but the encounter won't end if you miss them. There are some adds, but none of them have complex things to handle. Just fairly basic field mob dodging. The boss itself originally had the same amount of HP as the Avatar, the boss from T8. We were a full patch cycle/raid tier's worth of gear ahead of T8 at the time. So the community essentially complained that they couldn't beat a walking training dummy with almost no mechanics, with the HP of a previous raid tier's penultimate boss, using extra optional damage boosters conveniently available in towers along the way.

Meanwhile parties doing Final Coil were just killing it without touching the cannons or the dragonkillers.

Again, I don't think Steps is a well-designed trial. But it's got that juicy skill gap story right there.

[Recon1o6]

Honestly the main problem was the time failure before you could retry. Notice how every msq final boss since has a fall or arena kill (except tsuki I think) The cannons were mainly there to stun the boss for more uptime and get rid of the annoying adds (since aoe back then was hella expensive in cost)

Gating an expansion wasn't a bad thing for the playerbase since HW was designed to be harder. The problem was that it was group skill rather than individual player skill. Then again, this was also the time when groups didnt disband on the 1st wipe.

Boy did it feel satisfying clearing it pre nerf.