Skipping Healer Slide Again?

[Aluja89]

I expect as much; so long as Yoshi has his hands on healers they're going to continue to get worse and worse. I have no faith in his 'vision' for healing after 5.0.

Not to belittle the man's achievements but I never really understood what he actually did that was so amazing to others, as far as I can see he just copied WoW and is mostly in charge of gameplay systems. Yet everyone who genuinely loves FFXIV loves it because of the story, music and other such things. Things he doesn't really touch.

Personally I always thought the game part was always lacking and everything he does he eventually abandons because of his own bad implementation.

[Videra]

God, I'm so fearful of what will come next.

[Auryan]

Not to belittle the man's achievements but I never really understood what he actually did that was so amazing to others, as far as I can see he just copied WoW and is mostly in charge of gameplay systems. Yet everyone who genuinely loves FFXIV loves it because of the story, music and other such things. Things he doesn't really touch.

Personally I always thought the game part was always lacking and everything he does he eventually abandons because of his own bad implementation.

"Not to belittle his achievements, but hear me out as I belittle everything he's achieved."

[Aluja89]

"Not to belittle his achievements, but hear me out as I belittle everything he's achieved."

Go ahead, convince me otherwise. The man himself said ARR wouldn't exist without WoW, so tell me. What did he design after ARR that makes this game great.

[Anhra]

God, I'm so fearful of what will come next.

I made myself a Bingo chart of possible changes that may or may not happen, shuffle and use as you like.
Changes include:

- Energydrain removed (again)
- Broilccoli getting another Potency Buff of 20 Dmg
- Adlo/Succor getting a upgraded Version
- Eos/Selene Summon will now be like the former PvP Skill: Fairy is only active for a limited time depending on your Faerie Gauge
- Return of Miasma 2 without any changes to it
- Physick getting a upgraded version
- 4th Energydrain Stack
- AoE Esuna
- Ruin 2 upgrade

[Auryan]

Go ahead, convince me otherwise. The man himself said ARR wouldn't exist without WoW, so tell me. What did he design after ARR that makes this game great.

So not interested into getting into any of...that. Just pointing out the immediate contradiction.

[Aluja89]

So not interested into getting into any of...that. Just pointing out the immediate contradiction.

It's not a contradiction, the elements designers created that people love about this game he still put those people in charge. What he achieved is through producing but as a designer he's prone to abandoning.

Try not to assume the worst.

[Anhra]

It's not a contradiction, the elements designers created that people love about this game he still put those people in charge. What he achieved is through producing but as a designer he's prone to abandoning.

Try not to assume the worst.

You are forgetting that aside from FFXIV, a mayority, if not all of the staff including Yoshi P. (who worked previously on Dragon Quest Titles) have no prior experiences with MMORPG's in general.

Before ARR was created, the entire staff had to play WoW (during Cataclysm) to get not only a better understanding about the Genre itself, but also draw inspiration from it.

My point on this is, despite having made a huge overall success with FFXIV, they are still rather greenhorned about when it comes to designing Classes. Instead of building a fundamental identity with its own strengh and weaknesses for each Job, they choose to eliminate weakness and build upon strong points only, to the point where all the Jobs within their designated Role, are very similar to one another.

Sooner or later, they will hit a wall with that design philosophy, since they have to update Classes and overall Combat arround it, and that, WILL result in a complete rework from scratch, like it or not.

[SpiralMask]

see that's the weird thing--the new classes from SB onwards (BLU's horrific monkey's paw wish notwithstanding--SAM/RDM/DNC/GNB) are pretty great in terms of design: they've got a unifying theme, their skills work towards that theme and all mesh rather nicely together, and dont feel like complete garbage to level/queue into low-level content as, since they were designed with those levels of play in mind for their current kit, rather than having their kit gutted, rearranged, and spread thinner and thinner over 60/70/80 levels (like NIN and DRG not getting an AOE skill until their fourties even with the kit homogenization pass everyone got in ShB).

it's the folks in charge of rebalancing existing classes that seems to be tripping over their own feet --things like the healer gutting, DRK->WAR illegal cloning operation, monk devolving back to HW-with-no-skill-floor-anymore in preparation for it's 6.0 metamorphosis, SMN becoming an excersize in carpal tunnel).
there have been a few overall good class balance-ups in the NIN's new lack of carpal tunnel (to contrast SMN), PLD's back and forth style of play, BLM continuing to be great (to be fair this class will never face any hardship--or at least not for more than a patch or two, since it's yoshi's baby). and MCH's rework is so fundamental it may as well be an entirely new class (and fairly well recieved overall in the circles i run)

it could jsut be that the current team is much more experienced in class design, and trying to dredge up classes coated in old code is a nightmare with soem skills being very hard to change (such as eos and selene having to exist despite the latter's effective removal, due to emerald and topaz carbuncle existing on the same buttons) to re-align the class to a singular theme again, or the old theme being too stifling for the team's vision (as was cited for greased lightning on MNK).

then again, those nicely-rounded new classes have also gotten some complaints on being rather stagnant themselves (such as RDM hardly changing over the course of play, especially 70-80), so maybe my initial point is misguided in other ways.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

I did a bit of homework on job design team a few years ago which seemingly still stands true today - https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/391471

A quick check of IMDB lists the following credits for the battle system team aka job designers:

Kei Sato - battle director

Tsuyoshi Yokozawa - lead battle system designer
Takashi Kawamoto - battle system designer
Hikaru Tamaki - battle system designer

Hironori Isami is likely still there in an assistant role and IMDB just doesn't have them listed.

Toshiaki Suzuki - lead battle system designer is also listed on IMDB but this is a mistake, he is a lead for the quest design team which is confirmed in the Shadowbringers opening cinematic credits as the WOL gets taunted by a Gremlin.

From my post linked above 2 years ago:

Kei Sato, Takashi Kawamoto, Hikaru Tamaki, Tsuyoshi Yokozawa

Basically, very little has changed. It appears that Sato has been promoted to more overarching role and Isami has been drafted in to bring the core job team back up to 4.

We've got more jobs, more abilities per job, significantly higher standards of play and insight within the player base but the design team has never really been increased to keep up with the extra load. IMHO it's a case of shortage of fresh ideas and man-hours with healers taking the brunt in particular.