Worthless Live Letter

[Elladie]

There will surely be healers that are not angry about the changes, or lack thereof, they're probably just indifferent. Because a lot of people playing this game couldn't care less about how their job actually plays, they queue into expert roulette, press their 3 buttons to heal while watching Netflix or Youtube and call it a day.
Now the question is, should the game be designed around those kinds of players? At the end of the day they'll just take whatever SE gives them anyway.

You're making a lot of offensive assumptions here.

Casual players - of which I am undoubtedly one - are not indifferent. We care how our jobs play. I play most of the jobs, but I consider myself a healer main, and my healers have been fine and fun to play when I run content. I would no more dream of watching Netflix while playing than I would if I had guests around for dinner. I don't doubt there are players who do so, but I have encountered exactly one during the 11 years I've played this game.
It's fine to be unhappy with what you don't like about healers. It's not fine to make outrageous generalisations about the players who aren't unhappy. The truth is, most of them never come near the forums. They are out there playing the game they enjoy

[Kabooa]

Yes, it's indeed flawed but it's the closest thing we can get.

Also why healers only sits on top when the highest MH IL are so easy to get as you said ?

Why healers increase their MH IL faster than any other jobs even before Resistance Weapon got released?

Prior, it was based on Eden clear rates. You're generally going to have about a 25/50/25 split here because the composition is enforced. What we actually saw was closer to a 28/42/28 split, meaning when people were getting alt weapons, they chose to get tank/healer weapons instead of more DPS.

Now a days, if it's based on Relics, there's a pretty easy explanation. Healers are freakin' fun in Bozja, and they own the place.

[Fellgon]

Interestingly, i would like to see japanese opinion on LL and healers.
As it's a well known fact se doesn't give a crap about western audience when it comes to feedback

Of course they don't, western start a thread like : "worthless".... "Fail"........... 'do your job"......threads.
but i understand the resistance some have to changes, its part of human nature, at least we westerns could say these things in a manner that don't devalue dev teams jobs. I'm sure jap forum may be way different than ours. lets not forget, this is a Japanese game! many things in game could give reference to japan culture, philosophy and music, (its not Kansas anymore) but someday you will see: "oh this game music is S*&^%"! ive seen a post here in forum saying that hair styles of game were bad...many of these hairs could be popular in japan or inspired in some Japanese artist.
Don't be surprised if someday something like this appears in Japanese forums: "please square enix......delete NA forum, they don't deserve this game.'

[Valkyrie_]

You're making a lot of offensive assumptions here.

I don't think they were making generalisations though, he was just asking the question why the game should be constantly designed so much around the super casual part of the playerbase, it's not some personal attack on casuals, it's a good question.
They weren't generalizing any more than you did with "casual players are not indifferent, we care how our jobs play".


And he's absolutely right in asking, just look at what they said about designing reaper, they said they knew the class was going to be popular, so they didn't want to make it too hard.
We already have tons of classes that cater to casual players, why mush SCH(which used to be the skillful healer), play braindead like WHM?

Like it or not, casuals are the root of the problem for why SCH is in such a bad state, of course it's not like they have done anything wrong, no one is specifically blaming casual players, casuals are what keep ffxiv alive and thriving after all.

But it IS the develepors fault for always catering to them and not giving any thought to the players who want a challenge or *gasp!* more than 1-2 buttons to spam.
If the devs actually stopped doing that, they might find that alot of casuals actually don't mind a mild challenge here and there, they just need a little push.

[Rubiss]

I don't think they were making generalisations though, he was just asking the question why the game should be constantly designed so much around the super casual part of the playerbase, it's not some personal attack on casuals, it's a good question.
They weren't generalizing any more than you did with "casual players are not indifferent, we care how our jobs play".


And he's absolutely right in asking, just look at what they said about designing reaper, they said they knew the class was going to be popular, so they didn't want to make it too hard.
We already have tons of classes that cater to casual players, why mush SCH(which used to be the skillful healer), play braindead like WHM?

Like it or not, casuals are the root of the problem for why SCH is in such a bad state, of course it's not like they have done anything wrong, no one is specifically blaming casual players, casuals are what keep ffxiv alive and thriving after all.

But it IS the develepors fault for always catering to them and not giving any thought to the players who want a challenge or *gasp!* more than 1-2 buttons to spam.
If the devs actually stopped doing that, they might find that alot of casuals actually don't mind a mild challenge here and there, they just need a little push.

The problem with casuals are that they don't care about optimization, so why bother trying to close the gap between people who optimize and a casual? They're going to perform poorly regardless. May as well keep the job good and just let them pull bad numbers, as per usual.

[Grimoire-M]

The problem with casuals are that they don't care about optimization, so why bother trying to close the gap between people who optimize and a casual? They're going to perform poorly regardless. May as well keep the job good and just let them pull bad numbers, as per usual.

Casuals do care about it to some extent. That’s why the mid core audience exists.

[Sebazy]

Eh, I don't think it's fair to blame the casual player base for SCH's woes.

Wildstar went down the polar opposite route and failed pretty hard.

I 100% agree with you that SE should abuse the job system and not be so deathly afraid of having different jobs excel in different content. Is it really a huge deal if WHM isn't good at a single fight? Assuming the next one is favourable for it, absolutely not. WoW practically made a sport of shaking the balance tree even at it's peak and whilst it was potentially devastating for some players, it really helped to keep things fresh for far longer than they could have been. FFXIV would reap most of the rewards with far less pain.

If you really want to place the blame, don't drop it on the casuals or even the dev team. IMHO the fault lies somewhere between Yoshida and SE's finance team. Either Yoshida really needs to set aside a larger part of the budget to tackle the lack of dedicated battle system designers that the team has struggled with since relaunch or the bean counters need to give him more money. They aren't going to magically find another Sudo overnight, let alone people that can breath some fresh life into the job designs, rather it's going to take a good amount of hiring and time before they see results which won't be cheap. IMHO It's something that needs to be done sooner rather than later for the long term health of the game though.

[Kraniel]

Interestingly, i would like to see japanese opinion on LL and healers.
As it's a well known fact se doesn't give a crap about western audience when it comes to feedback

To answer your question, their healer forum is somewhat active but they definitely didn't have 8 "THIS LIVE LETTER SUCKED" threads created instantly yesterday.
As a matter of fact, most people don't seem to complain about healer gameplay at all, even looking at past threads.

[MaxCarnage]

I've seen a few players mention this in previous posts so it's something I want to touch on.

Healer DPS skills are lacking 100%. However, they have versatile healing skills that I actually love to use. The oGCD skills are great if I wanna keep uptime. And I'm not just spamming glare or holy, I have other buttons to press, characters to switch between, etc. etc. I didn't play in HW so I can't attest to healer playstyle back then, but I find playing healer a lot of fun. I find it much more engaging and interesting than being a dps, honestly.

But this is something I need to address. There are many a times where I have gotten into a duty where the healer has NO clue what they are doing. And I'm not talking low-level, ARR stuff. I'm not even talking HW stuff. But in StB and ShB content, they don't know what they're doing. They already can't balance a dot, 1 damage spell, and multiple healing spells. I don't mean to crap on anyone, as I understand some people take longer to learn than others, but there comes a point in the game where you should have a basic understanding of your class. And I'm just saying, if people already can't handle the "boring, lackluster" way healers currently play, I can only imagine what it would be like if the rotation were more complex.

I'll give an example from today. I was running as PLD in a mid-60 dungeon, and on the first pull, I exhausted all my CDs, as well as Hollowed and STILL DIED. The healer wasn't holying, they didn't regen, they didn't benison, benediction, asylum, or assize. All they casted was Stone IV, medica II, and the very occasional cure II. In fact, pretty much the entire dungeon, I was only getting healed by the RDM.

I know this is an extreme case, however, stuff like this is always excused. It's now deemed "toxic" to expect that players have basic understanding of their job. If you give someone any form of advice they will chew it up and spit it right back in your face. And if they don't, someone else will for them. So until we have a standard that people should know at least what half their buttons do, I don't imagine they will make healers more engaging and complex when people already can't handle them at a most basic requirement.

[Sebazy]

But this is something I need to address. There are many a times where I have gotten into a duty where the healer has NO clue what they are doing.

IMHO this is more of a content problem than it is a job design issue.

Leveling dungeons are routinely considerably more demanding on Healers than 'Expert' Dungeons. Meanwhile casual end game content such as 24 mans and DR ask so little of a player that the base line is being afk to the extent where someone bothers to notice and a vote kick passes on you. When people take that mentality that they can just bash whatever sparkly hotkey back into the likes of Bardams as a healer, it's a recipe for a train wreck. This rot started at the tail end of ARR and SE have just doubled down on it ever since sadly.

Early ARR had the right idea of it. Dungeons were used to train a player for Hard Mode Primals, they shared mechanics and even had DPS checks you could fail. In turn, HM Primals were the gatekeeper for Coil.

Now you step out of your final levelling dungeon and you can just go press a button two or three times a minute in a 24 man and still get the full reward and praise for it.

It's now deemed "toxic" to expect that players have basic understanding of their job. If you give someone any form of advice they will chew it up and spit it right back in your face.

This stuff really sucks yeah =/. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. There's an unhealthy number of people who are unable or unwilling to accept that they could improve, coupled with far too many people that won't try to help in a constructive manner, but rather just jump straight to snide rubbish that doesn't benefit anyone. You do see people that are willing to try on both sides of the coin, but it feels like more and more people have just given up at this point.