Worthless Live Letter

[ItMe]

I honestly don't think any of these developers spend any length of time playing healer. It's the most boring experience ever casting the same spell over and over again.

This is something that I keep hearing, but I don't understand how this could be.
At the end of the day... for each expac they still have to rigorously playtest 12 raids, about 7 trials, many dungeons, any deep dungeon, exploration content, any public dungeon(s), and (since Stormblood) at least 1 Ultimate.
And then rigorously playtest it 2 (now 3) more times on the other healers.

And we know the battle team only has single digit members. So there isn't a way to pass the buck around enough that no one really gets time to understand healing. They should be experienced enough to know what's up.
What's happening?
How does it seem like they're staffed with such (pardon the awkward expression) green healers when they've been running their own content so much and for so long?

I really wish the dev team posted videos of them doing content together because I'd love to see how they playtest stuff, what their approach is like, how they communicate, etc.
And I wanna see what their healers are doing.

[Recon1o6]

This is something that I keep hearing, but I don't understand how this could be.
At the end of the day... for each expac they still have to rigorously playtest 12 raids, about 7 trials, many dungeons, any deep dungeon, exploration content, any public dungeon(s), and (since Stormblood) at least 1 Ultimate.
And then rigorously playtest it 2 (now 3) more times on the other healers.

And we know the battle team only has single digit members. So there isn't a way to pass the buck around enough that no one really gets time to understand healing. They should be experienced enough to know what's up.
What's happening?
How does it seem like they're staffed with such (pardon the awkward expression) green healers when they've been running their own content so much and for so long?

I really wish the dev team posted videos of them doing content together because I'd love to see how they playtest stuff, what their approach is like, how they communicate, etc.
And I wanna see what their healers are doing.

1. Because a lot of their testing likely involves computer modelling rather than actual playing for numerical data. This is standard industry practice and due to the job team being invisible, we have no indicators this is different for SE.
2. They spend most of their time on dps jobs in terms of adjustments due to bias. Neither of them mains a healer or a tank. The one that mained a tank left in hw-sb. We know one of them main's dragoon and yoshida makes sure blm gets the love he wants it as its his main.
3. The battle design team and job design team are two separate teams. They communicate on balancing primarily so all comps are viable.
4. Most of the job team spend time on pvp balancing since the chaos in there makes it a damn nightmare to balance due to the unpredictable nature so it takes time.
5. The devs have shown repeatedly through statements and design that they haven't a clue how the jobs play in practice, only on paper. You only need to look at energy drain for this.
6. They always look at a new player's prospective for marketing reasons rather than someone who actually plays the jobs.

[ItMe]

1 - 4

This is very illuminating, thanks for the info and the breakdown~

The devs have shown repeatedly through statements and design that they haven't a clue how the jobs play in practice, only on paper. You only need to look at energy drain for this.

Hahah, yeah... I forget how much of a jobs identity is emergent through community optimizations, like MNKs spamming tornado kick (or whatever it's called).

6. They always look at a new player's prospective for marketing reasons rather than someone who actually plays the jobs.

Wait, do they?
How do we know this?