Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[ty_taurus]

This game tosses a plethora of content at players in both solo and group formats, and the difficulty range is quite fair for being an mmo wherein the majority of the playerbase has a nice comfort level of where they like to do content. I can't help but facepalm when I see gripes like this. If you are no longer finding anything engaging, I don't think it's the game's fault; I think you're just burned out. Don't take that offensively. It's not meant to be. It's meant to have you take a step back and look around. Imagine being a totally brand new player coming into FFXIV right now.

The majority of the playerbase don't do Ultimate, Savage, or even EX. I mention that not because it's difficult and intimidating to try, but because each of those can be considered their own content, and require their own time investment. The same can be said about content like big game fishing, expert level crafting, housing and gardening, Eureka and Bozja, PoTD and HoH, etc. It's a big 'ol amusement park, and most players don't have the time to try all the rides, or they establish a comfort zone with particular rides and don't want to try the others. You really should be able to find something engaging and fun. If you can't, then you might have to seek out that engagement and challenge elsewhere.

In any case, and still using the park metaphor; you can't hop off the rollercoaster and head over to the Ferris wheel and expect the same kind of thrill, yeah? Don't hop into dungeon after doing savage/ultimate and be like, "You know what would be cool? Some kind of enrage timer to make things interesting!"

The thing is, your comment is disregarding the entire issue. For healer players, many of whom have become experienced with how healing plays have discovered that healing is very poorly designed for casual content. DPS jobs are engaging at all levels of play. It doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or if it's your dungeon roulette. Sure, Ultimate is still more engaging for those that want to scratch that itch, but even when you're doing your dailies, if you enjoy your DPS job's playstyle, then it's still fun. Meanwhile, once you've understood how healing plays, casual content basically asks you to do nothing. Healing requirements are trivial to which healers don't neve need to stop DPSing to keep the party healthy. I don't really understand why there are some people who find the idea of asking for a job to always be fun for as many players as possible rather than only fun if the fight is pushing you to your limit or you're just not a very experienced healer is such an outrageous request.

This is not a theme park where the content exclusively dictates the experience you receive. The quality of the job you play is half the ride.

[Gemina]

The thing is, your comment is disregarding the entire issue. For healer players, many of whom have become experienced with how healing plays have discovered that healing is very poorly designed for casual content. DPS jobs are engaging at all levels of play. It doesn't matter if it's Ultimate or if it's your dungeon roulette. Sure, Ultimate is still more engaging for those that want to scratch that itch, but even when you're doing your dailies, if you enjoy your DPS job's playstyle, then it's still fun. Meanwhile, once you've understood how healing plays, casual content basically asks you to do nothing. Healing requirements are trivial to which healers don't neve need to stop DPSing to keep the party healthy. I don't really understand why there are some people who find the idea of asking for a job to always be fun for as many players as possible rather than only fun if the fight is pushing you to your limit or you're just not a very experienced healer is such an outrageous request.

This is not a theme park where the content exclusively dictates the experience you receive. The quality of the job you play is half the ride.

Am I disregarding the issue, or are the players I questioned disregarding casual players? One of those two cases fueled my last post, and it's definitely not the former. Having healed in this game for years, across all content except Ultimate, I am all too aware of the issues healers have in regards to their kits and the content. There is nothing wrong with asking for our jobs to be fun, and in the case of healers, we definitely should be receiving the same amount of attention that is paid to other jobs when it comes to making them fun and engaging to play. I will agree that is not happening. What I don't agree with is raising the difficulty level of casual content just because the more advanced players are not engaged. I will never get on board with that, and neither will this dev team. Dungeons like Grand Cosmos, Amaurot, and the Burn are about as tough as they will make 4-man. Players can and will fail mechs in dungeons like those, so healers will need to stay awake. There is Ratholos EX, but I don't count that one because of how healing is set up for that fight.

Healing however, is just a different role from the other two and this just needs to be accepted. Their kits are aimed at sustainability and erasing player mistakes. You're not going to get kits that have an intricate system of cogs that you need to understand in order to pump out respectable damage when those two responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders. However, this doesn't mean healers can't have rewarding gameplay outside saving a raid from failure. I think that's what this team is still trying to figure out, and I don't think it's as simple as some people are trying to make it out to be.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Am I disregarding the issue, or are the players I questioned disregarding casual players? One of those two cases fueled my last post, and it's definitely not the former. Having healed in this game for years, across all content except Ultimate, I am all too aware of the issues healers have in regards to their kits and the content. There is nothing wrong with asking for our jobs to be fun, and in the case of healers, we definitely should be receiving the same amount of attention that is paid to other jobs when it comes to making them fun and engaging to play. I will agree that is not happening. What I don't agree with is raising the difficulty level of casual content just because the more advanced players are not engaged. I will never get on board with that, and neither will this dev team. Dungeons like Grand Cosmos, Amaurot, and the Burn are about as tough as they will make 4-man. Players can and will fail mechs in dungeons like those, so healers will need to stay awake. There is Ratholos EX, but I don't count that one because of how healing is set up for that fight.

Healing however, is just a different role from the other two and this just needs to be accepted. Their kits are aimed at sustainability and erasing player mistakes. You're not going to get kits that have an intricate system of cogs that you need to understand in order to pump out respectable damage when those two responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders. However, this doesn't mean healers can't have rewarding gameplay outside saving a raid from failure. I think that's what this team is still trying to figure out, and I don't think it's as simple as some people are trying to make it out to be.

Excellent post and I agree with everything you stated mostly.

[ty_taurus]

Am I disregarding the issue, or are the players I questioned disregarding casual players? One of those two cases fueled my last post, and it's definitely not the former. Having healed in this game for years, across all content except Ultimate, I am all too aware of the issues healers have in regards to their kits and the content. There is nothing wrong with asking for our jobs to be fun, and in the case of healers, we definitely should be receiving the same amount of attention that is paid to other jobs when it comes to making them fun and engaging to play. I will agree that is not happening. What I don't agree with is raising the difficulty level of casual content just because the more advanced players are not engaged. I will never get on board with that, and neither will this dev team. Dungeons like Grand Cosmos, Amaurot, and the Burn are about as tough as they will make 4-man. Players can and will fail mechs in dungeons like those, so healers will need to stay awake. There is Ratholos EX, but I don't count that one because of how healing is set up for that fight.

Healing however, is just a different role from the other two and this just needs to be accepted. Their kits are aimed at sustainability and erasing player mistakes. You're not going to get kits that have an intricate system of cogs that you need to understand in order to pump out respectable damage when those two responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders. However, this doesn't mean healers can't have rewarding gameplay outside saving a raid from failure. I think that's what this team is still trying to figure out, and I don't think it's as simple as some people are trying to make it out to be.

It makes it very difficult to have a conversation about topics like this when you refuse to read the posts that players make about this issue because many of us couldn't beat a dead horse more than we already are in that none of us are advocating against casual play. If I had a dollar for every time someone has brought up "raise the skill ceiling without touching the skill floor" I'd be playing this game for free every month and then some. If you don't care enough to read any of our posts, then fine, but don't think you can weigh in on the subject because you don't know what you're responding to.

I'll say it again, Let healing be accessible and forgiving but at the same time design healing to be fun for all levels of skill at all levels of difficulty from dungeons to Ultimate. These two sides are not mutually exclusive. You can have both, and it's really not that hard to do. The problem is that we are the vocal minority, and there are too many new players flooding the queues to make our dissatisfaction make an impact. That's not to say that it's the new players fault, but rather, that SE should want healing to be fun for all skill levels, but they don't have to. They can not do anything about it and suffer no negative consequences, so why waste the resources that you could otherwise spend in other areas of the game?

[Kabooa]

It makes it very difficult to have a conversation about topics like this when you refuse to read the posts that players make about this issue because many of us couldn't beat a dead horse more than we already are in that none of us are advocating against casual play. If I had a dollar for every time someone has brought up "raise the skill ceiling without touching the skill floor" I'd be playing this game for free every month and then some. If you don't care enough to read any of our posts, then fine, but don't think you can weigh in on the subject because you don't know what you're responding to.

I'll say it again, Let healing be accessible and forgiving but at the same time design healing to be fun for all levels of skill at all levels of difficulty from dungeons to Ultimate. These two sides are not mutually exclusive. You can have both, and it's really not that hard to do. The problem is that we are the vocal minority, and there are too many new players flooding the queues to make our dissatisfaction make an impact. That's not to say that it's the new players fault, but rather, that SE should want healing to be fun for all skill levels, but they don't have to. They can not do anything about it and suffer no negative consequences, so why waste the resources that you could otherwise spend in other areas of the game?

I've read most of the posts in here.

Most of the ideas are awful, don't do what they aim to do, or are in the realm of "Just make it fun at all skill levels in all content." which might as well be saying nothing, for all the help that is. There are a few topics that merit discussion but they rarely get as much attention as the whine threads.

And, by the way, mind sharing that design for healing to be fun in all levels of content played by players of all skill levels? I'd like to apply that to the tanks and DPS, and since it's already solved, little reason to do extra work, ya know?

[ty_taurus]

I've read most of the posts in here.

Most of the ideas are awful, don't do what they aim to do, or are in the realm of "Just make it fun at all skill levels in all content." which might as well be saying nothing, for all the help that is. There are a few topics that merit discussion but they rarely get as much attention as the whine threads.

And, by the way, mind sharing that design for healing to be fun in all levels of content played by players of all skill levels? I'd like to apply that to the tanks and DPS, and since it's already solved, little reason to do extra work, ya know?

Well most people on here are ultimately not game designers, so yeah a lot of what gets posted isn't necessarily going to be good. I've made plenty of attempts at redesigns simply because I find it fun, and pretty much most of the ideas I had before I look at now and think wow, that's terrible. The key is ultimately in what people are trying to achieve. Sure when it comes to actually put ideas into practice you certainly want to achieve a lot more than just trying, but it's also a lot easier for developers to test more outrageous ideas anyway. They have a test build where they can change things and mess around with the systems all they want and can then when they weed through all the ideas that sucked, where they come to something that seems good, they can then have their QA teams test those builds. That's hundreds of people trying to break your job design to ensure it's not as flimsy as a lot of the ideas we share here.

So yeah, in practice, most of the suggestions on here would break more than they fix, but that's ultimately not the point. It's about what they set out to accomplish, and while there is some desire to return casual difficulty to pervious iterations where it was still very forgiving but had a bit more complexity. As I brought up before, though, I believe most of us don't want to alienate casual players. Perhaps players that just don't care to try, but I'd say it's 100 times more alienating for the white knight casuals on here (which is only a small fraction of the casual playerbase mind you) to demand everyone get over it.

[Shurrikhan]

I've read most of the posts in here.

Most of the ideas are awful, don't do what they aim to do, or are in the realm of "Just make it fun at all skill levels in all content." which might as well be saying nothing, for all the help that is. There are a few topics that merit discussion but they rarely get as much attention as the whine threads.

A lot of that just comes down to the basic problems of New Posts and completed ideas. Just by nature of how we tend to access these threads, those that don't have regular space to add ideas to at low effort tend to dry up quickly.

As much as I enjoy the occasional good, concrete, and relatively complete idea, though, those aren't really going to be the primary point or purview of a player forum, I would think?

I'd be happy if we could just at least contextualize and somewhat test our suggested criteria for basic applicability or relative merit.

Coming up with the exact method by which to meet those criteria? That's for designers. (And occasionally the sufficiently obsessive and bored, when those designers have too often failed us and/or the method is just that obvious.)

[Shurrikhan]

I'll say it again, Let healing be accessible and forgiving but at the same time design healing to be fun for all levels of skill at all levels of difficulty from dungeons to Ultimate. These two sides are not mutually exclusive. You can have both, and it's really not that hard to do. The problem is that we are the vocal minority, and there are too many new players flooding the queues to make our dissatisfaction make an impact. That's not to say that it's the new players fault, but rather, that SE should want healing to be fun for all skill levels, but they don't have to. They can not do anything about it and suffer no negative consequences, so why waste the resources that you could otherwise spend in other areas of the game?

And, by the way, mind sharing that design for healing to be fun in all levels of content played by players of all skill levels? I'd like to apply that to the tanks and DPS, and since it's already solved, little reason to do extra work, ya know?

I, too, would like to here some attempts at this, however spitball, that we might work to refine.

[ty_taurus]

I, too, would like to here some attempts at this, however spitball, that we might work to refine.

Well I posted an example of a few changes I'd make to WHM as an example of adding some depth without making it complicated, but everyone ignored it, lol.

[Shurrikhan]

Well I posted an example of a few changes I'd make to WHM as an example of adding some depth without making it complicated, but everyone ignored it, lol.

Sorry, hadn't seen any of yours since the old "Where to go with the Lily Gauge" thread. I'll check the new one out.