Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[Saefinn]

Oh yeah, my nostalgia goes way back as well. I mained RDM in XI, and experienced it when it turned from a debuffing monster to a refresh/cure bot. The days where you were told to put your main weapon down because your damage was laughable, and took a knee to regain mana during combat. As uphill as times were back then, I miss them too. FFXIV is too aged now and well past those days. I wouldn't call it a sad state. Just a different one. When you've been playing the game for a really long time, you just have to go out there and find things you enjoy doing.

It is in the very nature of mmos to change. Certain things you once enjoyed will be lost, and other things will come around that you pick up. It's just how those virtual worlds spin, and players have to adapt if they are to continue finding enjoyment in the same mmo.

I know the nature of MMO's is to change and I am normally fine going with the flow. I have my preferred visions of healers like SCH and what I consider the good old times and I am okay with leaving them there because I know things change and heck encounters and party set ups and balance is different in 5.0 to what it was in 2.0 so maybe some of the things I prefer are less viable. Though IMO there is an evolution of 2.0 SCH that would have worked, but hey, I can let go of that if I have something I am enjoying.

But in this case I feel it's more a design issue than a case of "times change".

There are two camps for this:

1. For those who believe the role of the healer is just to heal.

If in most content you are healing only 30% of the time, then you're not really doing much healing at all. In this case our healing toolkit is too efficient for most content.

2. For those who believe the role of the healer is a mixed one, so a hybrid.

Functionally this is what we currently have. The design flaw is that there is a big chunk where there isn't much to do. The hybrid here is healing & DPS.

What if we stripped Dragoon down to Vorpal Thrust, Disembowel and Chaos Thurst and kept its buffs like Lance Charge, Battle Litany and Dragon Sight, then have Doom Spike remain as an AoE and if we buffed the damage output.

It'd still functionally be a DPS class, it still fulfills its role.

Yet this is still more complex and varied than what many of us are doing 70% of a run.

You would find Dragoons would be very unhappy and find their job unfillling to play. This is because job design is a key part of what makes content engaging for the player, mechanics alone aren't enough. Certain types of games might be fine with or benefit from a minimalist design approach when it comes to dealing damage. But FFXIV's design is based around a mix of job design and mechanics and they've not changed this approach.

[Gemina]

But in this case I feel it's more a design issue than a case of "times change".

That depends. Something like healing kits becoming redundant as players get better and stronger is a design issue. Something like thinking that reverting back to 3.x gameplay will fix this issue is nostalgia. I think both cases are true with nearly every healer discussion.

There are two camps for this:

1. For those who believe the role of the healer is just to heal.

If in most content you are healing only 30% of the time, then you're not really doing much healing at all. In this case our healing toolkit is too efficient for most content.

2. For those who believe the role of the healer is a mixed one, so a hybrid.

Functionally this is what we currently have. The design flaw is that there is a big chunk where there isn't much to do. The hybrid here is healing & DPS.

There's only one camp. The heals only healer is a smoke screen. A caricature using the Sylphie meme to warn up and coming healers, "Don't be this person." I won't go as far to say that these players don't exist, but an entire faction or "camp" of them is a bit far-fetched.

Within the healer community, we simply have varied levels of experience, and a whole lot of diversity with the views pertaining to the role and jobs within it. That's kind of what an online community is and does. You have players learning the ropes, players who know the ropes, and players who think they do. They're all healers. Not green DPS, not heals only, not sheeps in wolves clothing, not chameleons. Just healers. That is what you are if you choose to play WHM, SCH, AST, and SGE.

What if we stripped Dragoon down to Vorpal Thrust, Disembowel and Chaos Thurst and kept its buffs like Lance Charge, Battle Litany and Dragon Sight, then have Doom Spike remain as an AoE and if we buffed the damage output.

It'd still functionally be a DPS class, it still fulfills its role.

Yet this is still more complex and varied than what many of us are doing 70% of a run.

You would find Dragoons would be very unhappy and find their job unfillling to play. This is because job design is a key part of what makes content engaging for the player, mechanics alone aren't enough. Certain types of games might be fine with or benefit from a minimalist design approach when it comes to dealing damage. But FFXIV's design is based around a mix of job design and mechanics and they've not changed this approach.

I was hoping to avoid such comparisons being made when I stated that healers are simply just a different role. I get what you're doing, but these arguments are launching flame arrows into a lake. If there is something the devs don't care about, it's gripes about the one button smash dance.

I don't think arguments like that get through. If I was a dev, the DRG argument simply would not compute because its a different role. I'm just thinking that it isn't DRGs responsibility to erase player mistakes and sustain the group, so of course I wouldn't redesign a DPS job that way. However, what I would say is something along the lines of when DRG uses this skill, it unlocks a new skill; or so long as DRG has this buff active, they have access to skill X. How can something similar be given to healers, and would they feel rewarded?

They are talking about FFXIV in the scope of another 10 years, so when it comes to healing changes and how to expand them, they are very likely thinking in that mindset. I know their foresight is actually quite horrible, but we also have the team credit with some of their job redesigns, and hopefully they will give healers the same treatment going forward.

[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.

[AikenDrum]

this isn't a complicated issue
spamming one button is extremely boring
having anything more varied than that would keep me engaged in the game
it doesn't matter at all what those extra buttons would do, just that they must be available across ALL scenarios
given how game is made, and the amount of existing content wont allow for major redesign, the only option for those extra buttons is to ultimately do damage
dps jobs, and to a lesser extent tanks, are already fun enough to play

sitting in a queue waiting for healer is as boring as playing one though

also, there's nothing even remotely difficult to fixing that. tanks have basically melee dps rotations, so... do exactly same for healers? take jolt+verthunder+verfire from rdm, rename and give it to whm, make it generate lilies or something; remove fluid aura and make cure 2 upgrade to cure 1 to avoid button bloat. there, fixed.

[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.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

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.

I did not :c I liked your thread, along with few other I believe.