Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[ty_taurus]

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

Aww I appreciate that, lol. I've made a few of those over the years mainly cause I'm just a nerd who likes theorycrafting, but those threads tend to not elicit responses, which I guess makes sense. It's not really much of a question. Also if they get really long no one likes to read them anyway, 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.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Aww I appreciate that, lol. I've made a few of those over the years mainly cause I'm just a nerd who likes theorycrafting, but those threads tend to not elicit responses, which I guess makes sense. It's not really much of a question. Also if they get really long no one likes to read them anyway, lol.

I like reading theorycrafted kits and such from another player in a community. They give me some urge to make one myself, or at least get imagination running.

But alas I’m no game designer myself. It’s janky at best.

[ty_taurus]

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.

Ah yes, lol. I may or may not have a problem

[BooPoo]

What they should do is designing casual level encounters and even some of Savage fights to be clearable based on casual healers doing the absolute minimum. Then provide more experienced healers with more DPS tools that will help the team with the fight even more, but just by a tiny margin (5-10%?). This allows accessibility while ensuring that good players have stuff they can work on to stand out.

[Shurrikhan]

What they should do is designing casual level encounters and even some of Savage fights to be clearable based on casual healers doing the absolute minimum. Then provide more experienced healers with more DPS tools that will help the team with the fight even more, but just by a tiny margin (5-10%?). This allows accessibility while ensuring that good players have stuff they can work on to stand out.

I think we can expect more from our fights than casual healers doing the absolute minimum, since that equates, quite literally, to them afking while their cohealer solos it (as opposed to the less casual oGCD heals only).

Due to how low the difficulty floor is, that difference between them and the "more experienced healer" is never going to amount to some 5-10%, either, unless you seriously reduce healer's offensive output.

[Saefinn]

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.

2.x and 3.x are times when we did not have the problem people are complaining about and we don't really get why they'd scrap things that worked and people liked. I mean, we could have an evolution of 2.0 and 3.0 design.

With that said, I think if they replaced it with something else that addresses the issue then this complaint would be alleviated. I mean, I've long compromised on my preferred heal vision and a lot of the suggestions I've made have been with current healer design in mind. In fact, there are things in SGE's kit that are similar to suggestions I made for SCH, hence my cautious optimism for SGE (it does it to a lesser extent than my suggestion did)

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.

The reason I separate into 2 camps is because those are the two prevailing argument types I see about healer design. Yes, there are "healing only" arguments made, there are people who say they'd rather not focus on DPS but focus on healing overall and we've seen the argument a lot "healers are healers not DPS". And if that is the argument people want to make, the problem is, we have a big chunk where we're not healing, so it's not like that approach is being satisfied.

Then you have the people who argue that healers shouldn't just heal, which I know I fall into. Though I will stress for me that's from a design point of view and not prescriptive on how people play it, because the idea of a low skill floor is that people aren't required to.

Then of course there's different arguments and nuances and variations within them and even some bleed.

As for the type of healers out there, yes, I agree there's variation across the board and if you'll notice I've been a huge advocate for low skill floor, high skill ceiling approaches because I feel that accommodates the most people. It keeps them accessible and it keeps others from being bored.

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.

Yes, I know they're a different role and that's why I gave an actual rotation in my example because I think if they gave a DPS the same treatment, it'd not be a single button spam. It was intentional to use another role because what I was illustrating was what it'd be like if they applied the same "strip down" approach to other roles, they would become unfulfilling and people would complain and on a healer there's a huge chunk of the role that feels stripped down because it's what we're doing most of the time. It is by no means an attempt to compare a healer rotation to a DPS rotation. But it is considered a design flaw because the design philosophy is about engaging people through job design and mechanics design, hence a single button spam is so underwhelming here, where as in another game it might not be.

If the devs don't care about the 1 button smash gripes, then yes, we'll continue to make complaints because it is a problem. For me, I don't actually care if it's a DPS move, a healing move, a support move, or anything as long as it works and is meaningful. I think DPS makes the most sense for reasons I've listed many times before.

And yet, we see some positive steps here on SGE and AST for 6.0. It's 13th Oct, so I think it's fine to

And I realise that yes they do reworks and they may get around to it on healers, but there reworks come about because people complain and continue to complain. EG. MNK has been complaining for many years, they finally acknowledged the issues, turn Greased Lightning into a trait to hold them over until 6.0 and are working in a completely new system in 6.0 to hopefully make MNKs happy. I accept a change like that could eventually come.

[Gemina]

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.

And if I had a dollar for the answer to healer boredom being to revert to antiquated gameplay, or to just add a couple of DPS skills, I could hire my own design team. I never said you're attempting to berate casual play, and the fact that you feel you have to defend yourself in such a manner tells me you're the one not reading posts, and responding emotionally. Don't think you can weigh me out because I don't concede. Is that what you do? Ostracize those who don't agree and conform? You try to make them feel like they don't belong in the conversation? Seriously WTF, dude?

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.

And then you say this in another response...

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.

Why on Earth are you grieving me about not listening and reading the posts here when you acknowledge this?

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?

What really makes it difficult to have a civil conversation with a healthy exchange of ideas and debates are contradictory statements like this one. You say it's not the new player's fault, right after pointing the finger right at them. And then you resort to defeatism. How am I supposed to respond to that?

Listen bud. I'm on your side, and I'm trying to help. My attempts at being pragmatic are not attacks on the ideas being tossed around, or my refusal to read/listen to other posts. I am aware that most of the people here are not game designers, and that's fine. I don't believe this prohibits the exchange of ideas and debates on how to improve gameplay. However, my own frustration stems from the impression I get that players will voice the 'I want my cake and eat it too' mentality. You even bolded all of it:
"none of us are advocating against casual play"
"Let healing be accessible and forgiving"
"design healing to be fun for all levels of skill at all levels of difficulty from dungeon to ultimate"

Yet, you somehow think this is "easy"? You have to got to be kidding. Especially when your idea of making healing more fun is to immediately have healers multitask even more by adding more DPS responsibility. Additional frustration comes from a lot of refusal to accept this. Understand that you ARE placing additional responsibility by giving healers more ways to be offensive. I don't really think that can be disputed. We are really talking about two different things at that point. Because giving healers additional DPS responsibility entails a change to current content design. This will not be fun for everyone. If you feel like raising the skill floor is the way to go. That is fine. Just understand that is what it is, and it's an uphill battle because you and I both know the devs do not feel this way.

When I respond this way, is that me not listening? Not reading? Misinterpreting what's being said? By all means tell me if that's the case, and if I am reading into things incorrectly. In any case, it goes without saying that making healing fun for everyone AND across all content isn't possible. It's a very tall order because the community is diverse. And you know what? That's totally fine. Awesome actually. So long as the exchange of ideas and debates can be done in a civil manner.

Ultimately I feel adaptation is the key to enjoying healing in FFXIV, and it's difficult to say you're not enjoying healing if you're still doing it. This says you have a strong ability to adapt, and go out there and find things you enjoy. But even if you want to ignore that, the devs are the ones who make the final say and there really is no choice but to adapt to their job designs. And don't take that to mean to be complacent. It is perfectly fine to voice how you would like to improve the game. Just know that not everyone will agree with you.

[Shurrikhan]

What really makes it difficult to have a civil conversation with a healthy exchange of ideas and debates are contradictory statements like this one. You say it's not the new player's fault, right after pointing the finger right at them. And then you resort to defeatism. How am I supposed to respond to that?

I actually have to agree with this one. We could definitely benefit from more measured and forward-looking responses...




That said, we are going to have to consider, fairly concretely, how far we're willing to move the difficulty floor (which in turn may warrant consideration as to the learning/difficulty curve, improvements to control schemes, and so forth).

[Absurdity]

I think we can expect more from our fights than casual healers doing the absolute minimum, since that equates, quite literally, to them afking while their cohealer solos it (as opposed to the less casual oGCD heals only).

Due to how low the difficulty floor is, that difference between them and the "more experienced healer" is never going to amount to some 5-10%, either, unless you seriously reduce healer's offensive output.

I think he's just severely underestimating what "absolute minimum" in this game actually looks like.