SE FINALLY ANSWERED THE HEALERS COMMUNITY LONG ANSWERED QUESTION

[LanFangHua]

Yeah, we are basically screwed. Why would I think this? Cause their ideas for new healers are very uninspired versions of skills from other classes taken away from the original one and adding it to the new class. Give it a new fresh set of paint and there you go "new class"!

Generally, whenever someone try to deeply start a conversation about healers, they become very "yes, we understand, but" and then start beating around the bush.

No "hope" on my end, even tho I am open for a surprise

[Liam_Harper]

I'm not going to raise a pitchfork on this one.

The interview response was very disappointing, but at the same time they do hear feedback (they're even considering hard 4 man content now because of the push for it). Yoshida mentioned that he's a hard gamer himself and if he were to design the game to his own preferences, it would be hardcore, so he tries to take the casual player and different playstyles into account.

This is great, I just think he's overthinking it. He's so afraid of being influenced by hardcore preferences that he's leaning as far from that direction as possible and underestimating even the casual players. Even casuals can handle more than 3 buttons in lv30 dungeons and they can certainly handle a little more healing and more than one button for dps at endgame. Making a game that's accessible to casuals is important and should be maintained, so classes should be easy to learn, but even new players are eventually going to learn their class and yearn for more. The devs have made healers into a journey, where the road reaches a gate before you get half way and you aren't allowed further because they're worried you'll get hurt.

So honestly, I'd keep pushing the feedback. Constructively. We aren't going to be listened to if we make it a "good players vs bad" war or accuse the devs of not listening (and I'll admit perhaps I can be guilty of this too). Sure they're really slow on the uptake and we've been at this for years which is frustrating. But if we continue to make it clear we'd enjoy more engaging gameplay, there's still hope.

[HappyHubris]

This interviews have at least confirmed that horrible healing is a deliberate decision instead of an oversight.

People think that more time and engagement will push changes, but this game is 5 major releases in and seeing it's most success of all time with glare spam. They're not going to rock the boat for a fraction of a fraction of players. For all we know, for every obsessed optimizer in Savage fights there are two lazy healers happy to be along for the ride.

We should just move on instead of acting like battered spouses and holding out hope that the game will change in our favor.

[HappyHubris]

So honestly, I'd keep pushing the feedback. Constructively. We aren't going to be listened to if we make it a "good players vs bad" war or accuse the devs of not listening (and I'll admit perhaps I can be guilty of this too). Sure they're really slow on the uptake and we've been at this for years which is frustrating. But if we continue to make it clear we'd enjoy more engaging gameplay, there's still hope.

This is the sixth iteration of FFXIV, and the devs have clearly laid out their priorities in words and choices: not you. Why not listen and be rational instead of trying to gaslight other players that things could change if we just stay positive and have faith?

The devs deliberately chose to strip out damage tools while tuning healing at the floor. They've known that this upsets advanced players. They would rather alienate these players instead of possibly maybe hypothetically giving weaker healers something to do that could be held against them. If you think that they will rock the boat on healing at the height of their success you're deluding yourself.

[Saefinn]

This interviews have at least confirmed that horrible healing is a deliberate decision instead of an oversight.

People think that more time and engagement will push changes, but this game is 5 major releases in and seeing it's most success of all time with glare spam. They're not going to rock the boat for a fraction of a fraction of players. For all we know, for every obsessed optimizer in Savage fights there are two lazy healers happy to be along for the ride.

We should just move on instead of acting like battered spouses and holding out hope that the game will change in our favor.

I think to bear in mind is that, maybe with the exception of WHM the core of the healer complaints have been in Shadowbringers with some in Stormblood, at least from an enjoyment perspective. In ARR I was a very happy healer, in HW I was a very happy healer, in SB I think the first symptoms showed but weren't make or break and ShB was the point of collapse. Looking at EW one the one hand it doesn't look like they've learned their lesson and then on the other hand, there's signs of them making an effort to consider our complaints and have at least made clear their thought process and what issues they have. And also, whether they have learned their lesson this time around is contingent on how the healing requirements match the toolkits.

So whilst I can happily say "they should have done this and they should have done that" because I have, but I can look at how things went for other jobs who received the similar relationship and see that we are in position both MNK and MCH have been in.

On the one hand I can think positively in that, "okay, maybe they will be convinced to make the right steps and shown signs of it, so we mat end up getting the treatment."
On the other, realistically speaking, if they are going to give us something meaningful then we would be looking at 7.0 and that feels too far away. That is if they don't pleasantly surprised us with something unexpected in EW and go against their healer track record.

[ItMe]

So to know that they care but miss the mark is a better position than where we were. And I've been saying SGE looks like a step in the right direction (but not necessarily where we want to be) and from the interviews that seems intentional. And I think AST is too.

1,000% agreement~

I think to bear in mind is that, maybe with the exception of WHM the core of the healer complaints have been in Shadowbringers with some in Stormblood, at least from an enjoyment perspective.

Really?
From an enjoyment perspective huh?
Having only started at the end of Stormblood I didn't know this. This is good context to have, thanks for sharing.

[Gemina]

The devs have made healers into a journey, where the road reaches a gate before you get half way and you aren't allowed further because they're worried you'll get hurt.

I agree there is a gate, but it isn't the devs that don't allow further access. Want to guess who is actually doing that? I'll give you a hint. It also isn't you if you think that is where I was going.

For most healers, their journey towards becoming more experienced and advanced ends somewhere in casual content. Healing is easy until it isn't, and each healer has to get past a discouraging experience if they are going to progress. That bad experience is the afore mentioned gate, and it is entirely up to the healer confronted by it to step through it. This gate is not locked. There are no guards. There is no barbed wire. It's the mind of the healer that places those things there.

If you want to raise the skill floor, which in turn will allow the ceiling to also be raised, you have to encourage the game's healers to push past the gates they set up in their own minds. The devs do try and do this, but a lot of assistance is needed from the playerbase and is relied upon. There are TONS of videos out there on how to improve as DPS and Tanks. Content on how to be a better healer? Not as much. Not even close.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

I agree there is a gate, but it isn't the devs that don't allow further access. Want to guess who is actually doing that? I'll give you a hint. It also isn't you if you think that is where I was going.

For most healers, their journey towards becoming more experienced and advanced ends somewhere in casual content. Healing is easy until it isn't, and each healer has to get past a discouraging experience if they are going to progress. That bad experience is the afore mentioned gate, and it is entirely up to the healer confronted by it to step through it. This gate is not locked. There are no guards. There is no barbed wire. It's the mind of the healer that places those things there.

If you want to raise the skill floor, which in turn will allow the ceiling to also be raised, you have to encourage the game's healers to push past the gates they set up in their own minds. The devs do try and do this, but a lot of assistance is needed from the playerbase and is relied upon. There are TONS of videos out there on how to improve as DPS and Tanks. Content on how to be a better healer? Not as much. Not even close.

Also, sadly to be a better healer requires you at the bare minimum to have a tank that is level 80, because part of healer problems come from not understanding when you are underperforming and when the tank is under performing. That alone causes a lot of problems.

[Gemina]

Also, sadly to be a better healer requires you at the bare minimum to have a tank that is level 80, because part of healer problems come from not understanding when you are underperforming and when the tank is under performing. That alone causes a lot of problems.

No. To be a better healer, and a better player in general; it only requires the desire to be better. Seeking the knowledge, trial and error, leaving comfort zones, getting past criticism (especially your own), understanding your tools and their applications, improving reaction time, DPS uptime, encounter memorization and optimization; all predicated on that one concept. None of it can happen without actually wanting to be better. It starts there, and once it does, everything just starts falling into place and the player gets better as a result.

One of the most difficult trials a healer will face when gaining experience is a Tank's over pull, resulting in a wipe. These are the toughest when you are an inexperienced healer as you are not sure why things broke down. The tank pulling too much, is only one of several things that went wrong. An inexperienced healer will either point the finger at someone, or place all the fault on themselves. An experienced healer knows that a wipe on a dungeon pull began before even the first enemy was engaged.

[ty_taurus]

A couple of things. Yoshida is responsible enough to take accountability when he acknowledges a mistake his team has made which has lead to a lot of disappointment. You saw this when he directly apologized to all SCH mains for their lackluster showcase in the LL. He then went into great length to assure SCH mains that they have not neglected them, and to look forward to EW. Now that's when they acknowledge a eff up. Obviously he's not going to come out directly and say that, but it is a much different response than how he responded to everyone who asked about the healers.

My interpretation about that response was he realized that the SCH’s section of the job actions trailer was poorly executed. Even if not much changes, they still want the job to look cool. An example would be something like MCH where very little is changing, but they still show off things like the Automaton Queen, Flamethrower, Auto Crossbow, Ricochet… i.e. things that look cool. SCH admittedly have very little interesting looking actions these days, but they could’ve at least used things like Fey Union, Scared Soil, or Summon Seraph. It also just didn’t even showcase the sprint buff well at all.

He seemed to be apologizing more that he didn’t oversee the trailer more meticulously to ensure that the SCH looked better and displayed their new capstone more effectively, but followed up by saying that SCH will still be fun to play, or at least that’s what they say.

For the record, I don’t necessarily think the healer changes are a fuck up, at least not universally. I was more just using that as a hyperbolic example of the other extreme. Because if he actually did feel like they fucked up healing, hypothetically, he would still need to promote it as a positive direct for the role.

It needs to be understood that the direction they have taken healing is not a mistake, or it is not seen as one by this dev team. It was a deliberate design choice that some healers don't agree with. I emphasize on some, because the healers upset by this design choice is not shared across the entire community, and are in fact, not even the majority of it.

So what? It’s clear that there’s a fairly significant chunk of the player base that is upset. It’s bubbled to the surface so much so that influencers who don’t care at all about healing asked legitimate questions on behalf of their fans who do play healer. We’ve had back and forths before and you keep taking this stance of “us vs them” in regards to casual players and experienced players. We are not your enemy. We are not trying to ruin your casual experience.

Over the years, the healers who do not agree with raising the requirements of them have been ostracized and their views drowned out. Some have even been shamed and told they condone inferior gameplay; so now all you hear for the most part are the frustrations from being bored by the game's advanced healers, as no one dare object or risk the wrath of the pitchfork mob. Meanwhile you have this enormous portion of the healer community who won't touch anything outside NM difficulty.

We need to break this down a little because there’s an important distinction between healers that try and struggle vs the section of healers that were demanding the role change so that healers never DPSed and would outright refuse to DPS in any content no matter the circumstances. The later were basically selfish players who wanted to play a different game with FFXIV’s aesthetic, because that’s not how FFIXIV is designed, and it will never be that way.

For the healers that would try and have a difficult time, I get that. There are changes that I think were really good in Stormblood to make their experience easier, such as removing Cleric Stance. I firmly believe Cleric Stance was terrible because it was a system based on punishment. If you don’t use it, your punished because you can’t DPS. When you do use it, if you mess up your timing, then your healing is punished and you could have the team killed because you forgot to press a button, or because your latency prevented it from being turned off.

And guess what, the people who were complaining about healing being too hard largely stopped. Stormblood’s addressing of that issue was perfectly fine. There was no reason to further cauterized the healed wound with what Shadowbringers did specifically to SCH. Yeah WHM lost Aero III too, but SCH was basically disemboweled to resolve issues that no one was complaining about.

What I just mentioned about all the healers who stay away from content EX and above is reason enough for them to not raise the skill floor by giving healers additional responsibility. This is why every once in a while they release a dungeon, NM raid, or wall boss in an alliance raid that is a bit more spicy than the rest to see how players do. What do you think it means if they latter go in an nerf one or more of these encounters, especially well after additional ilvs are released? A boss like Cid in Orbonne could be considered a trial of the playerbase, and guess what? We failed it. And you want to raise the skill bar? SE has yet to release an Alliance Raid we wipe to since Orbonne.

Here is another way to look at it, and this is most certainly how Yoshida does: If you raise the skill floor, what do you think happens to all the players residing on that floor currently? Sure, all the healers who stay above ground will benefit and thrive, but it comes at the cost of exclusion. However this dev team has to be indiscriminate of skill level when it involves decisions that affect the game on a global scale. You need to zoom out. Way the eff out. Those players on the current skill floor are also paying subscribers and have to be accounted for.

I don’t understand how we’ve specifically talked about this before, yet you keep bringing up this skill floor debate. How can I make it any clearer that…

WE. DON’T. WANT. TO. RAISE. THE. SKILL. FLOOR.

At this point, I’m inclined to believe one of three things: either you don’t understand the difference between a skill floor and a skill ceiling, you’re misunderstanding the difference between then, or you’re just intentionally ignoring what we’ve been saying in order to paint a narrative. If it’s the former two, please tell me. I will be more than happy to find you a number of examples and explain in greater detail what they are to help you understand what we’re talking about.

I'm not bringing all this up to smash hope before it can even sprout, but rather to broaden the perspective so suggestions on how to improve healer gameplay can go beyond the unsolvable puzzle it has been thus far. If you keep trying to solve a puzzle the same way, you will never get anywhere. Try another path.

I think if there is something to truly take from these interviews, it should be that Yoshida cares about each and every one of you. This is also something he does indiscriminately. So if you are aware now that his ear is open, you should know it has always been open. Be mindful of your suggestions. Try to be pleasant and inclusive, and it is totally ok to voice what you disapprove of and provide criticism. However anyone who chooses to berate the team, attack others who disagree, and rattle off like a broken record should not be surprised if hey are not listened to, or "ignored" as I see tossed around a lot.

I agree here. Criticism is important because it helps us improve and identify problems where we don’t see them. I totally understand the frustration and passion a lot of experienced healers have on the topic, but there are times where some people (not all) cross a line into defaming the team when people are likely working 60+ hour weeks to make this game a reality.

What this team wants now is feedback from all the healers after getting their hands dirty with EW, especially those who try Sage. Why do you think he's telling you to go an play Sage?

I think there are absolutely things we can talk about and criticize now, but this is also true. I’m speaking generally now, but when EW comes out, play Sage. Ignore the healers you think aren’t developed enough even if it’s a job you love. You’ll do more good for SCH leaving it alone and showing the team in numbers that SCH players are leaving the job than you will digging your heels in the sand and pouting about it. That said, I can’t tell you what to play as that’s each person’s individual decisions, but know that actions speak louder than words, especially when money is involved. And if Sage isn’t enough, continue to bring that up.