Are you the loud minority? (Healer feedback)

[CrimsonGunner]

Aye aye indeed! I have been keeping separate screenshots for each roulette and type because for some unknown reason others seem reluctant to believe me. Not only reluctant but downright passive aggressive at the times about this! Why would I lie about queue times..? How does this gain me anything? I know how long my queues take.

i know, when i play as a healer in roulettes , there is a reason i offer free fast queue service for my FC cause even when other roles are displayed its insane how it is still insta queue in fact if it doesn't pop in less then 10 seconds i find it odd XD. while as dps i get to wait 10-15 min and anything beyond that i just try something else really.

i am from twintainia which is light datacenter so same dps times as he has i should have gotten which i dont but as i said it might be also luck and when the queue is long.

[Mortex]

Ohhh yup yup! It is most different on JP for how others behave or approach the many jobs. JP tend to play more safe or less aggressive for most things because we value clear chance over clear speed. Though that does not mean clear slow it only means safe strats and not too many wipes, preferably one shot clear especially when farming anything.

The tank will probably test with first pull then pull appropriately as to not cause wipes by over pulling. For me despite nationality I always go cray cray so can not say for all JP! I always play reckless though in all games even Dark Souls so I am most likely exception.

For healer staying behind and no one pulling for the tank they are being courteous. This does not mean they are not displeased though! They are simply far far less likely to speak about it, you will have to trust me.

For the other bits about tank I cannot say. I will check JP forum sometime to see, I have not been on either for months until recently.



Aye aye indeed! I have been keeping separate screenshots for each roulette and type because for some unknown reason others seem reluctant to believe me. Not only reluctant but downright passive aggressive at the times about this! Why would I lie about queue times..? How does this gain me anything? I know how long my queues take.



I am on Primal data center and cannot speak for yours. This does seem like good luck though or everyone on this end has extraordinarily bad luck. Keep in the mind that the 12 - 20 minutes is the average for us, the exception is five minutes. There are always exceptions and outliers in all data sets.

jesus 12 - 20 mins o.O is it actually so bad there with people or whats the reason we have these massive que time diffrences ?. Did actually people from america stop playing healer. Must resist bad healthcare joke........ But yeah thats pretty scary , are the healer you have atleast not pure cure afk bots ? or are they like my healers i had (pure afk cure 2 spamming).

[Mortex]

i know, when i play as a healer in roulettes , there is a reason i offer free fast queue service for my FC cause even when other roles are displayed its insane how it is still insta queue in fact if it doesn't pop in less then 10 seconds i find it odd XD. while as dps i get to wait 10-15 min and anything beyond that i just try something else really.

i am from twintainia which is light datacenter so same dps times as he has i should have gotten which i dont but as i said it might be also luck and when the queue is long.

Im gonna test that now a bit and later today because its really strange, i actually get for almost all roulettes even on dps really fast que times in almost all situations (well to be fair 3 am or 4 am this is were it sometimes can take a bit longer).

[ItMe]

tbh you getting a 5 min queue time as dps is a much more miracle that can be described as divine intervention in the game,

Is it though?
Then the entire Aether data center must be blessed and you guys should move, because as a DPS since 5.0 my queues are almost always between 3-7 min.

Aye aye indeed! I have been keeping separate screenshots for each roulette and type because for some unknown reason others seem reluctant to believe me.

It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I don't think the screenshots are worthwhile for a few reasons.



A.) Since our experiences don't match, can I counter every one of your screen shots with one of my own.



B.) You cannot queue enough to take an adequate sample size before 6.0 all by yourself no matter how hard you're playing (you just won't be able to get the minimum tens of thousands of screenshots to be able to have enough data).



C.) It doesn't matter what we on the forums think. SQEX has their own way of collecting data and they draw their conclusions from that. But no matter how many or how conclusive your screen shots seem SQEX has said they don't accept screen shots for evidence because they can be so easily altered and because isolated images don't have enough context.
So if you're taking screenshots to change our minds, we don't matter because they have better data.
If you're trying to take screenshots to show the devs a problem, they both have better data and don't trust screenshots.



D.) Photos showing healers not queueing enough doesn't tell us WHY they aren't queueing.

-- Is it because people are busy levelling jobs other than what they regularly play to get ready for the next expac?

-- perhaps many people are taking a break from FF14 entirely before 6.0, and a disproportionate number of them in your data center are healers.

-- DPS jobs are always the most popular. Maybe the incredible swell of new players is just exacerbating this normal imbalance.

-- is it because enough people (in your data center) are dropping healer/going on strike that it's effecting queues?

-- etc

(The answer is likely a combination of all of these things and more)



E.) Even if we knew that people were dropping healer, queue times can't tell us WHY. The forums can make it sound black and white, but there can be any number of reasons.

-- I, for one, really slowed down on it after coming to terms with how limited their glamour options are since the overwhelming majority of body pieces are just different robes.

-- My buddy dropped healer, because they tried ranged DPS and fell in love with not having a cast bar.

-- The original healer main in my FC isn't healing for awhile because they like playing through each new expac using the poster job, so right now they're practicing with PLD.

-- etc



Tl ; Dr
It's not that we (or I at least) don't believe you.
It's that i don't believe queue screenshots can't contribute anything to the discussion.
You can't get an enough for an adequate sample size, and screenshots of queue timers just don't tell us enough.

I honestly think collecting screenshots is just a waste of your time.

[Grimoire-M]

jesus 12 - 20 mins o.O is it actually so bad there with people or whats the reason we have these massive que time diffrences ?. Did actually people from america stop playing healer. Must resist bad healthcare joke........ But yeah thats pretty scary , are the healer you have atleast not pure cure afk bots ? or are they like my healers i had (pure afk cure 2 spamming).

I struggle to find healing enjoyable so sometimes I'll bite the queue time as a DPS just so I get to play a job with an actual rotation in braindead content. It also lets me do dailies as I wait the extra hour it takes to get into them. I wouldn't call this reflective of 'normal' content though. At the moment everyone's doing Bozja and high end content for funsies, or are rushing their way to Endwalker.

The only exception regarding healers, lately, is when I know my sister's about to enter content she's not prepared for. I'll go on healer in those spots so I can guarantee her haphazard group a clear. The tank literally can't hit tab to even select an add to start establishing aggro on kind of haphazard. It's certainly not braindead when you can count on half the people you're with screwing up even as you're doing callouts and fixing mistakes no one should reasonably be expected to fix by Shadowbringers. It's fun, in the same way 'The Room' is a fun movie to watch.

I don't consider that a good state for healers to be in either. Here's a quote from a better thread that posted a "What kind of player are you?" quiz tailored to all the people posting retorts here. It sums up my feelings on the current state fairly well:

3) Do you find healing too boring, too hectic, or just right?

I find healing depends way too much on other players screwing up and how much they're allowed to screw up before the fight forces you to wipe, instead of on the fight itself pressuring your resources at a base level and using those mistakes to add stress over time. In casual content I can solo-heal garbage situations but I wouldn't call it hectic as much as I'd call it a sobering experience for the sprouts involved. Extremes and Savage can be hectic, but to some extent that's limited to progression. You can see the effect that skill gap has in Alliance raids as much as levelling content. People learn at different rates and as long as you're willing to learn or share what you know you can clear every bit of content in this game, eventually.

I think the problem is SE's approach to fight design in and of itself. Ever since Gordias they've really hunkered down and settled into one niche that they are unwilling to break out of in harder content. The majority of what everyone is actually doing in each fight learning how to move their respective avatars according to the correct dance. I can't recall a time when they actually had you micromanage a mob or an encounter specific resource for more than 15 seconds since A2S. And, sure, that's okay as a DPS, they have enough to pay attention to already, but I find myself wishing there'd be more of that irrespective of the role I'm playing. On a healer in particular that's especially painful given the lack of a rotation to engage with when the party -is- competent, and SE's unwillingness to allow for recovery in harder content. If, as a designer, you have to resort to binary outcomes like Doom stacks and instant-kill AoEs to make a phase matter, you are kind of admitting the mechanics you're presenting within that phase aren't interesting in of themselves anymore.


4) Based off question 3, which content are you referring to.

All of it. Engagement and Difficulty are two seperate vectors that make up gameplay, and my concerns are primarily with the former. I don't mind content being hard. It's how that difficulty is presented that matters. We're variety starved at the moment. Dancing and DPS checks aren't the only option. That will always be a part of fights to some degree, but the better part of the MMORPG genre doesn't lean on it as heavily as XIV has. And giving players more ways to actively control an encounter also allows for more a granular difficulty spectrum to be implemented within an encounter. It also requires that you design more dynamic class kits on the player side of things, because you can expect that a greater amount of flexibility will be needed to deal with fights properly. Not everything has to be about the 1m-2m raid buff window, after all.

[Mortex]

I struggle to find healing enjoyable so sometimes I'll bite the queue time as a DPS just so I get to play a job with an actual rotation in braindead content. It also lets me do dailies as I wait the extra hour it takes to get into them. I wouldn't call this reflective of 'normal' content though. At the moment everyone's doing Bozja and high end content for funsies, or are rushing their way to Endwalker.

The only exception regarding healers, lately, is when I know my sister's about to enter content she's not prepared for. I'll go on healer in those spots so I can guarantee her haphazard group a clear. The tank literally can't hit tab to even select an add to start establishing aggro on kind of haphazard. It's certainly not braindead when you can count on half the people you're with screwing up even as you're doing callouts and fixing mistakes no one should reasonably be expected to fix by Shadowbringers.

I also help 2 friends that started recently a lot with any job they need. Also i never do flame people in chat but i admit i make fun about these peps in voice or real life to vent some frustration and funny enough its either when the healer is playing worse then a robot or when im healer and out dps 3 people in a dungeon. Like i had a matoya run and after being in there for like 100 times i never ever knew the 1 boss mudman had a actually simple stack marker stack mechanic it did actually blow my mind and also the fact that i whas top dps as astro.......... Ofc well all love the smack talk healer and even i do that as healer main (not in endwalker anymore going meele in my static now) but bad fruits are in all job catagorys. Like Dark knights being full mana for like 50 seconds or paladins that think hollowed should be keept like a rare collectors item. And i really dont wanna start talking about dps doing some freestyle rotations (the fire 1 blm after lvl 70 or ice mage)

[Mortex]

The problem in my eyes for healer is that they try to balance around the healer category in general but they want for example whm to be the new player friendly healer and the other healer for more advanced player but the problem with that is that they hamstring themselves with this. WHM can never get any intresting mechanics or tools as long as its treated as the baby healer. They also want that all jobs can kill all fights even the week ones, they cant go overboard with buffs and nerfs. A job should start easy to learn and get into and should continuously get more difficult when you get closer to max lvl. Also the way they try to satisfy people that want to play DMG dealing healers and pure healers is not going to work on a long run, that has more then 1 problem 1. FF 14 isnt WoW were we have often random and continous aoes damage hitting the group. Also FF 14 has very strong mana regen abilities and ogcd heals. 2 even after making it way more easy for healer player to actually do dmg by simple pressing 2 buttons when group is around 50 % of max hp some people still wont do that, i dont have any problems with it in lower content but this is also were the fight between "casual" and "elitist" gets pretty heated, because you cant tell them that easy in final fantasy 14 because something like this can be counted as "harrasment" and can get you reports and stress with a GM or even a ban so people dont bother and just eat it up and because they get through all content with that attitude they think its gonna be the same for savage were all 8 player should try not too be a deadweight if possible and respect the time people have by not sandbagging. of course there is also diffrent kinds of casual and elitist, osme casuals understand that the way they play isnt the FF14 intented way so and just wanna do some story and more relaxed stuff. If they would change the fight desinge we have now and make heals way more needed and add either for all jobs utility (and stop treating whm like the little kid and give him some mechanics) or more downtime options i dont think healer would be fine. The talk about DPS buttons not being there for healer so they dont feel pressured to press them in a game were in low content people dont even mind what a healer is doing or if, they cant tell them because they gonna eat a report pretty quick anyway, sounds in my ears like hogwash.

[MiaShino]

jesus 12 - 20 mins o.O is it actually so bad there with people or whats the reason we have these massive que time diffrences ?. Did actually people from america stop playing healer. Must resist bad healthcare joke........ But yeah thats pretty scary , are the healer you have atleast not pure cure afk bots ? or are they like my healers i had (pure afk cure 2 spamming).

Uncertain what is causing it! My group of extended family play during all hours so this is the sample size I have. I can speculate though from our experience if I wished by asking them. I know why I stopped playing healer as much despite it being the main job.

Tl ; Dr
It's not that we (or I at least) don't believe you.
It's that i don't believe queue screenshots can't contribute anything to the discussion.
You can't get an enough for an adequate sample size, and screenshots of queue timers just don't tell us enough.

I honestly think collecting screenshots is just a waste of your time.

I only did this to demonstrate that Square should poses same metrics I can gather. I firmly do not believe the conclusions they have reached about healers are supported by the data they have collected.

There are roughly twenty of us currently playing so I cannot collect tens of thousands but can collect many more then the average person can, for what little it appears to be worth.

I am also not attempting to be hostile or mean here I just do not subscribe to the "Square knows what it is doing and the dev team knows best" mentality. This development team has demonstrated time and time again that it has no clue about certain subjects and must hire additional help.

I have friends over here falling asleep (I mean quite literally) while playing healer. One recently killed their tank because they just umm, well zoned out. Many only played healer and tank out of necessity for shorter queue times while progressing through the msq.

I have seen coding decisions that simply boggle the mind.

There is one thread somewhere in general discussion I believe where Yoshi P himself does not understand why high ping can effect animation lock and weaving. In a multiplayer game.

There appears to be lack of healers queuing for duties for one reason or another which I will be unable to prove to this forum, I suppose.

There are threads upon threads in this section almost none positive about current healer design.

So nope! I can only speculate about why others stop playing outside of the friends and family I know but can list reasons why they might not play as much.

1.) Boredom. This appears to be the most common complaint amongst family.
2.) Lack of interesting utility. No crowd control, no interrupts, limited stun, etc.
3.) Enjoyment out of optimizing their rotation for maximum contribution to the team. They feel that healers have few methods of accomplishing this so move to deeps.

Example for 3; "I guess I use bene first because it has the longest cooldown and heals for the most then work down through my ogcd heals."

4.) Syncing down to lower levels appears to and I will quote "cause brain rot".
5.) Lower level healing feels unsatisfying because I am missing most of my good healing abilities.
6.) It can be stressful when I am blamed for things not my fault.
7.) Why do I wait so long for my aoe? This stinks.

The big big one I believe at the least for those on my end is that we feel our team contribution is almost meaningless unless something is going very wrong.

Now in Endwalker Tanks are obtaining reasonably high potency heals which may mean we get to do even less. Where are those clutch moments where you feel as healer your presence was required? Where you saved the party?

"Uh oh, everyone is low what do?"
*presses dot button* > *weaves plenary and assize* > *presses rapture* > "Maybe I need asylum? No never mind that did it, passive health regen should take care of the rest." > *glare, glare, glare, glare, zzzzzz* Perhaps I use the weave window to heal the tank, maybe but probably not. I have bene and they will survive several more auto attacks.

Many thanks for the replies though! They were well worded and most fun to engage with.

[ItMe]

I only did this to demonstrate that Square should poses same metrics I can gather. I firmly do not believe the conclusions they have reached about healers are supported by the data they have collected.

If you mentioned at any point that sharing the screenshots with us was a way to compel SQEX to share their metrics and data, I (and many others) must have missed it.

If this was your point all along then WOW that long post I just made is a whole lot of going off topic lol.

I am also not attempting to be hostile or mean here I just do not subscribe to the "Square knows what it is doing and the dev team knows best" mentality. This development team has demonstrated time and time again that it has no clue about certain subjects and must hire additional help.

Yeah, they're def not perfect.
It's frustrating because without access to their data I feel it's hard for us to do more than wheel spinning on it.
They have shared some job statistics through their censuses, and Lucky Bancho are great for additional raw data. But even that stuff doesn't distinguish between who just has any specific job leveled and who is actively or frequently using that job.

At the very least, for job satisfaction we know one of the metrics they check is how often a job is brought into EX content and harder. While FFlogs paints a very incomplete picture, we may use that to get some hints.
(The other metric I know they use for job satisfaction is how many people build that jobs relic for that expac. And I don't think we have a way to track that).

For queue times, I have no idea if or how they collect / process that data.
They'd def have to look at times for an indication, because looking at how many people queue with each role will just even out to regular party sizes unless there are loads of people withdrawing from queues and doing so in a way that produces a patterj.

As far as I can gather, this is often a rather nebulous thing for them to nail down too.

I don't expect it, but I wonder if they wouldn't be open to sharing more numbers / data with us. Maybe someone should ask him about that at the next Q&A.

Many thanks for the replies though! They were well worded and most fun to engage with.

Yeah~
Your posts as well~

[MiaShino]

If you mentioned at any point that sharing the screenshots with us was a way to compel SQEX to share their metrics and data, I (and many others) must have missed it.

If this was your point all along then WOW that long post I just made is a whole lot of going off topic lol.

Nope nope you did not! I am not so good with English and the conveying of things in it. I can also sound saucy or feisty because I say things in a very direct way.

Not off topic though! I like reading big meaty posts then responding, writing is fun. Many thanks though!

I too would like them to share information. I feel they know there is dissatisfaction with healers yet out of traditionalism refuse to admit that they have failed in this regard. If such data were to be shared it might corroborate my own personal experiences with friends and family.

Seeing them buff gcd heals is one such of many of the examples! It shows semblance of being out of touch. We do not gcd heal where able at level 80, I am unsure how buffed cure 1 is going to be useful at 90 but that was what they chose. Temperance feels like slap too, while 10% mitigation is nice why does it buff "healing magic" instead of "healing actions". No one should be casting cure 2 at level 80 unless progging and things have gone great googlie mooglie.