Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[HisShadowX]

They've been saying that for years now, at least 2 expansions, and it's has yet to happen. If anything, the problem has gotten worse over the years and healers are being sidelined more.

I think they know the moment the make an entire expansion hard like World of Warcraft's CATA people will start fleeing. Also making the joke race real and making the next expansion a disney movie to make fun of the customers who wanted things easy helped more people deciding to drop their subs.

Ulimate is for like you said the 1% of players and no one cares about that content. Trying to get a random group for this content as a Tank or Healer is impossible. You have to be in a guild or have friends into BDSM and hardcore content who like that sort of thing.

[ASkellington]

I think they know the moment the make an entire expansion hard like World of Warcraft's CATA people will start fleeing. Also making the joke race real and making the next expansion a disney movie to make fun of the customers who wanted things easy helped more people deciding to drop their subs.

Ulimate is for like you said the 1% of players and no one cares about that content. Trying to get a random group for this content as a Tank or Healer is impossible. You have to be in a guild or have friends into BDSM and hardcore content who like that sort of thing.

I mean, SE acts like we're asking for Savage content in dungeons.

I've said that all expert dungeons in Shb, for instance, should be the same level of difficulty as Mt. Gulg and Amaurot. Both leveling MSQ required dungeons and ones that were CERTAINLY more challenging than Heroes' Gauntlet and the laughable Pagalthan.

For EW they've gotten WORSE in their experts. I studied the bosses in the Lunar dungeon and I need to record it to verify but the time between unavoidable AOE damage and tank busters on the last two bosses can CERTAINLY be reduced its laughable.

We aren't asking for much as far as increased healing goes.

[SeverianLyonesse]

increased healing

The problem with "increased healing" requests is that there is a wide disparity in how non-healers play. Between not gearing up properly, not popping mitigation, and not respecting mechanics, it is too easy for the average casual player to keel over if they aren't bothering to learn how to play. And FF XIV is designed around the accessible notion that players really don't need to learn how to play the game.

While I would like to think that we could balance some X amount of more damage to heal, the reality is that it is *extremely* probable that any more damage would result in on average more wipes, which in turn would result in more conflicts between players, more complaints lodged at the game for slowing grinding down, and more players quitting the game for it being too difficult/toxic. The way the game is designed now is to create robust party composition by having so many redundancies that it is difficult for players *not* to clear as long as they have either a decent tank *or* healer and ideally at least one decent DPS.

And here's the rub. I don't mind wipes (most of the time), overcoming them shows character and cameraderie. I don't play content unless I am prepared to have to work for it, and when I do have to tap out I generally recognize that it due to *my* preparedness, not my parties'. So I think the game's community *could* benefit from being less grind-oriented and more okay with slowed down content. I think the game's community *could* benefit from being encouraged to communicate more.

But I also recognize that this is a pipe dream for two reasons. The first is that the majority of people who engage in online content generally want to avoid social responsibility, so the toxicity is never going to go away no matter how easy or difficult the content is. And the second is that, even if toxicity were minimized and players adulted up and learned to communicate and respect each other better, any increase in difficulty would still result in a drop-off of subscriptions because players would either get frustrated at not being able to do the mechanics, or simply wouldn't have the sort of low-brainpower destressing activity they might be expecting from XIV.

And I recognize that is huge amount of defeatism to infer from just wanting to do more healing, but it is the reality we are facing. FFXIV's success has been soundly defined by *reducing* complexity and difficulty. The game it is now just doesn't want to overburden players with strategy, at least the sort that requires optimal use of abilities. Instead it has decided to *downplay* the importance of which buttons players are clicking in casual content, and instead *upplaying* a more visceral, visual, and direct form of gameplay that is effectively just attacking and dodging. And while I definitely have doubts as to the longevity of this paradigm, they do appear to be sticking it for the immediate future because it *sells*.

[BaconBits]

It's time to stop asking and start demanding.

Yoshi-P needs to either nut up or shut up. No more of this "please don't bully us uwu" bull crap.

[ASkellington]

snip

They can stick with it all they want but they need to face these facts:

They can technically bring out a TB more often in Dungeon Content, specifically Expert as well as AOE.

We have many oGCDs and we're going to burn through them before we even TOUCH our GCDs (...except WHM, sorry). This design is a problem, however, because we're never pushed enough to USE our GCDs when everyone plays well (strictly speaking of bosses not trash mobs) and thus we have few mana problems (which makes piety useless, again sorry WHMs) and an overbloated kit.

Even if they don't want to bring Expert Dungeons in line with leveling dungeons, the same can still be said for Raids, EX and Savage. And EX and Savage have 0 excuse for not testing 2 tanks and 2 healers.

So, if they want healing to be lax, fine. BUT we need a skill pruning then. They cannot have low healing and too much healing abilities. One or the other has to give.

[SeverianLyonesse]

They can stick with it all they want but they need to face these facts:

They can technically bring out a TB more often in Dungeon Content, specifically Expert as well as AOE.

We have many oGCDs and we're going to burn through them before we even TOUCH our GCDs (...except WHM, sorry). This design is a problem, however, because we're never pushed enough to USE our GCDs when everyone plays well (strictly speaking of bosses not trash mobs) and thus we have few mana problems (which makes piety useless, again sorry WHMs) and an overbloated kit.

Even if they don't want to bring Expert Dungeons in line with leveling dungeons, the same can still be said for Raids, EX and Savage. And EX and Savage have 0 excuse for not testing 2 tanks and 2 healers.

So, if they want healing to be lax, fine. BUT we need a skill pruning then. They cannot have low healing and too much healing abilities. One or the other has to give.

Again, this idea of "bloat" doesn't take into account why the redundancies exist: to help compensate for outright bad players.

I have absolutely needed to dip into my GCDs as a SGE to keep bad tanks alive. And granted some of that comes down to me being new to healing and greedy for those adderstings, but even still that is a situation that the ability bloat accounts for: when you have a bad healer AND a bad tank, you can still clear.

I think even in the live letter YoshiP made some intimations that he prefers to err on the side of content being clearable rather than difficult.

Again, this makes a lot more sense when you view FF as a social MMO as its first priority, and a combat MMO second. It makes its money from having an extremely low barrier of entry to most of its busywork content.

[ASkellington]

Again, this idea of "bloat" doesn't take into account why the redundancies exist: to help compensate for outright bad players.

I have absolutely needed to dip into my GCDs as a SGE to keep bad tanks alive. And granted some of that comes down to me being new to healing and greedy for those adderstings, but even still that is a situation that the ability bloat accounts for: when you have a bad healer AND a bad tank, you can still clear.

I think even in the live letter YoshiP made some intimations that he prefers to err on the side of content being clearable rather than difficult.

Again, this makes a lot more sense when you view FF as a social MMO as its first priority, and a combat MMO second. It makes its money from having an extremely low barrier of entry to most of its busywork content.

Not really? Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything. Collective Unconciousness can 100% be removed and with some moving of skills I can guarentee most healers will not feel it. CI can also be removed by either trait upgrading it to Exalt or just flat removed. Neutral Sect'd A.Bene can fill it's spot for when I need to shield a DPS or my tank.

That is where we differ on our opinions for redundancies. Where you see it as less tools, I see it as more chances to creatively use what tools I have left to salvage a situation. THAT is what healing imo is lacking for engagement and WHY I want unnecessary skills or just some skills period gone.

Does that make sense?

[SieyaM]

Not really? Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything. Collective Unconciousness can 100% be removed and with some moving of skills I can guarentee most healers will not feel it. CI can also be removed by either trait upgrading it to Exalt or just flat removed. Neutral Sect'd A.Bene can fill it's spot for when I need to shield a DPS or my tank.

That is where we differ on our opinions for redundancies. Where you see it as less tools, I see it as more chances to creatively use what tools I have left to salvage a situation. THAT is what healing imo is lacking for engagement and WHY I want unnecessary skills or just some skills period gone.

Does that make sense?

The problem I see with removing CI and just using Neutral A. Bene is that if you are in a dungeon situation and your tank is pulling, you don't want a regen effect on them since it's so easy during that time to grab aggro from them. Neutral is also on a pretty long cool down so it probably would not be available again before the next pull. Sure this would probably work for Savage or ultimate content, but that is not where these jobs are going to be used most of the time and so having tools that work better for dungeons is also important.

[MintnHoney]

Perhaps it is my experience but even with bad tanks and dps I still don't use everything.

I think they meant bad healer players.

[Deceptus]

I think they know the moment the make an entire expansion hard like World of Warcraft's CATA people will start fleeing.

Difficulty and engagement aren't the same thing.

Content can be easy and engaging. Pressing the exact same button in 90% of content from level 4 to lvl 90 isn't engaging.