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

[grinkdaboy]

they have to design around the lowest common denominator

[Liam_Harper]

they have to design around the lowest common denominator

Why?

In the same way it would be a terrible idea to design an entire role exclusively for hardcore players, it's also a terrible idea to design a role that's only for the lowest common denominator. The dps role isn't like this, anyone can pick up a dps, mash buttons and clear lots of content. But there's also plenty of depth to master and engagement for those who want it. Dps are for everyone to enjoy. Healers are only for a small group at the bottom of the barrel. Why does it need to be that way?

[IDontPetLalas]

Few things. First. The devs aren't "lazy" as more complex rotations for every job have existed in the past. It's not laziness, it's a design choice. Devs of any game in any genre are almost never smarter than their player base(unless their player base is smaller than the dev team). You don't have to agree with their design choices at all, that's what the forum feedback is for. However, instead of trying to attack the character of the dev team, try listing out the reasons why what you or anybody else wants is better than what currently exists. It's completely understandable that more veteran players are unsatisfied with the state of many jobs or roles being too simple, however most people are providing feedback that would only be a gain for a minority, while hurting the majority, and why would they ever listen to something like that? The OP states they just want "more buttons". What type of buttons? How many? What would you scrap to avoid button bloat? How do you make the extra buttons a non-detriment to casuals? When you add more buttons, slice the damage evenly for the sake of balance, how do you balance it so that the casual player isn't performing half of what they are now? Is this actually beneficial for the majority? Or is this something that only helps a handful of veteran players while preventing more casuals to heal?

As you say, first things first

1- justifying a decision as a "design choice" when there is consistent feedback that it may not be well-received may not necessarily be 'lazy', we can agree that it may not be the best term, however it reflects poorly on how the development team reflects upon their design once it is out in the hands of the community and actually tested by millions of players.

2- There are countless posts, including posst from that site which cannot be named, with cold hard facts pointing out why the current state is not tenable, include posts that show why it is possible to introduce changes that veteran players could make use of without frightening off newer players. In any case, if someone just wants to hit (for example) Medica 2 now, if we introduce a bright shiny new DPS button or 2, they would still hit Medica 2.

3- Why are you afraid that a change will suddenly make little Timmy afraid to heal? first of all, damage is scripted in this game. Secondly, almost every class has some type of self-buffs or mitigation. third, tanks were given an incredible amount of self-sustain, and if that isn't enough, healers have an incredible amount of healing skills now. Healers are the only jobs that can easily hit one skill for 80% of a run. So, it is completely understandable that many healers are unsatisfied with the current state of there jobs in terms of engagement and improving this would be a gain for the majority.

[ASkellington]

snip

It may not be "lazy" (we can argue that) but it sure as all seven hells is short sighted. Not a single dev plays tank or healer. That's fine if it isn't their preference, but they should have either 2 people who exclusively plays one of those two roles each, or they should play both regardless at a high level to get an understanding for where we are coming from.

Fact is they aren't designing tanks and healers FOR tanks and healers. Aside from ESO this is the only other game I'd ever turn away a healer fan from because of how quickly they'd grow to hate it as I have and ESO AT LEAST allows their healers to customize how much damage they do with their abysmal healing. FFXIV doesn't.

New healers are not going to be doing damage. Off healers are not going to be doing damage. They're new or play occasionally and not someone who spends hours trying to get better at their job.

Savage and EXes should not be designed for Off/new healers. They should be designed for healers who put the work into their jobs.

"But healer should be accessible." To what degree are we going to allow this for one, and for another making the role legitimately fool proof is not making it accessible. You want to make a role accessible? How about being more clear on potencies? How much we're healing. How about showing how long our regens are on the PARTY LIST (that still isn't there btw!) How about reducing button bloat where it needs to be? (Draw/Play MA/Crown Play 1 button each)

We are approaching lv100 (more than likely) in the next expansion. When is it finally time to say "you should know how to play your job by now"? Its pretty much expected for Dps, tanks, and healers to know how to preform their job in Extreme and above. I don't know why Ex and Savage AT LEAST don't have higher bars.

[AnotherPerson]

Few things. First. The devs aren't "lazy" as more complex rotations for every job have existed in the past. It's not laziness, it's a design choice. You don't have to agree with it, but you just come off as rude when you say it's due to "laziness". Second, it's a no brainer that more dps options would be harder for casuals. Unless you have been not paying attention at all to any game ever, most games that retain any success rate cater to their majority, with their majority being casuals. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who remembers that games are a business, and the majority brings in the money. Third, they have stated in the past that all the devs can do is have an idea of how a job should play in mind, but it's up to the players to figure out what it optimal. Devs of any game in any genre are almost never smarter than their player base(unless their player base is smaller than the dev team). This would make any sort of job tutorial moot if the community discovered a better way to play a job. Not to mention it really isn't hard to just read your tooltips and press your buttons, there is even the Hall of the Novice for the basics.

In the end it's a design choice. It all is. None of has anything to do with the work ethics of the dev team, and Yoshi-P isn't out to crap on healers. They have their reasoning with supporting numbers from a business and player retention standpoint. You don't have to agree with their design choices at all, that's what the forum feedback is for. However, instead of trying to attack the character of the dev team, try listing out the reasons why what you or anybody else wants is better than what currently exists. It's completely understandable that more veteran players are unsatisfied with the state of many jobs or roles being too simple, however most people are providing feedback that would only be a gain for a minority, while hurting the majority, and why would they ever listen to something like that? The OP states they just want "more buttons". What type of buttons? How many? What would you scrap to avoid button bloat? How do you make the extra buttons a non-detriment to casuals? When you add more buttons, slice the damage evenly for the sake of balance, how do you balance it so that the casual player isn't performing half of what they are now? Is this actually beneficial for the majority? Or is this something that only helps a handful of veteran players while preventing more casuals to heal?

1. The casual healers you are referring to are those who can't heal well, and they mainly don't touch DPS anyway before they're still learning to heal well. It doesn't matter if it's 1 DPS button or 5 DPS buttons in that case. Giving more DPS options doesn't change the fact that they don't touch the DPS buttons because they're not working towards DPSing yet. The only thing it changes is giving them the mindset that they're doing something completely wrong, which should serve as an indicator for upwards improvement and player skill progression.

2. Character progression has always been a trend for anyone who wants to play an MMO. By and large, because the game has scripted damage, then it's no longer a skill of character progression in fights, but player progression as well. Mechanics are designed so healers cannot save you after a certain number of hits due to the vulnerability stack debuff. Mechanics are designed so players will instantly die if they fail something. Those are no longer tied to Character progression, but player skill progression. So yes, having more player skill progression is also a factor why the a role in the game is successful - which does not apply to healers at the moment outside of optimizing their DPS (which all jobs already do, except it isn't 1 button DPS).

3. DPS from healers are touted to be completely optional. It doesn't matter if healers get more DPS options then, because healer DPS should not affect the difference in the fight if everyone else can already contribute enough. Casual players thus are not hurt by SE's decisions. Unless... you're telling me healer DPS has to be mandatory because DPS and tanks play so terribly that they cannot function without healer DPS? So healers just have to be DPSing? What happened to the argument of healers being casuals?

4. Assuming the majority you're speaking of is 'healers who panic all the time from level 1 to level 90 and has not learned anything and can't use any other DPS skill beyond one button', I'm stare at you and ask "Are you seriously telling me you think 1 button DPS from Satasha dungeon gameplay for level 90 is acceptable for tanks and DPS as well?" Why don't you just give tanks more mitigation and take away their DPS gauge then, and replace it with a mitigation gauge? Why not just remove all DPS mitigation and healing skills for more DPS? The answer should be obvious - a cohesive toolkit feels better even if they are more focused to one role. Healers having nothing else but healing when all other roles can start healing themselves and take away the healer gameplay without giving anything in return is clearly going to cause dissatisfaction in the long run. Healing has a hard cap the better you play. DPS does not because the fight only goes as long as until the enemies are dead.

[-BlueGreen-]

I feel like the problem is one largely created by the emphasis on "everyone needs to DPS" which automatically makes GCD healing "evil" (since, outside of the heal attached to the sage DPS GCDs, any heal attached to a GCD doesn't contribute to DPS). I'm not so sure if SE's just continued to go in this direction on their own or if they're following the community's opinion on this, but on this point (do more DPS) both sides seem to be in perfect agreement.

So, if a healer is to do more DPS, yet still heal, how do they do that? Under the current design philosophy, that's simply "create more oGCD healing buttons!" Players healing as much as possible through oGCDs only get to make more GCDs available for DPS. Using oGCDs for healing in this way, however, creates the problem that's been growing since 4.0: The number of oGCDs and such for healing has continued to grow. To keep the number of total skills from growing out of control, they cut out DPS skills, especially GCDs.

On top of this, healers are now the only role that actually still has to really worry about MP management. Overuse of GCD healing (or just GCDs period in WHM's case as I understand it) can cause MP to go to zero leading to a player being forced to skip GCDs. If any of those dropped GCDs are heals, that's probably going to cause a wipe. Overly cautious (or novice) players might be led to thing that DPS skills are bad because they cost MP, which they might wish to reserve for the possibility of needing "Cure II" or "Medica" spam.

If they changed the general design philosophy, they could probably make more people happy with it:

• Condense the healing toolkit, make all heals oGCDs, but attach MP costs to most of them (e.g. Cure II might be a 2k MP cost 2 second ability, so you could fire several off in generally quick succession, but not spam endlessly). Throw in some spice and give raise a 30 second cooldown or something, but have it have built-in insta-cast (it would be an oGCD going this route) so swiftcast can be used to force a GCD to be instant allowing it to be used only for mobility during DPS casts.
• Give all healers a role ability which allow locking heals to the player with the "healing target" buff. Basically think Kardia, just without any other special effect. This way you can press heal buttons while targeting a boss to heal the locked player without having the headache of constantly swapping targets a couple of times each GCD or dealing with the pain of trying to put oGCDs on macros that are unreliable and slow.
• Remove MP costs for DPS skills (no excuses now, always do DPS on GCDs as they're free and the only GCDs you have deal damage!)
• Expand the DPS GCDs to be more interesting. They don't have to be "old school monk" level of complicated. I'd look at rotations like DNC or RDM, something interesting enough to fill the void while not being too busy that you have trouble keeping an eye on what you need to do heal-wise.

[MellowMink]

How many replies does this thread need to get for the director to see it and write some brief follow-up blog post, or at least quickly apologize for being dismissive or misinterpreting the original post? The increased rivalry between healers and the design team is becoming really troubling.

[MellowMink]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again since I really think that this is a problem that shouldn’t be ignored…

The idea that it’s okay to dismiss valid and persistent healer complaints about lacking DPS variety or healing complexity while playing as a healer for 99.9% of instances and the entirety of solo content by simply pointing to four extremely specific instances (that you can only unlock after playing through multiple expansions of solo and multiplayer content, require many non-ultimate fights to first be done, and can sometimes be done without any healers at all) as if that’s the only thing that healers ever want to play is actually incredibly disingenuous and rude.

It really feels like the director is sometimes looking for an easy out in these questions, and it’s quite disheartening to see “You think you want it, but you don’t” types of responses from Final Fantasy XIV designers when I thought they wanted to avoid those problems that many players had with toxic World of Warcraft community-versus-designer conflicts. I hope there’s some kind of a way to pin this thread for developers to see, because the lack of communication or the presence of nonspecific dismissal is something that I really don’t want to be a thing going forward.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again since I really think that this is a problem that shouldn’t be ignored…

The idea that it’s okay to dismiss valid and persistent healer complaints about lacking DPS variety or healing complexity while playing as a healer for 99.9% of instances and the entirety of solo content by simply pointing to four extremely specific instances (that you can only unlock after playing through multiple expansions of solo and multiplayer content, require many non-ultimate fights to first be done, and can sometimes be done without any healers at all) as if that’s the only thing that healers ever want to play is actually incredibly disingenuous and rude.

It really feels like the director is sometimes looking for an easy out in these questions, and it’s quite disheartening to see “You think you want it, but you don’t” types of responses from Final Fantasy XIV designers when I thought they wanted to avoid those problems that many players had with toxic World of Warcraft community-versus-designer conflicts. I hope there’s some kind of a way to pin this thread for developers to see, because the lack of communication or the presence of nonspecific dismissal is something that I really don’t want to be a thing going forward.

The problem is when we have simps/ SE white knights trying to defend them and drown out the crowd trying to get attention toward healers. This community can’t handle any criticism whatsoever and it’s just hurting the game more and more in the long run.

[grinkdaboy]

Why?

In the same way it would be a terrible idea to design an entire role exclusively for hardcore players, it's also a terrible idea to design a role that's only for the lowest common denominator. The dps role isn't like this, anyone can pick up a dps, mash buttons and clear lots of content. But there's also plenty of depth to master and engagement for those who want it. Dps are for everyone to enjoy. Healers are only for a small group at the bottom of the barrel. Why does it need to be that way?

because the design space for healers in this game is very narrow. they have 5 melee dps that are all good and manage to feel distinct from eachother. 4 tanks and they manage this as well, and even casters feel diverse and fun. phys ranged (the lowest common denominator dps job) is just a slider of "most to least utility" going brd -> dnc -> mch. as they've done in the past they could take a look at wow and how all of the healers there all manage to feel unique and different from eachother (restoration shaman, holy paladin, mistweaver monk, holy and discipline priest, restoration druid) they all manage to have their own unique playstyles compared to xiv healers which is mash your dps button + keep up dot