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

[Mapleine]

Then you realize it really hasn't changed at all from lvl 4 to lvl 90.

One filler spell (lvl 1) and one dot (lvl 4). Both simply get upgraded via traits as you level but the button stays the same.

A ten minute old Priest in WoW, before they get any talent specs even, has more gameplay depth than any of the four in XIV at cap.

Did the XIV team just go into cold sweats when playing WoW and the game kept unlocking spells after Shadow Word: Pain and Smite? Did someone spit out a drink when Shadow Word: Death and Mind Blast popped up?

I'm not asking for WoW over here, but I find it difficult to accept the current FFXIV healing segment as an actual role. There's no healing to do and even when we try and bargain and accept the base of the game as damage we're still told to take a hike so the devs can talk about Venat's favorite ice cream.

[KizuyaKatogami]

- Job adjustments in 6.1 - most of the adjustments are buffs. However there are a few cases where actions have been overly effective and these will be downtuned. Some jobs’ play feel will change significantly. Listening to player feedback, they decided to make these changes even at the risk of players used to the jobs’ current feel getting confused.

- For example, for jobs that are difficult on controller, the number of buttons will be reduced via new settings for action substitutes. Other changes include shortening Dragoon’s Jump duration as well as the duration of other jobs’ actions have been adjusted by fractions of a second. The hope is that players will be able to more easily use “stiff” actions like Jump. These changes coming 2 weeks ahead of the Ultimate might not be very welcome to players attempting the Ultimate, Yoshida says, but as there are many players challenging the Extremes and Savage, it was decided to make jobs more comfortable to play in 6.1. Also, he has great faith in the skill of players attempting the Ultimate, he thinks they will be able to deal with the changes within 2 weeks.


Ummm….didn’t they say they weren’t adjusting healers because Ultimate was so close? Yet they’ll do this shit? How do y’all even stand these devs anymore lmao.

[shao32]

The ideal solution would be have a team of casual players and a team of serious players as Yoship refers himself and test all content with both teams gathering testing info from both to prevent content get to hard at the same time to prevent to become a boredom.
Same stuff if they are, and I'm pretty sure they are, designing tanks and healers with the current premise, they should use both feedback to improve the learning process of jobs via hall of the novice and better toolkits and not doing what the hell they are pushing on us now due how they test stuff, this is just disappoint me like to much.

[HyoMinPark]

I can agree with them having multiple teams to test content of varying degrees. Running dungeons and running Extremes/Savage/Ultimate are two totally different monsters. Gameplay is quite different, since one has trash and requires use of AOE rotations while also not having things like enrage timers or one-hit KO mechanics, and the others have all three. Dungeons barely require a pulse but the latters all require people to pay attention for the most part. And know their jobs.

My main concern just comes from the idea of them testing around extreme outliers. And that goes for both ends of the spectrum. I think testing and tuning should consider the average skill, not just the lowest. Maybe that isn’t feasible, or maybe it is. I’d like to think that it is. Because making every design consideration for the lowest common denominator just makes anyone who is of higher skill feel the difference. And feel it at an incredibly significant degree if they’re an upper-percentile player.

[Liam_Harper]

It's sad, but "healer became too good, don't want them anymore" is reflected in the game too.

The better you become at the healer role, the worse you are treated. You'll get much less comms, you'll get told off for being a filthy dps healer, the devs will utterly ignore you and in the grand scheme of things the extra rdps you add won't be noticed. It's the least rewarding role to be good at, you're actually better off being a Sylphie who lives in ignorance, spam healing health bars to full when there's no danger and doing very little damage, because you'll be praised for it and the devs will pat you on the head as their favorite child.

[ForteNightshade]

Ummm….didn’t they say they weren’t adjusting healers because Ultimate was so close? Yet they’ll do this shit? How do y’all even stand these devs anymore lmao.

I'm putting 50 bucks on Macroscosmos getting hit with a big ol' nerf bat. There's no way they intended for Life's Agonies to be deleted like it is with that one ability. I also wonder if they're concerned over DRK and BLM doing so much damage.

[HyoMinPark]

It's sad, but "healer became too good, don't want them anymore" is reflected in the game too.

The better you become at the healer role, the worse you are treated. You'll get much less comms, you'll get told off for being a filthy dps healer, the devs will utterly ignore you and in the grand scheme of things the extra rdps you add won't be noticed. It's the least rewarding role to be good at, you're actually better off being a Sylphie who lives in ignorance, spam healing health bars to full when there's no danger and doing very little damage, because you'll be praised for it and the devs will pat you on the head as their favorite child.

Add to this when you’re carrying your entire alliance in a 24-man while your cohealer spams Medica II on everyone at full HP and dies to literally every mechanic. You save the run with a healer LB3 while raising the DPS multiple times because they think the orange AOEs give damage up buffs, and then walk away with no commendations.

Meanwhile, I’ve actually done test runs of stuff where I barely DPS as a healer, play the full Medica II uptime game, and get 4 or 5 commendations. Just a huge fml.

[Rilifane]

To be honest, it's important for casual players to be able to complete content. I have no issue with there being testing considerations for players of all skill levels, because that's responsible quality assurance. What's troubling is the fact that instead of allocating multiple teams and distributions, it's all on one team again. This is similar to the complaint about job design, how it's being overseen by a surprisingly small and seemingly isolated group, with a lot of focus on DPS, and less on supports. The scope is, once again, too narrow.

Total guesswork here, but the fact that the tank player is the casual one is PROBABLY the explanation for why Bloodwhetting is so overwhelmingly insane in dungeons. If he knew what he was doing and used it to it's full effect during testing, there's no way something that broken would make it into launch. It is astonishing they don't have a hardcore/midcore/casual option for each party member for at least balancing reasons, never mind actual engagement with the content.

That said, extremes is the breaking point though? Really? Not at least 3rd-Floor savage? Isn't it a problem that you have to replace your QA healer as soon as they may start to realize just how mind-numbing everything is?

If your developer can get better at healing, chances are, the player can get better at it too. Why replace them? (see: unsubscribe for our version of "replace") Why do you have so little faith in your own playerbase? I didn't realize they were as jaded as we were.

That is my issue with this.
Having a casual team testing content would be fine - if they also had people of different skill levels than casual to mix and match because each role influences how the others can play.

"Healer too good, replace with bad healer pls"
Why would they want to get rid of someone that's decently knowledgeable about a role? Isn't QA supposed to be about spotting any potential issues based on experience and knowledge? Besides, they only touched Ex. It's not like they were triple legend first week hardcores. Even then it would've been a better choice to add someone of a different skill level than requesting a replacement.

So Yoshi represents the dps role as a serious player - and somehow, miraculously, the world didn't end because someone competent was testing content. On the contrary, the dps role as a whole is fairly well-designed, offers pretty good variety, issues generally get fixed fairly quickly and they try to keep them fun and engaging.
But clearly having a competent and more serious QA tester is a bad thing.
QA in games is about ensuring that content is well-designed and tuned on average. There will always be people that are so far below the average that they will struggle or so far above that they'll get bored. Neither should have signifcant influence on balancing because they're both outliers.

Meanwhile, I’ve actually done test runs of stuff where I barely DPS as a healer, play the full Medica II uptime game, and get 4 or 5 commendations. Just a huge fml.

I've done the same recently and I'm sad to report that I've always walked out with at least 2 comms from every dungeon where I did this. Keeping Regen and Medica II up on the tank, keeping them at full health, healing everyone to full after a raidwide and then casting Medica II for good measure, barely dpsing, spending a good amount of time not doing anything productive and ebing "on standby".
4 comms on average in 8man trials/ normal raids.
But plenty of "how about you actually HEAL???" when I out-healed my co heal by a mile while keeping dps uptime. In all content, from DF dungeons to Savage.

[BaconBits]

If you want engaging content, go play Elden Ring.

I've had a hell of a time running a faith build in multiplayer, providing clutch heals and buffs to my party while narrowly avoiding enemies, bosses, and dogged invaders. To make matters even better, I'm not even restricted to heals and buffs thanks to the plethora of offensive incantations at my disposal, all of them varied in their usage, alongside a large amount of faith scaling weaponry.

The fact that Elden Ring does more for healers than FFXIV is hilarious, and with Yoshi's recent statement, I find myself wondering why I should even continue playing this game when it continues to treat healers like glorified babysitters at best.

[HyoMinPark]

If you want engaging content, go play Elden Ring.

I've had a hell of a time running a faith build in multiplayer, providing clutch heals and buffs to my party while narrowly avoiding enemies, bosses, and dogged invaders. To make matters even better, I'm not even restricted to heals and buffs thanks to the plethora of offensive incantations at my disposal, all of them varied in their usage, alongside a large amount of faith scaling weaponry.

The fact that Elden Ring does more for healers than FFXIV is hilarious, and with Yoshi's recent statement, I find myself wondering why I should even continue playing this game when it continues to treat healers like glorified babysitters at best.

Except I want to play FFXIV. Even though I agree with your sentiment. It makes things hit much harder when I want this kind of engagement in a game I actually want to play, but am denied it. Versus one I don’t really have much interest in.