What has gotten into the community these days?

[Nizzi]

To me, that indicates a well-designed game. I felt rewarded for my efforts, both in terms of progression as well as socially. WoW has the opposite design. It penalizes you for going into fights without any prior experience, and it also penalizes you for going into fights with others who have no prior experience. There is no motivation to get better because all you have to look forward to is more penalization. In my opinion, FFXIV's direction is the exact opposite of where WoW is. I find it ironic that so many players claim that FFXIV is going the way of WoW by simplifying their game when it's the exact opposite. They're avoiding WoW's pitfalls when they cut down on button bloat.

I find it interesting you have White Mage as your main job on here and you also say that XIV "indicates a well designed game that rewards you for efforts" when the healer role is exactly the opposite. You're penalized for being good at it and you're penalized for playing with others who are good. Your "reward for your effort" on healer is being able to hit Glare/Broil/etc more. That's not fun, that's not well-designed, that's actually the exact opposite - there's no motivation to get better because all you have to look forward to is more monotonous one button spam. Are you only referring DPS in the frame of XIV being a "well-designed game" or are you saying this about all of the roles?

[Ronduwil]

I find it interesting you have White Mage as your main job on here and you also say that XIV "indicates a well designed game that rewards you for efforts" when the healer role is exactly the opposite.

Maybe we see penalization differently, and maybe we run different types of content. As I've said in other threads, if you want an engaging experience as a healer, you need to run with a bunch of random players who constantly stand in stuff and collect vuln stacks. If solo queuing the roulette is your primary activity, like mine is, then healing is rewarding. If you know the details of the fight, you can time your casts to go off right when the damage hits, and then players won't know how hard they've been hit. To me, that's a great feeling. If you don't know the details, you're constantly scrambling to keep up with the heals. Players claim that the job is boring, but I don't see it that way. If you're always running with the best of the best in a static, then of course healing is going to be boring. That's not indicative of a poorly designed game. To me, it's indicative of a personal choice to heal in easy mode.

As for spamming Glare, don't forget that you also have to maintain your Aero debuff while also getting rid of excess lillies to enable your Afflatus Misery casts. If spamming a skill and tracking two different timers, all while keeping your party alive isn't doing it for you, I honestly can't understand what it'll take to make you happy.

[Nizzi]

Maybe we see penalization differently, and maybe we run different types of content. As I've said in other threads, if you want an engaging experience as a healer, you need to run with a bunch of random players who constantly stand in stuff and collect vuln stacks.

This is bad design. You shouldn't need to rely on random players not being good or messing up for something to be engaging. DPS and Tanks do not require the party to enable them to have fun. You can play a DPS and Tank through the new Duty Support in ARR, Trusts in ShB and EW and have fun as a completely solo experience, and then you can have fun in multiplayer content with other players. What's the justification for healers being locked out of experiencing the game solo if the "fun of healing" is only hoping to get unreliable players?

If solo queuing the roulette is your primary activity, like mine is, then healing is rewarding. If you know the details of the fight, you can time your casts to go off right when the damage hits, and then players won't know how hard they've been hit. To me, that's a great feeling. If you don't know the details, you're constantly scrambling to keep up with the heals.

Why is healing the only role that requires these increasingly complex hoops to jump through for how to have fun on it? If you're having to come up with goals for yourself like "timing my heals so the players can see their health bars go down", that is entirely indicative of a poorly designed role. There's no difference between healing someone as soon as a boss finishes their cast and 15 seconds after. If you're having to scramble to keep up with healing in casual content, this is entirely what I'm talking about. No offense, but that's indicative of a skill issue from the healer and part of my point. As you get better at the healing role, you heal less and your reward is more Glare/Broil/etc spam. That is entirely indicative of a poorly designed game.

If you're always running with the best of the best in a static, then of course healing is going to be boring. That's not indicative of a poorly designed game. To me, it's indicative of a personal choice to heal in easy mode.

I don't do Savage anymore because spamming Glare/Broil/etc is boring, even in Savage. I also only have time for casual content. I don't understand where this idea comes from that if you're pointing out how awful this role is, you're "healing in easy mode" and "running with the best of the best in a static" when I'm not. I only do casual content. I play with the aforementioned chickens running around with their heads cutoff. It is a punishment to be good at healing, and that is awful design.

[IdowhatIwant]

In my opinion, FFXIV's direction is the exact opposite of where WoW is. I find it ironic that so many players claim that FFXIV is going the way of WoW by simplifying their game when it's the exact opposite. They're avoiding WoW's pitfalls when they cut down on button bloat.

WoW did reduce button bloat which is why in MoP many clases felt similar which is what we are dealing with in FF now. The problem isn't about reducing button bloat in FFXIV, it's about how they solve it. There are plenty of skills that could be combos off another as x skill is required to perform y skill. Some skills that shouldn't be that way such as minuet turning into pitch perfect. It's more of a matter that I don't believe anyone actually plays many of these classes they design as they tend to make counter intuitive decisions at times. FFXIV's problem, is exactly the same as WoW's at this point, and it lies with a dev team that does not want to listen to the player base and develop the game around 1 type of player. In WoW's case it was the mythic raiders, in FF's case it seems to be the RPers. Which it actually funny cause most people claim that the devs only listen to the JP community, but the JP community is way more hardcore in raiding. NA's highest completion rate server for savage matches JP's lowest completion rate in savage. While NA has about 2 data centers that are just RP data centers. So it is very clear the devs are listening, but to a certain player base group.

As for spamming Glare, don't forget that you also have to maintain your Aero debuff while also getting rid of excess lillies to enable your Afflatus Misery casts. If spamming a skill and tracking two different timers, all while keeping your party alive isn't doing it for you, I honestly can't understand what it'll take to make you happy.

Hasn't been doing it for WHM since lillies were introduced.

[TaleraRistain]

Some skills that shouldn't be that way such as minuet turning into pitch perfect.

I wasn't convinced on this one before they did it either but I've really been loving it. I don't keep my songs in the same place as my more frequently used buttons and it's meant I can turn on WM a lot more smoothly than I did before without losing the benefit of where I have Pitch Perfect. I don't think I'd mind too much if they found a way to do it with the other two songs, so long as it didn't affect AoEs like Rain of Death.

[TaleraRistain]

Maybe we see penalization differently, and maybe we run different types of content. As I've said in other threads, if you want an engaging experience as a healer, you need to run with a bunch of random players who constantly stand in stuff and collect vuln stacks. If solo queuing the roulette is your primary activity, like mine is, then healing is rewarding. If you know the details of the fight, you can time your casts to go off right when the damage hits, and then players won't know how hard they've been hit. To me, that's a great feeling. If you don't know the details, you're constantly scrambling to keep up with the heals. Players claim that the job is boring, but I don't see it that way. If you're always running with the best of the best in a static, then of course healing is going to be boring. That's not indicative of a poorly designed game. To me, it's indicative of a personal choice to heal in easy mode.

As for spamming Glare, don't forget that you also have to maintain your Aero debuff while also getting rid of excess lillies to enable your Afflatus Misery casts. If spamming a skill and tracking two different timers, all while keeping your party alive isn't doing it for you, I honestly can't understand what it'll take to make you happy.

To add to this, we can play our role two different ways depending on the group. If we have a solid group that doesn't need a lot of healing, we go to dps mode and push out the big booms. If we have a group that needs more healing, we get to be the heroes keeping the party going. I do wish we had a bit more going on with those super solid groups but my wants tend toward repurposing us as a Support role and letting us manage timers for buffs, debuffs, and damage shields in addition to restoring party health or preventing damage. Regardless, I do also find White Mage rewarding to play still and can find something I enjoy about it no matter the group. I wouldn't have mained it since 2014 if I didn't.