Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

[TwistedTea]

Observed the opposite; people defending Yoshi P and team like they can do no wrong.

2 issues, close to my heart as examples:

1. Housing
After nearly 10 years of the limited ward housing being a mess, there are still a lot of people saying not to criticize SE and "wait and see". That "we are not privy to what goes on behind the scenes."

A lot of us here are working adults. Imagine telling our bosses, we can not find a scalable long-term solution that will make most of our client base happy after nearly 10 years.

But I guess Yoshi P can cry a little more and white knights will rush out for defense.

2. Healers
Lol, when the game devs give so little thought to an entire role, that none of them have a healer main.

[Kozh]

Like...I'm sorry, but if you're going to doompost, at least post about something relatively new, not things we've been dealing with since BEFORE the game got a heavy surge of players.

Maybe because those are the valid problems that the devs keep ignoring for years? Hence why the same criticisms keep appearing. For example: job homogenization, healer engagement being non-existent, housing problems, hrothgar still need fantasia to change hairstyles. It took them years to finally address dark knight, because people doesn't stop complaining about it.

And let's be honest here, if people came up with new things to complain about, they'll be hit with "omg, you're complaining just for the sake of complaining"

[Semirhage]

Didn't say it can't be improved...I swear yall are so caught up in your emotions over this that you're seeing things that aren't there. Calm down and think before you type. Someone that has fun with healers now can still have fun when there's more to do like say the SB days. You're doing to much

No one is advocating to keep healers as is

I've been complaining about the hideous design applied to healers for six years. It hasn't improved. In fact, it's continued in the direction that I've opposed the entire time. You know who's advocating healers stay as-is? The developers. I'm so beyond bored of "well yeah they could be improved I suppose, but they're still fun now!" God, please no. No they're not. They're embarrassingly designed. The kits have less nuance than some phone games. I'm utterly uninterested in hunting for faint praise to hand the developers. Where's the interactivity? It's not there. You have a single boring GCD that you cast literally hundreds of times in any given instance if you've gained any skill in the role at all. It only gets worse the more skilled you get. Healers are currently designed to be easy queue pops by driveby players who aren't interested in actually playing them at all. They're designed by DPS mains for DPS mains. There are no procs. The deepest interaction in the kits is "this ability makes your healing spells heal slightly more for 10 seconds". The skill ceiling is an inch above the floor.

"Calm down" indeed. They've given a lobotomy to my favorite role with no signs of stopping for half a decade, and I'm sick and tired of people defending this horsecrap.

[Lyth]

The devil is in the details.

If you were to make a post on how healer gameplay is generally unsatisfying, a lot of people will agree with you. That's the low hanging fruit. Nobody is going to 'defend' against that statement. The real prize is higher up: you'll have a lot harder time getting a complete consensus on what the central problem is, be it:
1) a lackluster offensive toolkit
2) an overabundance of healing and defensive cooldowns between tanks and healers
3) lack of incoming damage/variability in fight design
4) reduced opportunities to carry (i.e. raidwipe potential) or
5) relatively homogenous design and gameplay (why is every healer a caster?),
let alone proposed solutions. And that's really the level of detail that you need to engage at bare minimum.

What I find truly frightening is the fact that 'The idea that we need to DPS must go' is actually still a topic on the healer forum frontpage in May 2022. We occasionally used to see similar threads about 'the dangers of DPS tanking' at the absolute latest up until mid-Heavensward, circa 2016 or so, before the tanking community unilaterally reached consensus on it and laughed any further 'debate' on the subject off the forums. If we can't even agree on what the core design goals and direction should be from the playerbase, how does anyone find a solution? So things remain the same.

I think that there's a lot of passion, but that's not enough on its own. You need someone who knows how to actually write. That passion needs to be supported by well structured and thought-out post(s) that people can rally and formulate a consensus behind. And while many people want their voices to be heard and be the one to make that golden thread that builds the necessary momentum for change, not everyone is equally able to express themselves with clarity, so you get a mire of duplicate complaint threads that don't provide anything besides raw emotion.

There are some very articulate regulars in the healer forums (at least one of whom is lurking in here). I have no personal stake in the issue myself (healer is by far my least played role in this game, largely because I dislike MMO healing's pace in general and find healing truly shines in a faster, more reactive PvP environment), but I'd really be interested to see one of them pick up their keyboard and write a unifying thread on the topic and get it cross-posted on to somewhere like /r/ffxivdiscussion or the main subreddit. Not just for the upvotes, but to build an actual conversation on the subject. If we managed to get Living Dead changed using this approach, I'm pretty sure anything is possible. I'd offer to do it for you, except it's not my place nor my battle to fight.

[RyuDragnier]

Maybe because those are the valid problems that the devs keep ignoring for years? Hence why the same criticisms keep appearing. For example: job homogenization, healer engagement being non-existent, housing problems, hrothgar still need fantasia to change hairstyles. It took them years to finally address dark knight, because people doesn't stop complaining about it.

And let's be honest here, if people came up with new things to complain about, they'll be hit with "omg, you're complaining just for the sake of complaining"

If the game has not died to these problems before now, it isn't dying to them now. There are legit problems, but a "OMG the game is dying because they won't give healers more damage options" is a completely stupid argument. That's not worth doomposting over...it's worth going, "Hey, give healers more stuff to do in downtime like how you gave AST cards to worry about!" Because again, if we've had this problem for more than 4 years, it isn't killing the game anytime soon, not when we've had a huge surge in players just last year.

[IdowhatIwant]

If the game has not died to these problems before now, it isn't dying to them now. There are legit problems, but a "OMG the game is dying because they won't give healers more damage options" is a completely stupid argument. That's not worth doomposting over...it's worth going, "Hey, give healers more stuff to do in downtime like how you gave AST cards to worry about!" Because again, if we've had this problem for more than 4 years, it isn't killing the game anytime soon, not when we've had a huge surge in players just last year.

The game is not dying, but it is heading towards a direction that will make the game or break the game soon, specially with as many frustrations as players have had with in the past couple of expansions.

And people want to say everything is fine because look at this big surge of new players that came last year. That surge had absolutely nothing to do with any decision or change that FFXIV made. That surge really just showed the power that social influencers have over there audiences. SE, Yoshi P, and the dev team did nothing to cause that random surge to happen, it happened through third party means.

[RyuDragnier]

The game is not dying, but it is heading towards a direction that will make the game or break the game soon, specially with as many frustrations as players have had with in the past couple of expansions.

I'm going to be honest, I have heard the "game will die" nonsense since ARR. I will not, nor will ever believe it until they pull something so idiotic that it will kill the game, because I've been here for 10 years and it still hasn't happened. There have been massive missteps yes, with the handling of Gordias Savage (almost killed the raiding community) and the handling of Eureka Pagos (the population for the relic grind dwindled to almost nothing within a week). But there has been nothing so widespread to where the game has almost died. Something may come some day from NEW content, but the problems we have had now for years won't.

[IkaraGreydancer]

I've been complaining about the hideous design applied to healers for six years. It hasn't improved. In fact, it's continued in the direction that I've opposed the entire time. You know who's advocating healers stay as-is? The developers. I'm so beyond bored of "well yeah they could be improved I suppose, but they're still fun now!" God, please no. No they're not. They're embarrassingly designed. The kits have less nuance than some phone games. I'm utterly uninterested in hunting for faint praise to hand the developers. Where's the interactivity? It's not there. You have a single boring GCD that you cast literally hundreds of times in any given instance if you've gained any skill in the role at all. It only gets worse the more skilled you get. Healers are currently designed to be easy queue pops by driveby players who aren't interested in actually playing them at all. They're designed by DPS mains for DPS mains. There are no procs. The deepest interaction in the kits is "this ability makes your healing spells heal slightly more for 10 seconds". The skill ceiling is an inch above the floor.

"Calm down" indeed. They've given a lobotomy to my favorite role with no signs of stopping for half a decade, and I'm sick and tired of people defending this horsecrap.

Take your emotions out on something else. You're getting upset because I simply have a different viewpoint. Being passionate is fine but you need to practice some restraint n poise seriously. Hop into a healer thread with your grievances as that'll be a much more suitable place for issues with said role. Pop off at the people there and let others who still enjoy the role as is do as such.

[Deceptus]

There are some very articulate regulars in the healer forums (at least one of whom is lurking in here). I have no personal stake in the issue myself (healer is by far my least played role in this game, largely because I dislike MMO healing's pace in general and find healing truly shines in a faster, more reactive PvP environment), but I'd really be interested to see one of them pick up their keyboard and write a unifying thread on the topic and get it cross-posted on to somewhere like /r/ffxivdiscussion or the main subreddit. Not just for the upvotes, but to build an actual conversation on the subject. If we managed to get Living Dead changed using this approach, I'm pretty sure anything is possible. I'd offer to do it for you, except it's not my place nor my battle to fight.

We've tried just that for years and they always get ignored.

Time to expand a little on my comments about SE needing to hire a healer designer. (After Stormblood Nerfs, pointing out there isn't even a job designer dedicated to each battle role)

The Healer Double Standard (After the Massive Stormblood Nerfs)

Summary of Healer Issues (Comprehensive list of a LOT of issues)

Basically: Stormblood was the breaking point for a LOT of veteran healers. We were told "Healers are being nerfed so we can rebuild them from the ground up" and that rebuild was worse than before.

Also, I've tried posting to the main subreddit, almost any actual discussion is downvoted into oblivion and the only stuff that gets upvoted are memes and art commissions.

[Vahlnir]

Basically: Stormblood was the breaking point for a LOT of veteran healers. We were told "Healers are being nerfed so we can rebuild them from the ground up" and that rebuild was worse than before.

Yeah. The "rebuilds" were basically just the devs taping and gluing the pieces of each job back together, and not with the good stuff. I do not envy healers right now at all.