MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Semirhage]

It's an engaging, guided tour, not a skill testing obstacle course, and thank goodness for that.

Spotted the person who hasn't played through the MSQ on a healer.

FFXIV has become so easy that much of its content isn't engaging. That's the problem. Every. Single. Time. Someone says this. We get "toxic gatekeepers want everything to be super hard!"

FFXIV has a toxicity problem: its TOS babies and validates every lazy impulse a player might have. No meanie can -ever- dare suggest you improve at something. Yeah they DON'T pay your sub! If this were a live and let live situation then fine, but Square has been continuously, constantly dumbing the engagement out of everything, MSQ included, and a lot of us are sick of it.

[Omedon]

Spotted the person who hasn't played through the MSQ on a healer.

FFXIV has become so easy that much of its content isn't engaging. That's the problem. Every. Single. Time. Someone says this. We get "toxic gatekeepers want everything to be super hard!"

FFXIV has a toxicity problem: its TOS babies and validates every lazy impulse a player might have. No meanie can -ever- dare suggest you improve at something. Yeah they DON'T pay your sub! If this were a live and let live situation then fine, but Square has been continuously, constantly dumbing the engagement out of everything, MSQ included, and a lot of us are sick of it.

I'm not going to get into a protracted discussion on a thread that isn't my own and thus isn't easily tracked, but I'll just say that the difficulty curve of the entire game, in a game like this, demands that a healer's damage dealing toolkit be as minimalist as possible. This is a necessary evil for the good of the rest of the game, I'm afraid. I am almost at omni 90, I know exactly the issue you're talking about, but my point still stands. The game cannot afford to overly "engage" the "healers that want a challenge" in the core mandatory MSQ lane, so long as this is a trinity game. Knowing this, if you continue to do the MSQ on a healer (and to be honest, on a "caster concept" character, healer is your best bet for survivability), you likely should continue to expect this. It's not ideal in the "I want a challenge regardless of job" vein, but it is, once again, a necessary evil for the good of this kind game.

If you want a challenge as a healer, might I suggest you group with a like-minded party of friends in difficult trinity party content? Criterion is coming!

And to be fair... I threw the word "engaging" in there to leave room for occasional challenge. Ideally the MSQ errs on the side of easy/inevitable for everyone.

PS: I love your name!

[Absurdity]

I'm not going to get into a protracted discussion on a thread that isn't my own and thus isn't easily tracked, but I'll just say that the difficulty curve of the entire game, in a game like this, demands that a healer's damage dealing toolkit be as minimalist as possible.

I'd argue the exact opposite if we look at just the story. The MSQ would only require you to have maybe 2 healing spells exactly because it is so easy and nothing hits hard enough to justify more, your dps kit consisting of 2 buttons however makes your solo experience an absolute chore because those 2 buttons are what you'll be pressing 99% of the story's combat encounters.

If you want a challenge as a healer, might I suggest you group with a like-minded party of friends in difficult trinity party content? Criterion is coming!

Not even the hardest content in this game challenges you in the healing department, it merely boils down to "does this aoe oneshot you or does it not?" which is solved by proper party mitigation, you can't outheal a oneshot.

Criterion might switch this up, though very unlikely, but that still leaves the question why healer engagement should be limited to a single activity.


The current healer issues aren't limited to the most hardcore players but any healer that even remotely knows what they're doing.

[Omedon]

I'd argue the exact opposite. The MSQ would only require you to have maybe 2 healing spells

Oh there is absolutely a button bloat problem for healers, you won't get an argument from me there. There are so many niche buttons per healer job that none of those powers can really justify their existence, because of how niche they are. You can't have a "wrong healer" for 4-person content, after all. The answer isn't more damage buttons though. I don't know what the answer is, but I know that healers are kind of in the position here that both tanks and healers are in other games. They gate the queues, they are in demand to make the game work, thus it must be approachable and, by extension, easy. Ideally they heal more than they do damage, but that's never going to be the case in solo content. Again, I don't know what the answer is, but it's not complicating their secondary role as a damage dealer, because that creates big problems when they group up with other players again.

Now, if the MSQ becomes 100% non-interdependent, you do reach a point where everything beyond, everything with other players can be flagged as "at your own risk," and there are ways to facilitate that... but that is a point on the side of making the MSQ inevitably easy, which, well... healers: check!

[vetch]

I know that healers are kind of in the position here that both tanks and healers are in other games. They gate the queues, they are in demand to make the game work, thus it must be approachable and, by extension, easy.

A low barrier to entry but without any depth doesn't create a healthy population of active and dedicated healers, it creates churn as new healers realize there's nowhere to grow and no satisfaction thereof to be had.

[Omedon]

A low barrier to entry but without any depth doesn't create a healthy population of active and dedicated healers, it creates churn as new healers realize there's nowhere to grow and no satisfaction thereof to be had.

Ah, but you assume that everyone that takes up healing wants a challenge. I can say as a leader of MMORPG communities that this is not my experience. As a "career tank," I literally want the healers to have a free ride, and see it as my job to make it so, in thanks for them taking up the job that people rarely want to actually do, dating back to RPGs' tabletop roots.

[Supersnow845]

Ah, but you assume that everyone that takes up healing wants a challenge. I can say as a leader of MMORPG communities that this is not my experience. As a "career tank," I literally want the healers to have a free ride, and see it as my job to make it so, in thanks for them taking up the job that people rarely want to actually do, dating back to RPGs' tabletop roots.

Have you ever considered that people don’t want to heal as much because games far too often treat healers as fodder so the DPS can have more fun

My job right now is basically designed to help the DPS have more fun, if I didn’t hate myself as much as I do I wouldn’t be playing SCH I’d be playing a job square actually designs around being fun

[IDontPetLalas]

Ah, but you assume that everyone that takes up healing wants a challenge. I can say as a leader of MMORPG communities that this is not my experience. As a "career tank," I literally want the healers to have a free ride, and see it as my job to make it so, in thanks for them taking up the job that people rarely want to actually do, dating back to RPGs' tabletop roots.

However, that's not at all interesting for the healers. As a healer I do not want a "free ride", that comes off as extremely condescending in tone.

That hasn't been my experience in any game in which I've played a healer, nor would I want it to be my experience in this one- by the way in all of those other game healers had many options , such as through skill tress- to both heal and do damage. This game has been far more simplified in that aspect than it used to be,

[IDontPetLalas]

I'm not going to get into a protracted discussion on a thread that isn't my own and thus isn't easily tracked, but I'll just say that the difficulty curve of the entire game, in a game like this, demands that a healer's damage dealing toolkit be as minimalist as possible. This is a necessary evil for the good of the rest of the game, I'm afraid. I am almost at omni 90, I know exactly the issue you're talking about, but my point still stands. The game cannot afford to overly "engage" the "healers that want a challenge" in the core mandatory MSQ lane, so long as this is a trinity game. Knowing this, if you continue to do the MSQ on a healer (and to be honest, on a "caster concept" character, healer is your best bet for survivability), you likely should continue to expect this. It's not ideal in the "I want a challenge regardless of job" vein, but it is, once again, a necessary evil for the good of this kind game.

If you want a challenge as a healer, might I suggest you group with a like-minded party of friends in difficult trinity party content? Criterion is coming!

And to be fair... I threw the word "engaging" in there to leave room for occasional challenge. Ideally the MSQ errs on the side of easy/inevitable for everyone.

PS: I love your name!

You're stating a personal opinion, which is completely within your right, however the statement that I bolded goes completely against my personal experience on any of the the healing jobs in this game, and furthermore , given all of the various types of content in this game - from early game levelling content , solo content, all of the way to ultimate content - is an extremely bold statement.

In addition - your quoting "this is a trinity" game doesn't mean anything. Each game has its own design and way that jobs interact, and in this game there is no need for healers to spend all of their time healing. Damage is also scripted. All jobs should be engaging.

No jobs should have to be penalized under the feeble excuse of some "necessary evil", that is the hallmark of lazy design.

[HyoMinPark]

If you want a challenge as a healer, might I suggest you group with a like-minded party of friends in difficult trinity party content? Criterion is coming!

Wow, this is almost as good as a suggestion as what Yoshida told healers to do: if you want a challenge on a healer, go do Ultimate! That will solve all of your woes! /s

Guess what. There’s not that much healing in Ultimate either. It’s primarily a mechanic and mitigation check. Not a healing one. As someone who has cleared three of the four, and done half of DRU, healers aren’t doing any more healing in those fights than I am in most other content. If Ultimate doesn’t challenge a healer, I doubt the Criterion dungeons will. Can’t wait to have another piece of content where I am pressing Glare/Broil/Malefic/Dosis or my AOE equivalent 100+ times and hardly touching my oGCDs heals. Much less my GCD heals. /s I can go entire stretches of content without touching a single GCD healing spell because the content simply doesn’t warrant it. That’s bad design. I’m not a healer; I’m a gimped DPS with a boring “rotation”.

The MSQ on a healer is resident sleeper. You don’t need hardly any of your healing toolkit during MSQ encounters, and instead you are stuck spamming 2 buttons for the entire duration. All because it’s apparently “too hard” to give healers more buttons to press. Unless it’s more healing tools, of course. Healing tools that are overkill in most of the content in this game because it simply does not hit hard enough. Nor will it ever, because this game is catering more and more to the lowest of the lowest common denominator, and I personally don’t find it healthy for the game at all. All it seems to do is allow players to never learn how to play their roles because they aren’t punished, but when they go into content that is the slightest bit punishing, they get mad and start demanding content nerfs because they’re never taught anything resembling a challenge. It’s part of the reason why the Alliance Raids aren’t nearly as challenging as they used to be, why Extremes can be done with one healer or none ON RELEASE, and why Savage is a watered down shadow of itself.


As for your comment about giving healers a “free ride” as a tank, please stop making my content even more boring than it already is. Personally, I really dislike how much I have to go out of my way to actually feel engaged on my primary role. Why should I have to search out clown fiesta parties in 24-man raids just to have a little bit of fun on a healer? So tired of seeing people defend the state of the role when they don’t have the slightest idea of just how boring healers are to play in this game.

Making it "more engaging" makes it less approachable, and, well, we're back at the square one of that being bad for business.

Considering I just saw a thread by someone asking what other games there are that they can heal in because they dislike healing in this game—can’t imagine why /s—I doubt it. The way they are designing healers to be so basic and boring is actually making more healers quit the role than its bringing them in. What with the sheer number of healer complaints present on social media (some of the threads on here are approaching 200 pages), I don’t think the majority of healers are pleased with their role. I know I’m not. Unfortunately, SE has also decided that my other favored role (physical ranged) should also be “Baby’s First DPS” and made them progressively more boring as the expansions have released. Because heaven forbid we have any sort of nuance or complexity in this game. Other jobs are beginning to see this as well.