MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[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.

[Omedon]

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

I see no untruths here. Like, I get it. Literally all jobs that aren't DPS are there, in a large part (but not completely) to move the queue for the DPS majority. Tanking/Healing jobs can't be "hard" because they have external difficulties at the community level ("Pull faster"/"Heal me while I pull faster"). It's the reality we live in by logging into a trinity MMORPG. WoW hasn't escaped it (and when they try it's a mess. See: discipline priests), FFXIV can't escape it. By default, folks DPS. It's low responsibility, high fun. And FFXIV can lean into this because, well... another job is just a button away. Someone will find fun in healing, and a low barrier to entry will assure that more people discover that fun that's there. Making it "more engaging" makes it less approachable, and, well, we're back at the square one of that being bad for business.

[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,

[ForteNightshade]

I see no untruths here. Like, I get it. Literally all jobs that aren't tanks and healers are there, in a large part (but not completely) to move the queue for the DPS majority. Tanking/Healing jobs can't be "hard" because they have external difficulties at the community level ("Pull faster"/"Heal me while I pull faster"). It's the reality we live in by logging into a trinity MMORPG. WoW hasn't escaped it (and when they try it's a mess. See: discipline priests), FFXIV can't escape it. By default, folks DPS. It's low responsibility, high fun. And FFXIV can lean into this because, well... another job is just a button away. Someone will find fun in healing, and a low barrier to entry will assure that more people discover that fun that's there. Making it "more engaging" makes it less approachable, and, well, we're back at the square one of that being bad for business.

Correction: FFXIV chooses not to escape it.

You can make the healing role more engaging without increasing its difficulty. Hence why most healer mains nowadays are asking for a more robust DPS kit comparable to tanks. These buttons will largely go ignored by the pure healers who panic at the slightest bit of damage taken but will improve the overall gameplay for everyone else. Alas, the dev team has refused to entertain the idea out of fear players will make it mandatory. In other words, they're choosing to make healers boring as sin for anyone below average to accommodate a portion of the playerbase who watches Netflix on the side. The irony is their dumbing down of healers hasn't accomplishment their set objective: increasing the overall healer population. Healers and tanks alike have been in constant demand, especially healers despite them being made easier and easier. It stands to reason the boring gameplay has pushed out as many—debatably more—than has brought in.

As for your prior remark about tackling higher-end content if you want a challenge per Yoshida's statement. Said higher-end content; all the way up to Ultimate, changes nothing about healer gameplay. You will still press one button well over 100 times; more than every other ability in your arsenal combined. On a purely anecdotal level, I've been learning how to SGE in Savage and cleared P1-3S while only pressing five GCD heals between all three fights. All of them were in P3S. The requirements are simply far too low at all levels of difficulty. Put bluntly, you aren't a healer in FFXIV. You're a gimped DPS who occasionally heals.

[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.

[Omedon]

the dev team has refused to entertain the idea out of fear players will make it mandatory.

Translation: They know how MMOs end up working out.

[ForteNightshade]

Translation: They know how MMOs end up working out.

Evidently not considering the healer population hasn't budged in years despite their constant dumbing down. The dev team is not infallible here. After all, this is the same team which openly admitted they didn't balance Bard and Machinist around the piercing debuff yet were baffled why both were incredibly overpowered.

Regardless, even if we do take that at face value. You're essentially justifying them having a boring gameplay for 1/3 of the playerbase because a portion want to watch Netflix. That's a terrible philosophy.

[Supersnow845]

Evidently not considering the healer population hasn't budged in years despite their constant dumbing down. The dev team is not infallible here. After all, this is the same team which openly admitted they didn't balance Bard and Machinist around the piercing debuff yet were baffled why both were incredibly overpowered.

Regardless, even if we do take that at face value. You're essentially justifying them having a boring gameplay for 1/3 of the playerbase because a portion want to watch Netflix. That's a terrible philosophy.

Seriously why does the community have this grand illusion that the healer rework worked when it hasn’t budged the healing population at all (if anything as a proportion it’s shrunk) all it’s done is just flushed job satisfaction down the toilet

[Sesera]

Only SE knows if healer changes is good or bad for the game players can only speculate so lets not claim "its good" because you like the change or "its bad" because you don't.

Also healthy mmo are the worst game for a challenge when it comes to content made for everybody.

[Supersnow845]

Only SE knows if healer changes is good or bad for the game players can only speculate so lets not claim "its good" because you like the change or "its bad" because you don't.

Also healthy mmo are the worst game for a challenge when it comes to content made for everybody.

We do have statics though, In 2018 there were about 630k active characters and on average each healer had around 420k people who had it at level 70, now we have about 930k active characters and each healer has about 650k people who have it at 90

So the endgame proportion of healers has not changed since the ShB changes, but job satisfaction has gone down the drain