Ultimate Representation: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

[glamazon]

I whish that someone on the team had played everquest 2 back in the days. That game had a lot of flaws but they knew how to designe different healers and find a nich for most of them.

such a fun game! and playing a faerie! I miss eq one bard too that was fun! If only they would split archer into bard and ranger.

[WaxSw]

Glare, Assize, Glare, Glare, Dia, Asylum, Glare, Temperance, Glare, Glare, Rapture, Glare, Solace, Glare, Glare, Divine Benison,...

Pretty fun and engaging to most people, it seems, since it's the most played Healer.

Or maybe, just mayyybe, because being the only healer that can be played from lv1, being an iconic FF job or having as competence Ast (Which has a bloated mess of a kit, can only be played from HW onwards and you have to lv up from 30), Sch (Which requires 30 levels as dps just to be unlocked) and Sage (Which requires first a lv70 job and the EW expac) plays more in its favor than its gameplay

Considering healers are the least played role, the most complained about and how below lv50 when Whm and Sch are the only ones available the role disparity is even higher I woudn't say its what people find engaging the most, especially when Whm population is known to be bloated by people that only use it for fast queue with friends and not to really learn it and play it

[fulminating]

The thing you have to remember is that the people heavily complaining about it are not necessarily the ones highly using it.

After the last batch of Lucky Bancho numbers, there was a lot of discussion about them in r/ffxivdiscussion. The conclusion the people there came to was "Maybe we who want more complex Jobs are just a minority of the playerbase...?"

While there is an argument world first-ers use simple Jobs when they have more or less equal performance (e.g. SMN vs BLM right now), the bulk of the playerbase are not world first-ers. It stands to reason that many players simply enjoy simple Jobs.

It's also a good thing there are no Jobs in the game that just hit one button and literally nothing else, isn't it? SMN is the simplest in the game, and it even has more variation than that.

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve. I think 5.x samurai, warrior* and summoner encapsulated this pretty well and where all healers stumble, scholar the least.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

Without bringing up the one button summoner macro, yes.

*Onslaught and upheaval being on the beast gauge, inner release interacting with everything rather than being a fell cleave button, ic being undesirable while ir is up etc. I'm not going to claim it was big brain hours, but definitely had more room for optimisations than currently.

[Vinal211]

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve. I think 5.x samurai, warrior* and summoner encapsulated this pretty well and where all healers stumble, scholar the least.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

i think the main issue also is that we're at a point where a LOT of jobs are low skill floor AND low skill ceiling. that isn't to mean it's necessarily bad, i think New SMN just needs tuning and more added on to it for it to not feel like a three summon pony and to start needing at least one brain cell. (now granted that's also bringing in the issue of job changes at an expansions release and patch cycle being INCREDIBLY janky and lackluster at times)

If you were to ask me, a lot of healer issues could be fixed if they actively took the time to look at where each one stands and give it a definitive skill floor that you can see from the get go, and various skill ceilings that cater to different peoples tastes. WHM can definitely have that "low skill floor semi-low skill ceiling" feel and still feel viable next to something like slightly higher skill floor SCH, or the even higher skill floor AST. SGE could be that middle ground. which leads me to wonder, considering that two of the healers are locked behind high levels and expansion packs, if they'll ever decide to actually go back and make base classes you can grab for post-ARR jobs. not likey though I'm sure, considering Yoshi-P's hatred of needing to use Job Crystals still for lore and gameplay reasons.

[Renathras]

Or maybe, just mayyybe, because being the only healer that can be played from lv1, being...

Unlikely. If people were crying out for a complex Healer and there was one available, then it would be the most played. If that was happening, then there'd be a good argument to shift the other Healers toward that. ACN/SMN/SCH also starts at level 1, and people that WANT a complex Job aren't going to shy away from a mere 30 levels. You also can level any Job on a single character, and again, people that want higher complexity would know of this and do so. Moreover, SGE is the Healer that starts closest to level cap, not WHM, meaning people wanting to pick up a Healer would use it. People that pick up WHM but hate simple Jobs and yearn for something, ANYthing more complex, would pick it up instead. It's EXTREMELY unlikely 30 levels are stopping anyone. Let's be real, most of you have multiple Jobs leveled, if not being omni-90s. Hell, I only have 6 Jobs not at 90 myself, and I don't play many or care much for DPS, which is the majority of the Jobs.

I don't doubt there are some people that play WHM for the reasons you claim, but the thing is...it's not just WHM. If it was, you'd have a stronger argument.

Aside from WHM:

SMN and RDM are played more than BLM; RDM doesn't start at level 1.
WAR is played more than GNB, DRK, and PLD. PLD is the least played Tank, despite it starting at level 1 and being an iconic Job.
DNC is the most played Ranged, and it's the simplest and the one that doesn't start at level 1.
RPR is arguably the most played Melee, and by most accounts, the easiest. The second easiest, and second most played, is SAM. Neither starts at level 1.

If it was JUST WHM, you might be right. But it's not just WHM. Across the board, we see that the most simplistic Jobs in all roles are also the most played. This seems to indicate that players desire simpler Jobs more than complex ones. It does, in fact, seem to be the most logical analysis given all of the data we have.

Healers may not be "the most complained about", we have no metrics to be sure of that. The forums are anecdotal, with a lot of selection bias. But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs.

Now, this is not an argument for all Jobs being simple. But it is an argument that there should be some simple Jobs in the game.

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve.

Is that what people in general want, though, or what you want and you believing that the majority of people are like you?

I don't mean this as a slight, but it's very likely you don't represent the majority, given all the data we have. You may be in the minority. Not a small minority at all, but it's unlikely your views are necessarily representative of the whole.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

RDM/SMN is an interesting case because the tuning right now has SMN higher than RDM. But that ignores that BLM does more damage. In a world where "utility doesn't matter, only more damage", BLM would be the most played. It isn't. Moreover, if we want to draw more broad conclusions, we can look at the rest of the data. RPR wasn't the top DPS but was the most played. What does RPR share with SMN? Not a combat raise. Not doing higher damage than its peers. But it DOES share ease of play. Indeed, RDM used to be the easiest Caster and was the most played, despite SMN and BLM doing more damage in ShB. But now, SMN is easier and is the most played. That indicates, again, ease of play being highly valued by the playerbase.

*Onslaught and upheaval being on the beast gauge, inner release interacting with everything rather than being a fell cleave button, ic being undesirable while ir is up etc. I'm not going to claim it was big brain hours, but definitely had more room for optimisations than currently.

What's interesting to me is how, when they change a Job to make it more simple, people say it'll be the death of the Job, but then the Job becomes the most played (or among the most played) in the role.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nd_raid_mount/

WAR, WHM, RPR, and SMN are the most played Jobs across all roles. They're also the easiest Jobs in their respective roles. DNC is the most played Ranged...but the three are actually fairly even (as many people have noted, their difficulties are similar and Ranged is arguably the easiest role overall in the game right now of the DPS subroles), but even so, DNC is also...considered the easiest.

So in 5 out of 5 categories, the easiest Job is also the most played Job. And in the categories where there's a pretty close "second easiest" (Healer-SGE, Melee-SAM, Caster-RDM), that second easiest is also the second most played.

Again, this does not mean there should not be complex Jobs but it does mean there should be non-complex ones since, at the VERY least, we can see that a large number of players want them, even if you'd rather not say it's a majority. We can't know for sure which is the majority, but we can know that a lot of people do not want to play, and shy away from, complex Jobs.

If you were to ask me, a lot of healer issues could be fixed if they actively took the time to look at where each one stands and give it a definitive skill floor that you can see from the get go, and various skill ceilings that cater to different peoples tastes. WHM can definitely have that "low skill floor semi-low skill ceiling" feel and still feel viable next to something like slightly higher skill floor SCH, or the even higher skill floor AST. SGE could be that middle ground.

This is honestly the best answer.

Give each Healer a different skill ceiling and let people play the one that has their desired level. Some people like playing Halo on easy, some medium, some heroic, some legendary. If the game only has easy, some people will get bored. If it only has legendary, some people will get frustrated and quit. The answer is to have all four and let players pick the one they want, and have a low barrier to entry for them to try another, so someone could, for example, start on medium and after doing that for a while and wanting more, swap up to heroic, or if they're feeling overwhelmed, step down to easy for a while.

[WaxSw]

Unlikely. If people were crying out for a complex Healer and there was one available, then it would be the most played. If that was happening, then there'd be a good argument to shift the other Healers toward that. ACN/SMN/SCH also starts at level 1, and people that WANT a complex Job aren't going to shy away from a mere 30 levels.

People that want a complex job straight up are not going to touch the ACN line as neither Sch is complex nor its Smn

You also can level any Job on a single character, and again, people that want higher complexity would know of this and do so

Which would be cool if there was a single complex healer job, but there isn't, thats why a lot of people who want a complex job go to either melee jobs or blm or simply stay with their main cause for some players things like aesthetics or irl situations may make them play a job, I know this is true cause I am one of them

Moreover, SGE is the Healer that starts closest to level cap, not WHM, meaning people wanting to pick up a Healer would use it. People that pick up WHM but hate simple Jobs and yearn for something, ANYthing more complex, would pick it up instead.

Which is why, since release Sage is 2nd most populated healer, a lot of freeloaders are trying it. However you're ignoring that a lot of players already have Whm at 80 before EW so its easier to lv up that one than Sge, how its precieved as the comfy pick if you don't care about healers because its reactive style and that for a lot of people that may try casually healing having suddenly all the actions of a job at lv70 may be overwheilming. It's a grave mistake to assume that the majority of the Whm's are happy with their gameplay though, in fact if I were to talk from experience I have found much more experienced Whm displeased with the job state than happy ones across all media.

SMN and RDM are played more than BLM; RDM doesn't start at level 1.

They are benefited from flashyness vs Blm which all the community tell players to not touch if you're new ofc the jobs with the big sparks will be more populated than the one with the "black" legend of being unaproachable. This case is also interesting because Smn, the most populated of the two has created a lot of balancing problems (being effectively a phys ranged with the damage of a caster) and its iteration has lighted some fires among the Smn community for its excesive simplicity.

WAR is played more than GNB, DRK, and PLD. PLD is the least played Tank, despite it starting at level 1 and being an iconic Job

B L O O D W H E T T I N G, aside flashyness people want to feel powerful and considering dungeons are the majority of content of the game and War is capable of easily doing them solo due to the immenese effectiveness of their tools... well its not hard to see how that is what drives people in and not its gameplay, which when put into drk has been criticized and among the tank community there is the dread of "making all tanks 4 flavours of war"

DNC is the most played Ranged, and it's the simplest and the one that doesn't start at level 1.

This is because its simply the one that works the best in its niche. Among phys ranged there are no significant gaps in difficulty but Dnc has that shine of being the default job for those who want a support focused job which is quite the crowd while brd is a weird inbetween (in fact before dnc was a thing, brd was the most populated because the same reason) and mch has had a lot of balancing issues + that if you want a selfish job there are competition from melee and casters too while Dnc faces little competition

RPR is arguably the most played Melee, and by most accounts, the easiest. The second easiest, and second most played, is SAM. Neither starts at level 1.

Fun fact, that is only in NA and EU and RPR was a job to appeal to us so I guess it worked. That aside RPR is an interesting case because there are multiple factors that affect its popularity (i.e Sam's kaiten controversy, it being OP on release, despite its simplicity being complex enough...) and how that may change (or in other words when we take into account weapon ilv above 610 its not actually the most played) so I'll just say "there is a lot more to unpack besides easy job"

This seems to indicate that players desire simpler Jobs more than complex ones. It does, in fact, seem to be the most logical analysis given all of the data we have.

Or that since we can switch jobs as will people that are playing just to fill roles gravtitate towards what is not going to challenge them. We as humans are lazy and most often than not take the least resistance path, but thinking a job's population is happy just because people is playing them is not true as there are a LOT of more things to unpack as shown above.

Healers may not be "the most complained about", we have no metrics to be sure of that. The forums are anecdotal, with a lot of selection bias. But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs.

Calling bullshit on that, first the forum's whole point is to grab feedback so disregarding it its one of the moves that lead to 1.0, second if healers werent complained the most we would see the same activity in other roles forums as well as in general about other roles, however that does not happen, the closest we had was the kaiten drama and even with that it was still something minimal compared to the multiple hundred-pages-long threads of complains healers have and not only for one action. Other media like youtube and reddit complain about healers too (in fact in the subreddit xivdiscussion there was a meme of "X days without healer complaints") you can search anywhere and aside the most casual playerbase anyone who has a minimal job understanding can see the glaring issues the healers have. We have multitude of samples that show it so its about to time to remove the blindfold.

Now, this is not an argument for all Jobs being simple. But it is an argument that there should be some simple Jobs in the game.

I agree but there is something called oversimplification and currently all healers fall under it, no job in a tab target mmo be it healer or not should see over 80% of their total GCDs being the same button that has no consequence nor interaction with their kit not see that their reward for good gameplay is basically pressing that button even more

[fulminating]

Isn't this just you making my argument about the 1 button job, the inherent laziness of this playerbase and the necessity of having a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling?

I have not spoken to anyone of any level who has no issues with the direction endwalker combat has taken, no matter their level of play. From talking with them it seems there is generally a sentiment of skill floor and ceiling being too close together, and a general distaste for everyone being on the 2m raid buff schedule.

Black mage does more damage as long as you don't die. The difference between them is not so insurmountable - and should you look at the alliance raid playrates, first you'll see paladin is the most played tank both pre and post rework and second you'll see that the whiskers on black mage extend further to the left than those of smn - i.e. the worst black mage deals less damage than the worst summoner. You will also observe that the medians of smn and blm are rather comparable, black mage being ahead by ~200dps. And if we're looking at historic data, warrior - the easiest shb tank - was also the least played in nier raids. This does discount dungeons, but since warrior is "solo play with others" there, it's an outlier at best.

[Silver-Strider]

Glare, Assize, Glare, Glare, Dia, Asylum, Glare, Temperance, Glare, Glare, Rapture, Glare, Solace, Glare, Glare, Divine Benison,...

Pretty fun and engaging to most people, it seems, since it's the most played Healer.

Popular =/= Fun or Engaging
It has less to distract yourself from so you can focus on fight mechanics and that's pretty much it. If you're going to prog anything, it's better to learn the fight first than it is to worry about Card mechanics, minimizing Aetherflow usage, etc. and WHM allows that.

[Liam_Harper]

Glare, Assize, Glare, Glare, Dia, Asylum, Glare, Temperance, Glare, Glare, Rapture, Glare, Solace, Glare, Glare, Divine Benison,...

Pretty fun and engaging to most people, it seems, since it's the most played Healer.

You do realize 75% of your GCD casts in that example of "engagement" are Glare, right? Not to mention it's an exaggerated example, because there are very few situations you need Asylum, Assize, Temperance, a Rapture and a Solace within a 30 sec window. Most of the time we're talking 85-90% Glare.

Ogcd's don't matter as much as you claim. If any dps was just mashing 1 button for their GCD, there'd be a riot, oGCD's or not.

[ForsakenRoe]

You do realize 75% of your GCD casts in that example of "engagement" are Glare, right? Not to mention it's an exaggerated example, because there are very few situations you need Asylum, Assize, Temperance, a Rapture and a Solace within a 30 sec window. Most of the time we're talking 85-90% Glare.

Ogcd's don't matter as much as you claim. If any dps was just mashing 1 button for their GCD, there'd be a riot, oGCD's or not.

We should remove BRD's DOTs and Refulgent procs, so it's just Burst Shot spam, and see how quickly people riot. Or maybe they'd be so grateful to Yoshi-P that it is now impossible to screw up their damage? Hell, there was a big fallout about GNB's CartCombo being made one button. People weren't happy at the time. I imagine the same would happen for a lot of DPS classes. Mudras removed and replaced with 'press this to instantly Raiton', forums would explode. Fell Cleave was getting to the point of memes, with 5 every 90s, until they broke it up into 3 per 60s. Every 3mins we only have one less, but the fact we do 3 in a row instead of 5 helps SO much with breaking up the repetition. Even if it's counteracted by the whole 'also use 2 more FC button presses on Inner Chaos'.

There's only been one time I can remember where 'press this button over and over' was interesting, and that's Legion, Warrior's Execute because of the Juggernaut artifact trait. A risk/reward system that made you hit harder and harder until either you died, or the enemy died. Imagine if we had a trait for WAR that said 'each time you FC, your next FC deals 5% more damage, this stacks infinitely, 20s duration' it'd be great fun, imbalanced as hell (top parses would have everyone purposely holding back just so the WAR could pad their stacks), but fun.

Give each Healer a different skill ceiling and let people play the one that has their desired level. Some people like playing Halo on easy, some medium, some heroic, some legendary. If the game only has easy, some people will get bored. If it only has legendary, some people will get frustrated and quit. The answer is to have all four and let players pick the one they want, and have a low barrier to entry for them to try another, so someone could, for example, start on medium and after doing that for a while and wanting more, swap up to heroic, or if they're feeling overwhelmed, step down to easy for a while.

After all that arguing back and forth, you finally say what I was saying (almost). I want 'WHM is Halo, SCH is COD, AST is Battlefield, SGE is Medal of Honor' (is MOH still alive?) Each has easy, medium, hard, very hard, by whatever names they go by. A WHM who is feeling overwhelmed can step down from Medium to Easy, but the difference is, they aren't forced to swap away from WHM in my version. If someone levelled to 90 as AST in your design, and was feeling overwhelmed and wanted to swap to something easier, they'd have to level an entire separate class. Which, isn't the hardest thing in the world, but it still takes time and effort. And some people don't want to for various reasons. I know a friend who has some RP thing she does, where one of her 3 characters only does '2H weapons', so BRD, DRG, DRK, WAR, etc. Another is 'magic only' so Casters and Healers, and the last is 'the leftover stuff' which, by coincidence, seemed to end up being 'two objects, one in each hand' so PLD, NIN, DNC, MNK, etc. Weird how that worked out. Anyway, yeh, forcing someone to level all the classes in a role, just in case they feel like they're unsatisfied with 'the current difficulty level', probably not good design.

Besides, even in something like Halo, you've got different skill ceiling levels. You can go through the whole game just rooty-tooty-point and shooty on Easy, yes, but you can also learn stuff to use/abuse like Rocketjumping. And then there's secrets like the skulls to collect that expect the player to use these more complex movement techs to get to. Or, in something like Metroid for example, at no point does the game tell you how to 'infinite bomb jump'. It implies you can chain two with good timing to 'double jump' with some puzzles, like an early one in Chozo Ruins in Prime 1, but not 'hey if you do it right you can actually do this infinitely'. 'ShineSpark' is a staple term of gaming now, but it's only taught to the player in a few of the games, like Super. In Fusion, sequence breaking using it gets a hidden easter egg dialog between two NPCs. You don't 'need' to know how to ShineSpark or IBJ to complete the game. But they allow you to do wacky stuff like getting the Space Jump Boots early in Prime 1, or Varia Suit early in Zero Mission, skipping the need to get some other upgrades. It's possible to do a '0% save' run, skipping all non-essential upgrades using creative application of ShineSparks and IBJs. It feels rewarding to the player to be able to do stuff like that, and is a much harder optional challenge than a 100% savefile run, due to you having only 1 energy tank. But again, completely optional.