A summary of healer issues

[Sebazy]

This scene from Sword in the Stone is how I perceive the changes from HW to SB to ShB to EW.

Agreed, I like the analogy.

In a way, ShB's rip-roaring success that was a number of different factors all hitting at a perfect time is something that's going to come back to haunt them in the long term. It's a odd but all too common trend for large JP corporations to get weirdly arrogant and complacent almost to the point of treating customers, competitors and partners all with equal levels of contempt. Shimano's road cycling division are a great example of this in recent years but Honda also spring to mind as well.

In recent years it genuinely feels like Yoshida's team are falling into that trap also. FFXIV 1.0 forced Yoshida's team to take a humble and earnest approach, they were a lot more transparent with their plans and they weren't afraid to back down on bad decisions. Early ARR Warrior was a great example of them realising that they were wrong and promptly taking steps to correct things. Now it feels like they aren't interested in what the community has to think. They have their plan and they are sticking to it come hell or high water. Yoshida seems to look more and more miserable these days when he gets collared with a tough question over his teams design choices.

And honestly, it's not so much that I have a strong sense of good game design, I was an optimisation and performance guru first and world builder second rather than systems designer in my time in the industry. Rather I quickly learned that the bean counters in finance were the true development leads, not any of us on the top floor.

[ForsakenRoe]

Rather I quickly learned that the bean counters in finance were the true development leads, not any of us on the top floor.

Just had the brainworm of 'what if Bean Counter was a job in FFXIV'. You'd have a bunch of skills with properties (like BLU), elements, additional effects, etc. You have two phases, one where you press a button to cast a simple GCD to restore your MP to full. The other is the main meat of the job though, you press the button to start the phase, and the job gauge gives you your orders: do this element, or this status effect, or both, etc. So you have to 'mix' a combo of attacks, like a NIN mudra of sorts, that fulfills the conditions. The more conditions met, the more damage that attack does. But every Bean Counter knows, you can't go over budget, so your total can go as close to 10000mp cost as you like, but if you go over, the project is considered a failure due to financial mismanagement (and the higher ups are angry)

maybe next April Fools eh