A summary of healer issues

[Sebazy]

They've been outsourcing armor designs, environment assets, monsters and weapons to Lemon Sky Studios for Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers (not sure about Endwalker) so it's actually not only likely, it already happened.

That's true, I completely forgot about the mog station stuff in particular being heavily outsourced. Didn't know monster assets were though, good to know and it's great that SE haven't shut down that route after getting burned in the past.

[Renathras]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues

Cross posted the thread there. It doesn't have 270 likes at the present time, but maybe there's a discussion going.

[ty_taurus]

That's true, I completely forgot about the mog station stuff in particular being heavily outsourced. Didn't know monster assets were though, good to know and it's great that SE haven't shut down that route after getting burned in the past.

What about asking a question about that in a future Q&A?

"With each expansion increasing the total number of jobs available, this also means it becomes more time-consuming to not only manage the balance between jobs, but also ensure they're all fun and enjoyable. How does your team manage this steadily increasing work load, and are there any plans to expand the team responsible for job adjustments to ensure every job gets the right amount of attention?"

[Sebazy]

What about asking a question about that in a future Q&A?

"With each expansion increasing the total number of jobs available, this also means it becomes more time-consuming to not only manage the balance between jobs, but also ensure they're all fun and enjoyable. How does your team manage this steadily increasing work load, and are there any plans to expand the team responsible for job adjustments to ensure every job gets the right amount of attention?"

Great question IMO. I like it.

[Renathras]

Dream Fitting wasn't forced into the game by the mogstation lady.

The community was asking for a way to preview outfits on their ingame character because more often than not you buy a mogstation outfit only to find out that it looks god awful on your character or dyes terribly.

No, the management actually wanted to put Mog Store purchases in the game. Yoshi P said he didn't want any in-game connection to the store - a position I agree with after playing RIFT, TOR, LOTRO, and GW2 and finding the obtrusive store to be immersion breaking and annoying. But the executives kept pushing and said he had to relent and capitulate to them in some way. His compromise was Dream Fitting. I don't remember which interview or Live Letter it was, but Yoshi P himself was saying he didn't want to do it but his hand was forced.

You can claim the community was asking for it now, but that wasn't the point. The point was that Yoshi P has a lot of clout but doesn't have power to unilaterally make all these big decisions. He still is subject to the board. Even though he was given a seat on it, it's his one seat, not a veto power or executive authority to demand things like bigger pay for his team to be expanded.

EDIT:

What about asking a question about that in a future Q&A?

"With each expansion increasing the total number of jobs available, this also means it becomes more time-consuming to not only manage the balance between jobs, but also ensure they're all fun and enjoyable. How does your team manage this steadily increasing work load, and are there any plans to expand the team responsible for job adjustments to ensure every job gets the right amount of attention?"

That's actually a good question. Would support.

[Sebazy]

Yoshi P has a lot of clout with Square, but it's not infinite. If it was, Dream Fitting wouldn't be in the game.

The issue is that FF14, like FF11 before it, generated a lot of money for Square. But the executives at Square have this interesting quirk. Instead of doubling down on things that make them money, they like pulling money from those sure bets to finance experimental ideas that often turn out to be boondogles. Like NFTs.

This is an interesting one that would make for a great deep dive for sure.

From where I see it FFXIV's budget is strange.

In terms of the core in house team within CBU3, it's been fairly consistent and Yoshida has gone on record many a time proclaiming that he prefers to keep a smaller tight knit team which is fair enough. That coupled with the difficulty of actually hiring in the JP market is why I think that SE need to consider outsourcing ideas from a Mythic equivalent.

Server and system costs have definitely increased, we've had extra data centres and capacity has generally been sufficiently scaled up in line with expansion projections which is great but issues or improvements beyond that have generally been ignored or brushed under the rug (EU Duty rubber banding in Sigmascape anyone?).

The thing that catches my eye in terms of spending is the quality and quantity of voice acted sequences though. ARR had some truely abysmal voice acting that might as well have been done on Fiverr. I'm still amazed that old Cid's lines in Praetorium were kept around for as long as they were. That was some truly dire delivery and no amount of 'interference' could mask it . Compare that dross to the quality of what's followed and it's night and day. Tons of stuff has voice acting now, the quality is top notch and the actors have been fairly consistent over the years. That sort of quality can't come cheap. I wonder if that's where Yoshida decided to spend the money feeling that his team had the rest well in hand.

[Sebazy]

So regarding an earlier comment, I finally got round to running Lapis Manalis whilst using only GCD heals, assize and no oGCD healing cooldowns. I did habitually hit PI once, but Aquaveil, Benison, Asylum etc were completely off the table.

Lilies and Regen had pretty much everything covered, I had hoped to need to Medica II more but I only ended up casting it twice on the final boss around it's big AoE transition.

Depressingly and perhaps predictably, it made naff all difference.

I got a 94% for my damage which given that I'm not BiS on my healer and don't have a Savage weapon, I'm pretty happy with that.

Dungeon damage is just too low, I suspect I'd have to limit myself to no in combat Lilies, no assize and pray I get a bad tank before no oGCD heals would actually start having an impact.

[ForsakenRoe]

So regarding an earlier comment,

What was said comment, just out of interest? Cos I'm not really sure what you were trying to find out from this run you did. All I see is 'if we remove every OGCD entirely from the healers, they still have enough spare time to have around 40% of their casts dedicated to doing damage in the EX roulettes', which I assume means that some people's suggestion would be 'okay then we need to not only remove every OGCD entirely, but also halve the potency of the GCDs that remain, that way we'll have only 20% of the casts be damage, that'll make healing fun'

I wonder, is this what we're gonna be doing for the month before the patch comes out? Just coming up with more and more stupid 'challenge runs' for testing how little of the 'healer role's responsibilities' we actually need to do as healers?

'Meet Kardialetics, my 'can only heal with Kardia-triggered heals' Ultimate Ironman' etc

[Iedarus]

What was said comment, just out of interest? Cos I'm not really sure what you were trying to find out from this run you did. All I see is 'if we remove every OGCD entirely from the healers, they still have enough spare time to have around 40% of their casts dedicated to doing damage in the EX roulettes', which I assume means that some people's suggestion would be 'okay then we need to not only remove every OGCD entirely, but also halve the potency of the GCDs that remain, that way we'll have only 20% of the casts be damage, that'll make healing fun'

I wonder, is this what we're gonna be doing for the month before the patch comes out? Just coming up with more and more stupid 'challenge runs' for testing how little of the 'healer role's responsibilities' we actually need to do as healers?

'Meet Kardialetics, my 'can only heal with Kardia-triggered heals' Ultimate Ironman' etc

Hey, considering Eos/Selene can do all of your healing for you in Sastasha, who can blame us for making challenges like this?

[ForsakenRoe]

Hey, considering Eos/Selene can do all of your healing for you in Sastasha, who can blame us for making challenges like this?

Well, I already screwed up by suggesting 'kardia only', if I had a group of FC friends who didn't mind potentially getting griefed that one actually sounds kinda fun, having to constantly swap Kardia around. If there was a CD that made it temporarily AOE then I'd be way more up to actually trying it