Is the Healer subforum here toxic?

[Renathras]

You all are a riot. So much emotion and energy into something that doesn’t matter in the slightest. Keep me entertained forums. It’s been a good few days

For my part, I'd just like outside/neutral opinions of the matter.

So far, the overall view seems to be a combination of "yes, it's an internet forum, they're all toxic" with a bit of "I don't know either way" and several representatives from the sample group acting very toxic.

I'm kind of curious if you guys think the personal attacks in this thread are good faith or if they're toxic?

[MaxCarnage]

I'm kind of curious if you guys think the personal attacks in this thread are good faith or if they're toxic?

Personal attacks are always petty. Sure, sometimes they may be "justified", but never in good faith.

[MirielleLavandre]

I'm not sure if it is toxic, exactly, but I've been playing since beta and it never seemed to be as 'bad' on the forums as it is now. However, between all the job forums, the healer one definitely seems to be the one with the most infighting amongst people who presumably play the same job type. I rarely see the dps or tank forums so full of people arguing or outright attacking each other -- in a funny way I'd expect that more from the dps forum >.>

[Lyth]

The topic of that thread is actually 'Why is the Healer Subforum so Toxic?' which is a very different question from the one that you have posed in here.

The answer provided is that there are two very different expectations for the role. Some players want to see healers take on a more support-orientated playstyle, like you see in traditional MMOs (where the focus tends to be more on resource management). The difficulty with this approach is that healing and mitigation are pass-fail checks. So if you want to challenge players with this style, you will end up excluding weaker players from content.

Other players want to see more of a hybrid playstyle, where the focus is on doing as much damage as possible. You see this sort of design in action MMOs, where everyone has a degree of support/mitigation/healing tools, and 'healers' are 'support-orientated' DPS. This will likely mean trimming down parts of the support kit in favor of more elaborate offensive rotations. The downside of this approach is that if you devalue healing checks without first narrowing the dps gap between 'healers' and other roles, then you may end up dropping healers and replacing them with DPS (or tanks).

I think the current problem with FFXIV is that it straddles both of these in a way that denies players the skill expression of either approach. Which is why players find themselves unsatisfied and move on to DPS. It's an important discussion to have, because if a consensus can't be reached then we'll continue to see the same problem in future expansions out of a desire to cater to both.

[BaconBits]

Guy even gets called out by OOP directly rofl. He's posting this because he felt attacked.

Careful now, he might clench his fist lmao.

[Renathras]

The topic of that thread is actually 'Why is the Healer Subforum so Toxic?' which is a very different question from the one that you have posed in here.

The answer provided is that there are two very different expectations for the role. Some players want to see healers take on a more support-orientated playstyle, like you see in traditional MMOs (where the focus tends to be more on resource management). The difficulty with this approach is that healing and mitigation are pass-fail checks. So if you want to challenge players with this style, you will end up excluding weaker players from content.

Other players want to see more of a hybrid playstyle, where the focus is on doing as much damage as possible. You see this sort of design in action MMOs, where everyone has a degree of support/mitigation/healing tools, and 'healers' are 'support-orientated' DPS. This will likely mean trimming down parts of the support kit in favor of more elaborate offensive rotations. The downside of this approach is that if you devalue healing checks without first narrowing the dps gap between 'healers' and other roles, then you may end up dropping healers and replacing them with DPS (or tanks).

I think the current problem with FFXIV is that it straddles both of these in a way that denies players the skill expression of either approach. Which is why players find themselves unsatisfied and move on to DPS. It's an important discussion to have, because if a consensus can't be reached then we'll continue to see the same problem in future expansions out of a desire to cater to both.

I think this is accurate, and have said so in that subforum - I get attacked as being discirminatory and gatekeeping "real healers" for doing so, though. Personally, I think the game needs to just establish a fourth Support role and embrace that, since a lot of people absolutely enjoy that gameplay style, or, instead of "Pure/Barrier Healer", they should do "Pure/Support Healer", which is kind of how ARR worked with WHM and SCH to begin with.

I agree that that is probably the crux of the issue there, and I do think that's an important conversation to have. Every time the topic has been broached, however...

[ZephyrMenodora]

I'm kind of curious if you guys think the personal attacks in this thread are good faith or if they're toxic?

Always toxic and unnecessary. On moderated forums such behavior would not be tolerated but there is little oversight here, so they've become not only regularly accepted, but often upvoted by a certain type of poster here.

Typically it's because the insulter has no retort to the actual issue being discussed, so they go for some random personal attack (that they often pull out of their behinds that aren't even accurate lol).

[GaiusDrakon]

[AmiableApkallu]

Some players want to see healers take on a more support-orientated playstyle, like you see in traditional MMOs (where the focus tends to be more on resource management). The difficulty with this approach is that healing and mitigation are pass-fail checks. So if you want to challenge players with this style, you will end up excluding weaker players from content.

Other players want to see more of a hybrid playstyle, where the focus is on doing as much damage as possible. You see this sort of design in action MMOs, where everyone has a degree of support/mitigation/healing tools, and 'healers' are 'support-orientated' DPS. This will likely mean trimming down parts of the support kit in favor of more elaborate offensive rotations. The downside of this approach is that if you devalue healing checks without first narrowing the dps gap between 'healers' and other roles, then you may end up dropping healers and replacing them with DPS (or tanks).

I think the current problem with FFXIV is that it straddles both of these in a way that denies players the skill expression of either approach. Which is why players find themselves unsatisfied and move on to DPS. It's an important discussion to have, because if a consensus can't be reached then we'll continue to see the same problem in future expansions out of a desire to cater to both.

This discussion has been had a million times already, though.

Healer kits come down quite heavily on the support-oriented playstyle. Gameplay comes down quite heavily on the "do as much damage as possible" playstyle. Healing checks are already devalued across the board — now including on-content Ultimates, apparently. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a more contradictory set of design choices.

Consensus simply won't happen in a game with more than a few players. It's easy enough to pick one side or the other and argue how to lean into it. I've yet to see anyone tackle kits and gameplay at the same time and somehow meet in the middle in a satisfactory way.

[Renalt]

My guy this is an official forum for a video game, the whole thing is toxic.