Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
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I definitely agree about bad game design being something that limits players experiences to ‘hit damage button’ or ‘hit heal button’, or some variation thereof.

That said, I can still see both sides of the argument. Ren’s idea taken literally (‘make one healer stay the same’) doesn’t solve any issues, but at the same time I do think there’s an argument for a healer to be ‘mostly the same as it is now’.

Like, to take White Mage as an example, the basic concept is that it’s focused more on high-potency direct healing and damage abilities as opposed to the more nuanced approach other healers take. Naturally, this concept doesn’t really work currently because there’s no decision making - you can just hit any heal and you’re basically done, and you only have one dps ability to use anyway. But that doesn’t mean that concept can’t stay the same but develop in a way that still improves the overall gameplay.

Like giving White Mages damage options such as Aero III or Lightblob Attack III damage-over-time attack that can act as sustained dps but have mutual exclusivity with a higher potency DoT that requires more finessed uptime to get the most out of it. Or competing options with Blood Lily to make the mechanic less of a basic ‘Afflatus Misery Ready’ status effect. Giving the job decisions that are less about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and more about having a versatile job that can more easily adapt to the players style means we have a job that’s ‘similar to what we have now’ concept wise whilst still having fun and interesting mechanics. That is to say, I don’t think a healer needs to be ‘sacrificed’ to try and make something that appeals to current healer enjoyers, but the concept itself would need improvement before it would fit the way it should.

As an aside, I’ve said before but I think rather than focusing on jobs having set/fixed ‘difficulty levels’, they should simply develop the jobs based on their concepts, what’s fun, etc, then let players determine for themselves which is/isn’t difficult. Because ultimately it’s always going to be different for everyone, so you run into the problem of having to decide which job is the ‘most easy’ and offering it up for sacrifice even though it could be so much more