Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Menriq]

I'm sure they know how to address the problem, the real issue is the devs are absolutely lazy and/or new.

It's easy to balance the jobs when they all play nearly identical (2-minute designs), and its easy to design boss fights around that as well (major boss mechanics taking place during that 2-minute buff window).

Can't expect them to make healers fun to play if they refuse to make the gameplay enjoyable.

You realize the two minute designs was because of feedback right? I'll quote from the interview:

Yoshi-P: "But the reason it's like this today is that we've received, in the past, feedback from all over the world saying that the timing of fights were difficult, it was difficult to align skills between classes, we were asked to unify everything, and precisely because we received these requests to homogenize this, we homogenized it".

[MisterNublet]

You realize the two minute designs was because of feedback right? I'll quote from the interview:

Yoshi-P: "But the reason it's like this today is that we've received, in the past, feedback from all over the world saying that the timing of fights were difficult, it was difficult to align skills between classes, we were asked to unify everything, and precisely because we received these requests to homogenize this, we homogenized it".

Yoshi-P has also stated that there were things too difficult to implement into the game for various reasons, and then as soon as a plugin/mod was exposed, they miraculously managed to implement it.

Take what Yoshi-P has to say with a grain of salt. Also "requests to homogenize" is a joke. Been playing MMOs for almost 25 years, no one ever asks Devs to homogenize gameplay, easily indicates that he is full of it.

[Boblawblah]

Yoshi-P has also stated that there were things too difficult to implement into the game for various reasons, and then as soon as a plugin/mod was exposed, they miraculously managed to implement it.

Take what Yoshi-P has to say with a grain of salt. Also "requests to homogenize" is a joke. Been playing MMOs for almost 25 years, no one ever asks Devs to homogenize gameplay, easily indicates that he is full of it.

So we should take YOUR word as an mmo player over Yoshi-p's word as the producer of FFXIV. Right. Do you mind if I take that with a grain of salt?

[MisterNublet]

So we should take YOUR word as an mmo player over Yoshi-p's word as the producer of FFXIV. Right. Do you mind if I take that with a grain of salt?

You should take anything that is said on the internet with a grain of salt. A very smart thing to go by.

By my own personal experience, with two and a half decades of MMO gaming, it's easy to tell when a developer/producer is talking out of their arse.

[Boblawblah]

You should take anything that is said on the internet with a grain of salt. A very smart thing to go by.

By my own personal experience, with two and a half decades of MMO gaming, it's easy to tell when a developer/producer is talking out of their arse.

Honest question, no snark, what would less homogenization look like to you? From the little I understand, if you change up all the buff/skill timers to have them not all line up nicely, you start to get issues where some job fit in awkwardly to high end fights, which means that some jobs will simply not be wanted for certain fights.

[MisterNublet]

Honest question, no snark, what would less homogenization look like to you? From the little I understand, if you change up all the buff/skill timers to have them not all line up nicely, you start to get issues where some job fit in awkwardly to high end fights, which means that some jobs will simply not be wanted for certain fights.

Remove a vast majority of raid buffs or turn them into self buffs only. There are only 3 jobs, at most, that should have a raid buff: Astrologian, Scholar, and Bard. Going further, raid wide buffs should be once per fight as well. This will remove the issue or need to align buffs in high end fights.

Once you remove the copious amounts of raid buffs, allow speed stat to affect the cooldown on personal buffs. This will open up further build options by allowing jobs to either build for faster GCDs, or slower, harder hitting GCDs.

Currently, the gameplay is held hostage by this 2 minute meta and everything needs to be designed around it or it won't work. Example: Paladin being reworked around the 2 minute meta.

[Tsumdere]

Honest question, no snark, what would less homogenization look like to you? From the little I understand, if you change up all the buff/skill timers to have them not all line up nicely, you start to get issues where some job fit in awkwardly to high end fights, which means that some jobs will simply not be wanted for certain fights.

Sorry to butt into a convo, but just felt like saying buffs/skills didn't line up perfectly through SB and ShB and jobs were never excluded because of that reason.

[ty_taurus]

Honest question, no snark, what would less homogenization look like to you? From the little I understand, if you change up all the buff/skill timers to have them not all line up nicely, you start to get issues where some job fit in awkwardly to high end fights, which means that some jobs will simply not be wanted for certain fights.

If it were up to me...

Different approaches to DPS...
WHM: Low APM, relatively simple set of attacks with a combination of longer cast times and higher MP costs. Skill comes in managing slow vs instant casts and MP management.
SCH: DOT focus with ways to interact with DOTS, resource management focus with Aetherflow.
AST: Indirect DPS generated through engine-building--the setting up of buffs and heals to detonate later. For players who don't like DPSing, you still are DPSing in order to stay competitive, but your DPS is disguised as support.
SGE: Feels like a caster DPS lite. More fast paced and hyper aggressive. The healer that plays like a DPS (the foil to Gunbreaker).

Different approaches to core healing:
WHM: High raw healing, reactive healing (heals when target sustains damage).
SCH: Barrier healing, provides large, singular barriers to nullify damage.
AST: Healing over time, delayed healing, but weaker reactive healing than WHM. You need to set up your heals ahead of time.
SGE: Staggered barrier healing--layers of small barriers that automatically replenish when the last one breaks, heal through DPSing.

Different approaches to utility:
WHM: Free Raising, AOE Debuff cleansing--can erase bleeds and poisons from bleedbusters and bleedwides, Float: the party can ignore puddle damage and floor damage (implies bleedbusters and bleedwides can all be cleansed with Esuna now)
SCH: Expedient, abnormally high amounts of raw damage mitigation
AST: Instant Raising, Macrocosmos--can ignore Infirmity, MP battery for your cohealer
SGE: No unique forms of utility--sacrifice utility for higher damage, or in other words, their utility is more easily clearing DPS checks. The Black Mage of healers.

[Aravell]

Honest question, no snark, what would less homogenization look like to you? From the little I understand, if you change up all the buff/skill timers to have them not all line up nicely, you start to get issues where some job fit in awkwardly to high end fights, which means that some jobs will simply not be wanted for certain fights.

I've been playing since ARR and I don't think I've ever seen any job get excluded for fitting awkwardly into fights. The times I've seen jobs get excluded widely were SAM in early SB, WAR and PLD in early EW and MCH for the first half of EW, and in those cases, the playerbase sees those jobs as not bringing enough to the table to justify taking a party slot (mostly they don't do enough damage). Let's take the most recent example of a job fitting awkwardly into fights, MNK and WAR in E12S back in ShB, both were 90s jobs, both had trouble in Basic Relativity, neither were locked out from parties.

Now, if you're talking about log runs and speed kills, then that's another story. Obviously they'd want to take the team composition that gives them the greatest chance of success.

[Absurdity]

I'll quote from the interview:

Yoshi-P: "But the reason it's like this today is that we've received, in the past, feedback from all over the world saying that the timing of fights were difficult, it was difficult to align skills between classes, we were asked to unify everything, and precisely because we received these requests to homogenize this, we homogenized it".

This statement just makes me facepalm every time I read it.

Of course it was difficult to get the timing right during a fight, that was the entire point, that's what made it satisfying to execute and why it's so incredibly stale in Endwalker, because now it just happens.
There is no thought involved in pressing a button whenever it's ready and no real satisfaction from aligning raid buffs and burst windows correctly when that is the default state.