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

[Supersnow845]

Players who play extremely casually both in time investment and skill level. We have a few posting on the forums themselves talking about how much they love certain healers. In general, it's those players who spam Medica II for every AoE and who throw up needless Succors. They all think they're contributing despite only negating what their co-healer already had going. But so long as the illusion continues, the devs seem happy.

Now I don't think they can that illusion up much longer nor can they keep dumbing down the jobs because it has caused something of a ripple. That being said, they might also not know how to design their way out of the hole they've dug while still retaining that ease of accessibility they've insisted upon. So... I suppose we'll see. I certainly can't say I expect much.

Maybe it’s just the “semi competent healer” in me but after a while the medica 2 bits get actively frustrating on any healer that’s not SCH because it basically means I’m not even able to do my own job and I’m just relegated to glare bot, sure alliance raid healing isn’t hard but I do like actually being able to heal now and again, when the succor bot is pumping out enough healing for 5 alliances me throwing out any heals is next to pointless

It’s weird that never comes into consideration that the “I’m contributing by casting medica 2 every time the boss casts anything” can actively make the cohealer have less fun

[OdinelStarrei]

Players who play extremely casually both in time investment and skill level. We have a few posting on the forums themselves talking about how much they love certain healers. In general, it's those players who spam Medica II for every AoE and who throw up needless Succors. They all think they're contributing despite only negating what their co-healer already had going. But so long as the illusion continues, the devs seem happy.

Now I don't think they can that illusion up much longer nor can they keep dumbing down the jobs because it has caused something of a ripple. That being said, they might also not know how to design their way out of the hole they've dug while still retaining that ease of accessibility they've insisted upon. So... I suppose we'll see. I certainly can't say I expect much.

Actually, I have a question for you, and I've seen you speak about it a few times before.

Since you've mentioned this "skill discrepancy" and "investment", I fear it's causing some sort of mechanic creep. This is a bit difficult to explain, so feel free to call me out on this, but recently, after I cleared DSR, it seems something has "changed".

What I mean by that is that while jobs themselves are getting absolutely gutted, the exact opposite is happening in mechanics. For people like us, who are pretty familiar with proteans, limit cuts, enums, wild charge etc etc, things are mainly okay.

But I'm getting more and more concerned about the players who either A. Are entirely new and are COMPLETELY blindsided by some of the most insane mechanics and toolboxes we've had yet (I, a bad player, 100% think the last 30% of Stacice is way too hard for what it is, I feel like an absolute goblin,, I didn't even do this tier) or B. Just getting a a bit burned out and tired for having to be 100% plugged in (this is conjecture, I know a TOP group that is going through heavy attrition because of how mentally excruciating it is.). I look at something like A9S or O9S and I think "oh ho ho, how quaint" and now I look at P9S and I'm just like jesus christ, you said there are HOW many ways to instantly kill the entire party for mispositioning? You said this aoe hits HOW hard?

I feel the balance between job difficulty and encounter difficulty is becoming increasingly lopsided to the point where people are just straight up not playing the same game at a fundamental level when the differences and punishments become this increasingly severe and disparate. It's like a difficulty cliff, I'm lucky that I got "ok" in HW and cleared an ultimate here and there, but if you're brand new? I have NO IDEA where these new players would even start to get a grasp on this. I'm not even sure if it's possible to be semi-competent anymore, as you reach the job skill threshold for clearing so quickly, but it's impossible to clear anything without being really consistent on esoteric mechanics. Not saying it's a bad thing, just want to ramble, and it's been on my mind.

Maybe I'm just bad, but, I think I would've preferred harder jobs and easier mechanics. I don't think I've ever been a weak link in my groups, but if you are one, good lord you must feel like trash constantly for killing your friends because you were out of position or you swear the death barrier reached it's grubby little hands out and pulled you in as you were trying to break you 95% arena max distance chain(i hate stacice so much)

Meanwhile average content is just "medica II and everything is literally putting me to sleep in real life"

I'm interested in your opinion.

[Supersnow845]

^im not the person you replied to but I totally agree, the mechanical difficulty has totally gone off the deep end with the last two ultimates and the sacrificing of visual clarity of the difficult mechanics for debuff vomit that just wipes you if you do anything wrong is becoming a massive issue (think of E12S, junction shiva was a masterclass of a mechanic, incredibly difficult, party finder wall but required no debuffs and was immediately visually obvious how to solve, it was just a matter of executing it correctly)

It’s hard now because there is fights like DSR and TOP in the game so if the jobs became more difficult now those fights would become near impossible but I do think they need to tilt the balance back towards job difficulty over mechanical difficulty, for 95% of players besides those who do nothing but raidlog you still spend the majority of time on casual content, we now have 80% of the games entire content be lifeless beige nothingness because of stupidly easy jobs so we can make savage/ultimate mechanically as difficult as possible

[Solakor]

Players who play extremely casually both in time investment and skill level. We have a few posting on the forums themselves talking about how much they love certain healers. In general, it's those players who spam Medica II for every AoE and who throw up needless Succors. They all think they're contributing despite only negating what their co-healer already had going. But so long as the illusion continues, the devs seem happy.

Now I don't think they can that illusion up much longer nor can they keep dumbing down the jobs because it has caused something of a ripple. That being said, they might also not know how to design their way out of the hole they've dug while still retaining that ease of accessibility they've insisted upon. So... I suppose we'll see. I certainly can't say I expect much.

The sad fact is that the target audiance has changed and the new players mostly like or don't care about braindead design and for every vet or player who wants better designed combat there is 2 players who just want to afk and run throught stuff without thinking anything.
I'v come to the realisation that most of the people that played before shb and want better class gameplay have migrated to wow because that seems to be the last bastion of more interesting design.
This same has happened to swtor and is happening in GW2 atm btw so these changes are by design and are aimed at shi77ers and raiders who think they should be able to pick up a new job in 1 minute and can flex to any job so that some cry baby doesn't need to actually learn anything.
Good class design died in sb and it will prolly never come back.
Also everything they announced in DT looks interesting but we have seen how half baked some of the stuff they do can be. So before we get to see actual meat on the bones of the product i would take everything they say with a load of salt.

[Kalaam]

Well let's all go repopulate FF XI then

[ty_taurus]

The sad fact is that the target audiance has changed and the new players mostly like or don't care about braindead design and for every vet or player who wants better designed combat there is 2 players who just want to afk and run throught stuff without thinking anything.
I'v come to the realisation that most of the people that played before shb and want better class gameplay have migrated to wow because that seems to be the last bastion of more interesting design.
This same has happened to swtor and is happening in GW2 atm btw so these changes are by design and are aimed at shi77ers and raiders who think they should be able to pick up a new job in 1 minute and can flex to any job so that some cry baby doesn't need to actually learn anything.
Good class design died in sb and it will prolly never come back.
Also everything they announced in DT looks interesting but we have seen how half baked some of the stuff they do can be. So before we get to see actual meat on the bones of the product i would take everything they say with a load of salt.

I firmly stand by the belief that most players don't really care either way. As long as things aren't punishing, most players will be pretty content with pretty much whatever. Adding in a higher frequency of generally weaker damage taken in normal content and expanding on DPS tools within a reasonable margin will probably have no effect on the vast majority of players.

[Supersnow845]

I firmly stand by the belief that most players don't really care either way. As long as things aren't punishing, most players will be pretty content with pretty much whatever. Adding in a higher frequency of generally weaker damage taken in normal content and expanding on DPS tools within a reasonable margin will probably have no effect on the vast majority of players.

While it certainly wouldn’t revolutionise anything we have to acknowledge there is must be a reason why healing is so singularly unpopular in this game, I don’t think attempting changes to try to figure out why is necessarily a bad thing

[SieyaM]

While it certainly wouldn’t revolutionise anything we have to acknowledge there is must be a reason why healing is so singularly unpopular in this game, I don’t think attempting changes to try to figure out why is necessarily a bad thing

Because there is nothing particularly engaging about it, you spend most of your time DPSing with the singular spell you have for it without ever really working towards something. DPS and even tanks I believe have some kind of burst phase that you are using your rotation to build towards, even if it's all on a 2 minute timer now. As a healer you have none of this, just DPS spam while using your oGCD kit to heal whatever there is.

[Colt47]

The sad fact is that the target audiance has changed and the new players mostly like or don't care about braindead design and for every vet or player who wants better designed combat there is 2 players who just want to afk and run throught stuff without thinking anything.
I'v come to the realisation that most of the people that played before shb and want better class gameplay have migrated to wow because that seems to be the last bastion of more interesting design.
This same has happened to swtor and is happening in GW2 atm btw so these changes are by design and are aimed at shi77ers and raiders who think they should be able to pick up a new job in 1 minute and can flex to any job so that some cry baby doesn't need to actually learn anything.
Good class design died in sb and it will prolly never come back.
Also everything they announced in DT looks interesting but we have seen how half baked some of the stuff they do can be. So before we get to see actual meat on the bones of the product i would take everything they say with a load of salt.

I don't really know what to do as a player right now. FFXIV power creep happened and things broke basically around the point everyone hit 630+. But then to address it they made choices that were not really something most people were a fan of. The feedback was 6.0-> 6.2 healing is too easy, 6.2 -> 6.3 healing is too hard (bleeds and body checks), 6.4 -> 6.5 healing is a combination of easy and frustrating, probably because of the excessive body checks forcing so many restarts on hard fights and then the amount of clutch moments people have to just insta rez a guy before a mechanic goes off. And to be fair a lot of people probably stopped playing anyway because there was a huge drop in even the savage running community around 6.3. Healer shortages got extremely bad and then with 6.4 I think most people who stuck through ended up taking a break or just broke up before clearing the final fight.

[ty_taurus]

While it certainly wouldn’t revolutionise anything we have to acknowledge there is must be a reason why healing is so singularly unpopular in this game, I don’t think attempting changes to try to figure out why is necessarily a bad thing

That's kind of what I mean. Most FFXIV players are not here for the intricacies of the combat system. They're here for the story and the surface-level gameplay. As long as the basic performance requirements of a job are not too punishing, there isn't much of a concern. And if there are a few more attacks that look or feel cool to use, then that's probably a plus in a lot of players' eyes. Seraph Strike and Afflatus Purgation are well-liked.