#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Tunda]

Anyone noticed that warrior don't spend mana on Bloodwhetting and healers get cost something of their bars?

No downsides I guess

[KisaiTenshi]

It would be pointless, you don't even know what proportion of in-game players know that the forum exists, even without saying they use it. It's easy to see the futility of this exercise, seeing the number of accounts created in June 2024, with 1 post, of people who come here because their beloved CCs told them about the forum's existence because of the strike.

Considering the forum is the only place to get a tech support answer, I'm sure everyone knows the forum exists, just chooses not to come here, and probably a not insignificant portion of the raiders are suspended for doing disruptive things on the forum in the past. So they choose to complain in places SE doesn't control.

As for the sudden pop-up of other hashtags on the forum... the community management here doesn't tolerate disruptive activities, so people being trolls and trying to disrupt the actual forum or the game by spamming the forum might see that backfire.

[Eorzean_username]

The game does not do enough to train people to handle the stuff they can't easy mode and trivial healing checks are just the tip of the iceberg.

I mean at the end of the day this is always going to be "it", no matter what sort of blow-harding occurs on any "side" of the topic.

Mr. Yoshida himself is on record as basically stating, in so many words, that if he was going to make a game just for his own pleasure, it sure as hell wouldn't be anything remotely like FFXIV. Though he does 459390 different interviews per year, so trying to scrounge-up the exact quote I'm thinking of where he said something along those lines has exhausted my patience with DuckDuckGo.

But the point is, if CBU3 had the will for it, they absolutely could tighten-up FFXIV's loose edges, and make a much more standardised and consistent difficulty-curve across the game, a more firm identity and style for each Job, and a more firm identity for each Role in all levels of content.

It's just that they know damn well that doing so would shrink FFXIV's audiences back towards a more dedicated "gameplay-positive" crowd, and they clearly don't want to ever be "that quirky boutique MMO" ever again. They want to remain "WOW, but Coherent Plot, Horrible Network Response Times, and Catgirls" — certainly not in gameplay refinement, but at least in terms of "pop-culture consciousness".

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Mr. Yoshida maintains a certain outward "friendly dad gamer" persona, because he's a designated "company mascot". But he's also clearly a shrewd and perceptive businessman with a life clearly spent keeping a close eye on the gaming industry, both local and international. He is certainly well-aware of what happened when WOW became overconfident in Cataclysm, and Blizzard's self-proclaimed "rockstars" stopped caring too-much about providing anything to players below the Endgame Dungeon / Raiding tier of content, distorting the entire game dramatically within the space of a single expansion-patch compared to what its fans recognised and expected beforehand.

So none of the CBU3 resistance to course-change on "normal" content and gameplay is surprising — FFXIV isn't an unsettled passion-project like it was in the early days of 1.x emergency-recovery and ARR/HW "finding its footing". Everyone responsible for FFXIV's direction forward knows that they have a well-ensconced cash-cow "formula" that they're now afraid to breathe-on wrong, because most game companies are ultimately designing with something akin to shamanistic prayer and superstition due to their fear of how fickle and volatile the interests of gaming audiences can be.

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All of this is to say that, yes, the game neglects to train people or provide a sanely-presented learning-curve, but it's partially because the game literally doesn't want to, since every bit of mild effort or slight disappointment that gets introduced along the way is another chance for a precious juicy payment source to pout furiously, and then wander-off to one of 342039943092 competitors for time and attention that are still willing to provide "You Win!" in exchange for just flat time-sunk and/or direct monetary investment.

There is no hyperbole intended when I say that the XIV devs wouldn't hesitate to reduce every Job to exactly 3 Actions and 1 Ult if they thought that they'd gain or retain more customers than they'd lose by doing so.

The only reason that there's any tension at all between complexity and simplification remaining in XIV's Job Design is that games rely somewhat on the outsized effect that proselytising and passionate dedicated fans / community-members provide a game as a form of powerful viral advertising and potently sustaining interest / sub-cultural relevancy. Over-simplifying too far runs the risk of driving that dedicated "actually likes playing games" segment away completely.

So market-widening "accessibility" adjustments are done in little nudges, and sips, and nibbles, to try to "boil the frog" to the exact edge of what will be tolerated from as many segments of the audience as possible.

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One could point to all of this and say, "Well, see, exactly, then... complaining and protesting is pointless, you're pining for a game-design that the devs no longer have any willpower to make".

But that's the thing — refer to my point about how much game developers actually fear their audience's fickle attention-spans and mysterious, almost incomprehensible desires and preferences.

Make your unhappiness clear, and loudly — and, preferably, coherently — enough, and it will plant that seed of doubt in the developers's minds.

"Oh no... have we gone too far? Might this entire gingerbread-house begin to crack and crumble soon? Will we soon begin to lose more than we gain or retain? Perhaps we must reconsider..."

That doesn't mean that 100% of all complaints will ever be addressed, because again, from the perspective of the creators, it's a balancing-act that ultimately just centers on what benefits the health of the company the most. However, it does mean that there's a chance that some portion of the feedback will actually be actioned — perhaps in horrible, horrible ways that were never intended, but actioned nonetheless.

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I mean, think about it.

Would we really be seeing even such "complexity" (lol) as "POM → Glare 4" and "Psyche" introduced into Healer "rotations" if the last 5 years had been totally silent?

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Yoshida and CBU3 would be perfectly-content to just keep offering "High Broil 3: Revengeance", "Emergency Emergency Tactics", and "Seraphism-ism" until the end of time.

As insipid and inadequate as updates like "Baneful Impaction" seem right now, I still think that they're a sign that the dissatisfaction is in the periphery of the developers's minds, and they're just struggling to figure out how to address that dissatisfaction without provoking and enraging the monster that they've created by going soft-ball on the lower end of content and Role Design for too many years in a row.

ie, NO, REDDIT / YOUTUBE / TWITTER / TWITCH, I AM NOT CALLING CASUAL PLAYERS MONSTERS, I am just saying that the developers must absolutely know the sheer inconceivable shite-storm that they will provoke if they attempt to adjust-up any of the push-back or resistance that Job Design or Content Design provides.

So they're "sweating", because they've now lodged themselves between a new sort of exotically low-effort "proudly casual" base on one side, that views FFXIV as their safe-space from any sort of performance demands whatsoever (since content is so slack that other people can just infinitely carry-them through), and an increasingly-irate and exasperated portion of the "alternative casual" and up base, which is tired of needing to keep a dose of Narcan on-hand when trying to remain conscious through half the game's cooperative content.

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TLDR
There's a lot of tangible reasons that the game, nowadays, very intentionally doesn't bother trying to hold players to any sort of performance standard until suddenly slamming you into EX / Savage / Criterion like a moose on a windshield.

But I think that continuing to express dissatisfaction with it — preferably in a coherent, well-organised, and reasonably-diplomatic manner — is still productive, and will still influence the developers... even if it's slow, or their response is incomplete compared to what would ideally be desired (the exact specifications of which will fluctuate wildly from player to player, anyway).

[Calysto]

Slightly off-topic but, I think "Touch Grass" should not have been on the bingo card since many of you aren't capable of doing so in-game either, by being terminally online in Limsa Lominsa.

[This is not meant to be taken seriously at all.]

Green-haired lalas may count as grass ? as for getting touched, well... Limsa....

[XiaoShengwu]

Slightly off-topic but, I think "Touch Grass" should not have been on the bingo card since many of you aren't capable of doing so in-game either, by being terminally online in Limsa Lominsa.

[This is not meant to be taken seriously at all.]

That's because there's no grass in Limsa. The green stuff there, is astro turff, and Algae.

[Hanayumi]

Soo... whats the goal here? Acknowledgment from devs? I mean ultimately what could the devs do to fix/bandaid healers at this very moment? Meaning no new skills, only adjustments to the current kits. Gotta keep in mind their dev process takes them ages to get anything major done especially if blindsided them and didnt plan ahead; planning>development>testing>art/animation/sound>translations>update...

[Sani2341]

Soo... whats the goal here? Acknowledgment from devs? I mean ultimately what could the devs do to fix/bandaid healers at this very moment? Meaning no new skills, only adjustments to the current kits. Gotta keep in mind their dev process takes them ages to get anything major done especially if blindsided them and didnt plan ahead; planning>development>testing>art/animation/sound>translations>update...

for a start? take the new 2 min DPS buttons out from behind the cd gating them, and give them to us much more regularly. with adjusted potencies if need be. would at least be a band aid showing they are willing to listen.

[CrimsonGunner]

Soo... whats the goal here? Acknowledgment from devs? I mean ultimately what could the devs do to fix/bandaid healers at this very moment? Meaning no new skills, only adjustments to the current kits. Gotta keep in mind their dev process takes them ages to get anything major done especially if blindsided them and didnt plan ahead; planning>development>testing>art/animation/sound>translations>update...

tbh acknowledgment is major. second they can change the already added dps skills they gave to each healer and make it more repeatable in healing downtime which i think will improve it massively.
lastly turn the DOT spells to AOE already, like come on its 2 expansion where healers need to target switch each mob to cast it in a bundled group.(last one is my personal opinion if it wasn't clear)

[Loggos]

[HB]

TLDR
There's a lot of tangible reasons that the game, nowadays, very intentionally doesn't bother trying to hold players to any sort of performance standard until suddenly slamming you into EX / Savage / Criterion like a moose on a windshield.

But I think that continuing to express dissatisfaction with it — preferably in a coherent, well-organised, and reasonably-diplomatic manner — is still productive, and will still influence the developers... even if it's slow, or their response is incomplete compared to what would ideally be desired (the exact specifications of which will fluctuate wildly from player to player, anyway).

I completely agree with this but I think it's also really sad because games like Elden Ring have shown how popular and "mainstream" the "overcoming hard challenges" type of gameplay can be.

There is obviously also a huge self-selection effect at play but the game's impressive growth compared to older Soulsborne titles could indicate that far more people are willing to try content that requires you to fail and learn if they are eased into it.

(And the funny thing is that ER doesn't even make it easy for new players. You have a lot more tools to make the game easier for you as you play but the beginning is still really tough for newbies.)

Now imagine a game that actually slowly introduces their players to increasing difficulties step by step and teaches you to gradually get more comfortable with harder content. If done right I really think this could work.

I'm not advocating for FF to adopt ER levels of difficulty of course. But I wonder if it's not just a problem of "what" (difficulty) but als of "how". As in, how your initial encounter with content that challenges your current skill level goes and how organically you can progress on that difficulty curve.

I wonder if proper game design could successfully utilise the psychology behind positive difficulty (having a good balance of rewards and frustration, with the scales tipped in such a way that the frustration doesn't become so big you want to quit but instead motivates you, while the rewards are fulfilling enough to generate a strong pull and intrinsic motivation themselves).

Because right now I think FF14 does a terrible job at dealing with those underlying psychological mechanisms, often making it a lot more stressful for casual players to even consider harder content.

Naturally you will never win everybody over to try harder things but I still think there is a lot of room for improvement in FF14's current game design and communication to make increasing difficulty exciting for inexperienced players without risking losing them or pushing casuals out.

[Aurora428]

tbh acknowledgment is major. second they can change the already added dps skills they gave to each healer and make it more repeatable in healing downtime which i think will improve it massively.
lastly turn the DOT spells to AOE already, like come on its 2 expansion where healers need to target switch each mob to cast it in a bundled group.(last one is my personal opinion if it wasn't clear)

It's important that the devs recognize an issue before the mid-patch of the first raid tier.

Historically they have allowed poorly designed jobs to rot for the next 20 months if they haven't taken action by then.