#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Dogempire]

Because it is in SE's interest to avoid single points of failure in the "casual" or regular MSQ content that everyone has to go through. The healer is the redundancy for DPS and tank. The second DPS is also the redundancy for the first DPS because of no enrage timer. With the exception of RDM/summ rez, there is no redundancy for a healer. Therefore healer is the most likely the one to get the "axe" in terms of complexity or stakes because SE's primary goal for MSQ or "casual" content is accessibility. Again, Wildstar was not economically viable and complexity does not work for the baseline "casual" content; it just doesn't sell or retain.

I think for SE to be comfortable taking the guard rails off healer for MSQ content, every DPS class and tank would have to be given a resurrection ability. Sounds extreme, but this means that healer has a natural redundancy built in now (where healer otherwise is the sole role that does not have a redundancy), and then the concerns about healer being single point of failure are lessened. If anything, the "strike promoters" should be arguing everyone gets a rez so SE feels more comfortable of lowering the healer guardrails.

Eh, disagree on the second healer not being redundant, good healers can solo heal all content, even ultimates.

Because there's no limit to how many people you can hit with an AoE heal (Well, besides how many people you can have in your party) if you can heal 4 people, you can heal 8. It especially becomes less of a problem when people aren't getting blasted by failing mechanics constantly.

It's especially less of an issue if you're playing AST/WHM because god forbid you run out of OGCD heals you can just use Medica/Aspected Helios once, and because of how infrequent damage is in 99% of content the regen does all the heavy lifting for you.

The second healer is just there to make healing easier, and honestly because of how bad most healers are at letting regens do their work you can just ignore healing the party entirely if you're a second healer. For some reason DF healers have gotta keep that overheal% above 150% and pop big cooldowns at even the slightest scratch or scrape.

[Auteur]

Finally this will sound harsh, but if healing is too much responsibility choose another role. It comes with the healing territory and it’s why a lot of healers love the role. It’s not to just watch my team while dead and no one can rez me and think “thank god I don’t need to even be here!”

I don’t play tank much because I don’t like those responsibilities. They stress me out. I’m not asking them to make tanking not needed so I can play it and not have any pressure.

This is trying to have it both ways for MSQ. Again, the MMO industry tried a game with high stakes for everybody for even baseline content in Wildstar and it failed miserably. Healer is a mandatory role queue for MSQ. You can't be arguing on the one hand to place the stakes on healer high, which can deter people, while at the same time arguing "if you can't handle it then go play another class." That's how you promote a skewed role queue combination for baseline content and QOL issues for everybody due to lack of interest in playing healer due to vote kicking/player frustration/single point of failure issues (again Wildstar tried to up the stakes and place high stress on everybody, and it failed miserably).

Tank and healer both have the problem as mandatory role queues that the MMO industry has to balance complexity while avoiding single point of failure and player retention problems. One of the answers I proposed is creating the redundancy for the healer by giving every single other class a resurrection. The person who claimed tank does not have a redundancy is technically incorrect due to the presence of healer LB3 in raids and in theory a healer could raise and keep the party up just long enough in MSQ content to allow the party to recover (again, we are using MSQ as the baseline here and not savage/extreme). If you give the healer the redundancy of everyone has a rez, and healer is currently the only role without a redundancy, you have a better argument that SE no longer needs to maintain the guardrails for healer relative to the other roles. I think people are discounting how important redundancy is in game design here and one of the fundamental flaws with healer is that healer is the only role without redundancy.

[ZephyrMenodora]

This is trying to have it both ways for MSQ. Again, the MMO industry tried a game with high stakes for everybody for even baseline content in Wildstar and it failed miserably. Healer is a mandatory role queue for MSQ. You can't be arguing on the one hand to place the stakes on healer high, which can deter people, while at the same time arguing "if you can't handle it then go play another class." That's how you promote a skewed role queue combination for baseline content.

Tank and healer both have the problem as mandatory role queues that the MMO industry has to balance complexity while avoiding single point of failure and player retention problems. One of the answers I proposed is creating the redundancy for the healer by giving every single other class a resurrection. The person who claimed tank does not have a redundancy is technically incorrect due to the presence of healer LB3 in raids and in theory a healer could raise and keep the party up just long enough in MSQ content to allow the party to recover (again, we are using MSQ as the baseline here and not savage/extreme). If you give the healer the redundancy of everyone has a rez, and healer is currently the only role without a redundancy, you have a better argument that SE no longer needs to maintain the guardrails for healer relative to the other roles. I think people are discounting how important redundancy is in game design here and one of the fundamental flaws with healer is that healer is the only role without redundancy.

You have been told no less than 3 times you can finish the msq with trusts if you can’t handle those dungeons. This is available to all roles.

Healers are already less common in every mmo I’ve played. It’s why most of a party is filled by non healers. Healers are unpopular in XIV because they are boring. The msq for healers is easy as F so that didn’t work.

Most players of games like challenge and find fulfillment out of not just being barely competent, but good. Learning and overcoming challenge.

There is a middle ground between hardcore and what xiv is.

I have an issue with the mentality that games should provide no challenge and players should face no hurdles whatsoever. Failing with terrible players should happen and then those terrible players can get better and be happy when they clear something.

[Rolder50]

This is trying to have it both ways for MSQ. Again, the MMO industry tried a game with high stakes for everybody for even baseline content in Wildstar and it failed miserably.

Stop bringing up Wildstar, that game died because it had a terrible, bug filled launch moreso then anything else. I know cause I was there.

[Punslinger]

This is trying to have it both ways for MSQ. Again, the MMO industry tried a game with high stakes for everybody for even baseline content in Wildstar and it failed miserably.

No, Wildstar failed because its devs built a "raid-or-die" MMO and then made the raids require 40 people.

People who have played WoW Classic realized that, with the better understanding of the game mechanics that WoW players have now, the old 40-man raids from Vanilla were never actually all that difficult. The hardest part was just getting 40 people together on one night.

There were high stakes for healers in WoW back during what its players unanimously agree were its glory days: Burning Crusade and Wrath. Those were the days of Heroic dungeons where parties had to watch for patrols, and every pull involved multiple pre-planned uses of CC. And yet, things still got cleared by non-raiders. Huh.

And there were high stakes for healers in FF14 back during what its players unanimously agree were its (mechanical) glory days: HW and SB. Those were the days of Cleric Stance, and multiple DoTs to juggle, and AST's old card system, and needing to Esuna WARs when they used Berserk. And yet, things still got cleared by non-raiders. Huh.

The person who claimed tank does not have a redundancy is technically incorrect due to the presence of healer LB3 in raids and in theory a healer could raise and keep the party up just long enough in MSQ content to allow the party to recover (again, we are using MSQ as the baseline here and not savage/extreme).

You say that healer jobs aren't allowed the slightest bit of complexity because lil' babby heawers need to be carried through the MSQ uwu. And then you turn around and argue "well asckslhuallyyly, tanks have a redundancy because LB3, which is only available in raids and not MSQ dungeons."

Pick a lane already.

[Auteur]

I have an issue with the mentality that games should provide no challenge and players should face no hurdles whatsoever. Failing with terrible players should happen and then those terrible players can get better and be happy when they clear something.

This is more of a complaint about society and general gaming industry trends. My personal opinion is that the mainstream gaming industry (and ff14 with SE is in the mainstream camp imo) has leaned towards instant gratification, "participation" trophies, appealing to lowest common denominator (get people their clears through baseline story and don't gatekeep, ex we will never see an OG steps of faith ever again) because that is what sells and that is the economic world we live in. Gamers on this forum and on reddit are a minority and imo the "silent majority" is what SE wants to appeal to because that's where the money is and the market has spoken.

I think on the other end SE acknowledges the decreasing amount of patience higher end gamers have (I want to clear this now and zero tolerance for players making mistakes, get out of my queue) and that also leads SE to the same conclusion of "reducing the baseline" because the corporate perception of higher end gamers is that they scare away the silent majority of customers and they actually become a detriment to player retention as a whole. Consider why PvP MMOs never gone mainstream and League of Legends in the West has a constant player retention/toxicity discussion.

[ZephyrMenodora]

This is more of a complaint about society and general gaming industry trends. My personal opinion is that the mainstream gaming industry (and ff14 with SE is in the mainstream camp imo) has leaned towards instant gratification, "participation" trophies, appealing to lowest common denominator (get people their clears through baseline story and don't gatekeep, ex we will never see an OG steps of faith ever again) because that is what sells and that is the economic world we live in. Gamers on this forum and on reddit are a minority and imo the "silent majority" is what SE wants to appeal to because that's where the money is and the market has spoken.

I think on the other end SE acknowledges the decreasing amount of patience higher end gamers have (I want to clear this now and zero tolerance for players making mistakes, get out of my queue) and that also leads SE to the same conclusion of "reducing the baseline" because the corporate perception of higher end gamers is that they scare away the silent majority of customers and they actually become a detriment to player retention as a whole. Consider why PvP MMOs never gone mainstream and League of Legends in the West has a constant player retention/toxicity discussion.

And it’s unfortunate. In older mmos difficulty created communities. Everyone knew who the good healers were and the good tanks and the good dps and you wanted them on your friend list. Xiv participation trophy gameplay we are all interchangeable nobodies. Probably great for business but to me it’s just inferior.

[Auteur]

And it’s unfortunate. In older mmos difficulty created communities. Everyone knew who the good healers were and the good tanks and the good dos and you wanted them on your friend list. Xiv participation trophy gameplay we are all interchangeable nobodies. Probably great for business but to me it’s just inferior.

The pugslinger guy name calling is missing my points entirely and being too emotional. I'm trying to offer my analysis from the business side and corporate line of thinking as to WHY this is happening and what a proposed solution would be. I did the OG steps of faith back in the day pre-nerf and tried Alexander savage prenerf. However, I care about new player retention and having played mostly PvP mmos over the years that have been axed and quit League of Legends myself, I "faced the music" myself in acknowledging economics and needing to appeal to as many people as possible for current MMO design and that is what it is. I really think a lot of the "pro strikers" in this thread are missing the importance of redundancy in game design and the win-win solution is to address healer's lack of redundancy by giving everyone a rez.

What people need to realize is SE puts the guardrails on healer because healer is the one role without a redundancy in MSQ and therefore is exposed to highest "single point of failure" and player retention issues that come with that (ex: vote kick threats from frustration, risk of not clearing, etc.). DPS and tank both can rely on a good healer as a redundancy in MSQ along with the lack of enrage timer meaning the 2 DPS are backups to each other. To solve this issue, give everyone a rez or allow everyone to use a rez item (ex: phoenix feather) and healer suddenly now has a redundancy and SE can feel comfortable removing the absolute guardrails on healer.

In other games they balance "everyone has a rez" by tracking the number of rezzes during an instance (basically a global amount of lives and cap it) so that's how you balance the difficulty for higher end. Allow everyone to use a rez item but track number of rezzes and use that as a way to promote difficulty in higher end instances or perhaps lets say the last trial of a MSQ.

[TsubameMikage]

I think the reality folks need to acknowledge is MSQ content has to appeal to the lowest common denominator to maintain player retention because everyone would have to go through it to progress the story.

No, the MSQ has little to no bearing on player retention as it's not the main gameplay loop. Once you complete the MSQ, it's over. However, the DF experience is far more relevant to those metrics, and right now their brain-dead simplicity is actually doing more harm to player retention than the MSQ ever could prevent.

Consider that with no enrage timer, a dps could play with the most "boring" or suboptimal way possible of just spamming one skill over and over without doing rotations, and you could eventually get the clear with the other party members playing "optimally." Again, the "strike promoters" have a more credible argument about higher end content (ex: very fair concern if healer is deemed not necessary for HM or extremes), but this discussion should be separated from MSQ and the practical reality MSQ really does have to appeal to the lowest common denominator (and high end raiders are not exposed to this reality because they don't deal with pug queues ever, and are basically out of touch with regular players at this point).

Most players never step foot into higher end content. Claiming we have to have a subpar, or even 'braindead' experience so that we don't unsub is kind of.. backwards?

[Supersnow845]

The pugslinger guy name calling is missing my points entirely and being too emotional. I'm trying to offer my analysis from the business side and corporate line of thinking as to WHY this is happening and what a proposed solution would be. I did the OG steps of faith back in the day pre-nerf and tried Alexander savage prenerf. However, I care about new player retention and having played mostly PvP mmos over the years that have been axed and quit League of Legends myself, I "faced the music" myself in acknowledging economics and needing to appeal to as many people as possible for current MMO design and that is what it is. I really think a lot of the "pro strikers" in this thread are missing the importance of redundancy in game design and the win-win solution is to address healer's lack of redundancy by giving everyone a rez.

What people need to realize is SE puts the guardrails on healer because healer is the one role without a redundancy in MSQ and therefore is exposed to highest "single point of failure" and player retention issues that come with that (ex: vote kick threats from frustration, risk of not clearing, etc.). DPS and tank both can rely on a good healer as a redundancy in MSQ along with the lack of enrage timer meaning the 2 DPS are backups to each other. To solve this issue, give everyone a rez or allow everyone to use a rez item (ex: phoenix feather) and healer suddenly now has a redundancy and SE can feel comfortable removing the absolute guardrails on healer.

In other games they balance "everyone has a rez" by tracking the number of rezzes during an instance (basically a global amount of lives and cap it) so that's how you balance the difficulty for higher end. Allow everyone to use a rez item but track number of rezzes and use that as a way to promote difficulty in higher end instances or perhaps lets say the last trial of a MSQ.

you aren’t getting the response you want because you are arguing with a strawman none of us is saying

We are fine not being the single point of failure in the party. We don’t want the healer role to dictate the entirety of the dungeon (or whatever casual content). I physically cannot say this anymore (literally look up my past 01029510692069 posts on this issue and they will all say the same thing) RAISE THE CEILING NOT THE FLOOR.

If x person needs 1010593 guide rails to play healer FINE, they can have them, but for those of us who don’t need those guide rails you need to give us something to do that’s not broil spam, this is the long and short of the argument, healers are BORING and that’s totally independent of redundancy in resurrection