#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Bobby66]

Right? Like it's absolutely insane to me how many people defend this because that's how "casual content is supposed to be"... It's really not. Every single MMO I have ever played has had more engaging healing, even while leveling, than XIV has at max level. It's so stupid, man. I'm so damned tired of people eating this dog crap, and claiming it's chocolate.

I do not think people are claiming that, the difference between WoW, SWTOR and FFXIV. Is I do not think SE wants healers to be the point of failure in group content. I do not think they want a single role to be the point of failure when it comes to their core gameplay. Look at tanks, aggro management is a thing of the past, and the moment they have an issue holding aggro they just buff aggro gen.

It appears SE wants the point of failure to be on the group overall and not just one role. Least it seems like that.

I love healing in SWTOR merc healer was a lot of fun, and disc priest and rshammy are also a lot of fun. Also specs come into play cause if you want brain dead healing in WoW or Tor you just went rdruid or sorc.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm specifically talking about western tab target MMOs. Almost all I have played are way more open in role design then current FF14. The only ones as strict as FF14 are ones from the 2000s.

"Tab Target" is not a genre.

It's either turn based (where time stands still), or active time battle (ATB) where time flows but commands are still executed based on speed variables. This is where you spend most of the time DPS'ing the closest target, or Healing/Casting from the back.

Or it's Action based where you have to be correctly positioned to execute an action or you miss. If you're in the AOE cone, you probably gonna die. This is where you spend most of the time dodging.

Also I don't understand why you are bringing up the art design in relevance to this?

Please look at the marketing and screenshots for Blade and Soul. Now look at the marketing for Aion. Both of these are NCSoft. Both of these games adhere to class-lock. BDO also does class lock.

The most well known Japanese MMO's are FFXIV, FFXI, Dragon Quest X, PSO2, and Monster Hunter. PSO2 also does the class-lock thing, but the classes themselves are not locked to races. It costs P2W money to change class.

Players in Asian games care a lot more about how the characters look. So that's why there is such a huge focus on these big-chested characters in marketing materials, and then you flip the page and there's a character that is small-but-still-an-adult-I-am-sure.

Then go back to Western MMORPG's and what do we have...
1. Minecraft (modded)
2. WoW
3. SWTOR
4. Star Trek Online
5. ESO
6. Fallout76

Of these maybe SWTOR isn't ugly.

Basically what I'm saying here is a lot of these Japanese and Korean games tend to market on the character designs, and survive or fail based on how much players want to play that character/race/class. That character/race/class lockin is a feature to make players have to start over and pump their P2W monies if they want to play that new character. Meanwhile FFXIV is over here and going "Hey you can play all the jobs on one character! Look at how much less time you have to commit!"

The compromise being 14 has to basically make a new set of gear for every dungeon and raid for every race in the game, and not all of those are going to be good. Compare to Wizardy Online when it was still live, usually took it's cues from XIV, where it came out with gear every month, but you had to gacha for it. The character models weren't bad, but they were not nearly as beautiful as FFXIV's art was, especially considering that WO was released during XIV 2.0 launch period and had the opportunity to grab players from XIV.

Asian players tend to care more about how the game looks (again , look at how much the JP side cares about animations) over functionality. Players can complain all they want about Healers being a 1-button DPS in all the MSQ content, but it's never going to become more like a DPS because the JP side doesn't want it to be a DPS. Play DPS if you want DPS functionality and leave the healer role alone.

The easiest rip-off-the-bandaid approach Square Enix can take is to just disable all the DPS buttons in Trial and Raid content on the healer to get the point across that the healer should be only healing in 8-player content. Then in turn disable the self-healing buttons on all the DPS and the Tank. Healing should be amplified on the Tank if they are using their mitigations correctly. But players don't want to play content differently. They want to treat all content like a DPS, because SE keeps making the encounter design that way where half the boss fight is just dodging optional damage rather than bleeding.

[Somnolence]

Man, you just made remember my time as operative healer in store. Bioweapon skills, stealth out of combat to remember, kolto tanks ticks, stim packs...you were always busy doing something. If you ran out of resource, you also had a button to regen that but you could also had one or two combat actions you could take to bring some of it back up.

All of this at normal gameplay level. You didn't need to enter hard mode or nightmare level to feel engaged. You can feel all that across all levels of gameplay as a healer.

I did not do PvE as a healer in SWTOR but it was fun in PvP, since it used same PvE skills. Keeping yourself and allies alive when people are actively trying to burst you down was very engaging challenge which is on completely opposite side of how healing feels in FFXIV.

[Bobby66]

I did not do PvE as a healer in SWTOR but it was fun in PvP, since it used same PvE skills. Keeping yourself and allies alive when people are actively trying to burst you down was very engaging challenge which is on completely opposite side of how healing feels in FFXIV.

Remember standing in acid farming HPS in huttball while people would cleave off your group? God healers were nutty esp when people did not interrupt or cc chained just tried to raw tunnel you.

[Kozmakis]

I did not do PvE as a healer in SWTOR but it was fun in PvP, since it used same PvE skills. Keeping yourself and allies alive when people are actively trying to burst you down was very engaging challenge which is on completely opposite side of how healing feels in FFXIV.

It was so funny as Sorcerer to cast Force Barrier at <10% hp in the middle of the arena, while 5-6 people keep trying to kill you haha So much fun with funny utility spells...

But we digress... I have a question - I checked out the new Extreme Dungeons. Don't worry, it was on a stream, not in-game, I don't have a DPS at level 100 yet, leveling is super slow with these dungeon queues. They don't look that hard, if you know the mechanics; at the same time they look punishing for healers, there's a lot of pressure to not get oneshot (even with 0 vulnerability stacks) from almost insta-cast red circles, which might happe while resurrecting others... There's like no learning curve for your role, just the content, and if the DPS keep dying even with Swiftcast CD reduction it looks probable you might end up slow-casting res... I want to ask the people, who completed them - is that a fair assumption? I am considering playing them on my Sage to check them out, but only after I cancel the auto-renewal of my subscription beforehand, so I am not sure... Let me know, thanks!

[Isala]

It was so funny as Sorcerer to cast Force Barrier at <10% hp in the middle of the arena, while 5-6 people keep trying to kill you haha So much fun with funny utility spells...

But we digress... I have a question - I checked out the new Extreme Dungeons. Don't worry, it was on a stream, not in-game, I don't have a DPS at level 100 yet, leveling is super slow with these dungeon queues. They don't look that hard, if you know the mechanics; at the same time they look punishing for healers, there's a lot of pressure to not get oneshot (even with 0 vulnerability stacks) from almost insta-cast red circles, which might happe while resurrecting others... There's like no learning curve for your role, just the content, and if the DPS keep dying even with Swiftcast CD reduction it looks probable you might end up slow-casting res... I want to ask the people, who completed them - is that a fair assumption? I am considering playing them on my Sage to check them out, but only after I cancel the auto-renewal of my subscription beforehand, so I am not sure... Let me know, thanks!

I healed them. They're not punishing. I DPSed them. The healers died, and it still didn't matter. The non-Warrior tank and I lived to the end of the bosses anyway. Still no effort required even in "expert" dungeons.

[Shurrikhan]

"Tab Target" is not a genre.

It is at least as much a (sub-)genre as third-person shooter, 2.5D fighter, Soulslike action, etc., each of which are significant descriptors whenever the characteristic difference is leveraged. MMOs without any underlying hard-targeting systems (those which are not tab-target) tend to play very differently from those with them. TERA and XIV, for instance, play about as differently as TERA and Lost Ark do, despite TERA and XIV both being third-person vs. Lost Ark's top-down view.

[Kozmakis]

I healed them. They're not punishing. I DPSed them. The healers died, and it still didn't matter. The non-Warrior tank and I lived to the end of the bosses anyway. Still no effort required even in "expert" dungeons.

Well, there you go I might give them a try then... I am still curious as tio why they are homogenising jobs altogether by having a learning curve mainly for the content, not as much for the role.. I mean, once you learn the mechanics, your job matters way less...

[ViaDesperare]

Pretty common in the Crystal DC, but healer quality has really dropped. This was for a farm party.

[ForsakenRoe]

I do not think people are claiming that, the difference between WoW, SWTOR and FFXIV. Is I do not think SE wants healers to be the point of failure in group content. I do not think they want a single role to be the point of failure when it comes to their core gameplay. Look at tanks, aggro management is a thing of the past, and the moment they have an issue holding aggro they just buff aggro gen.

Thing about that is, they could have reduced the feeling of 'Healer dies? We're all boned' in many ways, not just 'make Healer have one damage button to spam for 80%+ of their GCDs' and/or 'make Healer have like 15 different healing OGCD tools, to further reduce how much they need to GCD heal (since that has a cast time, which could cause the Healer to be late with the healing)'.

Simple solution: Phoenix Downs can now be used in combat with a 5s cast time, you can carry up to 999 in a stack (instead of being limited to 1), and you can buy them from any item vendor (same as the trash NQ potions, echo drops etc) for some nominal price (eg 100gil each). Bang, now anyone can raise the healer should they die (even melee/physranged/tanks), RDM/SMN's raise is still valuable as it has range (Phoenix Down has a very short range), and it has less punishment to their damage to use it compared to a Phoenix Down (5s for PD, 2.5s recast for Swiftcasting the raise spell), and RDM still retains its ability to machine-gun out multiple resses back to back.