#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[IDontPetLalas]

No worries, so your source is 'Google' and a forum of over 160,000 posts, that's not at all a cop-out to having no reference. I agree, I am not going to be spending the time to search through an entire sub-forum of that many posts to try and discern which ones you've personally deemed to be valid, detailed and/or extensive.


Some would lead you to believe, sadly.

No, however responding to someone who likes to quote someone out of context and who so quickly jumps to calling someone a troll has now convinced that I wasted far too much time down this sidetrack with you.

[flowerkatie]

No, however responding to someone who likes to quote someone out of context and

Feel free to point out areas where I've responded to you without context, though since we've been struggling to source our claims this entire time I won't hold my breath.

who so quickly jumps to calling someone a troll has now convinced that I wasted far too much time down this sidetrack with you.

Somebody asked how much 'raidwide damage' is required to force 4 dropped GCD's with zero information on hit points, party composition and is just generally a nonsensical question. Has this really been the arguments on healing for the past few years? I'm not at all surprised anymore why the developers haven't been listening.

I will agree that things have become derailed, if you have any response to me that has anything to do with the discussion - I'll respond.

[ForsakenRoe]

And (once again) we're wondering why I've come to disagree with so many of these suggestions. You actually believe that 'more healing' is a simple case of making raid-wide attacks do more damage when there are a wide plethora of other potential changes that can also support in achieving this goal such as providing less oGCD's in the toolkit of a healer or making them weaker with options to 'buff' or 'proc' based on GCD options which would begin forcing more healing-based actions rather than simply pressing your damage button.

Though, the real question is why I bothered responding to this obvious troll post cause you full-well know that stuff like that isn't changed based on paper-calculations and gets simulated through actual testing and adjusted accordingly. Unless you're under the impression I'm more capable than the developers in my understanding.

It's not a troll post. Genuine question. I also don't believe it's just a case of 'how hard does raidwide hit', or 'how often does raidwide hit'. But IMO there are three aspects to what creates the 'challenge' in healing: how hard it hits, how fast it hits, and how much the game forces the healer to stop healing (eg via movement). If we're going to be increasing healing required of the player in some way, it's presumably going to be via option one or two, harder hits, or faster hits (or some combination of the two). So, I simply ask 'how hard/fast does the raidwide damage come in, in order to get the player to have to GCD heal (and replace their damage GCDs with some healing GCDs)?'. If you perceive that as a 'troll question', then that's on you. I think it's a very valid thing to ask when we're talking about, y'know, how we potentially address healer issues by increasing healing requirements?

As for making OGCDs weaker, removing them, etc. We've seen over the years that SE is deathly allergic to the idea of making anyone weaker. It feels bad to be a player and lose power to a nerf, let alone an outright ability removal. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'buff or proc based on GCD options', you might have to give some examples.

I've previously posted myself, an idea of 'What if we had 'Barrier Check' mechanics more often', wherein an aspect of an enemy attack is negated if a Barrier is applied. Thinking of Vulcan Burst in UWU, where the knockback doesn't take place if you have a Barrier. So, as an example, imagine a raidwide which does two hits, the first is 200 damage exactly and applies a nasty bleed, and the second hit hits a millisecond later and deals the actual damage of the raidwide. Then the player can choose: do they put a Barrier up and block the bleed, do they heal through the bleed with their HPS (maybe better for certain jobs, eg AST with its 3 HOTs), or maybe the bleed can be Esuna'd and some healer has a hypothetical AOE Esuna, maybe that'd be the more efficient route?

But I recognize that this idea has an issue of its own: Not every healer has access to party-wide Barrier application. So the 'choice' in this example would be removed for a WHM, who cannot apply Barriers partywide, their options as it stands would be limited to just 'HPS power through the bleed'. And unfortunately for any dreams of 'use more GCD heals', WHM has the perfect tool to deal with raidwide bleeds: The Overheal Weed.

I don't expect you to be more capable than the developers. But I would hope that, if we're going to have a proper discussion on healer jobs, whether or not they have issues, and how to rectify those issues (especially those that concern actual numbers like 'we don't get asked to heal enough'), that we'd be talking about actual stats and maths. I wonder, how do you think the developers get the first stats to 'test and adjust accordingly'? Just guessing? No, they presumably have calculations to work out what a job's kit is capable of. So, my question was simply to do that first calculation, to find that baseline of 'how much healing is enough to achieve equilibrium with our OGCD kit on SCH'.

The fact you don't want to answer (or can't) makes me think that maybe you're the troll. But I'm willing to wait for you to do the maths. Also, if I'm trolling, I assume you'd be able to report my posts for being 'troll posts', surely?

[flowerkatie]

So, I simply ask 'how hard/fast does the raidwide damage come in, in order to get the player to have to GCD heal (and replace their damage GCDs with some healing GCDs)?'. If you perceive that as a 'troll question', then that's on you

If you're not a troll then go ahead, feel free to enlighten me how you, based on the information you provided would calculate how fast and much that raid-wide damage would need to be. Given the fact you provided no information on the composition of the party, no information on the size of the party, and least of all not a single piece of information on the hit points of the party. You call it maths and calculations whilst not providing any context that would be required to make those calculations. Even if you provided every single piece of needed context, you'd still be asking me to do something in the least efficient and most nonsensical way ever.

MMO balancing is not done with paper-calculations, its balanced via in-game testing and experimenting. Encounters are ran tens of times to balance certain aspects of the game, and if you don't understand that - I don't know what to say.

The fact you don't want to answer (or can't) makes me think that maybe you're the troll.

Then believe me to be a troll because I wont entertain nonsense if you seriously believe that based on the information you provided any meaningful inference can be made. And in your own words, "if I'm trolling, I assume you'd be able to report my posts for being 'troll posts', surely?"

[Isala]

MMO balancing is not done with paper-calculations, its balanced via in-game testing and experimenting. Encounters are ran tens of times to balance certain aspects of the game, and if you don't understand that - I don't know what to say.

This is wrong, and the devs actually put out an apology post explaining their paper calculations after overtuning a fight. They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching, and adding percentage points based on what they felt the actual players were capable of. Literally paper-calculations.

[flowerkatie]

This is wrong, and the devs actually put out an apology post explaining their paper calculations after overtuning a fight. They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching, and adding percentage points based on what they felt the actual players were capable of. Literally paper-calculations.

Feel free to reference this where they've stated the overtuning came from paper-calculations, might be the first time we actually get a real piece of evidence behind these statements.

Edit: Re-reading your statement actually I realize this doesn't prove anything wrong. You said yourself, "They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching" and then applied a percentage to that. So you're saying they did do in-game testing and balancing, but then on-top of that they proceeded to make the mistake of adding a % increase.

Meanwhile, I was asked to try and somehow come up with an arbitrary value of a pretend raidwide damage for a party we have no context on. That's totally the same situation (/s)

[ForsakenRoe]

If you're not a troll then go ahead, feel free to enlighten me how you, based on the information you provided would calculate how fast and much that raid-wide damage would need to be. Given the fact you provided no information on the composition of the party, no information on the size of the party, and least of all not a single piece of information on the hit points of the party. You call it maths and calculations whilst not providing any context that would be required to make those calculations. Even if you provided every single piece of needed context, you'd still be asking me to do something in the least efficient and most nonsensical way ever.

MMO balancing is not done with paper-calculations, its balanced via in-game testing and experimenting. Encounters are ran tens of times to balance certain aspects of the game, and if you don't understand that - I don't know what to say.

I said 'a dungeon boss', so that's a standard comp of 4 players, one tank, one healer, 2 DPS. Which particular comp is up to the reader, but presumably if we're talking about balancing how much healing is asked of the healer, it's going to be a comp with no extra healing provided from non-healers. So, let's say a DRK, SCH, and 2 BlackMages who have forgotten that Manaward exists. And let's say Tank HP is 175k, Your HP as the Healer is 108k, and the BLMs are also 108k HP.

I don't see how I need to 'provide context' so much. Surely, being knowledgeable enough on the topic to speak with such authority, would also confer the knowledge of how to work out 'how much healing can a job put out over X timeframe' (which could already be inferred from the previous post as 'the duration of a dungeon boss encounter'). I don't see how it's nonsensical, inefficient, maybe, we don't have whatever tools SE uses to make these calculations, but we can napkin-math it out pretty easily.

I am well aware that MMO balancing is done via testing, iteration and reiteration. But my point is, that testing and iteration starts from a starting point. And what decides that starting point? Calculations on what the job is capable of. The devs don't just go 'ok we'll make this raidwide do uhhh, idk 20k damage, probably not enough oh well lets see what happens LOL', because that WOULD be inefficient. Horrendously so. Literal guesswork to create a starting point for the iteration process is a terrible idea. Which brings us back to the original point: There's a base value, derived from calculations regarding job output, that the devs 'start with' when balancing content. I want to know, what you believe that 'starting value' would be for a SCH, when designing a dungeon boss in such a way to burden the player to use at least 4 healing GCDs per minute in the encounter.

I'll even make it easier. Let's say the dungeon boss encounter lasts exactly 4 minutes.

[Rolder50]

Feel free to reference this where they've stated the overtuning came from paper-calculations, might be the first time we actually get a real piece of evidence behind these statements.

Edit: Re-reading your statement actually I realize this doesn't prove anything wrong. You said yourself, "They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching" and then applied a percentage to that. So you're saying they did do in-game testing and balancing, but then on-top of that they proceeded to make the mistake of adding a % increase.

Meanwhile, I was asked to try and somehow come up with an arbitrary value of a pretend raidwide damage for a party we have no context on. That's totally the same situation (/s)

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...acaff4567b4e40

To quote:

We always add a little bit extra to the boss values before rechecking the fight and releasing it live.

The team responsible for balancing boss fights does so without debug commands and at the appropriate item level, employing available materia, foods, and medicines while experimenting with mitigating actions and various job compositions. Yet we recognize that player skill far exceeds our own. If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.

Based on the team's skill and our experience, that "little bit extra" usually translates to:

Balance test clear values +1-2% HP

[Isala]

Feel free to reference this where they've stated the overtuning came from paper-calculations, might be the first time we actually get a real piece of evidence behind these statements.

Edit: Re-reading your statement actually I realize this doesn't prove anything wrong. You said yourself, "They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching" and then applied a percentage to that. So you're saying they did do in-game testing and balancing, but then on-top of that they proceeded to make the mistake of adding a % increase.

Meanwhile, I was asked to try and somehow come up with an arbitrary value of a pretend raidwide damage for a party we have no context on. That's totally the same situation (/s)

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...340b373870140b

We always add a little bit extra to the boss values before rechecking the fight and releasing it live.

The team responsible for balancing boss fights does so without debug commands and at the appropriate item level, employing available materia, foods, and medicines while experimenting with mitigating actions and various job compositions. Yet we recognize that player skill far exceeds our own. If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.

Based on the team's skill and our experience, that "little bit extra" usually translates to:

Balance test clear values +1-2% HP

The final values account for other mathematical factors too, of course, such as the estimated damage the party could deal from the moment of victory to the end of the time limit, as well as total burst damage potential based on frequency and amount inflicted. The numbers these various calculations are based on are what we were referencing when we said that our team’s performance was higher than anticipated.

Emphasis mine. "Estimated damage." based on players being more skilled than the dev team. So, not even real numbers. They estimated it and got it wrong.

Say it with me. Paper. Calculations.

[Rolder50]

Emphasis mine. "Estimated damage." based on players being more skilled than the dev team. So, not even real numbers. They estimated it and got it wrong.

Say it with me. Paper. Calculations.

It's even funnier because this would be the easiest game to determine how much DPS a group could do just with math. There aint any crazy talents or gear options or anything to really throw a wrench in the works.