Originally Posted by
Kohashi
While I understand why people want to have more fun while playing their classes, I don't understand why people want this game to be a copy of an X game. If the combat/healing is more engaging for you there, just play that game.
Originally, FFXIV had a unique take on Healers, where we had a lot more freedom (in terms of available GCDs) to throw out damage spells. Having the ability to actually help in dungeon pulls by using Holy to stunlock mobs, felt very unique compared to WOW. People would say 'I don't want to DPS, I want to Heal because I'm Healer' (as in, they're asking for a more WOW style gameplay in FFXIV), and the irony is that WOW has now adopted a more FFXIV style of healing (where Healers have time to deal damage, or have reasons to such as building resources to spend on heals).
But for anyone who wants the Cataclysm style of 'you don't even have time to do damage, because there's so much healing to do', I agree, Cata Classic is out right now, and could be played to satisfy the hunger for that design. But the game I want FFXIV to be like in Healer design, is the FFXIV I joined, and enjoyed Healer in precisely because it did 'something different from the rest' (that being, I could do actually respectable damage as a healer to help speed the dungeon up). HW is too complex according to SE (because Cleric Stance, most likely), but we haven't heard anything about Stormblood, why not take a look at, say, Scholar of SB, and see what made that design so popular that some content creators still refer to it as the gold standard for kit design
Originally Posted by
Kohashi
I would like to actually see more innovation, a different approach, and a way to make things engaging. Also, keep in mind this game generally doesn't have the target audience set on people who have played every single piece of content for 11 years.
I don't think anyone's expecting SE to focus on the 'players who have played every piece of content for 11 years' when it comes to revitalizing the role. I also don't think they necessarily need to overthink the 'be innovative' thing, as what they had in previous expansions, a Healer design where you had time to do damage, and the damage is actually quite respectable (as a percentage of other role's output), WAS innovative at the time. They just moved away from it over the years, in the hopes of appealing to non-healer players. I don't think this is a 'be innovative and do something new and crazy' moment, I think it's a simple 'go back to your roots, remember why it was a success in the first place' moment
Originally Posted by
Kohashi
Making classes overcomplicated and with a zillion systems to watch for and manage will eventually just drive out a lot of "casual" players and some roles will see significant shortages.
This is only true if A: the game does a bad job teaching, and B: the players refuse to go back and learn the new systems. The problem isn't that 'there's so much to learn, casuals won't be able to keep up' IMO, as a learning player going through the levelling process would get each action one at a time. Looking at one of my designs as an example, the WHM:
At level 4, the player gets Aero and it has a 12s Duration. This teaches them that Aero should be used every 5th GCD ideally
At level 8, the player gets Protect. This teaches the player that there's more to Healing, than 'Healing'. Protecting your allies with damage reduction is also an aspect of being a Healer
At level 15, the player gets Water and it has a 15s Cooldown. This teaches them that Water should be used every 6th GCD ideally, but it can also be held onto, to use while running so you can keep your GCD rolling
At level 30, the player gets the Lily Gauge (down from 52), and a barrier action tied to it (Stoneskin). This teaches them that 'some actions require a limited resource'
At level 50, the player gets Blessing of the Elementals, and the Nature's Vigilance Gauge. At this point, the player is taught that every non-Lily spell gives them some gauge, and that Healing spells give more.
They are also taught that 'using this healing move gives access to powerful damage moves', incentivizing using damage, and opening the idea of 'what if I build up to that healing move with damage attacks'
At level 60, the player gets Afflatus Tragedy, giving a partial refund to the Lilies they spend. This teaches the player that the Lilies are not just for protection/healing, but also for dealing a big damage refund.
At this point, the player might also realize that 'if I use Lilies while I can't hit the boss, it still blooms the Blood Lily, so it's like free damage in a way'
At level 68, Protect upgrades to Plenary Indulgence.
This additional healing effect teaches the player that they should try to activate Protect quite close to the damage coming out, as they can then use Plenary's bonus healing to help heal up after
At level 74, Afflatus Tragedy upgrades to Misery, and becomes fully damage neutral.
This teaches the player that they should be as proactive as possible with Lily spending, so they can generate as many Miseries as possible (to put in raidbuffs)
As shown above, the learning player would learn these lessons, in sequence, not all at once. There's time between these level brackets, to internalize the knowledge of the previous lesson. For example, there's a lot to learn with Blessing of the Elementals, as it gives every spell thus far (Cure2, Regen, Medica2, Cure3, Stone, Water, Aero, Holy) values of 'this is how much Gauge you build by using this action'. But at level 50, the player also has the whole Post-ARR quest to get through, so there's plenty of time, and instances/dungeons, for the player to get used to this extra knowledge.
If the problem is 'I already got to level 100 and now I'm being forced to learn all these gauge build values at once this is too much', there's solutions for that in the game already. The player could do a Trust run of certain key levelling brackets, for example, a level 30 dungeon, a level 50 dungeon, and a level 70 dungeon, to get used to the new stuff at each level bracket and 'speedrun the levelling process' in a sense. The player could do the same with real players, in actual dungeon runs. When I first unlocked SGE, I did a run of a Level 50 dungeon (don't remember which), and then a run of Holminster Switch (71) before spamming Bozja to 80, to make sure I understood the fundamentals of how the class worked.
I don't think that 'oh a player will refuse to learn the new stuff, and also refuse to use the ingame systems that aid in learning the new stuff, and then be not-good in current content and complain that they're not-good' is a reason to avoid changes. Especially since, with the above examples, the WHM could simply play as they do currently and still clear all content.
Reply With Quote
