It's time to ask again: what's MP for?

[Valkyrie-Veil]

I just don't get this mindset. Managing MP is a staple in the RPG and MMORPG genres. If people "don't like it," then they are in the wrong genre.

I get that, for some reason, XIV has attracted a ton of people who don't actually like the genre it is in, but what about those of us who do? Why does everything need to be tuned and dumbed down because a bunch of people who are playing a game in a genre they seemingly dislike don't like staple mechanics?

Overcoming obstacles and learning to manage MP usage is actually the draw and *gasp* fun for many folks. At what point will SE just tell these folks enough with the whining about everything standing in the way of their character and their favorite pavement princess costume while they sit in Limsa dance emoting and whining that everything in game is too hard for them on the forums?

Their point is that you don’t have to manage MP anymore. SE has already removed the need to manage MP and therefore the need for MP in general.

[Aravell]

It depends of the back then. In HW most casters would run dry of MP for different reasons:

- DPS casters like SMN (not BLM obviously) had to manage MP because Ruin 3 costed 1300 MP (unless under Dreadwyrm were it was MP neutral or something because divided by 10). Still a good SMN would use Ruin 3 sparingly but still use it over a player only keeping it for Dreadwyrm, because it was more DPS.
- Healers could run out of MP very fast because they didn't have a lot of OGCD abilities like today and the ones they had were... less potent usually (notably the healer bubbles, SCH didn't do anything else than mitigate for instance). Also tanks and other roles were unable to self sustain as well as today either and required more intervention.

Tbf, casters at least could self-manage their resources to not completely brick. SMN could stop casting Ruin III for a bit to bring their MP back to stability and all the healers could cast a lower tier damage spell to spend less MP until they get back to stable levels (SB had Break which costs 0 MP for this purpose).

Unlike the TP users, who completely bricked roughly two-thirds into any long fight through no fault of their own and can only recover through outside intervention.

[Shipp]

Their point is that you don’t have to manage MP anymore. SE has already removed the need to manage MP and therefore the need for MP in general.

And my point is, "players won't like it," is not a valid excuse to not bring back a staple mechanic in an RPG.

[RedLolly]

Did anyone cry when we lost TP? Was Monk suddenly cake easy because managing TP during Greased Lightning was no longer a thought and never having Astrologians troll them with Spire cards since they didn't even have them?

It really is just an old system that only sticks around for being a legacy JRPG staple. Scrapping MP and building healers entirely around limited OGCDs could actually be the desperately desired mix up and layer of thought healer mains have been begging for.

[Shipp]

Did anyone cry when we lost TP? Was Monk suddenly cake easy because managing TP during Greased Lightning was no longer a thought and never having Astrologians troll them with Spire cards since they didn't even have them?

It really is just an old system that only sticks around for being a legacy JRPG staple. Scrapping MP and building healers entirely around limited OGCDs could actually be the desperately desired mix up and layer of thought healer mains have been begging for.

It really isn't just some legacy JRPG staple. It comes directly as a substitute for the way games like DnD limit how many spells you can cast between rests. It is there as a way to limit the casters to force smarter strategical play.

TP actually is just some legacy JRPG staple that tried to save the same purpose as MP for mages when the entire point of melee is that they aren't supposed to worry about that stuff. It's one of the draws of melee.

Also, yes, there were people upset about the change to TP. I saw threads about it while I wasn't even playing the game.

It's time SE stopped catering to people who use this game only as virtual barbie simulator and start catering to the actual PLAYERS who don't just sit in Limsa while whining on forums constantly about how hard everything is in the game.

[RedLolly]

It really isn't just some legacy JRPG staple. It comes directly as a substitute for the way games like DnD limit how many spells you can cast between rests. It is there as a way to limit the casters to force smarter strategical play.

TP actually is just some legacy JRPG staple that tried to save the same purpose as MP for mages when the entire point of melee is that they aren't supposed to worry about that stuff. It's one of the draws of melee.

Also, yes, there were people upset about the change to TP. I saw threads about it while I wasn't even playing the game.

It's time SE stopped catering to people who use this game only as virtual barbie simulator and start catering to the actual PLAYERS who don't just sit in Limsa while whining on forums constantly about how hard everything is in the game.

Isn't the current meta of being hyper-reliant on OGCDs just more in line with DnD's system?

My WHM already wants to use them because of the Blood Lily and my experience with Sage has me trying to rely on addersgal stacks so I can keep DPS rolling for Kardia. Both heavily favor oGCD heals for both emergencies and topping off.

The entire point is we're already practically there with removing MP and it wouldn't actually mess with the play style the game encourages for healers. Make Medica 2 something I can only cast every 2 minutes and I don't think it would mess with the average WHM.

[Shipp]

The entire point is we're already practically there with removing MP

This is the problem. The entire design they have going ever since late ARR and HW where healers are just DPS with a simpler rotation and some heal spells needs to go. They've stuck to it for a decade and all it has caused is homogenization and the dumbing down of the healing classes period. Sage is a great example of how to do a DPS healer right. None of the other healers should need to be DPSing or even have the time to dps. Unlike Sage, it doesn't feel good on the other classes and they clearly were never meant for the Frankenstein gameplay they currently have.

[Xapapetsu]

MP is practically useless when it comes to normal content, aside from blm, but plays an important role in skill expression for healers in high-end content. Mana management is important if you want to clear high-end content, just because you feel it's useless doesn't mean that it's not.

[RedLolly]

This is the problem. The entire design they have going ever since late ARR and HW where healers are just DPS with a simpler rotation and some heal spells needs to go. They've stuck to it for a decade and all it has caused is homogenization and the dumbing down of the healing classes period. Sage is a great example of how to do a DPS healer right. None of the other healers should need to be DPSing or even have the time to dps. Unlike Sage, it doesn't feel good on the other classes and they clearly were never meant for the Frankenstein gameplay they currently have.

I don't think requesting Healers simply heal and hardly DPS has anything to do with MP remaining a resource. It would also destroy playing those jobs in over world or solo content as being hard to kill doesn't help if you can't do any damage to the thing trying to kill you.

Scholar initially had access to much of Summoner's kit and was a very powerful DoT mage in ARR and HW. Bringing in a small but notable amount of damage was both always the intention but also part of the unique appeal of healing in FFXIV and also the biggest issue of their design.

[Valence]

Tbf, casters at least could self-manage their resources to not completely brick. SMN could stop casting Ruin III for a bit to bring their MP back to stability and all the healers could cast a lower tier damage spell to spend less MP until they get back to stable levels (SB had Break which costs 0 MP for this purpose).

Unlike the TP users, who completely bricked roughly two-thirds into any long fight through no fault of their own and can only recover through outside intervention.

DRK's type of management was a lot more interesting than SMN to my eyes - even though it was a little hardcore for the general playerbase who didn't turn on darkside for a reason. Healers as well for the reasons I mentioned.

Stormblood I don't consider it interesting in any way shape or form when it comes to resource management at least in 8 man fights. It just still offered the illusion of it and only a niche of cases was still relevant, like Foe Requiem optimization (I miss how organic that kind of management was, today it's just pressing buttons every 2 minutes without any thought behind). Even TP wasn't much of a problem in SB anymore. I remember specifically raiding and Tactician (the old TP version) was just "I'm using it on CD but nobody truly needs it anyway". Only place were it was still relevant was in dungeons, ironically, where resource management was still very much a thing.

TP design could have been made more interesting if rotations had fallbacks mechanics to be fair. That's probably why everybody hated it. I think in dungeons for instance the idea the devs had was that AoE was a luxury and not a given, and that past a point if you were out of juice, you'd have to single target. In a nutshell this makes sense to me, but it just felt miserable for everybody in practice.

Did anyone cry when we lost TP? Was Monk suddenly cake easy because managing TP during Greased Lightning was no longer a thought and never having Astrologians troll them with Spire cards since they didn't even have them?

It really is just an old system that only sticks around for being a legacy JRPG staple. Scrapping MP and building healers entirely around limited OGCDs could actually be the desperately desired mix up and layer of thought healer mains have been begging for.

The simple thought of it fills me with dread, but to be fair that's what healers have already been since ShB butchered the whole MP system anyway.

MP is practically useless when it comes to normal content, aside from blm, but plays an important role in skill expression for healers in high-end content. Mana management is important if you want to clear high-end content, just because you feel it's useless doesn't mean that it's not.

You're the first raiding healer that I hear having that opinion to be honest. Usually the group wipes way before MP becomes a problem those days.

Raids aren't designed to threaten party resources anymore. You won't run out of MP because it's not trying to pull a Harrowing Hell every minute of the fight (I miss Harrowing Hell, that was actually challenging healer resources unlike everything else). Raids are just programmed to pull a mitigation check every minute with a raid wide that requires people to press their mitigation buttons, and use some OGCD heals to bring the party's HP back up until the next mitigation check, and when it's not a raid wide it's stack marker or spread mechanics. Raids are also mechanically designed, more and more so, to not accept party casualties much depending on where they do happen in the encounter timeline because one of the only remaining factors for challenge in their current system is body checks in all shapes and forms - and body checks do not challenge the healers at all, they literally bypass them.