It's past time, Yoshi-P...

[Tridus]

Blizzard attempted to address the exact same problem. They nerfed healing spells and mana pools so the party had to work with the healer to get through the content. Sadly, it was a disaster because tanks and damage dealers refused to change their ways leading to numerous wipes and kicking of healers. This in turn led to the Great Healer Drought.™

Yep. I was there for it, and I thought it was great. It didn't work out so well on the lack of healers department, but if healing doesn't have resource management, then why do we have more than two heals (big heal and big aoe heal)?

That said, it was also that way back in vanilla WoW, and it wasn't so bad there in terms of healer numbers. I remember people used to keep multiple ranks of a given heal on their bars so they could minimize the MP usage for the amount of HP needing to be healed. We were of course the only role that would ever do that, but we were the ones with the most resource issues and the only one where "more" isn't necessarily "better" due to overheal. Then we got collectively lazy when it got progressively easier in WotLK (where "spam Circle of healing the entire run" was sufficient for an awful lot of content), and having to do it the hard way again was a big adjustment that some people just didn't want to make.

I mean, stuff like freecure and ehanced benefic II suggest pretty strongly that SE thinks we should be using Cure and Benefic. For some reason they then gave us a system where there's no particular reason to do that most of the time at endgame. Either they didn't intend for what we got and it's just too late to fix it for Stormblood, or the left hand and the right hand need to have a conversation.

Now, with that said, I think there is something to the idea. Surely, wouldn't the game be improved by reining in the power of our heals? This gathering of all the mobs and running to the boss is an abomination. I'd love for crowd control to be a thing in our dungeons. In other words, instead of everyone being focused on dealing the most damage, how about being focused on our roles and teamwork?

It should be, yeah. At one point in MMOs, being able to lock down, kite, snare, stun, CC and all that were valuable skills. Yanking stuff off and keeping it busy was a big deal. Pulling extra stuff was bad. Saw this amazing Hunter freeze trap snare one enemy in a pack, kite another, and pet tank a third after the tank died, and it was AWESOME when we turned what should have been a wipe into a win. There isn't a lot of room to do that these days, because even if I do use my CC, so few other players recognize what's happening that they'll probably just AoE and break it immediately.

A lot of gameplay has been cast aside in favor of "round up everything and AoE it", and IMO the genre is lesser for it. We may be in the minority, I don't know.

[Tridus]

I think what a lot of people are failing to see, is that SE wants the majority of the game to be accessible.

Yep. I get that, and I think it's a good thing. But there needs to be some kind of challenge progression for people to advance upward in challenge, just like in gear. That's where the idea that Expert is too easy is coming from. I mean, it's endgame content and rewards endgame currency. So why it that all of them are easier than Auran Vale is today? I still see groups make mistakes in there that lead to wipes (usually in the first big room). That pretty much doesn't happen in Expert. The Experts right now are for the most part extremely forgiving with little real risk unless everyone's undergeared and doesn't know what they're doing. The leap up from there to stuff like Shinryu Ex and Savage is HUGE. There's people who hit that and simply bounce off of it because there's not a lot in between.

I think people tend to underestimate the player base. Rabanastre came up, and it was a real mess for a while. But the last couple of weeks I've seen a lot of improvement in the average run. If you give the player base a step up in difficulty from what they're used to that isn't a chasm, they can do it. I mean, it's still not nearly as difficult as the hardest content in the game, but it's a significant step up from Kugane Castle. That's closer to where Expert should be.

[Maeka]

I will admit that it is a little easy, sure... the newest 4-man dungeon, I did blind without even reading up on the bosses, the mechanics were... rather easy (though the spriggan part of the 2nd boss confused me for a bit, but it is tuned so that the other 3 could completely handle it even if I had zero clue what I was supposed to do, I did eventually notice that I could lay mines and blow the statues up, but that was near the end of the fight).


But yet I don't want them to turn it too far that I'm wiping multiple times per dungeon, because I don't see that as fun, and the playerbase in general just does not have the patience for it. I hate it when people drop group, or try to votekick people or what-not. It slows everything down and adds pressure I don't like.

As it is, I really did not enjoy Shinryu story-mode all that much, not because of my own failings, but mainly because of the common player I was running into. I had to wait until I could get in with a party of veterans (by Qing right after the reset) to actually clear the thing. I didn't find wiping 10+ times on it very fun. I also remember the first few times I did Ala Mihgo or that laboratory, the last bosses in both of those were a bit annoyingly difficult if you were at leveling gear when you first got there, back when people were still learning it.

I think part of the problem with most dungeons being too easy, is that the item-levels are jumping too high too fast. You do Ala Mihgo when you've got about 290 and it's OK for difficulty... oh but wait, now Omega and the newest dungeon drops 315-320. Go back into Ala Mihgo and you steamroll the place because you're 30 I-level above what you're supposed to be for there.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I think what a lot of people are failing to see, is that SE wants the majority of the game to be accessible. *snip*

I, for one, do not want my experience tarnished because of the hardcore crowd who feel the game is "too easy". I like the fact that a large portion of the game's content is easy. I play for some relaxed fun, not to be sitting on the edge of my seat. I'm just not into that kind of stuff. Call me a carebear, casual, noob, whatever you wanna call me. Go ahead, it's fine. I'm not a pro, and I never claimed to be.

But please don't go nerfing the part I love most about FFXIV, because if you do that... then you kill what makes the game fun in the first place for me and many others like me.

Now, IF they can find some way to change Savage/Extremes, where heals are more important than DPS races, WITHOUT altering the rest of the grouped content... then have at it! I just don't want my stuff suddenly nerfed because of what the hardcores are complaining about.

Maeka, looking through this thread, you'll see few hard core players. Hell, I'm not even in Heavensward yet. So, that makes me pretty much a care bear too.

Cutting through all the noise, what I see is a group of players who are more committed to the game than your off the street casual player who are attempting to nail down the source of their discontent.

Personally, I like the fact that a lot of the content is easy also. But, it does feel off.

Healing should be more about decision making while healing aka triage. Tanking should be more than grabbing all the mobs in a dash toward the next boss for the damage dealers. Damage dealing should be more than pushing a certain sequence of buttons over and over.

In other words, many posters want the game to be more engaging.

Surely, S.E. can manage to do this without making the game so hard that us carebears will no longer enjoy the game. As you said, the game must be accessible to the majority of players and those are the casuals.

I suspect what it all comes down to is some tweaking of the abilities. A little less healing power, mobs hitting a touch more, and crowd control being more powerful in PvE than it is now. Of course, this'll need testing to get the numbers right but none of this is an overhaul of the existing game.

[HyoMinPark]

I think what a lot of people are failing to see, is that SE wants the majority of the game to be accessible.

The hardcores out there have their Extreme, Savage, and the PF-Only raids.

There’s nothing wrong with content being accessible, but there is something wrong when “accessibility” corresponds with “braindead easy.”

Yeah, the “hardcores” have Extreme, Savage, and now Ultimate, but even those (with the exception of Ultimate) have gotten progressively easier with each tier. Gordias was overtuned, so Midas was tuned down to try and bring back the raid community. But then Creator came out, and it didn’t keep the Midas difficulty, but instead got easier. Deltascape Savage is even easier than Creator. I’m hoping that the next tier of Deltascape isn’t easier than this one, but, bad as this sounds, I don’t have much hope just because of all the complaints I see about how “hard” Deltascape is, or how it’s the “perfect difficulty” for the “hardcores.”

Even the Ex trials are starting to border more on the easier side of the scale (just look at Lakshmi Ex and Susano Ex compared to fights like Thordan Ex and Sephirot Ex—even Shinryu isn’t as hard as Thordan or Sephirot), and Savage is slowly getting to the point where it’s “midcore” content. Again, that’s partially because of the developers failing to tune Gordias correctly, and then having to pick up the pieces of the raiding community that it left behind; and partially because players complain about “content accessibility” and complain about, when they enter Ex or Savage, about how “hard” the content is, and how it needs to be “nerfed” (see the “ShinEx needs to be nerfed” threads).

This is, in part, the developer’s fault for not giving this game a steady increase in difficulty from content like dungeons to “expert dungeons” to 24-man raids to story mode 8-man raids and, finally, to Extreme and Savage. You have “Expert Roulette”, where a player only needs to bang their head against the keyboard to clear it; and then you have things like Rabanastre (the first two bosses aren’t hard, but require people to do more than mindlessly smack it) and V1S (which is slightly harder than the story mode version; same for V2S), where things get a little harder and you kind of need to pay a little more attention to mechanics; and then suddenly the game slaps players in the face with mechanic-heavy fights like V3S, and healer-intense fights like V4S. And those were easier than their predecessors—A11S and Cruise Chaser wipe the floor with Halicarnassus.

Now, there is a valid complaint that in this Extreme/Savage content, the healers and DPS are forced to dish out as much DPS as possible. But if they change that, then they make the game not fun for the vast majority who are NOT doing the Extreme/Savage content.

I, for one, do not want my experience tarnished because of the hardcore crowd who feel the game is "too easy". I like the fact that a large portion of the game's content is easy. I play for some relaxed fun, not to be sitting on the edge of my seat. I'm just not into that kind of stuff. Call me a carebear, casual, noob, whatever you wanna call me. Go ahead, it's fine. I'm not a pro, and I never claimed to be.

That’s fine if that’s what you like, but you can’t speak for the rest of the playerbase. Not everyone likes the braindead content; not everyone likes the trend that harder content has, as of late, of getting progressively easier. I don’t care if they leave dungeons the same (they’re dungeons—I do them to cap weekly tomes and that’s about it anymore), but I really wish they would keep Extreme and Savage at that harder difficulty that “the hardcores” like and want. But, there again, when the “hardcores” ask for things to be harder in content that they primarily do, they are attacked by the other side of the community about how the developers should not be “wasting resources” to “cater to the 1%”—just see the threads made about Ultimate.

I’m not really sure what you mean by the first part of this quote—some clarification would be nice, if you don’t mind. Are you just talking about how Extreme/Savage fights don’t have the more intensive healing/tanking that some hardcore players would like, and instead are still more copies of “heal occassionally, put a regen on the MT, now DPS”? If that’s the case, I can agree with making Extreme/Savage fights require more intensive healing to make the jobs more engaging. Rather than it just be “Regen MT, spam Stone IV/Malefic III/Broil II”. But, to do this, they should probably also consider making easier content demand more healing, which I don’t really see as being a bad thing either.

If that’s not what you meant, please do correct me though.

But please don't go nerfing the part I love most about FFXIV, because if you do that... then you kill what makes the game fun in the first place for me and many others like me.

I’m not saying this in any way to sound rude, so I apologize if it comes off that way, but the only way the developers could “nerf” the more casual content would be if they made mobs and bosses deal 0 damage to tanks at this point.

Now, IF they can find some way to change Savage/Extremes, where heals are more important than DPS races, WITHOUT altering the rest of the grouped content... then have at it! I just don't want my stuff suddenly nerfed because of what the hardcores are complaining about.

I would be perfectly fine if Extremes and Savage had more engaging gameplay for tanks and healers. But that’s not going to happen, because of the sheer amount of people that would complain about it. Because now, they would have to do more than just Netflix and Heal. And like I said above, the developers would probably have to increase healing in the “easier” content to prepare players for what Extreme/Savage is going to bring. Otherwise, you will just have the same complaints we have now: the content demands more, and is therefore “too hard” and “needs to be nerfed”. Because there is no consistent difficulty increase—you have “braindead easy” immediately jump into “oh shit, I actually need to pay attention”.

I wouldn’t see increasing healing requirements in dungeons as being a particularly bad thing, to be honest.

[Maeka]

I’m not really sure what you mean by the first part of this quote—some clarification would be nice, if you don’t mind. Are you just talking about how Extreme/Savage fights don’t have the more intensive healing/tanking that some hardcore players would like, and instead are still more copies of “heal occassionally, put a regen on the MT, now DPS”? If that’s the case, I can agree with making Extreme/Savage fights require more intensive healing to make the jobs more engaging. Rather than it just be “Regen MT, spam Stone IV/Malefic III/Broil II”. But, to do this, they should probably also consider making easier content demand more healing, which I don’t really see as being a bad thing either.

That quote was:

Now, there is a valid complaint that in this Extreme/Savage content, the healers and DPS are forced to dish out as much DPS as possible. But if they change that, then they make the game not fun for the vast majority who are NOT doing the Extreme/Savage content.

What I meant by this, is that if they change the Extreme/Savage fights to be more healer intensive, then we go more towards what WoW is where a tank goes from 100% to 20% to 100% to 20% every 2-3 seconds. This is NOT fun whatsoever. I HATE that. I refuse to heal in WoW, but I love healing in FFXIV.

If they change it to be that way in Extreme/Savage, then they will probably end up changing it for the rest of the content too and I don't want that. At all.

I’m not saying this in any way to sound rude, so I apologize if it comes off that way, but the only way the developers could “nerf” the more casual content would be if they made mobs and bosses deal 0 damage to tanks at this point.

When I said nerf, I meant, nerfing fun by making it harder than I'd like it to be. Perhaps nerf was a bad word to use there.

I wouldn’t see increasing healing requirements in dungeons as being a particularly bad thing, to be honest.

I would, but that's because I have "PTSD" (well not really, but you know what I mean) from WoW. Chain-casting heals and doing nothing else is not fun. It's why I don't like undergeared tanks multipulling. Spamming Cure II on the tank nonstop is not fun gameplay.

EDIT: Did you see my post above where I mentioned that Item-Level Climb being too fast as being part of our problems? Running Ala Mihgo at 290 felt mildly stressful during the last boss and very reasonable everywhere else. Getting 320 and doing it again, however, and it's ridiculously easy. Maybe we shouldn't be jumping 30 i-level between Max Level and First-Tier Easy Raid?

[HyoMinPark]

What I meant by this, is that if they change the Extreme/Savage fights to be more healer intensive, then we go more towards what WoW is where a tank goes from 100% to 20% to 100% to 20% every 2-3 seconds. This is NOT fun whatsoever. I HATE that. I refuse to heal in WoW, but I love healing in FFXIV.

If they change it to be that way in Extreme/Savage, then they will probably end up changing it for the rest of the content too and I don't want that. At all.

The developers don’t have to make it as extreme as 100% to 20% in one hit outside of anything but a tankbuster. But, I feel like healing right now is pretty braindead (I’m talking about just healing; not healing and weaving in DPS). I can agree that spamming Cure II/Benefic II/Physick is extremely boring, but it’s also not engaging when a Regen is enough to keep a tank up until it’s time to refresh it. I have to be able to DPS as a healer in order to feel like playing healers are worthwhile; if I didn’t have that option, I wouldn’t play a healer because the job would be incredibly unengaging and boring.

With the players advocating “healers should only heal”/“I’m a healer and I only heal; I don’t DPS”, I don’t know how they can find such gameplay engaging when you barely have to heal in 90% of the content outside of fights like V3S, V4S, and Ultimate, or how they can argue that “healing is hard” in this game when it really is not. No fight, even the hardest ones (barring Ultimate) demand even 50% healing uptime (I honestly feel like that may be a stretch too, unless you don’t care about overhealing). A good example is, when I run on SCH for things like 8-mans or 24-mans, I can Adlo the MT/Succor the group to prep for AOE damage (or Deploy an Adlo if people stack close enough for it—that doesn’t happen often though :c), Indom if the damage takes 50% or more health from the group...but then, the rest of the time, Eos or Selene can handle the healing, especially Eos with a Roused Whispering Dawn. Healing is only made more challenging by tank failing to mitigate, or when a DPS stands in crap, and that’s not really how it’s supposed to be. At that point, I’m healing because of other people being incompetent, not because the fight actually calls for it.

When I said nerf, I meant, nerfing fun by making it harder than I'd like it to be. Perhaps nerf was a bad word to use there.

Fair enough; thanks for the clarification. I still think there should be better difficulty/content scaling in this game though.

Dungeons hardly prepare healers for the “harder” content, and a lot get overwhelmed when they finally enter it. They either give up or join in with the masses that cry for nerfs because Extremes and Savage aren’t like dungeons where they can Netflix at the same time, or where they are used to only putting regens on the tank or letting their fairy handle it.

I would, but that's because I have "PTSD" (well not really, but you know what I mean) from WoW. Chain-casting heals and doing nothing else is not fun. It's why I don't like undergeared tanks multipulling. Spamming Cure II on the tank nonstop is not fun gameplay.

Again, spamming Cure II isn’t fun, but neither is the fact that a healer can neglect the skill in a lot of the more casual content, only occasionally touching it and instead spamming another button (Stone IV) or doing nothing at all (the Beloved Netflix Healer). Barring when tanks/DPS are being dumb and not mitigating or standing in the bad. I would like a reason to actually use my healing spells, or like a feeling of having to prep more heals in all forms of content. I feel like it would make it more engaging. And it would actually give “heal-only healers” a leg to stand on, because, as it currently stands, they have none.

Maybe that’s why I like shield healers—I feel more engaged when prepping for incoming damage with shields compared to the “oh, well time to refresh my regen again” feeling I have when playing WHM or Diurnal AST.

[Maeka]

Yes, I get what you're saying, I'm just weary of changing it too much.


If you leave it the way it is now, many people find it fun enough that they keep playing, even though some people grumble about being too bored. Sure, that's a bad thing, hey I said I agreed before that it's a bit too easy.

But yet, if we try to fix it and wind up doing it wrong, then you end up screwing the game up for a portion of the playerbase and wham, you might end up losing a bunch of subs overnight and I can't say that would be good for the game either.

It's a fine line that they're walking with this, and if they're going to do something I REALLY hope they are careful with it. And again. Item Level Creep.

It's too freaking high. That, or we need better I-Level restrictions on some of the older dungeons (Kugane Castle and Ala Mihgo mainly). Yes, I will agree that these two are just too ridiculously easy. A tank should not be able to pull 3 groups and survive. Bosses should not be dying almost before they get to complete their full AI script, and invulnerability phases should not be required to prevent a boss from dying too fast to complete it's full list of mechanics.

However, I don't see the current healing model as being the sole culprit. Item Level Creep (or the I-Level Sync is too lax either/or) is a part of it too, I feel. Healers doing too much DPS is also a part of it, I mean, the amount of damage they do per ability.

If you took Kugane Castle or Ala Mihgo, and shaved off, say, 20% of a healer's DPS output per-ability and shave off, say, 15 I-Level off the maximum I-Level allowed for the zone... you'd bump up the challenge significantly. The tanks would be taking more damage (due to having 15 less I-level) and the healers would be putting out less damage resulting in bosses and trash being alive longer.

Perhaps give healers a trait that makes them do 20% more damage while solo (being with chocobo counts as being solo), and then cut their DPS output by 20%. That way solo play as a healer is not affected, healers can still throw their DPS without breaking the fights and making them cake easy.

[Shurrikhan]

Now, there is a valid complaint that in this Extreme/Savage content, the healers and DPS are forced to dish out as much DPS as possible. But if they change that, then they make the game not fun for the vast majority who are NOT doing the Extreme/Savage content.

I, for one, do not want my experience tarnished because of the hardcore crowd who feel the game is "too easy". I like the fact that a large portion of the game's content is easy. I play for some relaxed fun, not to be sitting on the edge of my seat. I'm just not into that kind of stuff. Call me a carebear, casual, noob, whatever you wanna call me. Go ahead, it's fine. I'm not a pro, and I never claimed to be.

That’s fine if that’s what you like, but you can’t speak for the rest of the playerbase. Not everyone likes the braindead content; not everyone likes the trend that harder content has, as of late, of getting progressively easier. I don’t care if they leave dungeons the same (they’re dungeons—I do them to cap weekly tomes and that’s about it anymore), but I really wish they would keep Extreme and Savage at that harder difficulty that “the hardcores” like and want. But, there again, when the “hardcores” ask for things to be harder in content that they primarily do, they are attacked by the other side of the community about how the developers should not be “wasting resources” to “cater to the 1%”—just see the threads made about Ultimate.

I’m not really sure what you mean by the first part of this quote—some clarification would be nice, if you don’t mind. Are you just talking about how Extreme/Savage fights don’t have the more intensive healing/tanking that some hardcore players would like, and instead are still more copies of “heal occassionally, put a regen on the MT, now DPS”? If that’s the case, I can agree with making Extreme/Savage fights require more intensive healing to make the jobs more engaging. Rather than it just be “Regen MT, spam Stone IV/Malefic III/Broil II”. But, to do this, they should probably also consider making easier content demand more healing, which I don’t really see as being a bad thing either.

This is about where my own hopes sit, too, on the difficulty spectrum. But, ideally, this shouldn't even need to be an equilibrium or best approximation sort of issue.

At present, dungeon and raid difficulties are likely made up of individually arbitrated potency values, specials recast times, and health pools, based around an eyeballed common-sense estimate to fit with precedent or surrounding dungeon/raid design, but that's not to say that the same couldn't be output through a given formula instead. And if that is possible, a huge number of opportunities become affordable.

Consider some of our earlier balances or perspectives into dungeon design:

• Hefty required healing (as opposed to avoidable damage) makes the healer feel a more complete "role", but in turn diminishes (1) unskilled healers' ability to perform their derivative role, (2) the sense of direct applicability of healers (albeit only when leaving virtually no time to DPS at all), (3) the ability for player compositions to skillfully avoid the need for a dedicated healer, as once tuned for, design essentially dead-locks healers into gameplay, which can ultimately reduce opportunities for ingenuity, alternative gameplay improvements, and for reduced queue times between the two.
• Making one given choice of playing in or outside of tank stance optimal in a vastly overwhelming portion of gametime makes the mechanic feel like a gimmick, but removing tank stance diminishes (1) tanks' freedom to open with non-enmity skills, which contributes to variance and strategy, (2) tanks' ability to calculate for and synergize with healer or melee-positional outputs, (3) may likely simply tilt the balance of global usage from primarily utility weaponskills, of which there are typically multiple, and therefore carries variance, to primarily enmity combos, whereby choice or utility are further restricted.

But if a dungeon or raid were able to scale particular mob output and stat values compositionally (relative to your party's composition, or even manual choices of composition-derived difficulty), those tipping points disappear. Rather than facing some negative consequence for each benefit of rebalance, you can play entirely towards or within the strategies that would only benefit in their gameplay from the rebalance. If you take 3 DPS at 1 healer into a dungeon, by default mobs' unavoidable strikes' potency maxima are reduced, as are enemies' CC-resistance, but new burst-requiring mechanics may appear or, where already existent, may be heightened. It becomes, in a sense, a new gameform, despite playing with all the same rules, just by manipulating the mob values involved.

[Ayer2015]

I still say WoW's Mythic+ system offers one of the best casual end game system. Progress in difficulty as far as you can or desire to.