Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[Zojha]

Nothing feels more frustrating than a healing design like WoW, where you spend your majority casting weak ass heals that barely manage to move the HP bar. >.<

Now, if only we could get a DPS design that can one-three shot anything so DPS can get the same kind of health bar moving satisfaction.

Breaking the game? Maybe. But less frustrating than looking at a boss bar barely move. And we could just, like, add more mob waves or something to compensate. Then DPS could also have that downtime feeling of healers between them, where they could throw out a group buff or heal. And we could have an endless forum debate about DPS not healing/buffing during downtime. The joy!

[RiyahArp]

Now, if only we could get a DPS design that can one-three shot anything so DPS can get the same kind of health bar moving satisfaction.!

If a DPS needed to get a boss down to 0 HP in 3 seconds or they risked wiping the raid, ok. If you want healing to be like a DPS rotation, you'd really get some boring fights.

I would like to think there exists a balance between "weak ass heals" and heals so strong, you'll spend far more time DPSing.

Get your red mage up to 70, try vercuring some. That's probably what, 50-75% of a healer cure potency, and the first thing you notice is that it's a weak ass heal. It's only real benefit is that it can be instant; notice there's never any "only rdm to heal" clears posted anywhere.

With dedicated healers, the potency would have to be even lower due to HoT and off gcsd. You'd have to make it 3-5k effective HP to more or less force healers to use heals, and you;d need to nerf off gcd healing a lot. SCH in particular would need to be gutted, since it relies mainly on non-direct cures.

You guys really don;t sit down and actually think what stuff like this may mean in practice. It's easy to say "healing potency is too much" but you need to sit down and actually post some kind of rough model people can agree or disagree with; not just say something needs to happen and not define a plan.

edit: like one particular mode of mmo playing is the "builder." A healer would do a small, low potency cure to build resources to spend on higher potency cures or attacks. Essentially instead of hitting the aetherflow button, you need to cast a 2k potency physick for maybe 30 sec to a minute to proc your stacks, then you have your spike cures or burst cures for upcoming attacks. But building modes of play are kind of sedate and slow, really.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Thank god!
Nothing feels more frustrating than a healing design like WoW, where you spend your majority casting weak ass heals that barely manage to move the HP bar. >.<

I would like to think there exists a balance between "weak ass heals" and heals so strong, you'll spend far more time DPSing.

[Granyala]

I would like to think there exists a balance between "weak ass heals" and heals so strong, you'll spend far more time DPSing.

Yes surely.
They can edit rezzing so it is way more punishing. Right now you can essentially rez as much as you want. An example would be that the mana cost doubles when cast infight or sth like that.
They can also rebalance mana consumption to make overhealing more of an issue.
They can definitely up encounter damage in non savage content so we get to cast more.

But to be perfectly frank: I prefer the concept of strong heals and quickly moving health bars over the concept of slowly regging people back up after a hit. I' rather have more ups and downs in rapid succession than one big hit and spending the next 20 seconds trying to recoup.

There is no right or wrong here, these are 2 different design philosophies. WoW had the former up until Cataclysm and then switched to the latter. That's also when healing stopped being fun for me, I'd hate to see the same happen in FF.

I do agree wholeheartedly that mobs in 4mans should stop hitting like wet noodles. There should be more to heal. That won't be happening though, considering that people going into a new dungeon overgear it by 30 item levels, even when we only wear tome gear.

[BillyKaplan]

The blitzball answer amuses me because I feel like that sort of idea would've been fantastic for Lord of Verminion instead of what we got. Kind of do with them what we do with squads only without the frigging 18 hours long requirements >_>

[Theodric]

Blitzball, ideally, needs to be interactive. In it's raw, original form with maybe a few tweaks.

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

[Tridus]

Blitzball, ideally, needs to be interactive. In it's raw, original form with maybe a few tweaks.

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

With the slow speeds of XIV, would Blitzball in its original form even work? I don't think so.

A manager style of game akin to Football Manager could work given the framework that's in place already, even if it's not the game people are looking for.

[Zojha]

With the slow speeds of XIV, would Blitzball in its original form even work?

It probably would - IIRC, all but movement was done in menus where you could take all the time you need. And I vaguely remember that even movement had an automatic option.

Personally, I find neither the thought of a carbon copy nor the thought of a menu game very appealing. When I think of Blitzball in FFXIV, I'd imagine something like an underwater swimming area where you swim around and the ball gets passed along via vector based skills that shoot a certain distance in the direction you're facing. Trick shots might fly in a curve, power shots might bypass players, missed shots might be picked up by getting near the ball, tackles maybe as active time event? Something like that.

But that's just me, there's probably a bunch of other good and better ideas on how it could work.

[WellFooled]

Triple Triad carried over fairly well, after all. I'm worried about them killing Blitzball at launch by making it into a 'menu' game. Squadron missions aren't exactly the epitome of engaging play.

If there is one piece of feedback I can offer based on this interview that I would beg the development staff to consider: Please, no more menu games. Retainer ventures? Nothing but clicking through menus. Airship and submarine voyages? Nothing but menus. Squadron missions? Menus. Chocobo training, feeding, coloring? Menus. Gardening? Menus.

All of the above items sounded amazing on paper, but in practice are incredibly boring because they consist of nothing but clicking a few words on a screen. Please, I'd rather Blitzball not be added then turned into another item for this list. That said, if it were added to FFXIV just like FFX (You collect npc from around the world as players, level them up through use, teach and equip a variety of abilities, you actually CONTROL them during the game, etc), but with some additions I would be more than happy with its inclusion.

[RiyahArp]

A tournament won't work because the PvPers in this game don't like to actually play in teams. They begged for light party feast to have the same rewards in 3.3 or so, and when SE did it, no one bothered to do light party feast. This is despite LP actually solving a lot of the mode's problems, like poor matchmaking or people yelling at each other in chat.

As for hard dungeons, yeah, I really wish they'd do them just to shut up the people who want difficulty when they wipe dozens of times in them because there is zero margin for error with a 4 man party.