Healer Mains and future Media Tours

[Shalan]

Some users here have suggested we need to be more constructive with regard to our criticisms and concerns, so here's the biggest one from me.

TL;DR: What can we do to get more attention to the role of healers and their concerns in future media tours/interviews? How were influencers selected for the tour, and are there any healer mains or experienced healers we could push to be selected for future tours?

Something that was a bit surprising with the 2019 media tour was a lack of healer mains in the invited guests. While I don't intend to besmirch those figures invited to the tour and their efforts to cover the role as best they could, the coverage and questions they posed to developers was sorely lacking from a healer standpoint (mostly DPS/Tank focused when discussing roles). There's no issue with focusing on other roles if they main them/have more experience with them, but it simply made the lack of any noticeable healer main all the more jarring.

The post-media tour interviews weren't much different. I spent a bit scouring the four major interviews with YoshiP following the media tour and release of role-action information, and out of roughly 223 questions there were 92 question related to roles/classes.

Of those 92 questions, only 3 were focused on healers. And they all came from a single interview.

Now, this may be somewhat set off balance by the introduction of a new tanking/DPS job. But having an entire role that's undergoing some hefty changes and was already in something of an uproar/fervor over the lack of information following the Fan-Fests and previous live letters, having only 3.26% of your role questions being healer oriented is insufficient. In fact, some interviews went out of their way to avoid addressing healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers..." [4gamer's Shadowbringer Interview]) in favour of other roles.
Simply put, we've been left largely in the dark to stew over the changes with little official statements on our concerns, and that's not something you want to have happen with your consumers.

Now, the point of this thread: What can we do to get more attention to the role of healers and their concerns in future media tours/interviews? How were influencers selected for the tour, and are there any healer mains or experienced healers we could push to be selected for future tours?

And the four interviews for those interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...interview_not/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...our_interview/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...M1S5o_hgg/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...uMgaL704g/edit

Apologizes for the Reddit links, but they contained the translated interviews.

[Kabooa]

Personality. Find someone who is, shall we say, family friendly that plays the healer role and makes youtube videos (as in, makes videos, not just upload twitch streams), and get them popular enough where for a media tour it would be good press to get them out.

It seems the common thread between everyone invited is that they participate in higher end content and they make video content.

[Deceptus]

Remember: Someone selected these people. They probably knew they had no good news for healers and purposely didn't invite anyone who would focus on healing questions.

Conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that SE either steered them away from the healer questions or flat out asked them not to talk about it.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Remember: Someone selected these people. They probably knew they had no good news for healers and purposely didn't invite anyone who would focus on healing questions.

That's making the assumption that Square Enix isn't proud of their decisions and know that they're bad.

It's entirely possible, and probably worse, if this represents a sincere attempt to balance healers and not inviting a healer main is because they thought nothing of it.

As another thread has pointed out, the dev team might just be utterly lost on what healers even play like in this game given the encounter design.

[Recon1o6]

The thing that concerns me is that they will select healer mains that do not reflect the community very well if at all intentionally in order to try and push the "pure healer" mentality further when it must be scrapped.
The other thing, is that even if we do get healer influencers etc, that doesn't mean they will listen:

Look at how unpopular changes to the tanks have been- while the Forums here may be filled with WAR's who want their job to OP, the truth is that many WAR's and DRK's abandoned the job this expansion. The former because it became even more braindead and is little more than Marauder with additional aoe, the latter because it flat out plays like WAR but with an ogcd in place of a second combo plus TBN and Fray (whose bugged like seraph)

PLD players aren't fond of the fact their job has a rotation that disconnects it from buff windows etc. They have to drop a gcd every few rotations or fall out of line. PLD's are also pretty annoyed with the lack of shield based abilities- this is the job that has come of best of the tanks

No tank players wanted this homogenisation or further scrapping of complexity

[Aurturia]

I think simply not pre ordering is going to be something to keep in mind. I remember pre ordering shadow bringers the day it became available because of course I would love it, that simply wont be the case this time. It might not be an immediate solution but its still something to keep in mind.

[Liam_Harper]

As another thread has pointed out, the dev team might just be utterly lost on what healers even play like in this game given the encounter design.

There seems to be a disconnect even among the development team and staff.

For example the gear designers, healer gear is riddled with Piety when WhM/ScH barely need it. Class designers, WhM's have bad clipping issues, ScH's pay taxes to weave and the pet is broken, AsT has free mobility as a side effect of the cards, but they barely seem aware of it and probably aren't even aware of clipping being a thing or loss of uptime from movement at endgame. Yoshi stated healer dps isn't accounted for. However the encounter designers are fully aware healer dps is a thing and do account for it in EX and Savage enrage timers. The quest designers and Trust designers also realize healers deal damage and account for it.

It's just all over the place, they don't seem to communicate or know what's going on with healers and tanks, unlike dps. You can tell half the team haven't gone near a tank or healer.

[MintnHoney]

I believe expecting anyone to bring light to issues that a company doesn't want to address, at an event that is completely controlled by said company, including interviews (which are scheduled and coordinated according to the needs and desires of the company), is expecting too much. Furthermore, an influencer's "job" is to influence the general population; Squeen knew what they were doing when they brought in the people they brought in, and they used their resources accordingly.
Considering, also, that those influencers would likely want to return to future events and have the special treatment that come with having an invitation, they're not going to rock the boat.

Therefore, I wouldn't expect the Media Tour to be anything other than a highly publicized circle jerk in Squeen's honor.

[bundythenoob]

Therefore, I wouldn't expect the Media Tour to be anything other than a highly publicized circle jerk in Squeen's honor.

I totally agree with you. the sad truth is that the media tours are always bound to be circle jerks and hugboxes filled with influencers kissing up so they dont lose their privilege. I think it might be time for us average players to take this matter into our own hands though. we have to start getting the word out there, even if it gets drowned out by the naysayers, or else we'll end up with no dedicated healer and tank devs, more homogenisation, and further disconnect between staff and players for the next expac, hell maybe even future expacs too.

I don't want this game to go that route. I think STB was so close to being the perfect version of the game. the jobs just needed a few tweaks for balance, and they just took it too far. had square enix just hired one dedicated dev for tank and healer jobs, this might not have happened

[Veis_Alveare]

I don't expect we'll ever see much in terms of interviews around healers because healing is the one role in the game at this point where controversy is inherent.

Either SE opens up and obviously acknowledges that healer dps is a thing and that they're attempting to balance it (thus angering all the bads who believe otherwise) or they risk giving that side of the argument more ammunition apart from the like 5 year old interview they like to quote where YoshiP mentioned not balancing encounter dps with healers contribution in mind.

At this point they just don't want to make anyone mad and their solution is to not give it any public focus. It's a politician's escape.