I hate to, but I think I put down healing for now. Please make it engaging again, SE.

[Saefinn]

Yeah someone who actually trusted that to happen would be exhibiting blind faith at this point. The evidence is to the contrary, and if you've ever had to make a group decision in a company, you'd know that firms are not rational actors.

I concur with this. I think people can give people higher up in corporations too much credit for how informed they are. Some people in higher positions can be pretty clueless and data can be bad. I can say from experience where I have worked for such a company.

I don't think the dev team is as bad as what I had, but I think it is plausible that the dev team could base decisions on bad data.

For instance, if 90% of people who played healers in their original design were happy with it. What statistics would show this? Very few people post anywhere that they are satisfied, they just play it. I mean, it's taken me until 5.0 to give any feedback on healer play and I've played healer since BETA and was a satisfied healer during most of that time since.

Then take those who're dissatisfied. Take, for example, people who keep forgetting about Cleric Stance or people in parties with healers who forget Cleric Stance and wipe. People then complaining about cleric stance, it's too clunky, it causes wipes, it leaves room for easy mistakes and so on. And if this is all you see about Cleric Stance, then it's plausible the data would suggest "Cleric Stance overwhelmingly bad" and then remove it.
But there are many of us who liked it, who thought whilst yes it could be improved but it should not be removed. This voice didn't come out until after Cleric Stance was removed. Again should people complain their healers DPS too much or are making too many mistakes with their DPS focus, without people saying "I like how this works" it looks more likely the right thing to do is simplify how they DPS.

And chances are, if say, they were to look at the forums now for people's satisfaction, what they're going to see is the complaints about those who're dissatisfied, rather than what's working and why for those who are satisfied.

I hope their means of data gathering is good, however, I'm not sure that it is. But I'd see no shame in them putting out surveys to gather such data before making decision. I think it'd be a more transparent approach and if the survey is well constructed then people could have the opportunity to provide more meaningful feedback than say, our anecdotal rants on the forum. Whilst anecdotal rants on a forum are great and putting things into context for certain complaints, it's not good for statistical data about what people like/don't like.

[EwokAssassini]

I hope their means of data gathering is good, however, I'm not sure that it is. But I'd see no shame in them putting out surveys to gather such data before making decision. I think it'd be a more transparent approach and if the survey is well constructed then people could have the opportunity to provide more meaningful feedback than say, our anecdotal rants on the forum. Whilst anecdotal rants on a forum are great and putting things into context for certain complaints, it's not good for statistical data about what people like/don't like.

A well constructed survey is what I'd love to see. SE needs to get more community involvement from outside the forums. As it stands now, we're completely left in the dark, and it seems they are too. I'm not sure if it's a pride issue of the dev team, or if it's a fear of embarrassment, but I just want to know if they're making informed choices.

[Genz]

Healer is boring because we're not really "healing" anyway. The only tool the devs have to make players lose is one-shot, thus we're playing around with a gauge called health, but the things that actually matter are one-shot and vulnerability down (which can't be cured).

[Deceptus]

A well constructed survey is what I'd love to see. SE needs to get more community involvement from outside the forums. As it stands now, we're completely left in the dark, and it seems they are too. I'm not sure if it's a pride issue of the dev team, or if it's a fear of embarrassment, but I just want to know if they're making informed choices.

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

In the run up to Shadowbringers across all the stupid "influencer" interviews there were a total of ~96 questions asked. Three. . . THREE of them concerned healers and they were all brushed off.

I hate to be an alarmist but it really does seem like either

A) The development team simply doesn't care about healers, or

B) They don't know how to properly balance them.

Either of which is equally concerning.

[Shalan]

I'd love more involvement on healers period.

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

Means there isn't much pressure being put on the devs from the English community's front. It might be different for the Japanese side, but I'm not sure as I can't read it or check the places they congregate to discuss FFXIV.

If there's not much pressure, it's not as important and doesn't need to be fully addressed. Those who are complaining obviously don't mean or know much since they're not generating much pressure.

That's part of why in the past I started a (dead) thread inquiring about current or potential healer influencers for future Media Tours and interviews. As someone who works in P.R., as much as many people dislike them, influencers are important in judging an audience's current opinions and though processes. Getting one that can operate on a larger stage, has a sizable following, or interact with the devs in some manner like we have for other roles would go a long way to having concerns recognized.

[GrimGale]

Healer is boring because we're not really "healing" anyway. The only tool the devs have to make players lose is one-shot, thus we're playing around with a gauge called health, but the things that actually matter are one-shot and vulnerability down (which can't be cured).

Yes, healing gameplay and strategy revolves around reacting to or preparing for incoming bursts of damage, hence why healers are given very strong "burst" healing type of tools like Assize, Indomitability and such.

Damage is never random, it comes at very specific moments, it's scripted.

With potent burst healing and encounters with scripted damage, healers often find themselves with nothing to do.

[Lodi]

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The
1. Lack of interview questions
2. Dismissive tones of some questions regarding healers ("As for the job balance, setting aside healers...")
3. Lack of healing influencers
4. The selection of live letter questions (and lack of healer questions being asked)

...

We're basically invisible, yup. We always represent 25% of any given group, yet we don't deserve anybody's time.

Not gonna lie, I felt like I received more attention as a RDM in one patch than as a healer since 5.0. AST had been bandaged until it suffocates because it was hot garbage after launch, and that's all we got.

I have become a dps now, it's the only role the devs seem to care about. If I want healing to be interesting, I have other games to play.

[Rasikko]

I remember when SCH in FFXI was first released. It was the worst healer in the history of Final Fantasy. There was so much wide spread sweeping complaints that SE redid that job from the ground up in the next update lol. Unfortunately that dev team died with the death of 1.0.

Id prefer the ED charges be moved up to 70..and yes bring aoe cards back.

I think the mostly read general discussion and yerp we tend to get a boat load of DPS changes, but tanks/healers a bit uncommonly. Not to mention, we got a ton of DPS jobs. 6.0, 2 DPS, 0 tank/healers, please look forward to it.

[Deceptus]

I'd like to throw in a third possibility: They don't know their audience has a problem with the state of healers or they think it's overblown.

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

[Mansion]

The extreme lack of healers in content (healer in need bonus constantly) should give them a good idea that people are dropping or have dropped the job.

I'm pretty sure they have their own figures on their side, that's not the problem.

It is a possibility that they think the players' response is not reasonable too. They said they wanted to balance healers before adding a job, so maybe they will only look at (or prioritize) this data. I think this is the case since 5.1, AST numbers have raised and all healers are close to each other (althoug the lower number of AST clears might make the data unreliable). They can still adjust things here and there to iron out the differences (fix fairy issues for SCH for instance)

All in all, I think they just made a mistake with 5.X healing direction, and changing it would require time and resources that are already allocated in patch cycles. So I guess healing will stay how it is until 6.X. That does not mean that there won't be slight adjusments on jobs or later fights to create an illusion of healer engagement. But the system is not likely to change between two patches.