A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

All of which is to say, asking for 'can we be forced to heal more' is probably never going to work out, SE's too worried about losing their bottom line because the Limsa AFK squad would have to demonstrate a modicum of skill in their roulettes

This argument doesn't make sense, though. Yoshi P is already on the record saying the reason they gutted the Healer DPS kits was because they thought it was too stressful, the same logic they gave for reducing healing requirements. You can argue that one is more stressful (or you think it would be), but it makes no sense to say "They won't do (A) because they said they won't do that, but they might be convinced to do (B), which...they...also said they won't do."

That doesn't make sense.

Speaking personally as a dirty casual - I'd enjoy spamming Benefic 2 more than Malific any day of the week, twice on Saturdays, and three times on Sundays. "But people can die and-" that's no different than wiping to an Enrage because of not enough Malifics. People will get over it.

EDIT:

Right, but at the same time, we said similar things when DSR got solo healed. At what point do we see all these 'hardest content in the game' fights being cleared with 50% (or in this case, 0%) of the recommended number of healers

Just out of curiosity, how many people are doing this?

How many teams have solo healed DSR after the first did it?

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EDIT2:

Roe's point is that, regardless of what the design team thinks, failing to keep up with increased healing requirements results in wiping. Failing to perfect your damage output results in...

...wiping in any encounter with a moderately tight Enrage check.

So same thing.

If someone dying to a missed Benefic 2 and getting Raised means you're not clearing Enrage, then that fight is tuned tightly enough not having optimized DPS such that you do 5-10% less DPS (common proposals around here) would result in a wipe as well.

And in casual content, neither one would result in a wipe, so nothing changes there, either.

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EDIT3:

I don't know, and I don't think it matters.

I think it matters a lot.

If one group does a thing, that means it really isn't true of the vast majority of players (like...literally everyone else, in this case), meaning that one group could do it is completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, if dozens of groups have done it, if 25+% of the clears now are solo healer (or even 10+%), then that's a pretty different argument, since it suggests just anyone (or, at least, most people) could do it, leading to groups dropping healers going forward - which is the argument people here are making.

That's EXTREMELY relevant.

[Xelanar]

Problem is, if you're bad at spamming Malefic all that happens is that the party does less damage, maybe you see enrage, but also other players can make up for part of that lost damage by being good at their own class. If you're bad at spamming Benefic 2 and the content is actually demanding you're good at Benefic 2, then you cause a wipe. Because of this, SE is super hesitant to ever put actual healing requirements in things, and this tier when they actually did, people didn't react well to it, having gotten accustomed to the 'usual' damage profile of raids. Also doesn't help it was, once again, more focused on 'use more mit' instead of 'heal more'.

This is true. However it is true for every role.
I'm refering specifically to savage and ultimate content, where people are supposed to know what they are doing.

1. If tank is bad at mitigating or switching aggro, what is going to happen?
- Tank dies and the other one can be a safety net
- Both tanks die, boss starts hitting DPS -> Raid wipes

2. If DPS is bad at doing DPS?
- Other DPS can maybe compensate and be a safety net
- Raid wipes because of enrage

3. If Healer is bad at healing?
- Other healer can maybe compensate and be a safety net
- Raid wipes because of lack of healing


For some reason tanks and DPS are expected to do their job just fine. But Oh noes! If healers are not doing theirs, the world is going to end.

[BRVV]

Healers are the role that gets you fast queues. That's all it's good for.

[ForsakenRoe]

Right, but let's take me as an example. I find EX roulettes boring as sin, they're not fun they're not challenging and I can do them with just 1/3 of my skills. Not just 'I don't need any GCD heals' but 'I don't need half of my OGCDs either'. I'm not the only person who feels this way about EX roulettes, I'm sure. So we have a quandary.

To mangle a quote from an ex-SE IP (they sold it to try and get into NFTs, that went well):

'Consider a two-sided coin. If the coin lands heads side up, SE make the EX roulette more challenging on healing, to keep me and players like me on our toes, with the side effect that some of the less skilled players in there get blown up and wipe (causing player friction). On the other hand, if it lands on it's reverse, they leave it alone because 'thats casual content', and me/players like me who do Savage and sometimes Ultimates are forever damned to only find enjoyment in 4 instances every 8 months, interspersed with one instance on a separate staggered 8 month interval.

But suppose you flip the coin enough times, that one day, it lands on it's edge...'

Even with something as obviously 'there are only two ways it can go' as a coin flip, there's actually a third option. So, will SE take the 'third option' here, is the question

[ty_taurus]

Right, but let's take me as an example. I find EX roulettes boring as sin, they're not fun they're not challenging and I can do them with just 1/3 of my skills. Not just 'I don't need any GCD heals' but 'I don't need half of my OGCDs either'. I'm not the only person who feels this way about EX roulettes, I'm sure. So we have a quandary.

To mangle a quote from an ex-SE IP (they sold it to try and get into NFTs, that went well):

'Consider a two-sided coin. If the coin lands heads side up, SE make the EX roulette more challenging on healing, to keep me and players like me on our toes, with the side effect that some of the less skilled players in there get blown up and wipe (causing player friction). On the other hand, if it lands on it's reverse, they leave it alone because 'thats casual content', and me/players like me who do Savage and sometimes Ultimates are forever damned to only find enjoyment in 4 instances every 8 months, interspersed with one instance on a separate staggered 8 month interval.

But suppose you flip the coin enough times, that one day, it lands on it's edge...'

Even with something as obviously 'there are only two ways it can go' as a coin flip, there's actually a third option. So, will SE take the 'third option' here, is the question

Giving every job the optional Auto-Battle (Single Target) and Auto-Battle (Multi Target) button would at least address the DPS side of that coin. You have the freedom to expand healer DPS tools to around 8~10 buttons or so, and anyone who does not feel comfortable performing that manually will get everything they really need to clear content with Auto-Battle. Certain jobs may not compliment Auto-Battle very well, like AST probably wouldn't regardless of whatever they might do with its cards, but each role would have at least 1 job where their combat loop is relatively friendly to Auto-Battle, and the difference between an Auto-Battle using Warrior and a manual-play Warrior might just be the difference between something like Dragon Kick Combo Monk and normal rotation Monk currently. Even with something like 8~10 DPS buttons, WHM would probably end up in that same spot. You still need to manually heal since the Auto-Battle is just for GCD attacks, but now every healer of either camp has 4 healers to choose from.

Some might not like the pandering to the lowest common denominator that this system does, but I would much rather have the jobs actually grow and expand on their moment-to-moment gameplay if the bargaining chip is letting players have access to an easy button that does a bulk of the work for them than watch each expansion continue down this warpath of homogenizing and aggressively simplifying everything.

[Shurrikhan]

Giving every job the optional Auto-Battle (Single Target) and Auto-Battle (Multi Target) button would at least address the DPS side of that coin. You have the freedom to expand healer DPS tools to around 8~10 buttons or so, and anyone who does not feel comfortable performing that manually will get everything they really need to clear content with Auto-Battle.

Sorry for the tangent, but... does anyone have any sort of mental picture of how this would look in the game -- specifically, without it feeling 'tacked on' and out of place?

(Not saying it would necessarily be the result; just constraining the ideas that seem worth mentioning. If it wouldn't possibly feel right, it's probably not a route worth going with, after all.)

For instance, I... wouldn't necessarily hate it if there was literally an Auto-battle mode in the game, for everyone... at least, assuming it'd only have a very basic, fight-agnostic AI for handling a long-term, bank-stuff-for-as-long-as-possible approach. But at that point the sort of natural state of things would look very different.

It'd make no sense then, for instance, to still have a unique button for each action, only for each fork, so to speak. You'd be looking at points of intelligent departure for optimization, not the maintenance of the basic flow of 1-2-3 or glare-glare-glare.

Sorry, just food for thought.

[ty_taurus]

Sorry, just food for thought.

I think we talked about this a while ago, but basically they’re just 2 buttons that you can set to your hotbar that automatically change to one of your GCD attacks based on a priority system. Using RDM as an example:

Auto-Battle (Single Target) starts as Jolt and automatically changes to Verthunder/Veraero while Dualcast is present or Acceleration, picking the one associated with whichever you have the least mana for. If you do not have Dualcast, it will prioritize Verfire/Verstone if they are present, and again picking the one with the least mana if you have both. If you have even mana, it will prioritize black mana. The Multi Target version would just swap for the appropriate alternative spells.

Now, a very important question the design team would need to talk about is if the system should stop there, or if it should continue to add in the melee combo and finishers as the following: If you are within melee range and have over 50 mana, it will switch to your melee combo. After, it will prioritize your finishers in the proper order following the same mana rules with Verflare/Verholy.

If we talk about fighting games that use this system for button mashers, your A button auto combo is the same basic combo every time, but it is not your strongest or most effective combo. It exists to ensure button mashers feel cool rather than feel like a goofball doing a ton of stiff jabs and kicks. Each move used in that combo is also usable outside it as well. In practice, a button masher won’t just rely on only that, but will fall back on it when other buttons aren’t working and lets the player feel powerful against the AI as well. Against other players, though, any skilled player can turn it against you as it makes you incredibly predictable, but that’s not an issue in XIV.

The major caveat to this system is that it is optional. I do not want the game to play itself for me, but I have seen many people resist change and clash against the idea of expanding on simple jobs because they don’t want to interact with more DPS buttons. Now I do not support that mentality, I think it’s antithetical to wanting to play an MMO like FFXIV in the first place, but it doesn’t seem like that mentality is going to leave, and that job design likely won’t evolve further in order to avoid pushing those players out of FFXIV, so this is a bargaining chip.

[Shurrikhan]

I think we talked about this a while ago, but basically they’re just 2 buttons that you can set to your hotbar that automatically change to one of your GCD attacks based on a priority system.

To clarify, I'm not asking for the one specific iteration you alone are looking for, but rather some idea as to how any such feature might fit into the larger game. Again, the question was anyone/everyone:

Assuming we had some sort of basic conditionals-assisted consolidation or autonomously rotating options available to healer, what would be the overarching system to contextualize that (so that it's not this oddity unique to healer --and therefore unintuitive for that unique- /one-off-ness), and what might it(s gameplay implications) look like?



Would it, for instance, be sort of a Gamut / Gambit system, as an improvement to macros (removing their purposely included self-sabotaging obstacles and making them capable of at least some mild conditionals), with a fair number of such options given automatically to the player as they acquire new skills, and where essentially everyone would use some manner of AI or consolidation... just with more or fewer options also being discrete / purposely left out of rotational cycles (Dia held separate for movement/snapshotting, Lillies held separate for movement/burst)?

Or might it be worth going so far as to have a true autonomous system where you basically start with a Trust AI rotation (though still improved, admittedly, as it'd at least have AoE) and players optimize atop that by varying the upcoming decisions and deploying bankable tools at optimal times?

[ForsakenRoe]

I assume it'd be a flowchart of simple yes/no checks to decide what is the next step to take. For example, lets take HW SCH, with it's extra DOTs and casted Shadowflare and what have you.



The problem with a system like Ty suggests is that there are certain decisions that must be made by the player, and cannot be interpreted by the auto-battle system. For example, if you were to add Chain Strat as a node on this flowchart so it automatically pops it, you lose the ability to make the decision to hold it for a few seconds, eg Pinax or Manifold Flames. That means that the autobattle system can never be 100% of the efficiency of a real player using their brain, and that's where certain people stop supporting it. Because it can't perform at the same level as actual brains.

[ty_taurus]

Actually, having something akin to a gambit system lite could be a good way to go about creating a system like this, as that gives players more freedom to use it how they like if at all. For example, maybe you just use it for MCH’s 1-2-3 combo or RDM’s melee combo to condense your hot bars. Or perhaps you try to put most of your rotation into it to simplify your gameplay. The system would just be much smoother than actual macros. And much like macros, there would be ways to use the system lightly which might not interfere with your ability to optimize, such as the former examples, or ways you can stress it to where it becomes less efficient, such as the later example.

I imagine this system only works with GCD actions and would still require input like how combos function in PvP. OGCDs would be difficult to blend into that in regards to smoothness. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The thing is, not being able to get the system to automate your entire gameplay with 100% optimization of your job is not a problem because that isn’t the point of a system like this. It’s like the example I gave with fighting games. Providing a basic character-specific combo in a fighting game that you get when you mash the A button is there to make it so that any button-masher can have an easier time getting through, say, the story mode against the AI and feel cool while playing, rather than just watching your character rigidly try and jab the enemy to death and fail trying. It’s not there to get that same player to the top of a PvP tournament effortlessly.

I brought up this concept as a bargaining chip for the unreasonable “nothing is allowed to change!” argument that continues to plague the forums since it means that player can toss all their attacks onto this auto battle button and perform well enough that any lost optimization shouldn’t matter. It’s not the healthiest response to that behavior, but I’m also thinking from SE’s perspective of healers being so cartoonishly delicate that the “healer who heals by attacking” couldn’t possibly manage more than 3 core attack buttons.