A summary of healer issues

[Sebazy]

Cool

Now how many of these occurred in your head or aren't massive stretches because you know.... Renethras posts etc?

1) Show me a legit post that asked for Aero III to be removed here

2) Tried chat gpt yet? Maybe it'll give you some fresh material

3) So why didn't Eos get removed when people thought she was worthless for some ~2-3 years?

4) By all means link me to any post here that says 'yes, what I really want is a cut and paste SCH with lasers'.

5) Are you hallucinating? Maybe get some water and sit down, also please link your source material. Preferably something that isn't from Titanmen, bonus challenge, can you find it without having to use google keywords? I'm not convinced.

6) Again, cite your sources. You're either lying or just plain deluded.

7) As above, people complained about AST's HPS throughput early on, then they complained about balance fishing later. I don't remember ever seeing a complaint thread over abilities such as time dilation getting traction.

8) Ironically I'd argue 3.4 was the worst state WHM was ever in, but if google says 4.0 was worse then I guess that's what you're going to go with right? Remember 3.4 literally had to spend time standing there doing nothing and not casting at all to conserve mana. As worthless as Lilies were, Thin Air was an incredible ability and it at least allowed WHM to actually do stuff for the entire fight. Do you remember this? I'm not sure google does.

9) Might want to double check your numbers there sir.

Seriously though, I don't have a hate boner for the devs. I'll always merrily say that they did an incredible job with the design of 2.0. The issue is that Yoshida has allowed the game to outgrow his team by a significant margin. They haven't been able to keep up with the demands of the player base for years now and that's not really acceptable for a game of this size and stature.

[ty_taurus]

I think it's important to remember that you can criticize someone's work while still respecting them as a person, as a creator, and acknowledge the good that they have done. No game is perfect in every conceivable angle. Every game has flaws. Every developer will tell you that there are probably a million things they wish they could do differently with a project. That's entirely normal. Good design is about owning those flaws and striving to improve on them, being transparent with your audience, and listening to what people think about your product. This doesn't mean you must make changes as they demand, but rather, acknowledge the problem and find a solution.

The people who care about you the most are the people who will call you out on your BS and love you anyway, not the people who will be polite out of obligation. The same is true for art and design.

Healer design is a problem. This is a factual statement and not an opinion. If it wasn't a problem, this constant back and forth wouldn't exist. It doesn't exist for Black Mage. It doesn't exist for Dancer. It doesn't exist for Gunbreaker. If the healers were in as good a state as these job, then it wouldn't exist for the healers either. But it does. If all people on the forums wanted to do was trash talk every job and every aspect of the game, then these other jobs as well as several others wouldn't be exempt from the same experience.

[Aravell]

I've been thinking, instead of heavy hard-hitting raidwides that kill when mitigation isn't on point, why don't they just give us a series of moderate raid damage hits during mechanics instead?

Let's take High Concept in P8S part 2 for example, instead of what they do now, what if, during the part where you have to combine 2 players to take towers, the boss marks one random tile with fire/ice and the remaining 6 players have something to do instead of standing there and staring at the boss until his wing starts glowing. Or maybe High Concept cast applies a minor bleed to everyone to keep healers on their toes?

There's other things they could do too, I think the problem of filler spam could be partially solved if most fights aren't just waiting for the next castbar.

[ForsakenRoe]

My best guess is balance concerns. An example: Expedient. They gave us this new ability people were mocking vs SGE in the Job Actions trailer, but some smart people were noting at the time how it could be useful. Even some early EW guides were panning it. I remember Wesk Alber saying "You know what else gives people a few seconds of Sprint movement speed? Sprint.", implying that it was a silly action.

Then it turned out to be super powerful, not just for the damage reduction, but for the movement speed. To the point they nerfed its duration in half over fear of balance concerns.

Ooh curse those smart people with their rational takes and their logical conclusions, they should just submit to the anger and outrage of the hivemind!

(sorry couldn't resist)

Seriously though, I don't have a hate boner for the devs. I'll always merrily say that they did an incredible job with the design of 2.0. The issue is that Yoshida has allowed the game to outgrow his team by a significant margin. They haven't been able to keep up with the demands of the player base for years now and that's not really acceptable for a game of this size and stature.

Think the problem they mentioned in the past is that, unlike in the west where the criteria is 'knows how to program games', over there it's 'knows how to program games, and is able to speak japanese', which means way less total people to recruit from. Also the geography means that eg Blizzard could theoretically recruit from any part of America (if the person is willing to move to CA to work for them), which is a vastly larger population than Japan.

What SE needs to do is realize how much money THIS game pulls in, and devote more devs to it from other parts of the company. Hopefully the reason things are kinda 'ehh' moreso than ever is because so much of the company is focused on FF16, so once that's out, bring those devs into the fold to work on FF14

[ForteNightshade]

...So we replaced those actual gamble elements with "Which melee|ranged each has the greatest burst dps during their 2min, their 60s mid-burst, and their shifted 30s between-bursts? DPad up to 3 times to target them and deliver a ST damage buff unnoticeable without a parser. If your top 2 DPS are of the same type at each of those windows, well, sucks for you and your rDPS, I guess?"

Oh, don't get me wrong. I never said it was a good decision. The whole shift from Astro has clearly been one failed iteration after another considering we'll soon be on the fourth rework. I do recall Yoshida outright saying players only cared about Balance, which is why they made the changes they did. Although, that was always a problem of their own making for precisely the reasons you outlined. They still seemingly operate with the idea players will sacrifice damage for utility despite them never making said utility worthwhile. If there's one positive I can give on the Endwalker job design, they have gotten better about not doing that. Even if Lady shows they remain a bit too stubborn.

I've long thought the logical step for Royal Road would have been to split the cards into two slots: Offensive and Defensive. This immediately makes resource or utility cards have actual value as they're no longer competing with damage. It also allows them to balance a smaller number of cards against each other. I also much prefer how cards like new Spear made you have to be aware of which jobs benefited from it. Of course, that's before they gutted a good amount of unique gameplay aspects like Bard interacting with Crit. All in all, I suspect the Astro changes were more about simplicity in balancing than listening to player feedback.

[Sebazy]

Think the problem they mentioned in the past is that, unlike in the west where the criteria is 'knows how to program games', over there it's 'knows how to program games, and is able to speak japanese', which means way less total people to recruit from.

IMHO it goes deeper than that. FFXIV 1.0 outsourced significant amounts of world design to an unnamed Chinese studio, needless to say, that's not a route I can imagine SE going down again

The other massive elephant in the room is simply F2P game money. It's been a huge market for much longer in Asia and it's free of the development stigma that it carried for the longest time in the west. Luring developers away from that potential money isn't easy or cheap.

[Renathras]

Now how many of these occurred in your head or aren't massive stretches because you know.... Renethras posts etc?

/sigh

And just when I paid you that complement in the other thread. I'll ignore the rest until you can make a good faith post. Except this bit, because it actually has something in it worth discussing:

The issue is that Yoshida has allowed the game to outgrow his team by a significant margin. They haven't been able to keep up with the demands of the player base for years now and that's not really acceptable for a game of this size and stature.

Yoshi P has a lot of clout with Square, but it's not infinite. If it was, Dream Fitting wouldn't be in the game.

The issue is that FF14, like FF11 before it, generated a lot of money for Square. But the executives at Square have this interesting quirk. Instead of doubling down on things that make them money, they like pulling money from those sure bets to finance experimental ideas that often turn out to be boondogles. Like NFTs.

Seriously.
N.
F.
Ts.

And this isn't even a NEW thing. They did this as far back as Spirits Within, which is why the company's name is "Square-Enix" right now instead of "Squaresoft".

They have some of the most fantastic money generating games in video game history, but instead of capitalizing on those, they constantly try these experimental ideas. Now, some experimental ideas can be good, especially ones that advance on existing ones - I suspect Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link is going to be wildly popular...though it's always possible it won't be, I suppose - but they've tried all kinds of things seemingly to avoid "just give FFXIV more money".

Activision-Blizzard did this same thing. "We have the biggest cash cow in history in WoW, sir! What should we do? Put more money into it? Make sure it's sustainable for perpetuity?" "Oh HEAVENS no, man! We need to make a cash shop so we can fleece the loyal customers for all they're worth while mocking them for doing it and dump all the excess money into mobile gaming and trying to dethrone League of Legends! Duh!!"

Healer design is a problem. This is a factual statement and not an opinion. If it wasn't a problem, this constant back and forth wouldn't exist. It doesn't exist for Black Mage. It doesn't exist for Dancer. It doesn't exist for Gunbreaker. If the healers were in as good a state as these job, then it wouldn't exist for the healers either. But it does. If all people on the forums wanted to do was trash talk every job and every aspect of the game, then these other jobs as well as several others wouldn't be exempt from the same experience.

But people do complain about GNB. And PLD. Tanks in general. People DO complain about DNC. More Ranged in general, though. People DO complain about BLM via Casters in general. Basically anything that isn't Melee. Or SAM.

The difference with Healers and BLM is that if people don't like BLM, they can play RDM or SMN. So people don't complain about BLM who don't like BLM, they just swap to one of the MANY other options. They have 2 other options for just Casters, 5 if they just don't like Melee but want to DPS, 10 if they don't mind Melee and just want to DPS, and still 2 others if they want to play a selfish DPS (SAM and MCH). It's why I push so hard on the Four Healers Model all the time, as it would make Healers like BLM is. "Oh, I don't like WHM because it doesn't have a lot of damage buttons. But man, I love SCH because of all the damage buttons!", "I don't like AST because of the RNG, but man, WHM is great without the RNG!" It would remove the "problem" almost entirely, if not entirely.

Ooh curse those smart people with their rational takes and their logical conclusions, they should just submit to the anger and outrage of the hivemind!

I do tell you we're more alike than you think.

What SE needs to do is realize how much money THIS game pulls in, and devote more devs to it from other parts of the company. Hopefully the reason things are kinda 'ehh' moreso than ever is because so much of the company is focused on FF16, so once that's out, bring those devs into the fold to work on FF14

100% agreed.

I hope that it's just FF16 and FF14 gets the love and attention it needs after that.

I've long thought the logical step for Royal Road would have been to split the cards into two slots: Offensive and Defensive. This immediately makes resource or utility cards have actual value as they're no longer competing with damage. It also allows them to balance a smaller number of cards against each other. I also much prefer how cards like new Spear made you have to be aware of which jobs benefited from it. Of course, that's before they gutted a good amount of unique gameplay aspects like Bard interacting with Crit. All in all, I suspect the Astro changes were more about simplicity in balancing than listening to player feedback.

Agreed.

I'm not an AST person, but for AST to keep the random/RNG element AND not have "Balance fishing", what it needs to do is have several flavors of offense (crit, direct hit, and damage, maybe?), and then it can have a separate set for utility (mitigation, MP regeneration, and...I dunno, a Regen or something? Whatever, just a 6th something that isn't damage). Getting Bole in HW wouldn't have sucked if it WASN'T keeping you from a Balance.

[Semirhage]

/sigh

And just when I paid you that complement in the other thread. I'll ignore the rest until you can make a good faith post. Except this bit, because it actually has something in it worth discussing:

Lordy. Sebazy calls you on lying about the history of the community's stances on healer design, and it's a "bad-faith argument". Redditors should have logical fallacy names forbidden to them until they can actually use them correctly. All the widespread dissemination of that information has done is enable people to smugly cry "bad-faith" or "ad hominem!" when they're wrong but want to dishonestly shift the discussion to "tone".

[Renathras]

Lordy. Sebazy calls you on lying about the history of the community's stances on healer design, and it's a "bad-faith argument". Redditors should have logical fallacy names forbidden to them until they can actually use them correctly. All the widespread dissemination of that information has done is enable people to smugly cry "bad-faith" or "ad hominem!" when they're wrong but want to dishonestly shift the discussion to "tone".

No, she doesn't, because I didn't lie.

Other people say the same thing, and as discussed (in that other thread), she was probably not part of a "casual" raiding group by most definitions of the word. And when you START your post with "oh, that's just you being a you" with negative implications - she was literally using my name as an insult - then that's not going to get a positive response. It's not even just me saying this. On the first page of the summary of healer issues I cross-posted to General, someone ELSE already mentioned it as well. In one of his Q&As, Mr Happy was asked about taking the game back to that era and he - who was a raider at the time just like Sebezy was - was the one who said it nearly killed the game a second time.

You can't call something "lying" when it's shared by a lot of people and is truthful, no matter how desperate you are for a gotcha against your hated enemy.

Take the stick out for once and try not to be so desperate for a gotcha, Semi.

[Absurdity]

Yoshi P has a lot of clout with Square, but it's not infinite. If it was, Dream Fitting wouldn't be in the game.

Dream Fitting wasn't forced into the game by the mogstation lady.

The community was asking for a way to preview outfits on their ingame character because more often than not you buy a mogstation outfit only to find out that it looks god awful on your character or dyes terribly.

IMHO it goes deeper than that. FFXIV 1.0 outsourced significant amounts of world design to an unnamed Chinese studio, needless to say, that's not a route I can imagine SE going down again

They've been outsourcing armor designs, environment assets, monsters and weapons to Lemon Sky Studios for Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers (not sure about Endwalker) so it's actually not only likely, it already happened.