A summary of healer issues

[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?