A summary of healer issues

[Post]

Mobs in HW were dangerous at the time; in general they made the overworld a lot tougher. Pulling and trying to kill 3 would be death for non tanks or healers usually; I remember fresh 60 BLMs struggling to kill their B rank weekly hunt solo before getting some gear. This was something they did intentionally because the playerbase asked for more danger in the overworld, but it was dialed back in StB upon reflection by the devs.

Players spent half the leveling of HW going in N Thanalan grinding FATEs because they could do them much faster and safer with their 130 vs 49ish expected ilvl instead of Coerthas Western Highland's expected 115 ilvl anyways.

But, as with many things, I think they overcorrected because HW rotations were not just complex, they had lots of ramp up time with so many DoTs, and cooldowns frequently locking out your core rotation, like MCH's (quick) reload, DRG's 1min Blood of the Dragon and BLM's 1min Enochian refreshed only via Blizzard 4. These actions did not fit very well for jobs roaming around the map and fighting shorter battles with enemies that wouldn't survive entire DoT durations and were spread enough that you'd lose your rotation buff.

So, all that was part of the perceived difficulty under which they made their decision to keep things much easier going forward, but as job design also changed, it's another example of them throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[SenahPanipahr]

So, all that was part of the perceived difficulty under which they made their decision to keep things much easier going forward, but as job design also changed, it's another example of them throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It's like this game has an uncanny amount of technical debt, or whatever you call that concept as it applies to game design.

I kinda worry that there's too many other things people might continue their sub for beyond MSQ these days (Island Sanctuary etc.) that even if a lot of people are as disappointed and irritated with some of the job design shifts and related consequences, if people have other reasons to play it's very possible that the devs will assume these solutions are more popular than ever.

I would assume they make liberal use of telemetry for these assessments, but I'm shooting in the dark.

[Absurdity]

I kinda worry that there's too many other things people might continue their sub for beyond MSQ these days (Island Sanctuary etc.) that even if a lot of people are as disappointed and irritated with some of the job design shifts and related consequences, if people have other reasons to play it's very possible that the devs will assume these solutions are more popular than ever.

It's not an unreasonable worry. They probably have participation data but very little context on why something has a lot of participation and can very easily draw the wrong conclusions from it.

Take Island Sanctuary for example. It might have a lot of players engaging with it, but what their data probably doesn't take into account is that the content is so barebones that even if you don't like it, it takes so little time investment to complete that you might do it anyway.

I think Island Sanctuary is a glorified Facebook game, but because it takes me all of 10 minutes total every week to set up my workshop I still do it, it's minimal effort for a bunch of rewards and a good source of gil.

But CBU3 sees high participation numbers and assumes we want more of that content design.