Developers : Healer design mentality needs to change

[Saefinn]

Fair enough, though in that case, it's just a matter of enough voices telling them to change back, like with the change over alliance raid loot.

Regarding complexity of healing kit, is it not comparable with DPS and their damage kit?

Two scenarios:

1. If fights are not demanding the full use of the healing kit, then that complexity is reduced for that fight.
2. If fights are demanding the full use, then players who choose to be healers would either learn their full kit or decide it's not the role for them, just like some players think DPS are too complicated to "master" and decide it's not for them or others with the role of tank. And for this scenario, a simplified damage kit also helps.

And yes, the problem of bloat can and does happen, but that's across all three roles. And I personally would support further reduction in buttons but with more meaningful interaction, but that's just me. I know some players think more buttons is more fun, and that's fine.

My thing is that I just want to have fun being a healer.

I think there's room for more buttons. But I don't even think there's a need for that or for much in the way of that, because some abilities can be given dual purposes. AST I think needs rework on existing buttons, because they already have all the extra buttons for their card system, it's the system itself I think could be improved. SCH I put earlier in the thread an approach that embraces its tactician persona in offering some dual purpose to its ability, the concept adds '0' new buttons to SCH and makes use of existing buttons that would be considered bloat in a low healing situation, so just get repurposed to be useful. WHM, I think could probably get away with a couple more buttons, but even then Cure could be upgraded to Cure II and Fluid Aura could have its function changed or replace it entirely because it is any incredibly, incredibly niche ability that I don't think anybody uses. Maybe WHM could also have some dual purpose abilities too, like Assize already is.

[Hyperia]

After some thought... I sorta wish they would make rez instant with no cost and put it on a 60 second CD timer. Would help save the lives of many healers who die trying to hardcast a rez and remind greedy DPS to do mechanics right and not get splatted.

[Crushnight]

If you're speaking narrowly about PF, sure.

All players absolutely are entitled to dungeon and trial groups when the story mandates it. Unless and until the MSQ gets decoupled from instances then those instances have to be able to be completed by the lowest common denominator. Not everybody aspires to challenging content nor should they feel pressured to do so. By the same token they are not entitled to your company so you are free to take the leaver penalty when they don't meet your standards.

In my experience with other MMO's healers are only required to DPS in the highest tier content and nobody expects them to do so anywhere else. Seems to me that Square is trying to convince the XIV community to realign to that attitude. If that's true then I agree with Saefinn that they're going about it all wrong.

Except everything the devs do to counter this attitude backfires on them.

Devs: We removed Cleric Stance dancing
Community: now healers have no problems of being stuck in dps mode when needing to heal so then they can freely dps more

Devs: Reduced dps abilities to barest minimum while boosting number of healing abilities, that'll get them to focus healing
Community: We are dpsing more than ever before and we are now more bored for it

Devs: why won't you focus more on healing
Community: Healing has a hard cap anymore than necessary is redundant and better time is spent on dps, look at how you design your own game because don't think you know why we play healers the way we do.

Devs: La la la can't hear you
Community: >_>

Obviously the sentiment isn't shared by everyone but it is how a good number of healers feel so do forgive the broad term community but couldn't think how best put that side.

[Crushnight]

No joke in HW when you had to stance dance with Cleric, I was way way more forgiving to healers who only healed because for all I know they were scared that if they put Cleric on they'd kill the party(most times they wouldn't but that fear was a reasonable one at the time).

Cue SB and by removing Cleric Stance dancing, my expectations went up, a pure healer was now a lazy healer in my book rather than a cautious healer, the devs design altered my view point on healers, by making things more accessible I expected more at a lower skill ceiling.

Along came ShB and made things even easier so now if I don't see a single dps spell in my lv80 dungeons in the 1st 5 minutes(this goes up to the 1st boss usually and is very good to tell what type of people you are dealing with), vote kick, I will not tolerate pure healers in any content past 70(you have trusts for that playstyle use them if you want to be lazy), if kick doesn't go through I leave.

The devs design changed my attitude into the opposite of what they want so yea the devs have no clue how to design healers to fit their goals for healers almost like they have no real understanding and just looking at data.

[Hazama999]

Revamp the quest system such that healers resolve every instance of conflict through an intricately designed diplomacy system with multiple branching paths.
Engage in a mental chess match with murderous chinchillas in Coerthas as you bargain for your life.

;]

[Anhra]

Many problems in regards to skills and preferences could easily be solved if all Jobs had something akin to skilltrees which would allow customisation. Not only would that keep things fresh, it could also fix (in my point of view) the rock-paper-healer minigame we call PvP here.

[BlitzAceRush]

The problem with skill tress is unless they basically become different specs in disguise someone will map out the most optimal for dps/whatever is needed and people will either run that or be shunned. As has been said in this thread, they could reduce the dps spells to 10 potency and people would still use them over anything else if it gave them the most dps.

Skill trees would just shift the problem from how you play your class to how you build them, the community will still have a "right" and "wrong" way of doing things, it'll just extend to this as well.

That's often what it comes down to, DPS, they could give people the choice of "This talent gives your healer a full DPS rotation, with skills and procs and the whole nine yards." Vs "Increase Glare potency by 500%" People would still spam the one button if that's where the most DPS is. Poor example I know, but it's just to illustrate what I've seen in every game I've played with a skill tree. You can give people the most interesting and fun customisation for their character, but most would still chose the "Increases dps by 1,3,5,8,10%" If it lets them clear faster.
The worst case I've seen in my recent gaming is Warframe, where the community are hell bent on finding any way to get the game to play itself where they could just tape a button down and walk away, all in the pursuit of "efficiency."

[Rilifane]

The problem with skill tress is unless they basically become different specs in disguise someone will map out the most optimal for dps/whatever is needed and people will either run that or be shunned. As has been said in this thread, they could reduce the dps spells to 10 potency and people would still use them over anything else if it gave them the most dps.

Skill trees would just shift the problem from how you play your class to how you build them, the community will still have a "right" and "wrong" way of doing things, it'll just extend to this as well.

That's often what it comes down to, DPS, they could give people the choice of "This talent gives your healer a full DPS rotation, with skills and procs and the whole nine yards." Vs "Increase Glare potency by 500%" People would still spam the one button if that's where the most DPS is. Poor example I know, but it's just to illustrate what I've seen in every game I've played with a skill tree. You can give people the most interesting and fun customisation for their character, but most would still chose the "Increases dps by 1,3,5,8,10%" If it lets them clear faster.
The worst case I've seen in my recent gaming is Warframe, where the community are hell bent on finding any way to get the game to play itself where they could just tape a button down and walk away, all in the pursuit of "efficiency."

Some do, some don't.
A good example of a power gap existing but players still chosing the less powerful spec would be Disc during the start of WotLK. It was bad compared to Holy because they hadn't yet figured out how to make Disc viable and more or less on par with other healers for PvE when it had been a PvP spec before. But although a lot of people stuck to Holy because it was comfy and something they knew, you had an increasing number of Disc priests running around even before the first buff/ tweak came in.
Same later during Cata with Archangel Holy. It was more complicated and not as strong as other specs in some situations but viable enough that people still played it.

However the game itself allows for a lot more freedom than FFXIV because of flexible raid size outside mythic and a larger party size for mythic. You can mix and match much better when you have 20 slots with barely restricted role distribution vs 8 slots with predeterminded role distribution. It's not just a matter of what is stronger, it's much more complex than that. Even at times when certain specs were known to be noticably weaker than others, you still had a signifcant number of players playing them.
The same was true for Rift. Chloromancer was far more complicated to play efficiently and quickly fell behind a pure healer spec because in most situations it was easier to just dish out burst healing and call it a day but it was still well-received and many players enjoyed it even if they couldn't realize the full potential and had sometimes trouble keeping up.

Skill trees are hard to balance but players are generally more forviging towards imbalances if they have a large pool of specs/ classes to chose from. But it takes a certain acceptance that the favourite class/ spec will not always be the best one aswell. Not every community has that, different MMOs draw in different people.

[Saefinn]

Plus I think because they've opted to offer so many jobs to keep in line with the numerous job fantasies of the FF series it's more achievable without skill trees to complicate balance.

[GeminiReed]

Skill trees are hell to balance. Their perceived freedom is usually just a sea of trap specs and one that's role-optimal. The viable off-specs I've seen had unintended synergies or offered hybrid role capabilities with little to no downsides.