Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[Gemina]

But in this case I feel it's more a design issue than a case of "times change".

That depends. Something like healing kits becoming redundant as players get better and stronger is a design issue. Something like thinking that reverting back to 3.x gameplay will fix this issue is nostalgia. I think both cases are true with nearly every healer discussion.

There are two camps for this:

1. For those who believe the role of the healer is just to heal.

If in most content you are healing only 30% of the time, then you're not really doing much healing at all. In this case our healing toolkit is too efficient for most content.

2. For those who believe the role of the healer is a mixed one, so a hybrid.

Functionally this is what we currently have. The design flaw is that there is a big chunk where there isn't much to do. The hybrid here is healing & DPS.

There's only one camp. The heals only healer is a smoke screen. A caricature using the Sylphie meme to warn up and coming healers, "Don't be this person." I won't go as far to say that these players don't exist, but an entire faction or "camp" of them is a bit far-fetched.

Within the healer community, we simply have varied levels of experience, and a whole lot of diversity with the views pertaining to the role and jobs within it. That's kind of what an online community is and does. You have players learning the ropes, players who know the ropes, and players who think they do. They're all healers. Not green DPS, not heals only, not sheeps in wolves clothing, not chameleons. Just healers. That is what you are if you choose to play WHM, SCH, AST, and SGE.

What if we stripped Dragoon down to Vorpal Thrust, Disembowel and Chaos Thurst and kept its buffs like Lance Charge, Battle Litany and Dragon Sight, then have Doom Spike remain as an AoE and if we buffed the damage output.

It'd still functionally be a DPS class, it still fulfills its role.

Yet this is still more complex and varied than what many of us are doing 70% of a run.

You would find Dragoons would be very unhappy and find their job unfillling to play. This is because job design is a key part of what makes content engaging for the player, mechanics alone aren't enough. Certain types of games might be fine with or benefit from a minimalist design approach when it comes to dealing damage. But FFXIV's design is based around a mix of job design and mechanics and they've not changed this approach.

I was hoping to avoid such comparisons being made when I stated that healers are simply just a different role. I get what you're doing, but these arguments are launching flame arrows into a lake. If there is something the devs don't care about, it's gripes about the one button smash dance.

I don't think arguments like that get through. If I was a dev, the DRG argument simply would not compute because its a different role. I'm just thinking that it isn't DRGs responsibility to erase player mistakes and sustain the group, so of course I wouldn't redesign a DPS job that way. However, what I would say is something along the lines of when DRG uses this skill, it unlocks a new skill; or so long as DRG has this buff active, they have access to skill X. How can something similar be given to healers, and would they feel rewarded?

They are talking about FFXIV in the scope of another 10 years, so when it comes to healing changes and how to expand them, they are very likely thinking in that mindset. I know their foresight is actually quite horrible, but we also have the team credit with some of their job redesigns, and hopefully they will give healers the same treatment going forward.

[Saefinn]

That depends. Something like healing kits becoming redundant as players get better and stronger is a design issue. Something like thinking that reverting back to 3.x gameplay will fix this issue is nostalgia. I think both cases are true with nearly every healer discussion.

2.x and 3.x are times when we did not have the problem people are complaining about and we don't really get why they'd scrap things that worked and people liked. I mean, we could have an evolution of 2.0 and 3.0 design.

With that said, I think if they replaced it with something else that addresses the issue then this complaint would be alleviated. I mean, I've long compromised on my preferred heal vision and a lot of the suggestions I've made have been with current healer design in mind. In fact, there are things in SGE's kit that are similar to suggestions I made for SCH, hence my cautious optimism for SGE (it does it to a lesser extent than my suggestion did)

There's only one camp. The heals only healer is a smoke screen. A caricature using the Sylphie meme to warn up and coming healers, "Don't be this person." I won't go as far to say that these players don't exist, but an entire faction or "camp" of them is a bit far-fetched.

Within the healer community, we simply have varied levels of experience, and a whole lot of diversity with the views pertaining to the role and jobs within it. That's kind of what an online community is and does. You have players learning the ropes, players who know the ropes, and players who think they do. They're all healers. Not green DPS, not heals only, not sheeps in wolves clothing, not chameleons. Just healers. That is what you are if you choose to play WHM, SCH, AST, and SGE.

The reason I separate into 2 camps is because those are the two prevailing argument types I see about healer design. Yes, there are "healing only" arguments made, there are people who say they'd rather not focus on DPS but focus on healing overall and we've seen the argument a lot "healers are healers not DPS". And if that is the argument people want to make, the problem is, we have a big chunk where we're not healing, so it's not like that approach is being satisfied.

Then you have the people who argue that healers shouldn't just heal, which I know I fall into. Though I will stress for me that's from a design point of view and not prescriptive on how people play it, because the idea of a low skill floor is that people aren't required to.

Then of course there's different arguments and nuances and variations within them and even some bleed.

As for the type of healers out there, yes, I agree there's variation across the board and if you'll notice I've been a huge advocate for low skill floor, high skill ceiling approaches because I feel that accommodates the most people. It keeps them accessible and it keeps others from being bored.

I was hoping to avoid such comparisons being made when I stated that healers are simply just a different role. I get what you're doing, but these arguments are launching flame arrows into a lake. If there is something the devs don't care about, it's gripes about the one button smash dance.

I don't think arguments like that get through. If I was a dev, the DRG argument simply would not compute because its a different role. I'm just thinking that it isn't DRGs responsibility to erase player mistakes and sustain the group, so of course I wouldn't redesign a DPS job that way. However, what I would say is something along the lines of when DRG uses this skill, it unlocks a new skill; or so long as DRG has this buff active, they have access to skill X. How can something similar be given to healers, and would they feel rewarded?

They are talking about FFXIV in the scope of another 10 years, so when it comes to healing changes and how to expand them, they are very likely thinking in that mindset. I know their foresight is actually quite horrible, but we also have the team credit with some of their job redesigns, and hopefully they will give healers the same treatment going forward.

Yes, I know they're a different role and that's why I gave an actual rotation in my example because I think if they gave a DPS the same treatment, it'd not be a single button spam. It was intentional to use another role because what I was illustrating was what it'd be like if they applied the same "strip down" approach to other roles, they would become unfulfilling and people would complain and on a healer there's a huge chunk of the role that feels stripped down because it's what we're doing most of the time. It is by no means an attempt to compare a healer rotation to a DPS rotation. But it is considered a design flaw because the design philosophy is about engaging people through job design and mechanics design, hence a single button spam is so underwhelming here, where as in another game it might not be.

If the devs don't care about the 1 button smash gripes, then yes, we'll continue to make complaints because it is a problem. For me, I don't actually care if it's a DPS move, a healing move, a support move, or anything as long as it works and is meaningful. I think DPS makes the most sense for reasons I've listed many times before.

And yet, we see some positive steps here on SGE and AST for 6.0. It's 13th Oct, so I think it's fine to

And I realise that yes they do reworks and they may get around to it on healers, but there reworks come about because people complain and continue to complain. EG. MNK has been complaining for many years, they finally acknowledged the issues, turn Greased Lightning into a trait to hold them over until 6.0 and are working in a completely new system in 6.0 to hopefully make MNKs happy. I accept a change like that could eventually come.

[Aword3213]

Yes, I know they're a different role and that's why I gave an actual rotation in my example because I think if they gave a DPS the same treatment, it'd not be a single button spam. It was intentional to use another role because what I was illustrating was what it'd be like if they applied the same "strip down" approach to other roles, they would become unfulfilling and people would complain and on a healer there's a huge chunk of the role that feels stripped down because it's what we're doing most of the time.

I find it hard to believe it's same treatment though . DPS roles unlock more offensive abilities as they level up, so do healers more healing abilities. If you remove those offensive abilities for the sake of comparison, then you should remove lots of healing abilities from healers. Healers then will be forced to use more GCD heals than before due to lack of abilities, resulting a totally different playstyle from we currently have now.

Current healers don't play this way, or at least, optimized ones. This dreadful 1 button spam comes partially from the extensive tools we have for healing. If we strip abilities away from healers in the same scale as you do from that of Dragoon, healers will have to juggle between healing GCD and offensive GCD, which somehow lessens this 1 button spam issue to an extent.

[Saefinn]

I find it hard to believe it's same treatment though . DPS roles unlock more offensive abilities as they level up, so do healers more healing abilities. If you remove those offensive abilities for the sake of comparison, then you should remove lots of healing abilities from healers. Healers then will be forced to use more GCD heals than before due to lack of abilities, resulting a totally different playstyle from we currently have now.

Current healers don't play this way, or at least, optimized ones. This dreadful 1 button spam comes partially from the extensive tools we have for healing. If we strip abilities away from healers in the same scale as you do from that of Dragoon, healers will have to juggle between healing GCD and offensive GCD, which somehow lessens this 1 button spam issue to an extent.

I mean, in practice, if we're talking about that 30% and 70% balance (and any variations) between healing and DPSing then you're not making full use of your healing toolkit.

But I was not doing an exact like-for-like because I don't think you can, because a DPS's core mechanic is persistent and a healer's core mechanic is situational. So the scope here is a common scenario of the healer experience and what it is like having your toolkit gutted, because in that 30/70 (or similar) scenario that's what the experience is. And if any other role had this experience then they would be complaining too.