Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Mimilu]

With how the question in the QnA was reformulated, I now ponder if SE as a whole is aware of the situation but dont want to address or Yoshi P have the wrong idea about the complaints for the way the team communicates to him the issue.

Do we know if we still the lack of a main healer in the combat Dev team?

The only dev team members I’ve heard of who played as healers were Foxclon (the global community producer who does the letters with Yoshi-P) but they only mentioned it once near the end of SB (as a WHM) and guest designer Yoko Taro, who stopped playing because he couldn’t solo Titan hard as a WHM.

[Rilifane]

That's probably still the biggest issue with healer design.
It's not something you can look at from a purely theoretical point of view and understand the reality. Especially not if you only main dps. It's the age old "expectation vs reality". You can't just look at the skills, read the tooltips and accurately gauge how healers will play and feel in reality without some first-hand experience.
If you ask a player about a role they have never ever touched (not even as a "I level it through roulettes" kind of thing) you will get answers that are wildly different from how it really is. They have their own idea and are influenced by what others said but that's it.
They lack the experience to refute or confirm any of the claims.
It's the same with what many people think about casters: they constantly have to stand still, they're turrets, you need to know the fight well to get your casts about because oh no, you have to stand still for 2s.
Reality is that it wasn't the case in ShB and is even less true with EW but people still think of turrets that are rooted to the ground when they think of casters. And I don't even mean BLM, I mean all casters.

There are a few things people that don't play healer usually don't get but they are fundamental for understanding the reality of healer gameplay once past the baby healer stage:
- healing is completely binary: it is either enough to live or not enough and you die. No inbetween. Surviving with 2 digits is the same as surviving with 4 digits. You live. Plain and simple
- useful healing has hard cap and any healing done beyond what was required wasn't useful, feely-heals that only serve to project a certain image are not onjectively useful
- incoming damage has a very low variance; you can't die suddenly from an aoe you previously survived with 10% HP given the same gear and mitigation
- damage is scripted and an aoe only happens when it was mapped to happen, there doesn't exist random surprise damage out of nowhere from a boss
- oGCDs are not for emergencies, there are supposed to be used liberally as they prevent emergencies from happening in the first place
- using dps neutral mitigation/ healing from tanks & dps is not a sign of a bad healer but a sign of a good dps and a good healer if they plan around it
- natural regen is a form of healing that can be utilized and letting people sit below full HP is not a sign of a bad healer
- healing faster doesn't give you any advantage unless a spread mechanic comes up shortly that makes it impossible to heal everyone efficiently
- "countering" each damage one by one with a heal cast is usually the least efficient way to heal because it doesn't factor in the initial HP pool nor any natural regen

That's not something everyone gets on day 1 after playing healer for a bit in a dungeon but designing healers without all that in mind leads to what we currently have.
Healers are designed as if extra healing is beneficial,natural regen, dps mitigation/ heal should be avoided, oGCDs are supporting actors for GCD heals, random damage could happen anytime even with everyone playing well and the initial HP bar isn't something to factor in and instead simply to be kept full at all times. Just in case, you know?
I think it's not even "healers should only HEAL" what many non-healers and the devs think of the role, it's more that they vastly underestimate all the options there are to keep someone from dying. Only from dying, not necessarily at full HP.
And it's fine that new healers don't utilize all those tools and options but veteran healers do and they also make up a big part of the healer playerbase and more importantly, of the consistent healer playerbase. They need to be kept in mind when designing healers. If they don't, they'll quit one by one and get replaced by people that play healer with the same enthusiasm as someone only leveling a class to 80 to get the Amaro mount.

[Deceptus]

Reality is that it wasn't the case in ShB and is even less true with EW but people still think of turrets that are rooted to the ground when they think of casters. And I don't even mean BLM, I mean all casters.

What sucks is there are people who still think that BLM are immobile turrets despite getting TWO charges of Triple Cast, TWO charges of sharpcast to either hold onto thunder proc or or firestarter proc, Switfcast, Xenoglossy being instant, Paradox being instant on ice phase, and Scathe as an absolute last resort.

SMN is ridiculously mobile now

RDM always has been.

- oGCDs are not for emergencies, there are supposed to be used liberally as they prevent emergencies from happening in the first place

This is extremely similar to tanks and their defensive mitigation CD's. You don't want to be using them when sh!t hits the fan. You want to use them before that so it doesn't happen.

This pattern of releasing a few jobs in a state somewhere between non competitive and barely functional and then having to spend the next 6 months worth of patches simply fixing them is both predictable and a huge waste of their time..

Well said.

However, Yoshi-P himself has stated many times that they will never be as smart as their players, which isn't a bad thing, it's just a fact. However many hundred of devs is nothing compared to the millions that play the game, and there is a good chance the player will find a way to play the job better than the devs ever intended. S

That is LITERALLY the point of a Player Test Realm. To get the developers outside of their echo chamber that they're in. Get an outside perspective and find things they missed BEFORE it goes live so they don't have to spend resources fixing it after.

That excuse "They'll never be as smart as millions of players" has been used for years now. Either it's ignorance or apathy and neither should be acceptable this long into a game's lifecycle.

[seraf]

I envy most people in this thread. What a carefree life one must live to be able to fill the social void with some weird and schizophrenic parasocial relationship with a company that couldn't care less if you died tomorrow. To grant such importance to it that you'd spend hours defending what would be stated as objective design shortcomings in quite literally any other game.

The community is so casualized and viciously "positively" toxic that reasoning with it has become impossible. And now the dev team take advantage of that to show flippant remarks and what would be reviled arrogance, again, in any other scenario. This is why I don't play in DF anymore. This is why I'm struggling to find a reason to do anything except play BLU and pretend Yoshi didn't take a fat steaming one over one of my favorite classes in the series with a laughable excuse that this community took on the chin. Yes. FFXI, a game from two decades ago, simply had access to alien technology that allowed that job to be born and allowed other jobs to maintain an engagement and identity that didn't hinge off the holy role trinity that is so heavily enforced because Yoshi's imagination is limited to whatever WoW thought up.

Healers have been told to take a hike. The past year or so tanks have been realizing we've been suffering a similar homogenization. But it's okay because daddy Yoshi knows what he's doing and as long as a new DPS class is released every expansion, there is naught to complain about.

I don't know who you people are, but you aren't the community that was around when HW released. I don't know where they went, but I'm probably going to end up unsubbing someday soon and following suit if both the game and it's community will so willfully decay like this.

/Rant

It honestly just sounds like you've burned yourself out. Nobody should ever get this upset over a video game and remember it's actually okay to take a break.

[MintnHoney]

It honestly just sounds like you've burned yourself out. Nobody should ever get this upset over a video game and remember it's actually okay to take a break.

Conversely, no one should be told that they shouldn't expect to have fun playing a video game unless they can reach what they consider the tippy-toppiest of difficulties, but here we are.

[Shurrikhan]

Comment: "I'm a casual player not interested in doing Ultimate, but I wish healing were more engaging even in typical, broadly accessible content."

Response Type 1: "You lack the clout to make this claim about non-Ultimate content. Go play Ultimate to be taken seriously (about non-Ultimate content)."

Response Type 2:"But healing is fun™ and if you tell me otherwise, you must be a jaded elitist. Go play Ultimate, elitist."

Damn, we didn't even need Yoshida for this.

That is LITERALLY the point of a Player Test Realm. To get the developers outside of their echo chamber that they're in. Get an outside perspective and find things they missed BEFORE it goes live so they don't have to spend resources fixing it after.

That excuse "They'll never be as smart as millions of players" has been used for years now. Either it's ignorance or apathy and neither should be acceptable this long into a game's lifecycle.

To be fair, it really shouldn't take a player test group to note that "Hmm, this skill only award roughly 60 potency per minute to even have on my bar, despite giving many more opportunities to lose more than that," (True Strike), or "This previously low-potency skill (Dragon Kick) that also gives massive effective potency to another also happens to be stronger than the far more rarely usable skill with no such bonus (True Strike), to the point that it might not be worth using any other skills except per (de)buff upkeep."

The Paradox rotation at least falls well short while not much reducing effort required. DK spam, on the other hand, is as much a mess as looking at two spells doing the same thing but one having a far higher MP cost despite being on an already far less MP-flush job.

[ForteNightshade]

If SE had hundreds of devs (Or even a consistent testing team of that scale with experience and skill comparable to a prog raiding static) then I don't think they would be making the significant oversights and mistakes that are pretty much a given with each expansion release. This pattern of releasing a few jobs in a state somewhere between non competitive and barely functional and then having to spend the next 6 months worth of patches simply fixing them is both predictable and a huge waste of their time.

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

White Mage is worthless. And I don't say that to be hyperbolic. The job offers literally nothing its counterpart Healers don't perform better at. Since the release of Endwalker White Mage has: the lowest DPS output, the weakest MP economy, the least mobility, the weakest healing flexibility and is the least able to recover from dying. Simply put, White Mage does nothing. It's downright baffling and a little embarrassing it was left in this state come 6.08. Unfortunately, White Mage remains incredibly popular at a casual level. So it may be left to rot for several patches.

Another major balance issue is the Physical Range. Nevermind the whole range tax is nonsense, Machinist is so woefully inferior DPS wise, the job may as well not exist. The supposedly selfish DPS job can't keep up with Dancer of all jobs. A similar problem has happened with the Casters as Black Mage utterly dwarfs Red Mage and Summoner since its 6.08 buffs—to the tune of nearly 1,000 rDPS. It's insane just how much stronger Black Mage is. And before anyone mentions it being the selfish Caster. Dragoon, Reaper, Monk and even Ninja are all reasonably competitive with Samurai despite its selfish nature. Hence why right now the only role decently balanced are the Melee. Bit ironic considering how the role started.

[Semirhage]

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights

As a long haul White Mage complainer, the claim that XIV's jobs are so well balanced has always been a headscratcher. Most of the roles/subroles had rDPS within a few percentage of one another most of the time? Sure, they're usually alright at that if that's your only metric. But White Mage being a hundred or two rDPS behind the others is anything but the whole story there. It's worse in damage while also being worse everywhere else, so there's no tradeoff. Sure, rDPS rarely being too far apart is a nice bonus...except you also see Square designing jobs that are superior choices in every single conceivable way. Even if that superiority gap is smaller in some places than others, that's still piss poor balance in my view.

Here, have your pick of two classes in this RPG. One has stats that are all 10s, and has access to level 6 spells. The other has one 10, and the other stats range from 11 to 15. They get access up to level 9 spells. Choose wisely! They both have a 10 in that one stat so I'm sure it's a real hard decision.

And that's just balance within the role, not even touching the thread topic of engagement. The healer role is so terribly designed that engagement isn't even where the BS ends.

[Liam_Harper]

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

I expect one of the reasons is they "balance" it by making content easier in terms of enrage timers and healing required. When content is easy other than resolving mechanics, it matters less whether the individual classes you bring are bad and more whether your team can do mechs correctly. Thus creating an artificial illusion of "balance" where all classes are fine.

Very little content in the game has tight dps checks now. Normal has almost no dps checks or enrage. EX is extremely lenient. Even Savage is designed so it can be cleared with multiple deaths, 50% uptime healers and a few single digit parsing dps as long as half the group is competent. Ultimate is known for low dps checks and being mechanics focused.
Same for healing, everything in the game requires very little healing and the cases that do, GCD heals are so strong even a WHM can churn out a few 1000 potency Medica IIs and cover it. The GCD heal dps loss won't matter because enrage timers don't matter much.
There's also the 1 phys ranged, 1 caster, 1 melee restriction as well as the fact that buffs from the same class don't stack, to discourage players from trying to exclude the "bad" classes and stack the good ones. It's not that bad to bring a MCH because hey, you get your 1% party bonus. "Balanced" without the work of actually balancing.

In the very rare cases healing or dps isn't easy and it actually matters, balance goes out the window. The best example is WHM in p3s, where suddenly it statistically goes from being the most popular healer to one of the least popular. Why bring the barebones rubbish healer when there's actually a difficult healing mechanic that can make or break a clear, that AST laughs at. Or the "no PLD" groups for early tier prog where damage was more important.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Meanwhile, the continual irony is people will prop up how incredibly balanced all the jobs are despite them being anything but. Presently, we're seeing comically high DPS discrepancies that simply shouldn't exist this long into an expansion cycle. For specific highlights:

White Mage is worthless. And I don't say that to be hyperbolic. The job offers literally nothing its counterpart Healers don't perform better at. Since the release of Endwalker White Mage has: the lowest DPS output, the weakest MP economy, the least mobility, the weakest healing flexibility and is the least able to recover from dying. Simply put, White Mage does nothing. It's downright baffling and a little embarrassing it was left in this state come 6.08. Unfortunately, White Mage remains incredibly popular at a casual level. So it may be left to rot for several patches.

Another major balance issue is the Physical Range. Nevermind the whole range tax is nonsense, Machinist is so woefully inferior DPS wise, the job may as well not exist. The supposedly selfish DPS job can't keep up with Dancer of all jobs. A similar problem has happened with the Casters as Black Mage utterly dwarfs Red Mage and Summoner since its 6.08 buffs—to the tune of nearly 1,000 rDPS. It's insane just how much stronger Black Mage is. And before anyone mentions it being the selfish Caster. Dragoon, Reaper, Monk and even Ninja are all reasonably competitive with Samurai despite its selfish nature. Hence why right now the only role decently balanced are the Melee. Bit ironic considering how the role started.

It may be intentional design that certain iconic jobs are just easier to play and optimization is less important to the devs. If a new player can come in and do okay as a WHM or SMN or RPR, then the popular "entry level jobs" are performing as intended.

Put another way, and using casters as I think a pretty clear example, what if the devs' idea of "balance" is having a job for every level of skill?

* SMN - beginners, casual
* RDM - intermediate, prog
* BLM - expert, current raid tier and Ultimate

You can even see a similar spectrum across Maiming vs. Striking (although I'm not sure where NIN was *intended* to fall in that spectrum).

Does that obviate a hope that jobs can still be balanced at all levels of play? Not at all. Does that still suck for people who mained WHM prior to this rebalancing? Absolutely. But I do think it is important to keep in mind that there may be other factors at play. The more jobs we have, the less important job balance actually becomes if there are other prevailing priorities like accessibility.

I also have no idea how WHM plays at lower levels and if it actually *is* more accessible than the other healers. But I have a strong hunch it probably is the most intuitive of the healing jobs, despite all its inefficiencies, because compared to the other healers the concept is quite direct and gimmick-free.