Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

[Lyth]

...

You were one of the people that I had in mind, actually! You just activated a trap card.

I think out of the three examples that you linked, Recon's post has always been hands down the best structured (I see that they've updated and tremendously improved on the OP a few days ago, although as I mentioned a month or so back in the thread itself, it would have a lot more impact if it were started up as a fresh thread - I didn't even catch that there was an update). Sebazy's thread is concise and makes an excellent point (they'd also have my recommendation, form what I've seen of their posts), but it's something that I would like to see incorporated in a broader 'design direction' thread like Recon's. I usually avoid multi quote-driven threads because I find them distracting, but I do like your posts in general.

I'll give you a couple of examples of how I like things formatted. This was our list of recommendations that was picked up by the Community Team and later became the basis of the 4.3 DRK changes leading in to the Shadowbringers rework, and this was a smaller, more focused thread on Living Dead leading up to Endwalker's media tour. There was a lot more to it than just that, of course, between Q+A sessions and reddit, but I think the basic point comes down to channeling your passion constructively into a well structured feedback thread that players can unite behind. Enjoy the discussion and do it out of a passion to make the gameplay more fun, rather than to gain a competitive advantage as many can be wont to do. I think the quality of the discussion dictates the effectiveness of the thread, much more than even raw upvotes.

If you have a genuine interest in this and are willing to put in some organizational effort, I'm more than happy to provide some recommendations and tricks from the sidelines, because I see it as a genuinely worthwhile cause. Although this is a bit of a tangent that's probably better suited for the healer forums.

[Semirhage]

The devil is in the details.

If you were to make a post on how healer gameplay is generally unsatisfying, a lot of people will agree with you. That's the low hanging fruit. Nobody is going to 'defend' against that statement. The real prize is higher up: you'll have a lot harder time getting a complete consensus on what the central problem is, be it:
1) a lackluster offensive toolkit
2) an overabundance of healing and defensive cooldowns between tanks and healers
3) lack of incoming damage/variability in fight design
4) reduced opportunities to carry (i.e. raidwipe potential) or
5) relatively homogenous design and gameplay (why is every healer a caster?),
let alone proposed solutions. And that's really the level of detail that you need to engage at bare minimum.

What I find truly frightening is the fact that 'The idea that we need to DPS must go' is actually still a topic on the healer forum frontpage in May 2022. We occasionally used to see similar threads about 'the dangers of DPS tanking' at the absolute latest up until mid-Heavensward, circa 2016 or so, before the tanking community unilaterally reached consensus on it and laughed any further 'debate' on the subject off the forums. If we can't even agree on what the core design goals and direction should be from the playerbase, how does anyone find a solution? So things remain the same.

I think that there's a lot of passion, but that's not enough on its own. You need someone who knows how to actually write. That passion needs to be supported by well structured and thought-out post(s) that people can rally and formulate a consensus behind. And while many people want their voices to be heard and be the one to make that golden thread that builds the necessary momentum for change, not everyone is equally able to express themselves with clarity, so you get a mire of duplicate complaint threads that don't provide anything besides raw emotion.

There are some very articulate regulars in the healer forums (at least one of whom is lurking in here). I have no personal stake in the issue myself (healer is by far my least played role in this game, largely because I dislike MMO healing's pace in general and find healing truly shines in a faster, more reactive PvP environment), but I'd really be interested to see one of them pick up their keyboard and write a unifying thread on the topic and get it cross-posted on to somewhere like /r/ffxivdiscussion or the main subreddit. Not just for the upvotes, but to build an actual conversation on the subject. If we managed to get Living Dead changed using this approach, I'm pretty sure anything is possible. I'd offer to do it for you, except it's not my place nor my battle to fight.

Going a little meta, I think there's a pretty big set of issues that prevents the healer forums from coming to a consensus on what needs to change with the role.
1) There are so many problems with how healers are designed that coming up with a succinct list is...rough.
2) FFXIV pitches itself as a trinity game, but its hard drive toward being solo-friendly is a design choice that consequentially makes the trinity less coherent; support roles feel it most keenly. This doesn't mean that you -can't- have more support focused jobs, but FFXIV's healers are designed in a way that's totally tone-deaf to this, and pretends as if a straight healbomber makes sense in this game.
3) Healing jobs have a divide in their fanbase that you just don't see much in tanks, and especially not DPS.

What makes playing a DPS fun is pretty well-known, easy to understand, and straightforward. You want to make the enemy explode. Or bleed. Or punch them in the face. Whatever route to that same end gets you going. Tanks might want to feel like the party meat shield, but there's still always a bit of that sword-wielding knight fantasy somewhere in there. You're still beating up the enemy. Healers, as a role, leave room for Sylphie. Someone who detests combat, and "just wants to heal". That's....not really how this game works, but you're always going to have a number of them screaming that FFXIV's healers are going in the "correct" direction, sense be damned.

Then you have what I, and several other healers who lurk the forums, see as our class fantasy. We want to hold the party together, yes. I want to feel like a powerful combat medic. Rescuing someone with a flick of my wrist, then smacking someone with my staff, debuffing, healing the tank, holy blasting, keeping a bunch of tasks in the air at the same time while looking like I haven't broken a sweat as far as the rest of the party is concerned. Struggle sessions do happen, and they're also fun, but the end goal is getting really good at managing stressful, complex situations while multitasking. Other players may define their terms differently, but I think a LOT of healer mains are chasing the gameplay I described. And every single element of that gameplay is utter anathema to FFXIV's healing direction for the last six years.

This leads to
4) FFXIV's healer jobs are designed by people who main DPS jobs.

The Sylphie vision of healer design is the direct healer-style copy of how DPS jobs work. They want to damage more? You want to heal more! Easy peasy. Makes perfect sense.
The combat medic vision of healer design is the inverse of how DPS jobs work. Rationing your abilities, stretching your cooldowns, and seeing just how close to the line you can get things and do as little as possible before going back on the offensive is a different world from how DPS jobs work. And it's really hard to get a lot of people who don't give a crap about how healer mains find their fun to really grok this. The dev team and Yoshi have certainly displayed none of that sort of understanding.

Honestly I think one of the biggest roadblocks to change here is that the dev team just isn't that interested in healers or how they play. All it takes is one Sylphie telling them that the grand vision of Cure spamming is "fun", and everything else the healer forums say is just babbling to them. What's this essay about how healer engagement is fundamentally different from DPS engagement? Get outta here, HeALeRs ShoULD HeAL OnlY, that's how they have fun because it makes sense to me and someone told me it's fun.

[IkaraGreydancer]

I've been complaining about the hideous design applied to healers for six years. It hasn't improved. In fact, it's continued in the direction that I've opposed the entire time. You know who's advocating healers stay as-is? The developers. I'm so beyond bored of "well yeah they could be improved I suppose, but they're still fun now!" God, please no. No they're not. They're embarrassingly designed. The kits have less nuance than some phone games. I'm utterly uninterested in hunting for faint praise to hand the developers. Where's the interactivity? It's not there. You have a single boring GCD that you cast literally hundreds of times in any given instance if you've gained any skill in the role at all. It only gets worse the more skilled you get. Healers are currently designed to be easy queue pops by driveby players who aren't interested in actually playing them at all. They're designed by DPS mains for DPS mains. There are no procs. The deepest interaction in the kits is "this ability makes your healing spells heal slightly more for 10 seconds". The skill ceiling is an inch above the floor.

"Calm down" indeed. They've given a lobotomy to my favorite role with no signs of stopping for half a decade, and I'm sick and tired of people defending this horsecrap.

Take your emotions out on something else. You're getting upset because I simply have a different viewpoint. Being passionate is fine but you need to practice some restraint n poise seriously. Hop into a healer thread with your grievances as that'll be a much more suitable place for issues with said role. Pop off at the people there and let others who still enjoy the role as is do as such.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'm going to be honest, I have heard the "game will die" nonsense since ARR. I will not, nor will ever believe it until they pull something so idiotic that it will kill the game, because I've been here for 10 years and it still hasn't happened. There have been massive missteps yes, with the handling of Gordias Savage (almost killed the raiding community) and the handling of Eureka Pagos (the population for the relic grind dwindled to almost nothing within a week). But there has been nothing so widespread to where the game has almost died. Something may come some day from NEW content, but the problems we have had now for years won't.

Ignoring the problems just makes things worse though. As of recently they have made numerous blunders, major blunders back to back since EW release. It doesn’t bode well for the future at all. Things like job changes and healers etc are just the straw that will inevitably break the camel’s back for many players. I’m sure people said the same thing as you back in 1.0 and look what happened lol.

[Havenchild]

People always said the same thing about WoW, look where that got them. It would be completely foolish to ignore the current state of the game, the game's direction, problems since EW launch, etc. Whether or not you think the game is "dying", pretending that it doesn't have major issues helps nobody.

Except WoW rarely catered to casual players and removed alot of said content or made it invalid. They instead chose the high end playerbase that was raiding and they listened to the raiders remarks above the rest.

The state of WoW is as is because they listened and overly bent over to the same types of players complaining on these forums now. WoWs issue is its complete and utter lack of casual content, something FFXIV has plentifully. The population of WoW has been decreasing for years while XIVs has been increasing. So it looks like the direction of XIV is just what the market wants. As others have already mentioned, these doom and gloom threads have been appearing since ARR. The direction of the game has been challenged since post ARR, its been challenged since HW, SB and SHB and despite said challenges, it continues to grow in popularity. Whether people choose to stay or not at this point is irrelevant as the game clearly is alive and well.

Now it's not to say some things can't be looked at ala PVP, which finally got a much needed revamp that received high praises all around. But there's very little focus on what the actual issue is, so devs have very few consolidated points to pull from, least looking at the NA forums.

[Vahlnir]

Except WoW rarely catered to casual players and removed alot of said content or made it invalid. They instead chose the high end playerbase that was raiding and they listened to the raiders remarks above the rest.

The state of WoW is as is because they listened and overly bent over to the same types of players complaining on these forums now. WoWs issue is its complete and utter lack of casual content, something FFXIV has plentifully. The population of WoW has been decreasing for years while XIVs has been increasing. So it looks like the direction of XIV is just what the market wants.

Once upon a time, WoW catered to everyone. It's a shame that it has become the mess it is now.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Except WoW rarely catered to casual players and removed alot of said content or made it invalid. They instead chose the high end playerbase that was raiding and they listened to the raiders remarks above the rest.

The state of WoW is as is because they listened and overly bent over to the same types of players complaining on these forums now. WoWs issue is its complete and utter lack of casual content, something FFXIV has plentifully. The population of WoW has been decreasing for years while XIVs has been increasing. So it looks like the direction of XIV is just what the market wants.

Do we have exact figures on the population? I’ve heard that EW had the biggest drop off in history after the main surge came.

[Havenchild]

Do we have exact figures on the population? I’ve heard that EW had the biggest drop off in history after the main surge came.

Well you have the fact that as of Feb 2022, over 800k characters completed the MSQ at least. That's up from previous expansion numbers, which were about 560k for SHB and 616k in SB in the same timeframe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._2022_release/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tails_are_out/


You have a more accurate comparison that Lucky Bancho's site offers every few months:

Heres the report from Janurary: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/56364034.html

Heres the report from April: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/56584369.html

Jan 2022: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...3/e3af7fb0.png
April 2022: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...2/d20b09dd.png

Rough Translation of the numbers:

The number of active characters is about 1.7 million, an increase of 350,000 from the previous (1.35 million).
The number of new characters increased by about 250,000 from the previous 180,000 to 430,000.
The last time inactive was 160,000 returning characters that were active this time, up 40,000 from the previous 120,000.
The number of active (return?) characters since the last time has increased from 1.04 million, up 60,000 to about 1.1 million.
The moon started at 1.33 million (up 300,000). The Dawning Level Cap reached 970,000 (up 330,000). The moon clear is 880,000 (up 310,000).


So game is definitely growing. They are mostly parsing data from lodestone against hitting certain quest milestones in MSQ, some side quests, Job levels, etcetc. There's a GitHub that explains how they classify the data a bit more and how they weed out and account for bots.

[Thaciscokidd]

Snip

This is one reason why i wish they would officially release numbers because from the same article you see a rise from last summer then a drop off after EW launch and returning to nearly pre summer numbers on steam.

[Havenchild]

This is one reason why i wish they would officially release numbers because from the same article you see a rise from last summer then a drop off after EW launch and returning to nearly pre summer numbers on steam.

The article is still more accurate as it's parsing numbers from all realms & platforms, directly from lodestone. So sure steam is reflecting a drop maybe, but that also doesn't account from players who stopped playing on the steam version. Even if at least it purely means steam players are leaving, that's also all its measuring; players who use the steam client. Which we know is a relatively small base against the overall playerbase. Yeah the rise and drop off are standard and has been more or less the same every expansion release. The more critical fact is that over time, the numbers steadily grow. It peaks during expansion -> levels out -> steadily grows more concurrently. That's a positive growth rate and something every game aspires to get towards.

I think a lot of these number hikes are also spill over from the launch issue. You have to remember that there are a lot of people that just quit and opted to try the game out later during the launch due to the queue times. There were players that purchased the game that were not even able to create a character due to servers being full. It would be interesting as well to see how many of those new characters are also just alts, as it seems making alts is far more popular that I would have expected it to be in this game.

Well that's why I linked Jan 2022 and April 2022. All login issues were resolved by Jan 2022. I would assume the number will increase when they do the summer analysis because 6.1 was just released to a successful PVP revamp, new MSQ, Alliance Raid, and a new Ultimate (which should engage players for some time).