MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Supersnow845]

A sampling is still just a sampling and I never got to fill one of these out, so I take that with a grain of salt. SCH is actually my favorite.

A sampling like the surveys done is far more reliable than “yeah but I like SCH so no problem”, people have not been satisfied with the healers since ShB, surveys, discussions, reddit, the OF’s, I don’t know how much evidence is needed to show that satisfaction with the healer role is plummeting

[Supersnow845]

It's helpful if you give detailed examples of how healer classes and encounters were designed in those other games so others can understand where you're coming from. People find it too easy to say "other games aren't like this" but then can't express an actual difference between the two.

If SE is going to improve on healer design, what game should they be looking at for an example?


Healer numbers rarely budge in any MMO because most players are more interested in seeing huge damage numbers splashed across the screen over having to watch health bars and debuffs/buffs on party members. No matter what's been tried, it's hard to get players to try out the role that's perceived as having more responsibility. Tanks also have frequently suffered from this, though to a lesser degree.

Perhaps the real solution is to give DPS additional responsibility beyond watch the boss and move out of mechanics as they DPS. Tanks have the added responsibility of handling their mitigation as they DPS. Healer have the additional responsible of keeping party HP at accepting levels and then DPSing if they have the free GCD (or oGCD if available). What additional responsibility has been given to DPS?

DPS used to have agro management, buff maintenance and synergy and utility (remember refresh), they ripped that out as well to completely functionally remove enmity and reduce all utility except expedience to “make damage or healing numbers bigger”

The problem with healers is more than just changes to healers, they are also the most affected by the overall changes in the game design

[IDontPetLalas]

It's helpful if you give detailed examples of how healer classes and encounters were designed in those other games so others can understand where you're coming from. People find it too easy to say "other games aren't like this" but then can't express an actual difference between the two.

If SE is going to improve on healer design, what game should they be looking at for an example?

Personally, I have, and more than once. This is the general section of the forum, if you want to see those types of discussions, I would point you to the healer sub-forum where there are literally hundreds of pages of posts in a single thread alone, and in fact there are numerous posts providing exactly what you want to see regarding examples from other games.

Healer numbers rarely budge in any MMO because most players are more interested in seeing huge damage numbers splashed across the screen over having to watch health bars and debuffs/buffs on party members. No matter what's been tried, it's hard to get players to try out the role that's perceived as having more responsibility. Tanks also have frequently suffered from this, though to a lesser degree.

Perhaps the real solution is to give DPS additional responsibility beyond watch the boss and move out of mechanics as they DPS. Tanks have the added responsibility of handling their mitigation as they DPS. Healer have the additional responsible of keeping party HP at accepting levels and then DPSing if they have the free GCD (or oGCD if available). What additional responsibility has been given to DPS?

That perception may well hold some people back, just as it may hold some people back from tanking. There are a number of ways to deal with that.

Stating that "healer numbers rarely budge" I suppose you are trying to say that there will always be less people interested in player a healer than a DPS, I think that's a fair comment, however I would also say that the healer role is also subject to any individual game design, and this can make that role more or less popular.

[Bobby66]

At this point in time it really feels like the FFXIV team really only cares about the causal experience. Problem is I think they are taking it too far, making a role welcoming and accessible does not mean making it mind numbly boring.

Tanking is also Zzzz for the most part at least we have a dps rotation unlike healers.

[ForteNightshade]

Healer numbers rarely budge in any MMO because most players are more interested in seeing huge damage numbers splashed across the screen over having to watch health bars and debuffs/buffs on party members. No matter what's been tried, it's hard to get players to try out the role that's perceived as having more responsibility. Tanks also have frequently suffered from this, though to a lesser degree.

Perhaps the real solution is to give DPS additional responsibility beyond watch the boss and move out of mechanics as they DPS. Tanks have the added responsibility of handling their mitigation as they DPS. Healer have the additional responsible of keeping party HP at accepting levels and then DPSing if they have the free GCD (or oGCD if available). What additional responsibility has been given to DPS?

While I don't disagree the Healer role is generally unpopular comparatively speaking, this only highlights my original point: the dev's approach has been flawed since Shadowbringers. The whole reason they dumbed down healers and seemingly refuse to give them a meaningfully engaging rotation is due to the perceived difficulty being too daunting for new players. Therefore, making them easier should attract players to the role. It didn't. All they accomplished was making the healer community incredibly divisive. If the numbers were never going to budge, or even deplete because of player backlash, then they were better off never changing their gameplay design in the first place.

Giving DPS greater responsibility is fine, though the devs have said they won't due to it being unfair for those playing specific roles. I recall Yoshida specifically mentioning the Gorilla mechanic from A5. Furthermore, the issue with mechanics like that is with how rigid jobs have become nowadays. Take a job like Dragoon. If forced to engage for any long periods, it's rotation is entirely destroyed in terms of damage output. Hence why any DPS mechanic will largely be thrown onto whichever job does the least damage.

[Deveryn]

DPS used to have agro management, buff maintenance and synergy and utility (remember refresh), they ripped that out as well to completely functionally remove enmity and reduce all utility except expedience to “make damage or healing numbers bigger”

Yeah... how was the population back then? How was the satisfaction back then? People appear to speak fondly of those days, but it clearly wasn't a sustainable path for XIV. All that stuff was needless complication and bloat.

There's more competition for people's time these days, so if something is too much of a niche, fewer people are going to bother with it and eventually that game goes away. K.I.S.S.

[VelKallor]

#NerfTowerofZot pls

Zot is fun, a blast. Love it.

[Seera1024]

Yeah... how was the population back then? How was the satisfaction back then? People appear to speak fondly of those days, but it clearly wasn't a sustainable path for XIV. All that stuff was needless complication and bloat.

There's more competition for people's time these days, so if something is too much of a niche, fewer people are going to bother with it and eventually that game goes away. K.I.S.S.

There's a fine line between making things more accessible and making things too simple and you drive away too many players who don't need it to be simple.

Many healers are arguing that SE in making the role more accessible may have gone too far and made things too simple for healers.

Everyone has their point where a class/role is too simple for them to enjoy it and a point where it is too complex for them to enjoy it. There's a sweetspot that has the highest number of players between simple and complex. If you go too simple in the name of accessibility, the players who prefer more complex classes/roles may find the class/role has become too simple for them. They stop playing that class/role and move on to something that's more complex.

People are saying that SE has moved the line too far over to the simple side and the players it brings in due to accessibility is less than the players it lost due to lowering the complexity.

[Supersnow845]

Yeah... how was the population back then? How was the satisfaction back then? People appear to speak fondly of those days, but it clearly wasn't a sustainable path for XIV. All that stuff was needless complication and bloat.

There's more competition for people's time these days, so if something is too much of a niche, fewer people are going to bother with it and eventually that game goes away. K.I.S.S.

The population has been growing since ARR, just because EW continued that path doesn’t mean it did everything right, HW was basically the expansion that secured the longevity of the game after ARR was “fine” but nothing that people would dedicate 10 years to, job satisfaction was also higher but anyway I was simply responding to the person that said “we should give DPS more responsibilities” saying that’s what we used to have, if you have a problem thinking that was pointless button bloat reply to them about it

[HyoMinPark]

Yeah... how was the population back then? How was the satisfaction back then? People appear to speak fondly of those days, but it clearly wasn't a sustainable path for XIV. All that stuff was needless complication and bloat.

There's more competition for people's time these days, so if something is too much of a niche, fewer people are going to bother with it and eventually that game goes away. K.I.S.S.

No BRD was complaining about the utility they used to have outside of old Mage’s and Army’s costing you 10% damage to use. If anything, when they got rid of Refresh and OG Tactician, the physical ranged role as a whole complained about it because their role was supposed to be the SUPPORT role (or XIV’s closest equivalent to a support role). No one complained about the design of SB BRD outside of its power creep in Alphascape. Instead of just fixing that, the developers basically gave the job a lobotomy in ShB, and it pissed off a lot of BRD mains. Aside from the fact that they removed all utility from the job and gave utility to DNC because, apparently, two jobs within the same role can’t both have utility.

Previous healer design—SB Lilies aside—was generally fine. AST had balance issues between it and WHM, and with Diurnal being objectively better than Nocturnal in every scenario except solo healing Savage or Ultimate; and Balance needed to be addressed because nothing can compete with straight damage increases. But the general design of healer gameplay was not as heavily criticized as you’re implying. HW DRK is near universally considered the best iteration of the job, despite needing to address how Parry was a dead stat. SB DRK, by comparison, was heavily criticized because the developers read way too much into “oh you like Dark Arts? Well now you can Dark Arts everything!” It made the playstyle needlessly clunky. And they kind of did the same thing with WAR by taking Fell Cleave and making it into something you basically spam. Compared to HW Fell Cleave where you built up Wrath stacks and then spent them on a hard-hitting ability that felt powerful.

And I bring up again the removal of Kaiten from SAM. Who the heck asked for that? And look at how much backlash that got the devs. The proposed DRG changes that were supposed to happen in 6.2 and are now happening in 7.0 are being criticized because who even asked for them in the first place? The developers have a huge issue with stripping down jobs and removing aspects from them that people did not ask for; and for ignoring the genuine complaints they may have.