MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[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.

[vetch]

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.

Heaven forbid I be responsible for turning into a giant gorilla and punching high explosives across the room. That's so unfair. I'd much rather press the same 25 buttons I've pressed for the last 100 hours to shave off 2% of the boss's health.

The calcifying effects of the design decision to never require any decisions of the players lest endgame raiders indicate a preference for certain classes (which they were going to do anyway) are even crippling DPS gameplay now. Every job gets uptime-friendly 'stand here, then here' mechanics. Every job bursts at 2 minutes. Every job wants the same substats. It's so tedious.

Ironically, A5 gorilla would be a perfect mechanic for modern FF14 healers. They do the least DPS, their burst doesn't suffer from not building up resources if they disengage, you have to bring two of them, and there's never so much outgoing damage that the tanks can't get along fine without them for 15 seconds.

[Rilifane]

Heaven forbid I be responsible for turning into a giant gorilla and punching high explosives across the room. That's so unfair. I'd much rather press the same 25 buttons I've pressed for the last 100 hours to shave off 2% of the boss's health.

The calcifying effects of the design decision to never require any decisions of the players lest endgame raiders indicate a preference for certain classes (which they were going to do anyway) are even crippling DPS gameplay now. Every job gets uptime-friendly 'stand here, then here' mechanics. Every job bursts at 2 minutes. Every job wants the same substats. It's so tedious.

Ironically, A5 gorilla would be a perfect mechanic for modern FF14 healers. They do the least DPS, their burst doesn't suffer from not building up resources if they disengage, you have to bring two of them, and there's never so much outgoing damage that the tanks can't get along fine without them for 15 seconds.

What is more ironical is that the endgame raiders didn't even ask for it for the most part. Having some burst at 90s, some at 120s and some even during other windows was completely fine for most of them. I can't remember a single "please streamline everything and give me full uptime on every boss, everything else makes me feel uncomfortable" threads and only very, very few posts with most of them coming from people aren't really into it but rather do it for glam and want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

On the contrary, I've seen a lot more people disliking the perfectly scripted and aligned down to the second burst from everyone, feeling like it cripples design, takes away decision making and optimization options and find easy uptime fights boring for the same reasons. Especially the physical ranged role has been up in arms over this for years now because the unique advantage their role had is completely irrelevant now since everyone can keep uptime just like that in most fights while they still suffer from their ranged tax.
So, who were these changes for? Because they sure weren't for people that genuinely enjoy endgame raiding.

[ForteNightshade]

What is more ironical is that the endgame raiders didn't even ask for it for the most part. Having some burst at 90s, some at 120s and some even during other windows was completely fine for most of them. I can't remember a single "please streamline everything and give me full uptime on every boss, everything else makes me feel uncomfortable" threads and only very, very few posts with most of them coming from people aren't really into it but rather do it for glam and want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

On the contrary, I've seen a lot more people disliking the perfectly scripted and aligned down to the second burst from everyone, feeling like it cripples design, takes away decision making and optimization options and find easy uptime fights boring for the same reasons. Especially the physical ranged role has been up in arms over this for years now because the unique advantage their role had is completely irrelevant now since everyone can keep uptime just like that in most fights while they still suffer from their ranged tax.
So, who were these changes for? Because they sure weren't for people that genuinely enjoy endgame raiding.

The whole direction of Endwalker seems like the dev team once again overcorrecting based on criticism to specific things. Uptime complaints were abundant mostly throughout Verse because E6 and E8 were notoriously bad for losing downtime with no means of adjusting strats to accommodate for it. Granted, NA did opt for the worst possible strat to exasperate the issue but the point still stands. Instead of addressing those specific cases by focusing on fights where downtime could be mitigated with creative solutions, they scrapped it altogether. Now you have boring strike dummy fights that only showcase why Prange movement tax is laughable. Then again, the sheer number of Prange players who can't figure out how to flex for P1S remains staggering.

Burst phases are similar, though more a product of the devs insistence on dumbing everything down to be near fail-proof. The hilarious irony is several jobs have become so incredibly rigid due to this change, they suffer more now than ever before. Bard, Dragoon and Summoner are notorious for having their damage completely crater if forced off the boss or said boss jumps away. Meanwhile, Gunbreaker has been made worse with the addition of Hypervelocity making it even harder to weave or re-position bosses and even the newly released Reaper doesn't help well with forced downtime. Something which Dragonsong has highlighted immense as it went from being the most popular job in Savage to the second least played after the seemingly forgotten Machinist.

A lot of their changes since Shadowbringers have been... questionable to say the least in who they're actually appealing towards.