MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Packetdancer]

Read the healer threads on here and on the discussion Reddit. There’s a lot of similar complaints about healers coming from those who main the role or who have played it for years, not just those who play it casually or whenever they want to mix things up. When you have enough of the same complaints, it is safe to make a statement that healer satisfaction is plummeting.

Not to say that healer gameplay isn't in a place where it could stand some improvement, but I feel like I ought to chime in here to point out that all of my own past experience has led me to believe firmly that "complaint threads" are the worst possible metric to go by. People who are unhappy with something will run to the internet to vent their spleen over said thing at length (and high volume); people who are happy tend to be a great deal quieter, whether because they're off playing the thing they're happy with... or just because they feel little need to go stick their hand in the meat-grinder that internet discourse can sometimes descend into.

Any time I've worked on a game or, really, any product that had a public forum, I could look at the discussions of people complaining... and then look at other metrics, and see that the complaints were often all from a relatively tiny (but very loud) percentage of people.

And I say this having, on occasion, been one of that tiny (but very loud) population myself.

This isn't to say complaint threads should be ignored, of course. It just means that "there are complaint threads" does not necessarily prove "the majority of healers are unhappy", no matter how loud -- or repetitive -- the complaints might be. (It doesn't mean the majority of the healers aren't unhappy either... just that complaint threads are a terrible metric to judge that by one way or the other.)

I think a big part of that is because it didn't used to have a bar to indicate it could be cleansed and when they added it, they didn't make sure the game told you. I can't remember if the Hall was out by then or not. You were just supposed to remember if you could cleanse or not or try it and see if it worked. It was just as annoying as I'm sure you're imagining. Especially when it wasn't consistent.

I do tend to recall that myself, yes. And it's worth noting that the flashing castbar to show something could be interrupted is an addition they made in... I think Shadowbringers? And, like the Esuna bar, it was a much-needed one... albeit one that was only ever detailed/noted in, like, the 5.0 patch notes on the website and literally nowhere else ever.

Both of those -- and various other things -- could stand to be communicated in game somehow.