The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

I honestly just want to see at least one extremely different control system, so to speak. I want a healer that doesn't just have a discrete button for almost every function (no, the 4-way doubling of Eukresia is not sufficient).

For instance, I'd like SGE to feel more like I'm managing nouliths, not just casting noulith-skinned spells. Let me program and command my little goddamn gundam army.

Build out in-universe-physics ways of giving reason to apply different modes or formation or such, and build out the kit from there, rather than from any template.

After that, I'd probably head to WHM, then AST, then finally SCH, until they each actually feel truly different from one another.

[Archwizard]

I honestly just want to see at least one extremely different control system, so to speak. I want a healer that doesn't just have a discrete button for almost every function (no, the 4-way doubling of Eukresia is not sufficient).

For instance, I'd like SGE to feel more like I'm managing nouliths, not just casting noulith-skinned spells. Let me program and command my little goddamn gundam army.

Build out in-universe-physics ways of giving reason to apply different modes or formation or such, and build out the kit from there, rather than from any template.

After that, I'd probably head to WHM, then AST, then finally SCH, until they each actually feel truly different from one another.

That I'm not too sure about. I mean if we were going to have a healer based on different formations and modes, I'd think it would be SCH.

In an ideal world:

* WHM should be the standard healer -- the cleric/druid hybrid. Job that introduces players to the basics of healing, low skill floor. Consistent focus on GCDs, everything's straightforward and classical effects, no particular gimmicks besides rewarding use of GCD healing tools.
* SCH should be the tactical healer -- the military support who happens to heal. Several situational tools that synergize, sabotage foes while commanding allies, lots of versatility with the expectation of fitting to and rewarding complex stratagem. If they're going to have the faerie, then it should create additional strategies, rather than just being a glorified HoT/totem/charge of oGCDs.
* AST should be the gimmick healer -- the spacetime manipulator. Enhance allies with bursts of speed and cooldown reduction, debuff enemies to stagger damage intake, accelerate HoT and DoT effects, turn back time to undo damage, stagger heavy hits then negate them with HoTs, etc.
* SGE should be the battle healer -- the doctor with a gun. Attacks flow into heals flow into attacks. (I don't necessarily think that this means every healing tool needs a dual function for attacking and vice versa, however.) There's a lot you can do with that without having to add in complex noulith formations.

Of these, I feel SGE is already the closest to its ideal, though it could do considerably more in that regard. SCH meanwhile seems the most muddled and in need of overhaul, since it presently feels like two jobs fused together with a number of tools that don't really mesh, followed by AST who is simply overwhelmed by its card system.

[Shurrikhan]

That I'm not too sure about. I mean if we were going to have a healer based on different formations and modes, I'd think it would be SCH.

To me, SCH would be based around schema(ta) and strategems, rather than actual weapon configurations. I was referring to only flight formations and energy modes for the gundam nouliths, after all.

[Archwizard]

I was referring to only flight formations and energy modes for the gundam nouliths, after all.

The other thing is (speaking as someone with some animation experience myself) that in order to have the diversity of noulith formations you describe, they would either have to animate each of the four as individual weapons with their own skeletons, or continue as one set but with several times more weapon animations than any other weapon just to account for the number of formations you're looking for. As already one of the most complex weapon types in the game, it'd make nouliths far and away the most overloaded and laggy weapon to boot.

But I also don't quite understand, practically, how programmable flight formations would work/benefit the job? It's a nice descriptor on paper but it really depends how much it actually adds to the job besides micromanagement.
I get that they're inspired by Gundam bits, but it's not like they're in danger of getting shot down if they don't perform evasive maneuvers, or need to bypass obstacles on the way to their target (and in the extremely rare cases where that mattered, like having to shoot from a particular angle at all times to bypass a reflective barrier, it might be imbalanced if the SGE was the one job that could ignore the mechanic). Nor do we have a sword or handheld gun as a backup weapon while they're deployed; they're the only extension of our arms, which is why they only fly for a second and come right back, as we'd otherwise disarm ourselves for extended periods (and prevent the charging of healing abilities to boot).
I could see things like "have two of them channel a barrier in front of you while the other two fire over it like an emplacement" or something like that, but even then the multitasking nature of SGE abilities means you could just have that as one "pre-programmed" spell... in the case you could ever justify us needing that capability. Anything more complex than that, there are probably simpler alternatives for.

And this is all ignoring the lore implications to boot, where the first thing you learn as a SGE is that the four adderstones/nouliths create one circuit for spells... so all flight formations would have to be in predetermined isometric shapes anyway.

At least in the case of SCH, the faerie acts independently of you and you can keep casting while it's deployed, so ordering it around to do one thing while you do something else at the same time makes sense so that you two have to work in synergy with each other, and is additive in just having actions to dictate the faerie's behaviors at a distance.
So it really feels like SCH is much more capable of accomplishing what you want out of SGE, in a practical manner.

[Shurrikhan]

it'd make nouliths far and away the most overloaded and laggy weapon to boot.

I've... yet to see a frame drop just due to a physical animation, or for an animation to stutter over load. And I've mostly played on a laptop. Particle effects, sure. But the actual physics, such as when particle effects are culled via the graphics options? Have not seen that.

So, simply put, I don't think I'll be considering that a constraint worth worrying about.

But I also don't quite understand, practically, how programmable flight formations would work/benefit the job? It's a nice descriptor on paper but it really depends how much it actually adds to the job besides micromanagement.

And this is all ignoring the lore implications to boot, where the first thing you learn as a SGE is that the four adderstones/nouliths create one circuit for spells... so all flight formations would have to be in predetermined isometric shapes anyway.

If the lore tells you a Soulcaliber-style blade-whip can't actually be used as anything like a whip (instead of just a sword that can curve a bit more and grab onto enemies a bit between its blade-plates), you dispense with the lore, not the obviously available functionality of the blade-whip.

Personally, I'd like to see Sage as actually being able to go in, from time to time, and kind of wreck shit. Allowing nouliths to be oriented in more than just a pyramidal formation with one's mis-torso palm thrusts at the center would be vital to a lot of those prospects.

With that, you might have them... funnel energy into you from behind, chain into one another into a sort of lance in order to empower a physical attack [via a launched noulith] for stunning purposes (where a mere beam would not suffice), carry off each other's momentum into a sort of cleave or additionally physically-based shield (using the sides of the nouliths, say, with exhaustible/rechargeable fortification runes), use short persistent beams that could uniquely impel and siphon simultaneously (but are limited to functioning temporarily as short-swords), or even stack them close, touching each other, for an extremely dense but small shield (e.g., single-strike miti).

While that would shift Sage's former identity from being just a backliner with a fancy 4-part staff, instead letting it extend into anything that would seemingly make use of those varied shapes, I wouldn't mind that. I'd prefer whatever tool it picks be the primary organizer of its kit, even if subtly constrained atop that by intended vibe.

To spitball something slightly more concrete, let's say that you have two basic phasic modes (essentially, inflow/drain and outflow/release), two overlying modes (impulsive and stabilizing), and a variety of commands that perform a dynamic action in themselves and set up a given formation of your nouliths. You have an energy gauge separated among 5 cylinders, one larger one in the center (your own), and 1 for each of the nouliths. The lower their energy, the more they can drain (inflow). The higher their energy, the more they can release (outflow).

As a creative exercise, let's imagine that's basically where it ends. A dozen or so buttons across two switches, a handful of dynamic actions, a power release (2-charge CD or whatnot) and/or maybe a noulith overload or full burst command (temporarily puts noulith out of commission if its energy isn't sufficiently high/low, though with certain added advantages from that crossover atop the burst throughput itself), and a few specials. Total actions actually possible, on the other hand... maybe 30-50.

If you want a mock-up beyond that, I can come back to this in a few days when work has calmed down.

For now, I'll just leave that...

• The means by which a job forms its given capacities (its "micromanagement") ARE what makes a job feel like that job; else we could simply modulate auto-attacks for a given burst window length and height and given cleave formula and that'd already provide a unique throughput profile (which, without building out of the different means of interaction is all that could differentiate jobs beyond a couple of arbitrary and unrelated utility --or variants on bog-standards-- that'd just be slapped on after).
  
  
• No, SCH would not be more capable of accomplishing what I want out of SGE, in a practical manner or otherwise.

[elioaiko]

It's because when they do pick some questions in regards to concerns of healer community, it's almost always "I want more busywork/heal more" and then the devs do so and people get mad which in turn frustrates the devs.

I really wish they would just ask an endgame, raiding healer to explain the issues bc the "I want more to do" isn't telling them what's wrong. All that tells them is to do the opposite and add arbitrary ways to limit "healing" with just as pointless GCD healing.

They think Medica 2 -> Medica 1 spam is more to do with back to back raidwides.

Whenever people accept that healers don't need need more forced GCD healing spam is boring too.

[Semirhage]

It's because when they do pick some questions in regards to concerns of healer community, it's almost always "I want more busywork/heal more" and then the devs do so and people get mad which in turn frustrates the devs.

I really wish they would just ask an endgame, raiding healer to explain the issues bc the "I want more to do" isn't telling them what's wrong. All that tells them is to do the opposite and add arbitrary ways to limit "healing" with just as pointless GCD healing.

They think Medica 2 -> Medica 1 spam is more to do with back to back raidwides.

Whenever people accept that healers don't need need more forced GCD healing spam is boring too.

They also listen to feedback from the endgame raiders who don't seem to care that much about job engagement, and are "fine" so long as they physically function, can clear things, and they can log in, raid, log out, and not give a crap otherwise.

They're not common from what I've seen, but they exist. To them the healers are all "fine". Spamming Glare a million times is whatever, they don't give a rip about job design.

[ty_taurus]

They also listen to feedback from the endgame raiders who don't seem to care that much about job engagement, and are "fine" so long as they physically function, can clear things, and they can log in, raid, log out, and not give a crap otherwise.

They're not common from what I've seen, but they exist. To them the healers are all "fine". Spamming Glare a million times is whatever, they don't give a rip about job design.

Overall, I'd say the community's views on healer design can be summed up by the following: A handful of players genuinely like the design of healers, a crowd of players hate the design of healers, and the vast majority of players find it inoffensive--fine--and don't really care either way. Most players are more engaged with fight design and don't really care what their job does mechanically as long as they like the look and playing it isn't confusing or overwhelming. So for them, it doesn't really matter how the healers are designed; AST suffers from its gameplay feeling very overwhelming due to the shear amount of single targeting it asks for, and its semi-RNG reliant busy-ness while SCH's reliance on the faerie and tools that cut you off from her feels confusing and unintuitive. Meanwhile SGE isn't far behind WHM in terms of popularity despite being a lot harder for casual healers.

This take can also be seen with NIN. Despite being easily the most challenging DPS to play correctly, it's not particularly unpopular. It's not the most popular DPS either, but it's not avoided like old SMN was, for example despite being just as complex. It's flashier, has style, and its gameplay is far more clear on what you're supposed to do because its tools connect to one another. Old SMN's toolkit, by comparison, felt like a hoarder's garage sale. Just a mess of buttons that have nothing to do with one another and demand a lot of focus from many different directions. I don't think new SMN's popularity is determined by it's ease, but rather, by its style and its flow. That's not to say ease doesn't play a part at all, but job difficulty is not the most important factor that the wider audience cares about. They just want something that looks cool and makes sense to play.

And that's also why I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that overhauling the healers to address the issues that the crowd of displeased players would be an overwhelming success. The largest group of players really won't care what happens to the healers as long as they look cool and it feels clear what you're supposed to do while playing them. The only people that will throw a hissy fit are the players who will get mad that they won't be able to parse purple by simply mashing their glareficoilosis key into a pile of plastic dust and will actually have to try to reach those same values. Anyone who likes parsing because of their performance, or who cares a negative amount about parsing will either be unaffected or genuinely happy, and that's such a more important audience to appease than the me me me freeloaders that will get pissy.

[elioaiko]

They also listen to feedback from the endgame raiders who don't seem to care that much about job engagement, and are "fine" so long as they physically function, can clear things, and they can log in, raid, log out, and not give a crap otherwise.

They're not common from what I've seen, but they exist. To them the healers are all "fine". Spamming Glare a million times is whatever, they don't give a rip about job design.

And that's a tragedy. I realized that to some, even on the higher end of the gaming spectrum in FFXIV, do not care about how fun a job is to play rather than being functionally fine.

I guess a good example of this is AST's card system. Before ShB, people can say that while it had its fair share of issues and problems, that it was indeed more intricate and exciting to play both casual and hardcore. The devs changing cards to all be dmg buffs due to raiders wanting a more consistent way to buff allies. This is become a point of contention and people hated it, blaming raiders for sucking the fun out of the job.

I guess to me, we should ask for more fun gameplay loops rather than true balance. For one, balance has been pretty skewed for awhile. I'd rather have a job that feels different to play rather than WHM with cards, WHM with cards or WHM with laser beams.

[Semirhage]

I guess to me, we should ask for more fun gameplay loops rather than true balance. For one, balance has been pretty skewed for awhile. I'd rather have a job that feels different to play rather than WHM with cards, WHM with cards or WHM with laser beams.

I'd agree about 80% of the way, if only "asking for fun over balance" didn't nearly always translate on the forums to "AST and SCH should be fun to play and WHM sucking is a price we should all be willing to pay for it".