The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[moroarda]

Apologies I’m on the phone so had to shorten the quote.

Same here, no harm no foul.

I think your square peg round hole analogy is nice and works to illustrate the real issue - we aren't getting a square peg through a round hole, and the devs giving us a square peg and a round hole is bad design no matter how you slice it. The square peg is bad design because of the round hole, and the round hole is bad design because of the square peg.

If you make a round hole it isn't necessarily bad, but if you made a round hole and then make a square peg and don't go back to revise the shape of the hole for that peg you've just made then yes, you've just done a bad job designing that system.

It isn't that the combat in the game was bad, but that it is bad now, given the state of healers. The state of healers is also bad given the damage model used in most content. These things are both failing, largely because of each other, but it doesn't change the fact that a failure is a failure.

Either they give us decent healer dps options or they continue the failure, since everything needs to work in the context of the combat system that the entire game already exists within. What's crazy is that instead of working on that style of healer revision they seem to just be doubling down each expansion in making healers even simpler. This is the part that still confuses me, since it's clear they've painted themselves into a corner but they're just... not... doing anything about it?

That's why I call all this bad design. Sure, individual elements of XIV gameplay work out alright in other games and even okay here sometimes, but it doesn't change the fact that in most content healers are braindead to play and often pointless to even bring. That shouldn't shouldn't the case.

[ForsakenRoe]

The problem with all this analogy about pegs and holes is that it's so accurate, because SE's shown that if they run into a 'square peg, round hole' problem, their solution is to cut the corners off the square peg until it fits. A circle is the simplest shape, it has one side and one angle, and the healer DPS rotation has trended more and more towards this form. One side to represent their Glare-Broil-Malefic-Dosis, and one angle to represent their DOT. They have some extra thing on the side like Assize or Phlegma yes, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised to wake up to news that 'In 7.0, Assize will no longer deal damage, but deal increased healing!' and all the Sylphies will wet themselves with excitement that they'll be able to use the 'pretty twirly move' without accidentally contributing to the RDPS of the group.

I was discussing the state of the game design with a friend last night, and came up with an analogy of my own. SE's seen their new players, these 'sprouts' and decided 'look how precious they are, we must protect them from the birds that try to attack them, we must keep them safe', and put them under a protective glass dome thing (my mother used to do it with empty 2L drink bottles). When the plant grows up enough that the protection is too small, you're meant to remove it, but by keeping this super simple design for healers, SE's actually caused the sprout to run out of room to grow, and now they're like one of those watermelons that grow into a weird shape because of the container they're forced into. Ironic the company's called Square Enix, cos they're turning their 'precious new players' into Square(tm) bonsai watermelons.

I don't think anyone was complaining about how 'complex' the DPS rotation was for healers in HW or SB, they were complaining that WHM was garbo because the Lily system back then was garbo, and AST buffs were 'quite good'. So if SE had just reworked the Lily system to be SHB Lilies, but kept the SB design of healers for their damage rotations (multiple DOTs, cards having varied effects, etc), and actually done their job of balancing potencies, noone would have any issues. They have boiled healers down to one nuke, one DOT, SGE vs SCH is Phlegma vs Chain Strat, and they STILL can't get the damage balance right. How much more are they going to push healers through the belt-sanding machine before they realize they will never balance them, so long as raidbuffs exist? What are they gonna do next, remove Chain Strat because people still can't align it with everyone else's buffs?

I've been playing Other MMO and if I were to list 'every talent or skill for a healer class, that has an effect on the RDPS of the group' it'd be an essay of it's own. I think Disc Priest alone might actually have more entries than all four healers in FF combined, it's honestly sad that this is what some people not only accept as 'good design', but actively fight to preserve. Even 'a different, third button to press every 6th GCD to replace Glare' is anathema to them, it's mindboggling

[moroarda]

I was discussing the state of the game design with a friend last night, and came up with an analogy of my own. SE's seen their new players, these 'sprouts' and decided 'look how precious they are, we must protect them from the birds that try to attack them, we must keep them safe', and put them under a protective glass dome thing (my mother used to do it with empty 2L drink bottles). When the plant grows up enough that the protection is too small, you're meant to remove it, but by keeping this super simple design for healers, SE's actually caused the sprout to run out of room to grow, and now they're like one of those watermelons that grow into a weird shape because of the container they're forced into. Ironic the company's called Square Enix, cos they're turning their 'precious new players' into Square(tm) bonsai watermelons.

If it's not clear by my posts here I tend to enjoy analogies but this is one of the most accurate and perfectly descriptive ones I've come across, and I don't just mean in relation to XIV. Honestly, you've got a talent, thank you for doing a better job encapsulating that problem than I likely ever could have hoped to myself.

[ForsakenRoe]

I've been playing Other MMO and if I were to list 'every talent or skill for a healer class, that has an effect on the RDPS of the group' it'd be an essay of it's own. I think Disc Priest alone might actually have more entries than all four healers in FF combined, it's honestly sad that this is what some people not only accept as 'good design', but actively fight to preserve. Even 'a different, third button to press every 6th GCD to replace Glare' is anathema to them, it's mindboggling

Decided to put my theory to the proof, with a twist: 'It's cheating to use Disc Priest for the example, it's designed around doing damage to heal!' would presumably come up as the excuse from the sylphies, their 'copium'. So I did it with Holy Priest, which many people seem to say is the 'i play healer to heal' spec of the game. Unless they want to move the goalposts and try to argue that Resto Druid is the real 'healer should heal' spec or something. So, unless I missed something (i'm very tired), every ability or talent in both this game and Other MMO, that either incentivizes doing damage in some way, or increases the RDPS of the group in some way (ie, giving a buff to an ally that makes them do more damage):





Of course, you can't take every listed talent, there's a limited number of points. But the comparison holds: four whole classes, vs one single spec, with all these choices it can make. The supposedly 'least DPS centric' spec, from what I understand. It's kinda sad when it's laid out like this, isn't it? If Holy Priest is the 'vanilla ice cream' of that game, I guess it makes our classes just plain ice by comparison

[Semirhage]

I don't think anyone was complaining about how 'complex' the DPS rotation was for healers in HW or SB, they were complaining that WHM was garbo because the Lily system back then was garbo, and AST buffs were 'quite good'. So if SE had just reworked the Lily system to be SHB Lilies, but kept the SB design of healers for their damage rotations (multiple DOTs, cards having varied effects, etc), and actually done their job of balancing potencies, noone would have any issues. They have boiled healers down to one nuke, one DOT, SGE vs SCH is Phlegma vs Chain Strat, and they STILL can't get the damage balance right. How much more are they going to push healers through the belt-sanding machine before they realize they will never balance them, so long as raidbuffs exist? What are they gonna do next, remove Chain Strat because people still can't align it with everyone else's buffs?

I would! *raises hand*. But that's because I think Stormblood WHM's damage rotation wasn't that great, and I think Endwalker healer design (including lilies!) is terrible.

[ty_taurus]

On a small tangent, I noticed something interesting while rewatching Log Horizon. For anyone that doesn't know, Log Horizon is an isekai anime about being trapped in an MMO--similar in concept to SAO but written by someone that actually knows what games are.

Basically, there's a group of kids that are inexperienced at gaming who learn and grow over the course of the story, and in the first season, there's an arc where they're training to become better at fighting. During that, when a raid event happens, the kids are fighting while some of the main characters are recovering MP, and the main characters are talking about how the kids have grown and how they get better. When talking about Serara, who is a healer, they specifically say "She used to only think about healing, but now she's actually using her offensive spells and remembering to summon her companion."

So I want to point that this anime indirectly compared sylphies to a child who doesn't understand how to play video games.

[Payadopa]

I wish there was more finesse in execution when it comes to skills. That's why I liked the time aspect of AST. Earthly Star or Macrocosm at least require timing. Too many abilities are just press button -> see HP go up. And now we just press Assize or whatever on CD. Bores me out of my mind. Along with the fact that we have no MP management. Might as well slap a charge on raise and delete that bar as well like with TP. Honestly, XIV can't afford to become more easy outside of current raids (where I actually enjoy healing).

[EpicOverlord85]

I just want my SCH dot abilities and bane back.

[Renathras]

End of the day, there are different groups of people. So any solution is going to anger a lot of them. Some want to do more damage while others want to do more healing, some want to do more of both while others think the system is fine as it is today, some want to do less healing, some want to do less damage, some would rather cast buffs on party members. The conversation is also strongly weighted by Savage raiders and ignoring something like 70% of the playerbase that...doesn't.

Needless to say, you aren't going to please everyone.

My personal solution is to realize we have four healers and have one each focus on the different groups. The only problem with this is you have the people that want to play a SPECIFIC healer but also have the specific playstyle on it. For example, if you gave SCH its SB kit back with all the DoTs and damage abilities like Shadowflare, Bane, etc but left SGE alone for the people that like the current playstyle, you'd have some SGE's complaining that THEY aren't getting the "fun" kit. Meanwhile, you'd have some SCH's complaining that their Job got "the short end of the stick" by being "stuck" with a bunch of damage spells they didn't want, didn't ask for, and now have to work around and use, and thus is less "fun" for them.

So there's no way to make everyone happy. At this point, we should just understand that and realize the solution that makes the MOST people happy is to have each of the four healers have a different focus and playstyle. e.g. WHM on GCD healing and simple damage, SCH on oGCD healing and plate spinning damage, SGE really flexing Kardia and functioning like a WoW Disc Priest to work damage dealing that generates party heals through maintaining a strong damage rotation, and AST as probably a healer specializing in casting buffs on the party continuously while weaving in damage during "buff downtime". Then players can migrate to the Job that fits their personal style the best, and if they REALLY liked a Job's aesthetic that they don't necessarily enjoy the playstyle, ask themselves which of the two is more important to them and be willing to go with that even with the downsides to them.

Many would grumble if it wasn't their preferred Job, but right now, everyone just about is grumbling, so that would probably still be an improvement.

[ForsakenRoe]

Then players can migrate to the Job that fits their personal style the best, and if they REALLY liked a Job's aesthetic that they don't necessarily enjoy the playstyle, ask themselves which of the two is more important to them and be willing to go with that even with the downsides to them.

That's one of the biggest problems with the game: onetrickers. People who insist 'I want to play as X class for the aesthetic/lore/whatever, but I hate the rotation' so much, that the rotation gets changed for them and ostracizes the people who originally enjoyed the class. Biggest offender was DRK in SB. Some people enjoyed it for what it was, like me. Not as much as HW DRK, but we accept our children's imperfections all the same. But enough people complained about 'Dark Arts spam' that it was just completely removed, and job reworked into basically a carboncopy of WAR. Now the people who enjoyed old DRK have no home (GNB just doesn't hit the same), and the people who complained about DRK have two classes they can play basically identically, DRK and WAR.

As for the people who'd feel like they got the 'short end of the stick' by getting more buttons to press, first of all, it's a weird stance to take considering we keep getting new buttons anyway, just they're for healing we don't need all that much instead of for damage. But it's also a matter of tuning and balance. If, for example, we look at SCH, Broil is 295 and Biolysis is 700, over double. Why does the DOT have to be double? What if, we make SCH have 3 DOTs, Biolysis, Miasma, Shadowflare. Biolysis could be 30s, 40 per tick, for a total of 400p. Miasma could be 24s, 45 per tick, for a total of 360p. Shadowflare could be 15s ground AOE, 75 per tick, total of 375. All are slight increases over Broil's 295, but the amount they're an increase BY is a lot less punishing, if you drop their timers for a tick or two. We aim for perfect uptime on DOTs, yes, but we can also reduce the punishment of dropping them with number balancing super easily.

Also why are all the DOTs 30s, making them have different durations to the other healers would help a lot, like if SGE's was 18s so we're pressing eukrasia more often maybe it'd feel at least slightly more interesting