The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Bobby66]

Yo, I’m highly insecure if that co-WHM can heal and GLARE nonstop. The latter shouldn’t be allowed!! They are healer, like me!! I should be able to get my savage glam by spamming Medica II to oblivion!!! It’s my god-given right!! We should be equal! I also don’t like that SCH who let their Eos & regens heal passively!! That’s cheating!!

/s

We must be a voice for the voiceless, let us carry the message that heals are not only viable but equal. Some may even argue we add more complexity because our healing only style requires everyone to perform that much better.

[ty_taurus]

2) Pure Healers (WHM, AST) are showing a lack of interest by the designers because healers as a role have no representation on the design teams, the designers don't Main healers, don't appreciate them or what they do and have even now reached a point where they have the game set so raids can function without a healer at all, content can be cleared without a healer so the whole ROLE has been disenfranchised and that's producing Healer mains scrambling to play TWO roles (Healer and DPS) at the same time to stay relevant and useful. This causes ridiculous amounts of confusion and frustration among the people Maining Healers.

I think a better way to explain this point is that the game is constructed to support a combat healer role--a role that is meant to juggle a combination of offense and healing--however, the healers we have are designed as if the game's content is designed for heavy healing output as if it were more in the vein of WoW, and that offense is an insignificant portion of healer gameplay.

In truth, it's the opposite. Content is designed with damage being entirely scripted. The game delivers to the player windows of avoidable damage, windows of unavoidable damage, and windows of no damage. These dictate when the healer needs to prioritize recovery or offense, and the windows of offense are significantly larger than the windows of healing. This is not bad design. Not every gamer may like this, but no game is meant to be liked by everyone. It's just a choice. The problem is the refusal to build healing jobs that support this design.

[moroarda]

In truth, it's the opposite. Content is designed with damage being entirely scripted. The game delivers to the player windows of avoidable damage, windows of unavoidable damage, and windows of no damage. These dictate when the healer needs to prioritize recovery or offense, and the windows of offense are significantly larger than the windows of healing. This is not bad design. Not every gamer may like this, but no game is meant to be liked by everyone. It's just a choice. The problem is the refusal to build healing jobs that support this design.

I think this feels a bit like saying if you build the foundation of your house on wooden stilts and then slap a bunch of concrete up there and the stilts break under the weight that the stilts weren't a bad idea.

Well, perhaps stilts aren't a bad idea inherently, but if you plan to slap giant concrete slabs atop them then in this context... yeah, that's a bad idea.

The current damage model is stilts. The current healer gameplay model is a giant slab of concrete. The stilts aren't cutting it, and in that way... yeah, it's poor design. Maybe stilts work in some games, but in this one they don't. It's all about context.

You could have either or, but together they fail. This means that together they're poorly designed.

[ty_taurus]

I think this feels a bit like saying if you build the foundation of your house on wooden stilts and then slap a bunch of concrete up there and the stilts break under the weight that the stilts weren't a bad idea.

Well, perhaps stilts aren't a bad idea inherently, but if you plan to slap giant concrete slabs atop them then in this context... yeah, that's a bad idea.

The current damage model is stilts. The current healer gameplay model is a giant slab of concrete. The stilts aren't cutting it, and in that way... yeah, it's poor design. Maybe stilts work in some games, but in this one they don't. It's all about context.

You could have either or, but together they fail. This means that together they're poorly designed.

It's the other way around--it's the concrete that's the bad idea.

When you begin to build your foundation, there isn't a "wrong" answer (technically there is depending on the plot you're trying to build on, like that concrete floor is probably still terrible if you're building your home in wetlands, but let's ignore that reality for the purpose of this comparison). You, as the builder, when nothing is built, have the freedom to take any direction you want. A house on wooden stills is a perfectly valid starting point if you're trying to build something like a beach house. This isn't a bad design. Now, if after you've finished constructing the foundation, you've decided, actually, you want an industrial loft with concrete floors instead, well now you've fucked up your project. It's true that the wooden foundation can't support that concrete floor, but if you wanted he concrete floor, then why did you begin your design with a foundation of wooden stilts?

The wooden stilt foundation is not bad design, starting with that and then deciding you wanted concrete floors is bad design. There is also nothing wrong with having a game designed for combat healers who are active DPS that also must manage party HP. Maybe you (general you) don't like that, but then again, maybe you don't like beach houses. That doesn't mean beach houses are bad houses, it's just not your taste, but a game is not obligated to provide you with an industrial loft if it wants to build beach houses, and if you aren't in the market for buying beach houses, then don't buy a beach house. Inversely, if you're someone who loves beach houses but hates industrial lofts, then don't buy an industrial loft.

Now the issue is that SE started building a beach house, but somewhere down the road, they felt that they didn't want to alienate players that prefer industrial lofts, and what you're left with is a beach house that has none of the finishings that a beach house lover wants and is designed as if it were an industrial loft, enough to appease industrial loft lovers but is done in a very shoddy way that doesn't truly feel like an industrial loft.

As has been brought up ad nauseum, SE needs to either tear down the industrial loft finishings or tear down the entire house and rebuild the foundation. One of this is astronomically more challenging to accomplish since you basically need to rebuild the entire house from the ground up in order to create a true industrial loft, so it makes so much more sense to just redo the finishings to create a beautifully designed beach house. Sure, the industrial loft lovers may hate that, but it's what this game is built to support.

[moroarda]

It's the other way around--it's the concrete that's the bad idea.

The concrete floor is only a bad idea in that context though - so these things only break down in relation to each other. Thing is, their relationship to each other is (in this case) poor design. If you choose a direction and then wildly pivot in another direction that's completely incongruous with your original choice that's likely because that original choice feels bad to continue. Again, poor design at every possible point.

I agree with a lot of what you think as a final result I believe, since the way the whole post reads I think we wind up in a place where healers get more interesting dps options since we can't re-vamp an entire game worth of encounters to fit the incredibly simple one-button-spam 'rotation' that we enjoy currently.

Thing is, this has been tried - we had a homogenous solution to healer boredom for quite a while, but SE decided to ditch Cleric Stance a while back now. For years now healers have been getting streamlined but I don't think any thought was given to how that would make them feel in the framework of existing content. The only consideration was accessibility. That's made healers something anyone can do, but there's no way to accommodate that wide of a playerbase with one toolkit and four paint jobs.

[ty_taurus]

snip.

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

Saying that an idea is bad because the designers shifted away from it it is flawed logic, especially considering combat healers are well liked in other games. In HW, they also changed ranged DPS to have cast times, so that means mobile ranged DPS design is objectively bad design, yeah?

And I’m not really sure what Cleric Stance has to do with anything. Is that the only conceivable way combat healer could ever hope to be? Or was that just one poorly executed punishment system, and having an actual selection of DPS tools is a concept that’s entirely different from that?

Yes, the problem is that SE carved a circular hole and is trying to force a cube through a hole that’s too small. The hole is too small for the square and that’s a problem. The square is too large for the circle and that’s a problem. Both are entirely valid shapes on there, but fail to accomplish what the other shape is trying to accomplish.

[ASkellington]

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

Saying that an idea is bad because the designers shifted away from it it is flawed logic, especially considering combat healers are well liked in other games. In HW, they also changed ranged DPS to have cast times, so that means mobile ranged DPS designed is objectively bad design, yeah?

And I’m not really sure what Cleric Stance has to do with anything. Is that the only conceivable way combat healer could ever hope to be? Or was that just one poorly executed punishment system, and having an actual selection of DPS tools is a concept that’s entirely different from that?

Yes, the problem is that SE carved a circular hole and is trying to force a cube through a hole that’s too small. The hole is too small for the square and that’s a problem. The square is too large for the circle and that’s a problem. Both are entirely valid shapes on there, but fail to accomplish what the other shape is trying to accomplish.

Another way to say this:

The problem with healers is that the combat design does not match the current healer tool kit (too little damage despite all the healing tools they have).

There are two solutions to the problem -

1. Fix combat design to match healer tool kit (increase damage across the game from lv15 dungeons to level cap)
   
2. Fix healer tool kit to match current combat design (decrease healing tool kit and replace with buffs/debuff and/or dps)

Option #2 is avocated because option 1 is not possible without either making A Realm Reborn Reborn or the devs saying 90+ content from now on is actually challenging and to hells with the rest of the game.

[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.