The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Venur]

It's because he has to constantly walk on eggshells on the topic. He can't say with a cast iron declaration 'You should do damage if you have no damage to heal', because the 'healers should only heal' players would all rage that they're expected to actually play the game, and quit (loss of revenue for SE). Conversely, he can't say with a cast iron declaration 'healers should NOT be needed to do damage, as that is not their role, and content will be tuned around the assumption that healers will NOT do any damage', because then the more skilled/hardcore players will see 'this game will never truly challenge us,

Well, various MMO have challenge for healers without requiring them to deal damage. Its just a different game design. That'S is why I have made a separate point for damage dealing then healing. You can have dmg dealing healer that are brain dead easy (FF online outside of raid progression) and healer with zero damage dealth that requiert skills to keep everyones alive wich probably represent the majority of MMO.

Having healers dealing damage is a design choice that ahs nothing to do with the complexity or the challenge of playing a healer. But in FFO they just try to avoid making the decision and I doubt that it is the decision that get them a lot of money.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, various MMO have challenge for healers without requiring them to deal damage. Its just a different game design. That'S is why I have made a separate point for damage dealing then healing. You can have dmg dealing healer that are brain dead easy (FF online outside of raid progression) and healer with zero damage dealth that requiert skills to keep everyones alive wich probably represent the majority of MMO.

You can, but then it means that the difference between skill floor (the minimum engagement required for the minimum output to clear a fight) and skill ceiling is something the whole party feels very directly.

When a healer in current XIV falls short, the boss dies slower. When a healer in those games fall short, the whole party wipes, repeatedly.

That's not an inherently bad thing, but it does mean either an imbalance in responsibility (which would likely lead to healers being quite the bottleneck to forming groups) or a generally more difficult / less accessible game.

Past a certain threshold where it'd detract from the whole point of challenging content, accessibility isn't something worth sacrifice elsewhere... but even then, letting points of failure have a tremendously disproportionate impact on the group is usually a poorer balance of challenge and accessibility (much like a random target mechanic that must be handled directly to not directly wipe the group with no chance of compensation or outplay by the rest). If the tanks and DPS are given yet more versatility for outplay potential, then it's not so bad, but by then we're talking three big role shifts, rather than just the one.

Brief Extension:
What you can't typically have, though, is both rDPS (damage+buffs combined) healers and no-rDPS-healers in the same game, if that game allows you to gradually outgear fights. Even if the heal checks start off high enough to demand a no-rDPS healer or two initially, they rapidly get locked out of fights as performance improves. And if they're not that high anyways, you end up taking on more risk (of wipe to enrage) by taking that excess healing anyways, in which case they're just always locked out instead of trading places with gear in a given tier.