Ultimate Representation: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

[Renathras]

Or maybe, just mayyybe, because being the only healer that can be played from lv1, being...

Unlikely. If people were crying out for a complex Healer and there was one available, then it would be the most played. If that was happening, then there'd be a good argument to shift the other Healers toward that. ACN/SMN/SCH also starts at level 1, and people that WANT a complex Job aren't going to shy away from a mere 30 levels. You also can level any Job on a single character, and again, people that want higher complexity would know of this and do so. Moreover, SGE is the Healer that starts closest to level cap, not WHM, meaning people wanting to pick up a Healer would use it. People that pick up WHM but hate simple Jobs and yearn for something, ANYthing more complex, would pick it up instead. It's EXTREMELY unlikely 30 levels are stopping anyone. Let's be real, most of you have multiple Jobs leveled, if not being omni-90s. Hell, I only have 6 Jobs not at 90 myself, and I don't play many or care much for DPS, which is the majority of the Jobs.

I don't doubt there are some people that play WHM for the reasons you claim, but the thing is...it's not just WHM. If it was, you'd have a stronger argument.

Aside from WHM:

SMN and RDM are played more than BLM; RDM doesn't start at level 1.
WAR is played more than GNB, DRK, and PLD. PLD is the least played Tank, despite it starting at level 1 and being an iconic Job.
DNC is the most played Ranged, and it's the simplest and the one that doesn't start at level 1.
RPR is arguably the most played Melee, and by most accounts, the easiest. The second easiest, and second most played, is SAM. Neither starts at level 1.

If it was JUST WHM, you might be right. But it's not just WHM. Across the board, we see that the most simplistic Jobs in all roles are also the most played. This seems to indicate that players desire simpler Jobs more than complex ones. It does, in fact, seem to be the most logical analysis given all of the data we have.

Healers may not be "the most complained about", we have no metrics to be sure of that. The forums are anecdotal, with a lot of selection bias. But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs.

Now, this is not an argument for all Jobs being simple. But it is an argument that there should be some simple Jobs in the game.

I don't think that's an entirely rational conclusion to draw - I think people want a low enough skill floor that they're not intimidated away, with a sufficient ceiling that you can see how or where you can improve.

Is that what people in general want, though, or what you want and you believing that the majority of people are like you?

I don't mean this as a slight, but it's very likely you don't represent the majority, given all the data we have. You may be in the minority. Not a small minority at all, but it's unlikely your views are necessarily representative of the whole.

Not necessarily, but there's definitely been a non-negligible number of people who've swapped from rdm to smn for the comparable (mildly superior) damage and vastly simpler gameplay in higher end content.

RDM/SMN is an interesting case because the tuning right now has SMN higher than RDM. But that ignores that BLM does more damage. In a world where "utility doesn't matter, only more damage", BLM would be the most played. It isn't. Moreover, if we want to draw more broad conclusions, we can look at the rest of the data. RPR wasn't the top DPS but was the most played. What does RPR share with SMN? Not a combat raise. Not doing higher damage than its peers. But it DOES share ease of play. Indeed, RDM used to be the easiest Caster and was the most played, despite SMN and BLM doing more damage in ShB. But now, SMN is easier and is the most played. That indicates, again, ease of play being highly valued by the playerbase.

*Onslaught and upheaval being on the beast gauge, inner release interacting with everything rather than being a fell cleave button, ic being undesirable while ir is up etc. I'm not going to claim it was big brain hours, but definitely had more room for optimisations than currently.

What's interesting to me is how, when they change a Job to make it more simple, people say it'll be the death of the Job, but then the Job becomes the most played (or among the most played) in the role.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nd_raid_mount/

WAR, WHM, RPR, and SMN are the most played Jobs across all roles. They're also the easiest Jobs in their respective roles. DNC is the most played Ranged...but the three are actually fairly even (as many people have noted, their difficulties are similar and Ranged is arguably the easiest role overall in the game right now of the DPS subroles), but even so, DNC is also...considered the easiest.

So in 5 out of 5 categories, the easiest Job is also the most played Job. And in the categories where there's a pretty close "second easiest" (Healer-SGE, Melee-SAM, Caster-RDM), that second easiest is also the second most played.

Again, this does not mean there should not be complex Jobs but it does mean there should be non-complex ones since, at the VERY least, we can see that a large number of players want them, even if you'd rather not say it's a majority. We can't know for sure which is the majority, but we can know that a lot of people do not want to play, and shy away from, complex Jobs.

If you were to ask me, a lot of healer issues could be fixed if they actively took the time to look at where each one stands and give it a definitive skill floor that you can see from the get go, and various skill ceilings that cater to different peoples tastes. WHM can definitely have that "low skill floor semi-low skill ceiling" feel and still feel viable next to something like slightly higher skill floor SCH, or the even higher skill floor AST. SGE could be that middle ground.

This is honestly the best answer.

Give each Healer a different skill ceiling and let people play the one that has their desired level. Some people like playing Halo on easy, some medium, some heroic, some legendary. If the game only has easy, some people will get bored. If it only has legendary, some people will get frustrated and quit. The answer is to have all four and let players pick the one they want, and have a low barrier to entry for them to try another, so someone could, for example, start on medium and after doing that for a while and wanting more, swap up to heroic, or if they're feeling overwhelmed, step down to easy for a while.