Healer Survey:

[ty_taurus]

If anyone's trying to do the polls now, I've not really "officially" posted them. I am making some adjustments, but thanks for the notes. I believe they allow you to edit you submissions. I also added in a 1 submission which requires google login. I don't think that gives me access to emails, but I can remove it if it does. But the goal is one submission per person.

Minor quibble: You have to pick a "more" category. The question doesn't let you submit without it. Even if there's a Job where you don't want any more actions, respondents aren't allowed the opportunity to NOT say they want more. There should be a "no new actions" and a "reduce/consolidate actions" choice. I know a lot of people feel like SCH and especially AST have too many and need a reduction.

I like the basic idea, though. If you could make those changes, I'd post them into my survey OPs too to see if we could get more participants that way.

We always get some type of new actions in new expansions, so there will always be "something" added, but I added the option for "other" which you I think can write in "ability upgrades" or something to that effect if you don't think a job needs new buttons per say. I also am adding a "What could <insert job here> have less of" option that also has an "other" as well as a "Nothing needs removing" option. The reason I want those to be required is to ensure that numbers are collected for anyone who doesn't believe there needs to be culling, for example.

Don't add it to that reddit thread though, please. I'm making these for every job and going to post them all in one place, so it wouldn't make much sense to have the other roles involved in that reddit thread.

There's a rather fatal flaw on your polls Ty. There's an * on the question about challenging content, meaning casuals like myself are forced to lie to even submit the form. I put a 1 because I loathe high end content either way, but that has little to do with the current state of healers.

I made those first 3 questions optional now.

[Icecylee]

tbqh I feel like the fourth question using the term 'rotation' was hella loaded, especially with the way most people seem to have interpreted it (ie. breakable combos and long ability strings that MUST be done in a specific order every single time or they don't work at all), rather than something that would actually make sense like priority and/or proc systems, or resource builder/spender systems. Kinda way too late to change how the question was presented tho

[ty_taurus]

Added a thread here in general with those surveys for all jobs.

[WaxSw]

As to the populations - I'm sorry, why is it that we may only take the advice of people who are not positive and not casual? Are casual and positive people not part of the playerbase? Since the point of this exercise is to see what the PLAYERBASE feels, not what only hardcore and upset people feel.

Because the problems appear when you get a certain degree of mastery of the job, those who still panic in normal dungeons or just barely play the job are much less likely to be exposed to those and because of that don't feel anything about the role, its like asking about the opinion of the US elections to the population of Nicaragua, they'll simply say its ok and move on which leads to one of the problems of your survey, which is how its worded and the conclusions you draw from it and let me elaborate.

Your first question is "Are you satisfied/dissatisfied with the healers currently? What do you like/dislike about them?" while on paper it seems nice there is the problem of how there is no neutral option like the 1-10 ratings have, and thus most if not all of neutral people will simply say they're satisfied. In your discussion with ty I believe it was mentioned how the majority of people simply are neutral which is true for almost any statistical analysis, however in your own data the number of neutral people is the minority. This disparity from the expected model should have been further studied because indicates problems in the data acquisition process, but that study didn't happen which leads me to believe of the malicious intent of the pollster.

The second question "Do you believe the healers could be better/worse? If so, what would make them better/worse?" barely gives any valuable data, of course everyone will think that things can be better/worse

The third question "Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a few more offensive spells?" already puts a negative focus on recieving new damage options, the question itself is not neutral and assumes that getting damage options would lead to people dropping the job which suggest the intention of the pollster to make the neutral people see this as something harmful for the job design

The last question "Would you stop playing healer if the healers received a DPS rotation on par with a DPS Job (you will still be expected to attend to all your healing duties while also juggling that rotation)?" It's already another malicious one as you're presenting an obvious impossible case and when told that no you're drawing the conclusion of people not wanting a rotation instead of the simple rejection of an absurd case.


If you were trying to get a fair appraisal of the playerbase feels then a lot of the questioning should be reworded/changed with numerical values and more neutral questions, I'm calling you out because of that and because we all know you and how much you tend to twist the things to support a view that does not represent the reality like how you said:

Encounter design, encounter design, encounter design - this seems to actually be the biggest complaint.

however a few posts later

I'm working through the other parsing stuff that I'm coming up with based on responses, but so far:

(8) want more DPS spells, but (2) want only situational ones, and (1) wanted ONLY one more per healer.
(1) wanted more healing spells, (2) wanted less, (2) wanted less oGCDs/healing plan focus
(2) wanted more Support spells
(2) dislike Energy Drain
(2) want more random healing (e.g. mini-tankbusters on DPS, unavoidable consistent raid damage)

Weird that the biggest complain is the least represented.

Mainsub discussion

You said it yourself, people tend to not put serious discussion yet for you the smaller sample of people not used to have a deep evaluation of the game state seem to have more statistical value than people who do, it's true that in discussion opinions tend to be more negative (not always in fact, a lot of good analysis get upvoted) but also begs the question of "how is that people that do actually reflect on the game have such a negative opinion" especially when it comes to healers.

And for the whole upvotes thing if anything it would show how the survey is not well made, when you do something like that you want to use outside resources to make the opinions quick and anonymous to make sure no one can influence others and/or act as a representative of a group otherwise you're missing votes this is why there is a problem cause the fact that the upvotes of comments are higher than value of the people with the same opinion shows that said person is acting as representation of not only themselves and that makes the data corrupt.

Man, it's almost like you're afraid the outcome won't support your view or something and trying to tilt the scale and incite doubt in advance

That is funny coming from someone who has made several threads trying to get people to support their opinion

[ForsakenRoe]

Because Ty LITERALLY asked me to: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6215580

It's almost like someone trying to support your argument proposed something thinking I wouldn't do it, then when I did it, collectively there's now a realization it could provide actual hard data suggesting your collective position isn't as unassailable as you guys always insist that it is; and in an effort to "get out in front of this", you're all attacking the questions, survey, and methodology before the results have even come in because you're afraid it won't support your position as absolute.

The thing is, NO position is absolute. It was just lying to yourselves for you guys to think so all this time.

Whole load of ranting again for a situation you don't know anything about. For the record, the reason I didn't know this was Ty's brainchild is because I've had some sort of cold or flu or some bloody thing for the past few days and I did not see that post. Or I did and it didn't sink into my fever-addled brain at the time, whichever. Feel free to instantly go on the attack about how 'the data will prove you right' or whatever though. But yeh, you can absolutely attack the methodology or question format before the data comes in. In fact, that's the time you should criticize the methodology. Because if you don't, and the data comes in and shows a position that doesn't align with what I've been saying, you'll just dismiss my criticism of the methodology as 'oh you're just being picky cos the data proves you wrong'.

If you have a problem with the questions - complain to Ty. He's the one that proposed them.

If it were up to me, I'd have preferred Ty to run the whole thing, since it was apparently his idea, and his forms are a lot better formatted. And even in that post you linked to, the questions are, yeh, they have bias, but I don't see "are you dissatisfied? If not why not?", I see the opposite, 'Are you satisfied with healers currently? If not, why not?', which, yes, the 'request for more detail' is dependent on the one answering being dissatisfied, and being satisfied is reduced to a 'yeh I like it' with no room for extra explanation. That could stand to be better, sure. But you're 'quoting' a question and getting it completely backwards. How's anyone meant to trust your accuracy on tabulating the data, or running a survey to collect it even, when you can't even quote a quote correctly? And when the misquote has such obvious bias contained in it (painting Ty as trying to create negativity bias in the way HE worded things), how's anyone meant to NOT assume you're going to attempt the same with your 'findings', to paint them as being more 'sunshine and rainbows healers are fine atm guys' than the data actually shows? If the data actually shows that, fine, but with the way you've acted both regarding this and previous behavior, everyone's probably just gonna assume you're trying to 'skew the numbers, classic Ren move' and refuse to believe you anyway.

But if me and him (and/or several other forum regulars here) had worked together to create those forms, him making them and me proofreading the questions to ensure they're not biased, no doubt we'd get told that the questions ARE biased and we just can't see it because we're on the side of 'healers deserve to have actual gameplay'.

[Sebazy]

Honestly the only issue I have with the survey questions is #4. That’s really badly phrased and far too open to interpretation. I tried to clarify on my response but it’s easily a very negative or positive Q depending on how it’s understood.

[Allegor]

Yeah, question 4 seems a little... disingenuous? I mean, it's already been left crystal clear NOBODY wants a full on dps rotation, simply more to do than 111111111, but it's worded as if you want people to say no to more dps spells period. As if just adding Aero III back would cause us arthritis.

[Renathras]

Okay, the issue with Question 4 is that if you say "a few more DPS buttons", that's highly open to interpretation. It also downplays the change as "just a few" or "just a little", where people reading it may think anything between "an extra DoT" to "a Tank-like rotation" to "one of the simpler DPS rotations" (SMN, DNC) to "a moderately involved DPS Job rotation", entirely based on interpretation.

But I thought Ty's original question 3 had merit, it just needed some kind of boundary. How much?

So question 4 was created to put an upper boundary on question 3 and draw a line there. Because there are A LOT of people who will say they want another DPS button, but VERY FEW who will say they want a full on DPS rotation. It also invites respondents (as many did from the responses) to say "Well, I don't want a full on DPS Job rotation, but something like a Tank rotation would be good", meaning it sorts the answers into a gradient and really gets at people want. The answers I've gotten between the two questions range from "less DPS buttons" (there were either one or two people saying that was their preference), "no change" (several of those, chiefly for WHM and SGE), "add 1 situational button", "add 1-3 buttons in a more general sense, but not a rotation", "add a tank level rotation", "add a SMN level rotation", and "add a full DPS Job level rotation" (there were 4 or 5 saying that; though they did acknowledge that was just their preference but they felt it would probably be bad for the game).

Ty's original question was trying to "prove" that people would keep playing Healers anyway with changes, but that's not asking people what they WANT, that's asking people what they'll PUT UP WITH. But in the end, having both questions allows people to really flesh out their answers, which is actually giving us a far better view of how they feel on the topic. There are, in fact, some people saying they WOULD like a DPS Job level rotation on a healer (some suggested SGE, with the Kardia effect, could make such a thing work), but most of those are acknowledging it would be bad for all Healer Jobs to have one.

EDIT: That is, in fact, there ARE some people that DO want a full on DPS Job rotation. So that is a position held by a segment of the community, and I think it's good that the results reflect that.

[ty_taurus]

On question 4, I would've gone with referencing tank DPS rotations instead of rotations on the level as the DPS role. I have never seen a single person claim they wanted the healers to have DPS rotations on the same level of action volume or complexity as any of the DPS classes. I think you asked before about if people here would enjoy a healer that had SMN's DPS rotation, and many said they'd be fine with that, but it's not want anyone has directly asked for or said the healers need. It's kinda like this... If you were looking at investment to start your business, let's say you ask for $500,000 as investment. If the investor offers you $5,000,000 dollars with no strings attached, then yeah, you're absolutely going to take that offer, but you were neither expecting, asking for, or needing that much capital. So sure, some people might go "yeah, that could be cool. I'd enjoy that," but I don't' think any of them would've asked for that specifically if given the opportunity to question the combat design team or anything.

That said, something several of us have mentioned and actively discuss is having the healers have the same level of action volume and complexity of the tanks. That's more realistic of an ask since Tanks are the other half of the "support roles" and also do not have "dealing damage" as their primary responsibility. Perhaps you could have phrased it more like:

"How would you feel if the healers received a DPS rotation on par with the Tank role while still juggling your healing duties? Should healers go even further than that?"

That would still leave the door open to discuss going farther than tank rotations toward DPS rotations, but you'd be setting the expectation a lot closer to something more reflective of what this community on the forums wants, or at least, a chunk of us.

[Renathras]

...

I know you would have - not to put too find a point on it, but the question would then better reflect the outcome you want to see.

I'm honestly treating 3 and 4 as one question, as that's how most of the respondents are treating it.

And, as noted, many of the respondents ARE saying what they want - some are saying just 1, 2, or 3 more abilities, some are saying Tank rotation, some are saying DPS rotation, some are saying only a situational ability, some are saying a few more buttons but NOT a rotation (though I think people are often defining "rotation" as "combo", since technically a DoT + Spam has a "rotation" in the sense you have to press them in a cycle... but I think the obvious way to take that is people are thinking combos or similar ability strings, build-up-spender systems like RDM, etc), some are saying they want no changes, or no changes to specific Jobs (WHM and SGE are often mentioned as Jobs that people want left alone - I know you don't like that, but...), and a couple even asked for fewer DPS buttons and for less focus on damage dealing overall.

The answers seem to be splitting into roughly 4/6 camps (6 overall though realistically 4 in a more general sense) of "less", "same", "one or a couple more (situational)", "one or a couple more (rotational)", "Tank rotation", and "DPS Job rotation". Each of these has at least some responses in favor of it. The lower two can PROBABLY be grouped together, and the third and fourth are ARGUABLY the same thing, just how people are asking for them (both seem to be asking for 1-3 more DoTs, just to some individuals that's a rotation and to others it isn't), and then the Tank group is asking for a small rotation, and the final group is asking for a full on DPS rotation.

And too a point, these also seem to be based on people's preferred Job. For example, WHM players seem to largely want WHM to remain unchanged or only have very minor changes while SCH players seem to want a pretty hearty rework.

...kinda like my "4 Healers" proposal.

It'd be interesting to imagine a world where WHM remains the same (maybe has Aero 3/Banish for AOE packs), SCH has several more DoTs with different timers and some interacting abilities like Fester and Bane and Shadow Flare, AST has a simple Tank 1-2-3 and occasional -4 combo, and SGE has a SMN/RDM type rotation and heals with Kardia. That would simultaneously address all the disparate needs of the community. BUT...

After today maybe I'll have some time to finish tabulating what's there (yesterday I did a preliminary run through the main page one then worked out my guidelines and wrote them down for how I'm classifying each answer so that I can have full transparency on that), then actually run the numbers and see what they end up being at that time. Also about 3 days seems a good amount of run time to let new responses trickle off and get a good measure of everyone who has answered.

...and I really want to do that FIRST before making any statements, because I want to see what those percentages are. There are also other considerations, as there are people who want more buffing (and non-damage related buffing - Expedient was mentioned a few times, and a lot of people want Healers to be the ones who own party mitigation) that also have to be factored in, which are important parts of the conversation as well.