The Devs Listen to Us

[Nizzi]

Healers have been this way since ShB launch, or arguably Stormblood if you take into account the unnecessary heal bloat that they've been getting that runs contrary to the amount of healing the game actually requires. Depending on how you look at it, that's over 4-6 years they have been outright ignoring healer feedback or responding to it by misrepresenting it and saying "Go play Ultimate and suffer" like Yoshida said when a question about the state of healing in Endwalker was the most upvoted in the "ask the developers" liveletter thread.

I don't disagree that they do listen to some things; the recent changes to Savage gearing show they definitely do when its things that don't effect the core vision that they have for the game at the moment in time. However, there's a lot that they don't listen to, and it often comes with Yoshida outright lying about the reasons given for the changes or reasons why they won't do something, as they did for the reasons of removing SCH's DPS kit as "Scholars DPS away and force White Mages to pick up the healing" when the numbers showed that Scholars were actually healing more than White Mages with the free healing built into their kit (later his reasoning was because they wanted to "give Scholar a more heal oriented playstyle"), or more recently the reasons given for why they removed Kaiten from Samurai, "Action bloat" where SAM is pressing Shinten more now and the amount of actions has barely changed for Samurai. The most frustrating part about this, is that Yoshida will always give his classic line of "Please try it out and give us your feedback!" and then none of it goes acknowledged in any fashion or seems to be heard when it comes to gameplay systems such as that.

It's completely understandable why so many people feel like they just don't listen. There's no communication, and in the rare instances there actually is, it will never be brought up again and players are left to wonder what all of their feedback actually amounted to. Yoshida asked for SAM players feedback on the Kaiten changes, and not a word has been heard about that since. Nothing has been said about the gutting of healers in 5.0 outside of Yoshida saying "We know there are some of you who like 3.X era job design, but we're never going back to that." which doesn't even really address the issues people have with healers. When you think about it, half a decade is a long time to go with near radio silence.

[DiaDeem]

There's no communication, and in the rare instances there actually is, it will never be brought up again and players are left to wonder what all of their feedback actually amounted to

This is the issue, mainly.

[FlutterYuu]

Healers have been this way since ShB launch, or arguably Stormblood if you take into account the unnecessary heal bloat that they've been getting that runs contrary to the amount of healing the game actually requires... Yoshida asked for SAM players feedback on the Kaiten changes, and not a word has been heard about that since. Nothing has been said about the gutting of healers in 5.0 outside of Yoshida saying "We know there are some of you who like 3.X era job design, but we're never going back to that." which doesn't even really address the issues people have with healers. When you think about it, half a decade is a long time to go with near radio silence.

Tbh I'm one of those people who like the 3.X era of job design. It is a very long time to be near radio silent. I don't refute that. And it does feel like they won't listen to us. But I'm sure they are. Maybe they can't respond for one reason or another. But the Devs can be trusted. The game wouldn't be where it is if they ignored us at every turn. PvP is more playable then ever, and that's because they listened. The SMN rework, though many may not like it, has been a good change. I love the Healer jobs and I do hate that Yoshi-P thinks all we should do is heal.

But tbh I can't be negative when SMN is right there, its job identity feels so on point, when I play it I feel like a Summoner. Maybe if we think about what we want out of each healer they'll rework them for the better. Make better changes. I know that sounds overly optimistic but reading your post made me think. We aren't ever going to get 3.X Healers back, but maybe we don't need them back. Maybe we can think about what we want our jobs to feel like. Maybe they'll listen then. We shouldn't have to post in a way that will make them listen, but if we want change we have to play by their rules. I know I don't want healers to only heal its super boring. And if that means we have to change how we think about things to get what we want then we should do just that.