I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[IDontPetLalas]

I can appreciate the aesthetic choice, sure. But looking at the thread title, that's not really the point, is it?

I think the value of those 'support' elements, at present, is vastly oversold, and deep down everyone knows that real value comes from doing more damage. Again, that's pretty much the point of the thread topic. In an ideal world, they would fix all this and make all three roles equally important. In practice, that isn't happening (in fact, I think if FFXIV was released in current times, it wouldn't be a trinity MMO, but that's another story). If you want to be valued for what you do, then why haven't you switched yet?

I believe you've already received some very good answers as to why it isn't an acceptable choice for many people to simply abandon a role. I'd just like to add my voice., with the addition of saying that while you've phrased this as "In an ideal world, they would fix all this and make all three roles equally important.", in actuality the bar has been even lower in my view, even some recognition of involvement of healer changes in public discussions like the FanFest, the addition of a dedicated designer for healers would be promising changes. Some incremental communication of changes or even a vision would be a plus.

Instead the healer role is the only one that does not have a dedicated designer. It seems to be the only role where it is acceptable for Square to say "we do not what to do with this job" (SCH) and walk away, or even have the lead designer repeatedly defer job design questions in interviews for years.

[Lyth]

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The recurring answer seems to be 'we're actually playing other roles now', which is a sensible one. Like taurus suggested, the role will likely have to fall completely flat before a change in the design philosophy can be initiated.

But I also don't believe that the average player is specifically in it for a 'challenge for its own sake'. What it really comes down to is the balance of effort and reward. As long as support roles remain sufficiently 'comfy', there's always going to be a subset of the playerbase that migrates to them, simply for the opportunity to weave watching their favorite shows inbetween GCD heals. If the healer population doesn't plummet next expansion, it's unlikely to happen in the long term. I think as an individual, you have to make a conscious decision on what you are willing to invest your time in.

I'm not so sure about the job designers claim, though. I remember something from an interview back in Stormblood that has been paraphrased for many years, but I haven't seen anything recently about the number and distribution of designers. If you can point me to a source from this expansion, I'd be interested to see it.

I do think that more needs to be done to communicate job design philosophy with the playerbase directly. It'd be great if when it comes time to do the job showcases, that they break it down into a number of smaller reveals by role, and really take the time to discuss their design philosophy on each (especially since we're going up to 23 jobs next expansion). The Endwalker job reveal itself was several hours long, so they're bound to cut corners in discussing some jobs if they try to get through it all in a single sitting.

The SCH issue strikes me as relatively obvious, but you do have to read between the lines a bit. Historically, SCH has generally had a dedicated spot in raid comps. I've watched the dev team attempt to stealth nerf the job between expansions since Stormblood, and they're consistently forced to backpedal from the backlash. This time around they just turned it into its own subrole, to split the SCH fanbase up. It's an effective strategy, and they've done it before.

[IDontPetLalas]

If you decide to to play a game that is advertised as a holy trinity style game then your quality standard may be that "as long as one role is acceptable for me, that's fine". However that may well not a "sensible" view to other people. Other people may well expect that each role is given a sufficient, dedicated number of resources and no role is overshadowed by the other roles. If I had a model, it would be a triangle instead of the distorted balance that we have now.

Regarding to your request about the job designers? I don't want to seem uncooperative however it's not just something I invented. For one thing, in the helare forums , around 2 years ago, when one mega-thread started, there was a comparison of the job designers by name from at least 3 games, compared to FFXIV. All of their names can be found, and guess who had the least? That's right- FFXIV- and jobs have been added since then.

Also, I am being completely sincere when I do not comprehend your statements regarding SCH. I don't think Square is that Machiavellian. In particular, when you discuss "sub-role" , are you actually trying to say that the SGE design was meant to set SCH players against each other? So I believe it's really more of a question of them having a mis-translation of some player feedback and their translating that through the views of DPS and tank viewpoints, not from dedicated healers.

[Sebazy]

I'm not so sure about the job designers claim, though. I remember something from an interview back in Stormblood that has been paraphrased for many years, but I haven't seen anything recently about the number and distribution of designers. If you can point me to a source from this expansion, I'd be interested to see it.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ealer-designer.

I made a thread commenting on this back in 2019 as stated above, comparing SE's class design team to a few rivals of the time. Back in ARR this compact team was clearly absolutely fine. But now? I'm not so sure, the player base's knowledge and understanding of the game often outstrips the developers themselves at times. IMO they are just stretched too thin not only having to deal with double the number of jobs and a far more savvy player base since ARR, but also the additional load of PvP kits as well.

And to clarify, this is info taken from the credits and as such, is still accurate to this day.

I do think that more needs to be done to communicate job design philosophy with the playerbase directly. It'd be great if when it comes time to do the job showcases, that they break it down into a number of smaller reveals by role, and really take the time to discuss their design philosophy on each (especially since we're going up to 23 jobs next expansion). The Endwalker job reveal itself was several hours long, so they're bound to cut corners in discussing some jobs if they try to get through it all in a single sitting.

The SCH issue strikes me as relatively obvious, but you do have to read between the lines a bit. Historically, SCH has generally had a dedicated spot in raid comps. I've watched the dev team attempt to stealth nerf the job between expansions since Stormblood, and they're consistently forced to backpedal from the backlash. This time around they just turned it into its own subrole, to split the SCH fanbase up. It's an effective strategy, and they've done it before.

IMO they've just had to eat humble pie more times than they'd care to admit over media previews and early patch notes with clear problematic issues that the developers and testers have somehow failed to spot. Hiding numbers until the patch drops is just a sad state of affairs.

I've seen that reference about job designers before, and it dates back to a Stormblood interview. The reason why I asked for a source is because I wanted to know what time period you were specifically referring to. I am genuinely interested in knowing how their job design process currently works, so if there's an up to date reference I would be definitely interested in seeing it. I tend to go to the source for most things, simply because I want to understand what's actually being said without alteration.

If you want a quick way to get the credits without having to sit through a bunch of inn cutscenes you can use the following link:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/17679...playstation-5/

The staff you want to look for are the Battle System team which is specifically the job design team as has been confirmed by various mentions of Kei Sato over the years.

[Lyth]

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If the Battle System Team is involved in job design, then the 6.55 end credits list the following:

Kei Sato
Takashi Kawamoto
Hikaru Tamaki
Hironori Isami
Tomonari Kurokawa

That's interesting, but it doesn't really tell me how these designers are allocated, or whether this is by role. On what basis are we saying that there is no healer designer? Is there another interview that you're drawing this information from?

(I also note that the current credits have changed relative to your list and link - I can provide a screenshot if you want).

[Sebazy]

That's interesting, but it doesn't really tell me how these designers are allocated, or whether this is by role. On what basis are we saying that there is no healer designer? Is there another interview that you're drawing this information from?

(I also note that the current credits have changed relative to your list and link - I can provide a screenshot if you want).

He must be a somewhat recent addition, that's good at least. Assuming there's no typo in the name, I can't find any history listed on them which honestly is probably a good thing. Fresh blood and ideas is the best thing this team needs IMO. It would be interesting to find out where they came from though!

As far as specific allocation goes, we're not fully privy to the whole process. Yoshida has talked a little about things but it's nothing concrete. It's mostly conjecture from the much more public processes we saw with World of Warcraft where you had several key designers that fought tooth and nail for their 'favourite' class (Eg Tigole/Kaplan and Rogues). The designer's favourite jobs are known from various fanfest boards where they've posted.

It's also very evident from some of the oversights and errors that have been made even recently with regards to healers and expansion updates that there isn't a whole heap of attention being paid or at best, the people sanity checking the numbers honestly don't play the job to any level beyond base competency. Eg anywhere from Misery potency not being scaled up with Endwalker's release or right the way back to SCH being 'updated' to have no spammable AoE button at any level. These are just a few examples that anyone with interest, experience and ability in the role should spot almost immediately with a bit of playtime in even basic content.

And of course, this is before we point to the simple and undeniable fact that current healer kits simply do not match up with mainstream content. There's a huge disconnect right there.