How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Mortex]

The choice to use Cleric Stance was the exact same choice you’d make when using any of your DPS actions, and inversely, the choice to end Cleric Stance was the same choice you’d make when stopping DPS.

Unless there was any circumstance in which you would use one without the other, old Cleric Stance was arbitrary when it came to gameplay decision-making, and at worst punished the entire party any time the healer had so much as a minor technical error or lag spike at the wrong picosecond.

Even the reworked Cleric Stande was silly. A 5% DPS increase on healers who already have extremely low DPS output amounts to almost nothing. You ask the server for more bread for your tomato soup, and they sprinkle a pinch of crouton crumbs on top of your soup. That’s what Stormblood Cleric Stance was.

Yes the choice is the same but it had consequences and draw backs. Some one might say it was a “skill ceiling” that cleric stance had. The skill ceiling we have as healer now is mapping ogcd for the entire fight and hoping if you pug you have a decent co healer that doesn’t use either medica 2 all the time and deals dmg or the polar opposite just doing dmg and not using all his ogcd/healing tools at all.

I miss having consequences in final. Back then a tank fail was a entire party wipe because the boss would often kill the entire party if the tank fukked up. Remember god kefka having double drill and killing the party when a tank was either dead or missing and no one sacced. Or o12 where the tanks had too be fast with pulling m and f apart or they would be one shot. Now tankbuster are just stay decently safe, use cds and voke/shirk and done. Self responsibility in this game just goes down the drain and it’s pretty sad

[ty_taurus]

Yes the choice is the same but it had consequences and draw backs. Some one might say it was a “skill ceiling” that cleric stance had. The skill ceiling we have as healer now is mapping ogcd for the entire fight and hoping if you pug you have a decent co healer that doesn’t use either medica 2 all the time and deals dmg or the polar opposite just doing dmg and not using all his ogcd/healing tools at all.

I miss having consequences in final. Back then a tank fail was a entire party wipe because the boss would often kill the entire party if the tank fukked up. Remember god kefka having double drill and killing the party when a tank was either dead or missing and no one sacced. Or o12 where the tanks had too be fast with pulling m and f apart or they would be one shot. Now tankbuster are just stay decently safe, use cds and voke/shirk and done. Self responsibility in this game just goes down the drain and it’s pretty sad

You don't need CS to have consequences. We saw this in some ways with Stormblood Scholar. Miasma II and Energy Drain together were stronger than Broil II, but they were ultimately MP negative and would eat up your Aetherflow, meaning if you needed the healing from Indomitability or Excog/Lustrate later, you could be forced to drop Broil II for an Emergency Tactics Adlo/Succor, which was ultimately worse. But that choice to decide how greedy you want to be was an interesting choice to make that had consequences. Why does it have to be such a polarizing and clunky all-or-nothing ability?

In fact, old Cleric Stance wasn't even a choice. You MUST use it or you cannot do any meaningful amount of damage at all. There was no choice or decision-making at play. You will do it whether you like it or not.

[LilimoLimomo]

In fact, old Cleric Stance wasn't even a choice. You MUST use it or you cannot do any meaningful amount of damage at all. There was no choice or decision-making at play. You will do it whether you like it or not.

If we are assuming that we must get as close to optimal play as possible, then there are no choices, only right and wrong answers. When operating in this framework, you are correct that Cleric Stance was mandatory because without it you could not achieve optimal results.

However, from the standpoint of a player who is satisfied with "good enough", it was most definitely a choice. Back then I was maining WHM, and I never used Cleric Stance because once you turned Cleric Stance on you weren't able to turn it off for a few seconds, which meant that activating Cleric Stance was a risk, a gamble that nothing would go wrong that needed urgent healing attention during that window. If your team is a well-oiled machine, I can imagine you might be able to confidently take that risk. But I was always playing with random strangers, so I erred on the side of caution so I could better fulfill my role as a healer regardless of what missteps my party made.

All of that said, I'm glad it's gone; it was clunky and really just acted as a psychological barrier in the way of a healer's DPS spells, as well as becoming a needless ideological minefield for players with different gameplay preferences. Did it technically add a choice? Yes. But was that choice enjoyable or worthwhile to make? No.

[ty_taurus]

If we are assuming that we must get as close to optimal play as possible, then there are no choices, only right and wrong answers. When operating in this framework, you are correct that Cleric Stance was mandatory because without it you could not achieve optimal results.

However, from the standpoint of a player who is satisfied with "good enough", it was most definitely a choice. Back then I was maining WHM, and I never used Cleric Stance because once you turned Cleric Stance on you weren't able to turn it off for a few seconds, which meant that activating Cleric Stance was a risk, a gamble that nothing would go wrong that needed urgent healing attention during that window. If your team is a well-oiled machine, I can imagine you might be able to confidently take that risk. But I was always playing with random strangers, so I erred on the side of caution so I could better fulfill my role as a healer regardless of what missteps my party made.

Except Cleric Stance was mandatory to achieve any results in regards to DPS at least. When attacking as a healer, there is a total theoretically achievable amount of damage you can do. Obviously, you can also do no damage at all. We can represent this with a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being that theoretically highest possible damage output.

Any player who wanted to do any amount of DPS contributions at all regardless of whether or not they cared about pushing to try and reach that 100 were required to use Cleric Stance because your damage output was nil without it. In other words, the "choice" to ignore Cleric Stance if you didn't like meant you were never allowed to go above, let's say a 1 on that scale because your damage was really that low. Meanwhile, the choice to play defensively in Stormblood where old Cleric Stance was removed was vastly more realistic. In the example I gave, choosing to reserve your Aetherflow for healing instead of Miasma II + Energy Drain meant you'd still probably hit a far more reasonable number. You don't have to be an optimization obsessed player to not want an all-or-nothing ultimatum.

Because that's what Cleric Stance was, an ultimatum.

As a Stormblood White Mage, you had the freedom to toss out an Aero II or III, or get in a few Stone IVs without that fear of being locked out of healing.

EDIT: Let met put it this way. If you don't want to use old Cleric Stance, you're stuck at 0 and not allowed to go any higher. Perhaps sitting at 0 is 'good enough' for most content since most content has no enrages, but even someone who isn't popping a blood vessel trying to max their parse at any given moment would appreciate the freedom to go above 0. There are people who don't care about reaching 99, but also would like to not sit at 0 and be forced to stay there.

[LilimoLimomo]

Except Cleric Stance was mandatory to achieve any results in regards to DPS at least.

I certainly won't argue with that; I would just say that doing any damage as a healer back then was well above the "good enough" threshold in the majority of the game's content. In other words, in any situation where healer damage wasn't mandatory to succeed, Cleric Stance was an optional choice.

And to retiterate what I added in my previous edit (which may have been after you started your reply), I think it was a needlessly restrictive choice, one that the game is better without.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes the choice is the same but it had consequences and draw backs. Some one might say it was a “skill ceiling” that cleric stance had.

You can arguably claim that there was some skill gap there, even if it was overwhelmed by "ping/packet_loss gap", but... there was no more "choice" of whether to use Cleric Stance than was already had in the choice between using Glare and using Cure II.

It just let you choose which part of your kit you were allowed access to. It's the still the same kit; it is not enlarged by locking it out, nor are its nuances deepened through a mere single extra GCD of locking out a given tool's opposite part of the kit.

Apply that to any other role. You want to switch from a combo opener to a sequential/RNG-procced action? Gotta hit your Infantry Stance. True Thrust, Infantry Stance, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Release Infantry Stance, Wheeling Thrust, Infantry Stance, Fang and Claw, Raiden Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, Full Thrust, Release Infantry Stance, Fang and Claw, Infantry Stance, Wheeling Thrust.

Stormbite, Caustic, Infantry Stance, Refulgent Arrow, Barrage-Refulgent Arrow, Release Infantry Stance, Burst Shot, Infantry Stance, Refulgent Arrow.

Fail to make those swaps, and you lose the vast majority of your output.

Skill gap there? Sure. But choice? None. And you could have that exact same degree of skill gap, or more, by... being expected to type in a specified 4-digit code between each GCD, to note whether it's an odd GCD or even GCD, etc., etc.. It's bloat.

The skill ceiling we have as healer now is mapping ogcd for the entire fight and hoping if you pug you have a decent co healer that doesn’t use either medica 2 all the time and deals dmg or the polar opposite just doing dmg and not using all his ogcd/healing tools at all.

Yes, it's so bad that we... must add several 0s to our choice and significant clunk to our gameplay? Surely that'll fix it??

No "it's bad, so let's throw fecal matter at it," does not work.

I miss having consequences in final. Back then a tank fail was a entire party wipe because the boss would often kill the entire party if the tank fukked up. Remember god kefka having double drill and killing the party when a tank was either dead or missing and no one sacced. Or o12 where the tanks had too be fast with pulling m and f apart or they would be one shot. Now tankbuster are just stay decently safe, use cds and voke/shirk and done. Self responsibility in this game just goes down the drain and it’s pretty sad

None of which has to do with Cleric Stance, nor would be helped or complimented by Cleric Stance. By all means, let's bring back some of that degree of danger... but there's no reason to ask for clunk back.

:: That said, tanks are just 1 in 4 players. Given the increased prevalence of body-checks, it's not as if the rest are increasingly getting a free ride or seeing no consequence for their failure.

[LilimoLimomo]

EDIT: Let met put it this way. If you don't want to use old Cleric Stance, you're stuck at 0 and not allowed to go any higher. Perhaps sitting at 0 is 'good enough' for most content since most content has no enrages, but even someone who isn't popping a blood vessel trying to max their parse at any given moment would appreciate the freedom to go above 0. There are people who don't care about reaching 99, but also would like to not sit at 0 and be forced to stay there.

I hope you'll interpret my words not as opposition, but rather an attempt to add nuance. I think what this summary lacks is the perspective of more casual players who have no idea what 99 would even look like, and no understanding that they're not hovering around 50. They're not parsing, they're not on Balance, they're just playing the game and doing the best they can with the tools the game has given them. If you looked at my play during ARR and Heavensward, you might indeed have said, "That player's damage is 6% of what it could be." But the important thing to remember is that I didn't know that, so that information wasn't part of my decision-making process.

My perspective back then was that when doing damage as a healer you have two options: you can have Cleric Stance on and do crap damage, or you can have Cleric Stance off and do very crap damage. One of those options deals more damage than the other, but that damage boost from "very crap" to "crap" comes with a risk to my primary purpose: keeping the party alive. As a healer, I saw dealing damage as a secondary goal, one that shouldn't be done if it puts my primary goal at risk — especially because at best my damage was crap. And because of that perspective and those priorities, when I cast Aero II without Cleric Stance, I was perfectly happy and felt like I was doing a good job. I was dealing very crap damage, but that was more than zero, and I was doing my damage in a way that felt like it kept my party safe.

I think it's fair to say that that perspective is less-informed, but it's absolutely a perspective that many casual players would have had, so it's important to include it in the analysis of the possibility space.

[ty_taurus]

I hope you'll interpret my words not as opposition, but rather an attempt to add nuance. I think what this summary lacks is the perspective of more casual players who have no idea what 99 would even look like, and no understanding that they're not hovering around 50. They're not parsing, they're not on Balance, they're just playing the game and doing the best they can with the tools the game has given them. If you looked at my play during ARR and Heavensward, you might indeed have said, "That player's damage is 6% of what it could be." But the important thing to remember is that I didn't know that, so that information wasn't part of my decision-making process.

My perspective back then was that when doing damage as a healer you have two options: you can have Cleric Stance on and do crap damage, or you can have Cleric Stance off and do very crap damage. One of those options deals more damage than the other, but that damage boost from "very crap" to "crap" comes with a risk to my primary purpose: keeping the party alive. As a healer, I saw dealing damage as a secondary goal, one that shouldn't be done if it puts my primary goal at risk — especially because at best my damage was crap. And because of that perspective and those priorities, when I cast Aero II without Cleric Stance, I was perfectly happy and felt like I was doing a good job. I was dealing very crap damage, but that was more than zero, and I was doing my damage in a way that felt like it kept my party safe.

I think it's fair to say that that perspective is less-informed, but it's absolutely a perspective that many casual players would have had, so it's important to include it in the analysis of the possibility space.

Sure, a casual player doesn't know what 99 might look like, but they will know what 0 looks like. I don't really remember the numbers we were working with back during HW, but let's take a look at modern day Summoner using Physick. Anyone looking at how much HP they restore with Summoner's Physick can clearly tell there's something wrong when their HP increases by less than 1%. That's what Healer DPS looked like without Cleric Stance. It wasn't something like a 20% boost in damage. It was like a 1000% boost in damage (the numbers here are hyperbolic because again, I don't really recall the exact numbers we were playing with back then, but that's not that much of an exaggeration). In fact, if you have a level 90 healer and remove all your gear then give yourself a level 1 weapon, that's actually the same amount of damage you'd be doing without Cleric Stance relatively speaking. So while I'm sure many casual players don't know what perfectly optimized DPS looks like, I have full confidence they understand what doing almost nothing looks like.

And the thing is, like I was trying to say above, it's not about 0 or 100. There are many people who aren't trying to push for perfectly optimized DPS output who would still appreciate doing more than 0. It's great that healer DPS has never been required for most content in this game, and in fact, it still isn't. You don't need to do damage to clear your roulettes, or do most things really. But a lot of people want to do more than that. It's not about them trying to be perfect, but just about being a team player and helping out as much as they can.

And that's why I don't consider old Cleric Stance to be a real choice. Sure, it technically was, but it wasn't a good choice. It's like if I'm having a party, and you ask if I can change the music to house music, how would you feel if my response was "Well, you have the option to get out." See, that's not exactly a very fair choice, and that's the vibes old Cleric Stance gave. Want to contribute to any amount of DPS at all? Use Cleric Stance. Don't like that? You have the option to cry about it.

[LilimoLimomo]

I don't really remember the numbers we were working with back during HW

Yeah, I actually don't remember the numbers either; the original Cleric Stance mechanic wasn't just a multiplier, as it actually swapped the values of your INT and MND. And that was back during a time when those stats were capable of being adjusted by materia and such!

And the thing is, like I was trying to say above, it's not about 0 or 100. There are many people who aren't trying to push for perfectly optimized DPS output who would still appreciate doing more than 0....It's not about them trying to be perfect, but just about being a team player and helping out as much as they can.

I 100% agree with this. I think the precise point where we're missing each other is that when a casual healer casts Aero outside of Cleric Stance, their brain doesn't tell them they're doing 0 damage; damage numbers pop up on the screen. And yes, those numbers are low, but if it doesn't feel safe to activate Cleric Stance, then the choice this player will feel that they have is between low numbers or no numbers.

And honestly, I feel that this goes well with your ultimate proposal that functionally Cleric Stance wasn't a choice; they're just two sides of the same coin. To hardcore knowledgable players, Cleric Stance wasn't a choice because it felt required in order to do meaningful damage. To less knowledgeable casual players, Cleric Stance wasn't a choice because it felt like a spell that should never be cast, akin to a "kill your party" button.

And that's why I don't consider old Cleric Stance to be a real choice. Sure, it technically was, but it wasn't a good choice.

Regardless of the nuanced differences between our two perspectives, we definitely both agree on this conclusion! Good riddance, Cleric Stance! ^^

[ty_taurus]

I just meant that the difference between having no INT investment and full INT investment after Cleric Stance was of the magnitude of a 1000% boost. Taking a quick look at some HW gameplay, I'm seeing Broil deal around 1200 damage, and I think without Cleric Stance it would've been around 100 or so damage, so not off the mark (if you saw this before my edit, my math is bad). That also would've been exacerbated over time as stats continued to climb, similarly to how Auto-Attacks are actually a significant part of healer DPS at level 50 but virtually meaningless at level 90. You do about 30 damage per auto, but in an environment where your basic attacks deal a few hundred damage, that 30 does add up very quickly across old fights, but since that doesn't scale at all while we level up and our MND gets higher, it becomes mostly inconsequential over time. So while HW Cleric Stance may have been around 1000%, it might now be closer to around 25000%-35000% if Cleric Stance were to still exist.