#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Moonjava]

By this same conundrum; why was it changed from what HW/SB offered? Why should I have to play a Broil mage when I previously had access to several different DoTs on SCH? Why should their fun be prioritized over mine when WHM already offered something close to the nuke spam we have now (even they still had Aero III and Aero II was only 18s instead of 30).

None of us can answer why it was changed before- maybe it shouldn't have been. I can't say. But people are demanding change now, and so I'm asking what justifies the very non-trivial development cost of the changes being demanded when those changes are very likely to piss a lot of people off and may only excite a comparatively smaller group of players.

[TheDustyOne]

None of us can answer why it was changed before- maybe it shouldn't have been. I can't say. But people are demanding change now, and so I'm asking what justifies the very non-trivial development cost of the changes being demanded when those changes are very likely to piss a lot of people off and may only excite a comparatively smaller group of players.

The same is again true in reverse; anecdotally I can only say that queue times got "better" for healers when ShB launched, which indicated that less people were playing healers compared to when I started in SB.

People like dealing damage, they like seeing big funny numbers, there's already plenty of memes around WHM screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILY!" people were excited at the concept of SGE being the "deal damage to heal" healer, so the inclusion of extra damage options would be exciting for people. And those that don't care for extra damage because "healers should be for healing" can just do what they do now and ignore them, even if they should know better.

[Moonjava]

The same is again true in reverse; anecdotally I can only say that queue times got "better" for healers when ShB launched, which indicated that less people were playing healers compared to when I started in SB.

People like dealing damage, they like seeing big funny numbers, there's already plenty of memes around WHM screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILY!" people were excited at the concept of SGE being the "deal damage to heal" healer, so the inclusion of extra damage options would be exciting for people. And those that don't care for extra damage because "healers should be for healing" can just do what they do now and ignore them, even if they should know better.

The situation doesn't truly go both ways, though, not from SE's perspective. Leaving things as-is is free; doing huge reworks of four jobs is very expensive, both in money and time. Reworking four jobs as immediately as most folks in this thread seem to be demanding will mean other content has to get postponed or cut- SE is not going to suddenly give CBU3 a budget increase to go hire a bunch more devs to work on job reworks just because one forum thread gained some traction (not that that would be logistically feasible anyway). And to your anecdote, ShB introduced one tank and one DPS job, so there would've been more people queuing as those roles, hence shorter queue times for healers. I'd be willing to bet that played a much bigger role in short healer queues than general satisfaction with playing healer, but there's no way of actually knowing.

Some people like dealing damage, some people like big funny number (me among them), but I've encountered plenty of healers who seem wholly uninterested in doing DPS and who could easily feel overwhelmed by more complex DPS rotations. Giving feedback is fine, but there are a lot of people in this thread demanding that SE capitulate to their preferences without justifying that demand or giving any reason why the benefits of doing so would outweigh the risks.

[IDontPetLalas]

I would completely set aside the question of whether or not the current state of healers is good/healthy for a moment. There are inarguably plenty of players out there who enjoy the current state of healers and would not want them to change- they're not in this thread because they have no complaints and therefore have no reason to be on the official forums, but they absolutely exist, just by the law of large numbers. They pay their subs just like everyone here.

Why is their desire for their mains to stay the same less important than the desires of those of you demanding change? There's nothing to suggest there are more people demanding change than there are people who want things to stay the same, and there's no way of accurately measuring that ratio- the people who are satisfied by the game as-is will always be underrepresented, because anger is much more likely to drive someone to give feedback than contentment is. How do you justify demanding that SE make an unknowable number of players as upset as you are now in order to make the game suit your own personal preference?

You raising some very good questions, which apply to any job changes. I have (in another game) had changes introduced on my main that I didn't like at all. I played that game for over 10 years, so I know how it feels to have a change forced onto a job that you like. I would point out that in any game, jobs will evolve, and game designers have to deal with these games- actually, it isn't unique to games, it's part of product design in general- if a change is made to a product , there's a risk that the customers using it may not like it.

Personally, I don't find it realistic to expect that "my" job never changes. Think about it, there could be issues with other jobs, encounters will change, all of which could impact "my" job.

So how do I have any control over those changes? One way, hopefully, is by providing my feedback on what I don't like, and ideally, by providing my feedback on proposed changes in advance.

I would also expect that Square evaluates i.e. measures both the current state and the trend of healer jobs and other jobs in order to assess their engagement/health, certainly before and after job changes to asses their impact. There are also ways to asses, both via metrics, and by engaging (surveys, interviews, analysis of social media, competitive analysis, etc.) to try to assess the state of healer satisfaction.

[Aravell]

Why is their desire for their mains to stay the same less important than the desires of those of you demanding change? There's nothing to suggest there are more people demanding change than there are people who want things to stay the same, and there's no way of accurately measuring that ratio- the people who are satisfied by the game as-is will always be underrepresented, because anger is much more likely to drive someone to give feedback than contentment is. How do you justify demanding that SE make an unknowable number of players as upset as you are now in order to make the game suit your own personal preference?

I could say the same thing about going into ShB. Why are the people who like the gutted healers more important than us who loved healers back then? Why did the ShB simplifications have to happen when we wanted to keep the way our jobs played back then?

How did they back then justify making all of us angry now?

There is no satisfactory answer. Someone will always be dissatisfied, that's why there's always complaints. Nobody is more important than anyone else, we all pay the same sub, we should all be allowed to give feedback without being shut down.

[Turtledeluxe]

What do player preferences have to do with content being cleared without healers? It's an imbalance. Fix it. I don't care what your preferences are.

If content from top to bottom was being cleared without tanks the forums and game would be having a meltdown. The fact healers have sat down and tolerated it this long is a blessing. It's time for things to change.

What the pro tankers writing their essays don't seem to get is that players can like something and that thing still be objectively bad for the game. If we have options to correct an anomaly that doesn't otherwise ruin something else, then we need to employ those options. It's just that simple.

As others have already mentioned, every player who plays over expansions has encountered buffs, nerfs, or reworks. That's the game we play. I don't like the new BLM rework, it has a major potential problem that will likely need to change for the final release. And even then, I'm not thrilled. We can't just say "people don't want their mains to change" and give up. Mains change all the time at the behest of the dev team.

[Turtledeluxe]

The fact that we do not know what future jobs and encounters will look like is all the more argument for finding solutions in the here and now that actually addresses the problems at hand.

[Aravell]

None of us can answer why it was changed before- maybe it shouldn't have been. I can't say. But people are demanding change now, and so I'm asking what justifies the very non-trivial development cost of the changes being demanded when those changes are very likely to piss a lot of people off and may only excite a comparatively smaller group of players.

Let me make this abundantly clear for you.

You, me, everyone here, we are ALL a minority. The majority DOES NOT CARE. They played healers in HW, they played healers in SB, they played healers in ShB, they played healers in EW, they will play healers in DT. They won't care whether the healer rotation is 1 2 3 4, 1 1 1 1 or 1 2 6 25 87 635 1, they will play healer as long as they enjoy it because they don't have a strong opinion one way or another.

These people do not have a strong lean one way or another. We (you and us), the people who feel strongly enough to give feedback are obviously a small number.

Neither of us have the backing of this nebulous majority, you can't even say any changes would anger anyone either because you DON'T KNOW how people would react.

Again, say it with me, the community is not a hivemind.

[Moonjava]

Let me make this abundantly clear for you.

You, me, everyone here, we are ALL a minority. The majority DOES NOT CARE. They played healers in HW, they played healers in SB, they played healers in ShB, they played healers in EW, they will play healers in DT. They won't care whether the healer rotation is 1 2 3 4, 1 1 1 1 or 1 2 6 25 87 635 1, they will play healer as long as they enjoy it because they don't have a strong opinion one way or another.

These people do not have a strong lean one way or another. We (you and us), the people who feel strongly enough to give feedback are obviously a small number.

Neither of us have the backing of this nebulous majority, you can't even say any changes would anger anyone either because you DON'T KNOW how people would react.

Again, say it with me, the community is not a hivemind.

Alright friend, I don't know what I did to deserve this level of condescension, but your argument only strengthens my point. The vast majority of people don't care- as such, why should SE invest resources into reworking these jobs when it will only satisfy a relatively small number of players and will probably upset an equal amount of others? (Again, law of large numbers, some number of people will always be upset by any given change.) Game development on a schedule as regimented as FFXIV's is zero-sum. In order to redesign every healer job, they will have to make room in the development schedule to do so, and that comes at a cost of other content. If most people don't care whether healers change or not, what justifies cutting or delaying that other content?

[Aravell]

Alright friend, I don't know what I did to deserve this level of condescension, but your argument only strengthens my point. The vast majority of people don't care- as such, why should SE invest resources into reworking these jobs when it will only satisfy a relatively small number of players and will probably upset an equal amount of others? (Again, law of large numbers, some number of people will always be upset by any given change.) Game development on a schedule as regimented as FFXIV's is zero-sum. In order to redesign every healer job, they will have to make room in the development schedule to do so, and that comes at a cost of other content. If most people don't care whether healers change or not, what justifies cutting or delaying that other content?

And where exactly do you have the data that the people who want change is very small and an equal amount of people would be upset at the changes?

Your argument hinges entirely on data that you do not have.