#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Supersnow845]

i mean there are many players who play only healer. even if they've leveled other jobs, they still want to play healer. what should they do if they arent satisfyed with the role? when they like the game overall they wont just stop playing healer.
and there are a LOT of players who are neither in the forum nor on reddit nor anywhere else to share their opinion.
that data doesnt mean as much as i have the feeling the devs want it to mean.
you HAVE to play a job. even when you dont like any job you still have to be on one to do stuff. that doesnt mean the job s good.
it also feels like they are obsessed with looking at the least played job and turning the whole thing around several times until its not the same anymore instead of listen to the players who actually play the job.
will there be more player playing that job afterwards? since they have a tendency to make the jobs easier....propably. that doesnt mean its a good thing. whats with the player who liked the job before the changes? they still HAVE to play a job even if they like it less. in a game with so many jobs, you could create a job for everybody and if that means not all jobs are played the same amount, then thats fine.

what i wanna say that data which job gets played how often isnt as precious as many apparently think

This is definitely a factor, everyone HAS to play a job and DF/PF enforces 1/1/2 or 2/2/4, so saying “there are the same numbers of healers going through duties as tanks” is a totally pointless statement (I’m not saying striker said that just in general)

About the only metric you could really use is queue times which healers unequivocally have the shortest, this could be deemed to still be in acceptable limits but we don’t know what those limits are, we also know tanks used to be the rarer role in the game so it seems like healers went the wrong way

Is it a matter of “people like healers” or “well the game doesn’t function on a system level without healers”

[Shurrikhan]

But listening to the relative few of us on the forums when all the data shows the opposite is true is just a good way to run your product into the ground.

Data being innately "true" (so long as a counter isn't bugged, etc.) does not mean it represents what a given analyst thinks it does. Nor does having even copious amounts of data mean that the conclusions being drawn aren't fallacious or spurious.

Nor does it take that large a random sample (which I'm not saying the Forums necessarily are, though neither do not I think a group being more aware than most of long-term or broad consequences should disqualify them as representatives) to quickly approximate a population well for most purposes (the increased in proximity to what one would find from taking the whole population declines sharply as the sample size increases); the larger factor is probably, well, the identification and untangling of underlying factors, for which a "whole lot of data" is generally necessary but far from sufficient.

However, when instead a developer team finds it sufficient to... say... look at some data on APM and CPM, some comments on "button bloat", and determine from that that what players *really* want is to remove "action bloat", ignore the contexts of what change they're trying to make, and proceed at a dead sprint towards further homogenization... I'm not confident they're parsing factor even in earnest, let alone well.

As such, if "lots of data" is coming to conclusions so different from those voiced by (a not-quite-random subset of) players (skewed towards the more concerned and informed)... I'm going to have to be wary of the usefulness of that data.

[Dogempire]

Snippity Snap.

Eh, regardless of the data a huge portion of what keeps people playing the game is the jobs, moving to homogenize everything across the board only serves to stagnate the gameplay because what the heck is the point of playing DRK if SE is just gonna make it reskinned WAR?

98% of the time Scholar and Sage have the same gameplay of 2->11111111111111->2, if you know how to dps on any healer job you know how to dps on them all. Since all healers have spells that do more or less the same thing but with different animations, you can also basically heal with 50-60% effectiveness if you know the healing tools of 1 healer.

When classes cease to be unique then it just creates faster burnout, and I imagine people are going to get bored even faster after everyone clears DT story because not all that much has changed about the combat system. Hell, at least games like Pokemon aren't afraid to try something new, FFXIV doesn't introduce expansion-unique mechanics or try to spice up the combat system, and prefers making everything more or less the same to work with the 2 minute meta.

The game's getting boring and too formulaic, the problems facing healers are one of the most visible issues in that regard, but homogenization affects everyone and SE is just egregious about ignoring healer complaints but will somewhat listen to the other roles.

[KisaiTenshi]

Hell, at least games like Pokemon aren't afraid to try something new, FFXIV doesn't introduce expansion-unique mechanics or try to spice up the combat system, and prefers making everything more or less the same to work with the 2 minute meta.

Pokemon games are intended for children. They can't make them so complicated you need a video tutorial to fight a gym leader.

Like this is something people seem to forget about 14, is that it adheres closest to the FF5 job system, to a fault. A healer is a healer first. All other roles are DPS other than Knight which is actually a Tank if you use it as one. FF1-10 are story-first games. The gameplay is not always the best at times. FF5 in particular, few people "level all the jobs", rather they just pick one job and stick with it until they level-out the character and then rotate. FF7 kills the "white mage" at the end of disc 1, that's the only FF game that explicitly removes the white mage, but the materia lets you give the magic to someone else. FF4 meanwhile always has a White Mage in the party that doesn't DPS until you get Holy, but Porom is removed from the party before getting that far, only Rydia can.

When people haven't played another FF game, they keep asking why they can't be DPS Healer. Because That is NOT what the White Mage is, and has NEVER been. JP fans probably want this to stay that way the most.

That doesn't mean AST and SCH have to adhere to that. Those jobs do not exist in previous FF games. But it's pretty clear that Square Enix simply photocopied White mage for all 4 healers, and just renamed the GCD spells without changing much else. People who play them, can switch between all of them, have the same GCD and oGCD's on the same buttons and they all play exactly the same, with only the Scholar having any variation on heal to dps ratio.

[Morgana96]

To be honest, the problem with this "strike" isn't that there are no valid points to be made about making healers more engaging.

The problem is that it's a disorganized free for all treating itself like an organized movement, which is not a good start.

The "manifesto" is vague and presumptuous, lumping together dissimilar abilities as if they all work the same way and making broad claims about what everyone wants without actually surveying or gathering that information effectively.

Several of the participants are being overly condescending and rude to people who genuinely just feel different about the situation.

A lot of people here don't even actually agree on what changes would "fix" healers; it sends extremely mixed messages about what you actually want from the devs and makes other players confused about your apparent goals.

Personally, I have never felt "obsolete" or "unneeded" in all my years of playing healer, and enjoy playing all four of them. I do think some points in this thread have validity, but there's also a lot of nonsensical and confusing takes as well.

If you're going to call yourselves a "strike" with a "manifesto", it really shouldn't be this sloppy.

[Fawkes]

Like this is something people seem to forget about 14, is that it adheres closest to the FF5 job system, to a fault.

Well I won't complain if the devs give me Protect, Shell, Reflect, Blink, Arise, Confuse, Berserk, and Mini instead of a second DoT.

[Supersnow845]

Pokemon games are intended for children. They can't make them so complicated you need a video tutorial to fight a gym leader.

Like this is something people seem to forget about 14, is that it adheres closest to the FF5 job system, to a fault. A healer is a healer first. All other roles are DPS other than Knight which is actually a Tank if you use it as one. FF1-10 are story-first games. The gameplay is not always the best at times. FF5 in particular, few people "level all the jobs", rather they just pick one job and stick with it until they level-out the character and then rotate. FF7 kills the "white mage" at the end of disc 1, that's the only FF game that explicitly removes the white mage, but the materia lets you give the magic to someone else. FF4 meanwhile always has a White Mage in the party that doesn't DPS until you get Holy, but Porom is removed from the party before getting that far, only Rydia can.

When people haven't played another FF game, they keep asking why they can't be DPS Healer. Because That is NOT what the White Mage is, and has NEVER been. JP fans probably want this to stay that way the most.

That doesn't mean AST and SCH have to adhere to that. Those jobs do not exist in previous FF games. But it's pretty clear that Square Enix simply photocopied White mage for all 4 healers, and just renamed the GCD spells without changing much else. People who play them, can switch between all of them, have the same GCD and oGCD's on the same buttons and they all play exactly the same, with only the Scholar having any variation on heal to dps ratio.

That’s the thing that square and JP are wrong about (not their opinion but the actual state the game exists in)

You can’t be a healer in this game because the game just doesn’t exist in a state that rewards it

There is nothing wrong with saying “healers DPS too much I want to heal on a healer” but you actually have to design the game around it. The modern game state doesn’t reward them and just choosing to not DPS or ignore the problems with the healer DPS is sandbagging

JP isn’t wrong for wanting to heal more, JP is wrong because they think that healing more is the answer to the current game design that doesn’t remotely reward extra healing

To be honest, the problem with this "strike" isn't that there are no valid points to be made about making healers more engaging.

The problem is that it's a disorganized free for all treating itself like an organized movement, which is not a good start.

The "manifesto" is vague and presumptuous, lumping together dissimilar abilities as if they all work the same way and making broad claims about what everyone wants without actually surveying or gathering that information effectively.

Several of the participants are being overly condescending and rude to people who genuinely just feel different about the situation.

A lot of people here don't even actually agree on what changes would "fix" healers; it sends extremely mixed messages about what you actually want from the devs and makes other players confused about your apparent goals.

Personally, I have never felt "obsolete" or "unneeded" in all my years of playing healer, and enjoy playing all four of them. I do think some points in this thread have validity, but there's also a lot of nonsensical and confusing takes as well.

If you're going to call yourselves a "strike" with a "manifesto", it really shouldn't be this sloppy.

That’s the thing we don’t all agree, and to me the original post makes that pretty clear. This is first and foremost an attempt to draw attention to our complaints. We don’t agree on the fix, that’s fine, we agree on the fact that we are sick of being ignored by the devs

[TheDustyOne]

Pokemon games are intended for children. They can't make them so complicated you need a video tutorial to fight a gym leader.

Ironically, Pokemon games have a hell of a lot more depth than this game does when you get into the competitive scene, it's one of the examples I'd happily give as "easy to learn, hard to master".

Like this is something people seem to forget about 14, is that it adheres closest to the FF5 job system, to a fault. A healer is a healer first. All other roles are DPS other than Knight which is actually a Tank if you use it as one. FF1-10 are story-first games. The gameplay is not always the best at times. FF5 in particular, few people "level all the jobs", rather they just pick one job and stick with it until they level-out the character and then rotate. FF7 kills the "white mage" at the end of disc 1, that's the only FF game that explicitly removes the white mage, but the materia lets you give the magic to someone else. FF4 meanwhile always has a White Mage in the party that doesn't DPS until you get Holy, but Porom is removed from the party before getting that far, only Rydia can.

If it adheres to FF5s job system, can I put Black Magic on my White Mage? How about give my WHM a greatsword? This game does the opposite of FF5s job system in that it's very static, the job is the job and you don't have much say in how it develops, whereas 5 lets you experiment with different passives, bring in new spells/abilities from other jobs, etc.

When people haven't played another FF game, they keep asking why they can't be DPS Healer. Because That is NOT what the White Mage is, and has NEVER been. JP fans probably want this to stay that way the most.

FF1 WHM still could wield hammers, making them good for picking off enemies early game, later it would get Dia for undead enemies and Holy for anything else. It was primarily a healer sure, but it still had offensive capabilities. FF3 gave them Aero and debuffs like Silence. Rosa could wield bows and Porom could Twincast with Palom. FF5 as mentioned earlier you could give them another jobs moveset. Garnet, Eiko, and Yuna were also Summoners. All WHM had some offensive capabilities, and the ones that don't had supporting systems to give them offensive capabilities anyway. The closest to "pure healer" you get is FF1.

That doesn't mean AST and SCH have to adhere to that. Those jobs do not exist in previous FF games. But it's pretty clear that Square Enix simply photocopied White mage for all 4 healers, and just renamed the GCD spells without changing much else. People who play them, can switch between all of them, have the same GCD and oGCD's on the same buttons and they all play exactly the same, with only the Scholar having any variation on heal to dps ratio.

SCH has been around since FF3, FF11 as well, and was known for being a user of both Black and White magic. The fact that a legacy job like SCH is now relegated to being a WHM clone (but with shields) already tells me Square doesn't care for tradition and is willing to sideline it for the excuse they call healer design in this game.

[Saraide]

Pokemon games are intended for children. They can't make them so complicated you need a video tutorial to fight a gym leader.

You know that pokemon games get insanely complex once you dive deeper, right? If SE could pull off pokemon's level of "easy to enter, extremely difficult to master" literally no healer would complain.

[Dogempire]

Snippity Snap.

Eh, others have pretty much said what I want to say in response, but I'm just going to say that while yes, Pokemon's target audience is children, I use it as an example because every new gen has some sort of new gimmick to freshen up the competitive scene and make the otherwise formulaic game a bit more exciting, it's something that FF14 should try but doesn't because it would rather stagnate in homogenization, copy-pasting the same tired job formula onto old jobs that don't fall in line and calling it a "rework."

It's an issue of being creatively bankrupt and sticking to a formula without realizing that you can only do the same thing so many times before it stops being effective. They're taking this route anytime a job is problematic and difficult to balance, and with healers they just said "Screw it" and applied the same formula across the entire role, effectively nuking any depth or nuance it had over the course of a couple expansions.

I really hope that SE realizes that their formula is becoming tired and that they actually need to start taking risks with job designs again, because all I see with the current jobs is "We're playing it safe so that everything is easy to balance and so that every job can be played by a novice" as if a new player is completely incapable of learning the hardest job in the game through trial and error or maybe they would choose to pick the hardest job because it's the most fun to them.