#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Kozmakis]

you know... a thought occurred to me. what if Blizzard isnt listening to its players... but seeing the issue there.. and making this announcement to try and lure some of its players back from FFXIV? wont work for me, I have no interest in WoW anymore, but it does kind of read like "HEY! we value our healing community! come play with us, we want your $15 a month...."

In my workplace, I do researches from time to time and they usually show that in a subscription business, it's easier to re-acquire a lapsed subscriber than someone brand new to the product. It drives higher lifetime value (LTV), and that's a key metric for retention, as retention drives up to 20x more revenue than acquisition. (varies per industry) So yeah, if they are doing that, I'd say it is a smart move!

[Kes13a]

In my workplace, I do researches from time to time and they usually show that in a subscription business, it's easier to re-acquire a lapsed subscriber than someone brand new to the product. It drives higher lifetime value (LTV), and that's a key metric for retention, as retention drives up to 20x more revenue than acquisition. (varies per industry) So yeah, if they are doing that, I'd say it is a smart move!

I suspect that re-acquiring would only work on people who left for certain reasons. for people who have become disillusioned with the company, game design or something else, losing them means... they are gone. that frail little tie of loyalty is broken. if SE were to announce anything, even a "sorry but it is what it is now, and we hear you but we are going to work on all jobs in 8.0" or even "sorry, we are ditching healers" then that goes a long way to a desire to stay or go. an apparent indifference to the game issues... is not going to help their cause... or their retention.

the announcement for WoW may make them keep their mouths shut, because then they might be seen as "just following WoW's lead" if they make an announcement now. either way, I feel thy are running out of time to retain the ones that may leave, and leave permanently, due to their complete silence.

[Kozmakis]

I suspect that re-acquiring would only work on people who left for certain reasons. for people who have become disillusioned with the company, game design or something else, losing them means... they are gone. that frail little tie of loyalty is broken. if SE were to announce anything, even a "sorry but it is what it is now, and we hear you but we are going to work on all jobs in 8.0" or even "sorry, we are ditching healers" then that goes a long way to a desire to stay or go. an apparent indifference to the game issues... is not going to help their cause... or their retention.

the announcement for WoW may make them keep their mouths shut, because then they might be seen as "just following WoW's lead" if they make an announcement now. either way, I feel thy are running out of time to retain the ones that may leave, and leave permanently, due to their complete silence.

Yeah, I agree with you. I am enjoying being a DPS way more than a healer in FFXIV, but I am considering whether I'd enjoy going back to healing in another game more than playing DPS in FFXIV... I can imagine not being the only one thinking about it.

[Isala]

Yeah, I agree with you. I am enjoying being a DPS way more than a healer in FFXIV, but I am considering whether I'd enjoy going back to healing in another game more than playing DPS in FFXIV... I can imagine not being the only one thinking about it.

I just keep thinking about my time in SWTOR and WOW as a healer... And I'm just like, "Man. I could be blasting people with healing rockets, riding my heat gauge for all its worth, and having a hell of a time." or "Man. I miss cycling my DoTs, keeping my Atonement up, and blasting the crap out of everything with Penance."

There's plenty of times to think these thoughts, mind you, as we spam 1 for most of a fight.

[SenorPatty]

I just keep thinking about my time in SWTOR and WOW as a healer... And I'm just like, "Man. I could be blasting people with healing rockets, riding my heat gauge for all its worth, and having a hell of a time." or "Man. I miss cycling my DoTs, keeping my Atonement up, and blasting the crap out of everything with Penance."

There's plenty of times to think these thoughts, mind you, as we spam 1 for most of a fight.

Man, you just made remember my time as operative healer in store. Bioweapon skills, stealth out of combat to remember, kolto tanks ticks, stim packs...you were always busy doing something. If you ran out of resource, you also had a button to regen that but you could also had one or two combat actions you could take to bring some of it back up.

All of this at normal gameplay level. You didn't need to enter hard mode or nightmare level to feel engaged. You can feel all that across all levels of gameplay as a healer.

[Wildheaven182]

I'm still utterly bewildered by this. Why healer? The role that is traditionally tasked with keeping everyone else alive. DPS is right there, that's the "I don't want responsibility" role unless you're doing something with enrage. Otherwise, you can manage to not press your buttons and you're still fine, the fight just takes longer.

Think like... conservative minded. It's viewed as derogatorily feminine for one. Very feminine. That's actually why they make even the male outfits practically skirts and dresses, they figure no one will play a healer on a male character unless you want to look like a femboy. Rip sexy buff teacher archetypes i guess xD

But it's more of a cultural feeling than a definitive description.
Partly stems from ww2 war culture and bushido. The japanese battle culture valued attack, offense and aggression above all else. The antithesis of a healer archetype. Theres also shame culture. If you are injured, you have failed and are now a burden to society. Rather than be treated by medics or doctors, they would prefer to die honorably in combat.

It's just a powerful cultural force that has echoed down the decades into something as subtle as looking down on the healer role of a video game.

Shame culture would be why they dont want situations where healers have to heal at all. Of someone has to be healed by the healer, it's a mark of shame that you wasted someone else's time, supposedly. Its a function of honor vs. Shame rather than a function of a fun gameplay style.
Lastly, wabi-sabi is a cultural tenet that can be misunderstood easily, but its about accepting imperfection. Perfection within imperfection particularly in a natural sense. At first. That is just the starting point, it's like, the natural imperfection of something is a moral that is inspiring to perfect it.

Anyway, that may be the driving feeling behind the continuous perfect execution of aoe mechanics to the point of choreographed swimming, rather than the implementation of anything new. Dodge the aoe. Now dodge the aoe faster. Now instead of moving out of the aoe, find the safe space left from the giant aoes. Now find the safe space in the puzzle of aoes. Now faster... etc.

Perfection, shame, offense.

[Ramiee]

Nay, it's the reverse. Japanese and Korean MMO's don't do strict class adherance, and tie the entire role to one character model. So you end up in a game that either has too many DPS and not enough healers, or a game with too many healers and not enough DPS because the character models aren't pretty enough.

Meanwhile Western MMO's are universally ugly, and do strict class adherance (dual classing at most due to them nearly all being based on DnD.) Which means that Western MMO's usually spend very little of their budget on the art, regardless if they are large or small (look at a game called "Dark and Darker" to give you an idea) and instead focus on the mechanics

I'm specifically talking about western tab target MMOs. Almost all I have played are way more open in role design then current FF14. The only ones as strict as FF14 are ones from the 2000s.
GW2 has tons of dual roles and multi roles in each class for example. Also I don't understand why you are bringing up the art design in relevance to this? I know people who think FFXIV is ugly and other JP MMOs too because the women look too young or doll like and the armour and weapons don't look cool to them. Why is people's personal preference on art design relevant to MMO trinity design?
Also the thing about multi classing, is not common at all in Asian MMOs. FFXIV is like the only game that lets you change class on the same character. This isn't an Asian MMO common game design this is unique to this game.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm specifically talking about western tab target MMOs. Almost all I have played are way more open in role design then current FF14. The only ones as strict as FF14 are ones from the 2000s.

"Tab Target" is not a genre.

It's either turn based (where time stands still), or active time battle (ATB) where time flows but commands are still executed based on speed variables. This is where you spend most of the time DPS'ing the closest target, or Healing/Casting from the back.

Or it's Action based where you have to be correctly positioned to execute an action or you miss. If you're in the AOE cone, you probably gonna die. This is where you spend most of the time dodging.

Also I don't understand why you are bringing up the art design in relevance to this?

Please look at the marketing and screenshots for Blade and Soul. Now look at the marketing for Aion. Both of these are NCSoft. Both of these games adhere to class-lock. BDO also does class lock.

The most well known Japanese MMO's are FFXIV, FFXI, Dragon Quest X, PSO2, and Monster Hunter. PSO2 also does the class-lock thing, but the classes themselves are not locked to races. It costs P2W money to change class.

Players in Asian games care a lot more about how the characters look. So that's why there is such a huge focus on these big-chested characters in marketing materials, and then you flip the page and there's a character that is small-but-still-an-adult-I-am-sure.

Then go back to Western MMORPG's and what do we have...
1. Minecraft (modded)
2. WoW
3. SWTOR
4. Star Trek Online
5. ESO
6. Fallout76

Of these maybe SWTOR isn't ugly.

Basically what I'm saying here is a lot of these Japanese and Korean games tend to market on the character designs, and survive or fail based on how much players want to play that character/race/class. That character/race/class lockin is a feature to make players have to start over and pump their P2W monies if they want to play that new character. Meanwhile FFXIV is over here and going "Hey you can play all the jobs on one character! Look at how much less time you have to commit!"

The compromise being 14 has to basically make a new set of gear for every dungeon and raid for every race in the game, and not all of those are going to be good. Compare to Wizardy Online when it was still live, usually took it's cues from XIV, where it came out with gear every month, but you had to gacha for it. The character models weren't bad, but they were not nearly as beautiful as FFXIV's art was, especially considering that WO was released during XIV 2.0 launch period and had the opportunity to grab players from XIV.

Asian players tend to care more about how the game looks (again , look at how much the JP side cares about animations) over functionality. Players can complain all they want about Healers being a 1-button DPS in all the MSQ content, but it's never going to become more like a DPS because the JP side doesn't want it to be a DPS. Play DPS if you want DPS functionality and leave the healer role alone.

The easiest rip-off-the-bandaid approach Square Enix can take is to just disable all the DPS buttons in Trial and Raid content on the healer to get the point across that the healer should be only healing in 8-player content. Then in turn disable the self-healing buttons on all the DPS and the Tank. Healing should be amplified on the Tank if they are using their mitigations correctly. But players don't want to play content differently. They want to treat all content like a DPS, because SE keeps making the encounter design that way where half the boss fight is just dodging optional damage rather than bleeding.

[Shurrikhan]

"Tab Target" is not a genre.

It is at least as much a (sub-)genre as third-person shooter, 2.5D fighter, Soulslike action, etc., each of which are significant descriptors whenever the characteristic difference is leveraged. MMOs without any underlying hard-targeting systems (those which are not tab-target) tend to play very differently from those with them. TERA and XIV, for instance, play about as differently as TERA and Lost Ark do, despite TERA and XIV both being third-person vs. Lost Ark's top-down view.

[IDontPetLalas]

"Tab Target" is not a genre.

*snip*
Please look at the marketing and screenshots for Blade and Soul. Now look at the marketing for Aion. Both of these are NCSoft. Both of these games adhere to class-lock. BDO also does class lock.
*snip*

Basically what I'm saying here is a lot of these Japanese and Korean games tend to market on the character designs, and survive or fail based on how much players want to play that character/race/class. That character/race/class lockin is a feature to make players have to start over and pump their P2W monies if they want to play that new character. Meanwhile FFXIV is over here and going "Hey you can play all the jobs on one character! Look at how much less time you have to commit!"

*snip*

Asian players tend to care more about how the game looks (again , look at how much the JP side cares about animations) over functionality. Players can complain all they want about Healers being a 1-button DPS in all the MSQ content, but it's never going to become more like a DPS because the JP side doesn't want it to be a DPS. Play DPS if you want DPS functionality and leave the healer role alone.

The easiest rip-off-the-bandaid approach Square Enix can take is to just disable all the DPS buttons in Trial and Raid content on the healer to get the point across that the healer should be only healing in 8-player content. Then in turn disable the self-healing buttons on all the DPS and the Tank. Healing should be amplified on the Tank if they are using their mitigations correctly. But players don't want to play content differently. They want to treat all content like a DPS, because SE keeps making the encounter design that way where half the boss fight is just dodging optional damage rather than bleeding.

I've played a number of games that you've listed, including both Western and Korean MMOs. Of the games in that list, played Aion since closed beta (so 2009) until 2021, as well as Blade and Soul for several years. There were additional games, however those were the ones that I had the most experience, and based upon those games I while I would definitely agree that appearance was extremely important in numerous aspects ranging from the character customization to the game backgrounds- the attention paid to job design was in no way overlooked. I don't agree with the statement that functionality wasn't considered important, as cosmetic updates weren't the sole or primary focus of content updates at all.

To be honest, your "band-aid" approach doesn't make any sense at all to me. It's a mixture of treating healers like NPCs who can't have any agency, and punishing other jobs because of poor encounter design?