#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Chasingstars]

I can’t find much evidence of actual people asking for the post ShB changes (though I have seen many people who support anything just by nature of it being in the game) but that poster is 100% correct that a lot of the decisions we now realise were mistakes were borne from the devs taking suggestions too far from the HW and SB era

There were complaints about cleric stance and DPS complexity in HW and SB that led to the modern healers, there were complaints about buff alignment in ShB after they removed damage types that led to the two minute meta. People do complain when the jobs are unbalanced

Square has a horrible tendency to use a hammer for a job that requires a nail file but all of the changes that player listed were born from actual complaints, even misguided ones.

Yep. Part of me is wondering if healers who strike now are just wishing to play the equivalent of Heavensward Classic. Where there were more dps checks and heal checks, more job complexity, enmity management, where savage and extreme were considered hard even for the better raiders.

[Ritsugamesh]

I can’t find much evidence of actual people asking for the post ShB changes (though I have seen many people who support anything just by nature of it being in the game) but that poster is 100% correct that a lot of the decisions we now realise were mistakes were borne from the devs taking suggestions too far from the HW and SB era

There were complaints about cleric stance and DPS complexity in HW and SB that led to the modern healers, there were complaints about buff alignment in ShB after they removed damage types that led to the two minute meta. People do complain when the jobs are unbalanced

Square has a horrible tendency to use a hammer for a job that requires a nail file but all of the changes that player listed were born from actual complaints, even misguided ones.

I think there's been a push and pull from both sides for a while. It's an unfortunate truth that those who are happy aren't engaging in discourse about these issues, and those that aren't are. On a personal level, I've played since (yes the dreaded 1.0) and the vast majority of changes that we've weathered were completely out of the blue. This is across the board - TP changes, MP changes, aggro changes, loss of things like boss stat resist downs (int debuffs, etc. and who would fit them into their rotation), jobs being gutted (SCH DPS RIP), loss of Cleric Stance - the list goes on. I'm not saying these were good, bad, or anything in between, but that I was on-board with the vision of the game at 2.0 and played within the confines.

The fact that the devs do show they listen to feedback is positive in many senses, but I do also think that a vision for a game should be upheld and this is where the problem lies. They have not seemingly had a north star for any aspect of the game, even down to the story, outside of not wanting to enrage the playerbase. I feel this has just created an unhealthy relationship where creativity is out the window and everything is shaved to the softest corners and least objectionable output. Dungeons are a fine-tuned data output to say 'this is how long people accept, this the number of trash they accept, this is the number of bosses they accept' - it's actually insane when you think about it. Nobody should be developing a game under that pretence. I could extend this to almost every system in the game - the gear, the MSQ, the patch releases

The MOBA scene wouldn't respect League of Legends if they removed ults because people didn't like how powerful they were - it's part of the game, deal with it or don't. It really boggles my mind.

[Shurrikhan]

I can’t find much evidence of actual people asking for the post ShB changes (though I have seen many people who support anything just by nature of it being in the game) but that poster is 100% correct that a lot of the decisions we now realise were mistakes were borne from the devs taking suggestions too far from the HW and SB era

There were complaints about cleric stance and DPS complexity in HW and SB that led to the modern healers, there were complaints about buff alignment in ShB after they removed damage types that led to the two minute meta. People do complain when the jobs are unbalanced

Square has a horrible tendency to use a hammer for a job that requires a nail file but all of the changes that player listed were born from actual complaints, even misguided ones.

Or, yet more often, they prefer reductive solutions over additive ones. "Why teach players how to use X when you could just largely or wholly prune X, thereby reducing the difference?" so to speak.

And among the player base itself, even, there are oddities in comprehension. It shouldn't need to be stated, for instance, that if A player asks to nerf or deemphasize Leaden Fist while Monk as a whole is barely at (or even below) a fair balance point, they're not asking for a net nerf to Monk. It should be obvious when one asks for shorter durations on DoTs, they are not asking for their damage to fall below that of a spammable filler (with only mobility then being of any value) and thereby to further nerf healer DPS overall. Etc., etc. Yet, sometimes players here are just as (seemingly actively) neglectful of scope, context, and likely intent of a given suggestion/request as the devs.
___________________

Ideally, a developer would look at, say, a complaint purely about the "clunkiness" of Cleric Stance, i.e....

• that the lack of queuing functionality on turning the skill off paired with queuing in turning it back on, along with the latency and packet loss more common further from the data centers' locations, causes frequent doubling,
• that it having a cooldown of 2 GCDs only if at no spell speed and causing drift or in effect a longer cooldown at more spell speed, and
• that it necessitates a primary stat loss for either Scholar or Summoner if playing both unless spending Grand Company consumables and reallocating level up attribute points every time you swap)

...and determine first which system issues are not unique to Cleric Stance, fix those, and, if deciding ultimately to remove Cleric Stance, roadmap replacements for its cognitive load in terms of weave space and its impact on uptime (as favored sub-GCD-cast-time spells, such as Regen or Cure II before toggling it on and DoTs before turning it off -- though the last was negligible in Japan), etc. But alas.

[Post]

I like to point out they tackle the same problem from multiple angles, also.

Game's too hard in Gordias? Simplify the job design AND loosen the damage tuning.

Positionals got melee players down? Remove em AND add True North. Make certain enemies all assflank. Make assflank a new temporary condition.

People can't bank enough gap closers cuz they deal damage? Add charges to em AND remove their damage components.

Healers are intimidated having to juggle GCDs between dealing and healing damage? Remove cleric stance, remove many damage GCDs, give many oGCD healing actions that are usable while moving. Also, remove boss auto attack damage, make every boss attack telegraphed, and remove healer mitigations and give them to the group, and give the tanks heals and and and

Enmity tools causing headaches for some players? Remove enmity tools, also make tanks generate shitloads of enmity. Also, make heals over time generate 0 enmity. Also, remove adds that have aggro tables from boss fights.

Ground targeted abilities harder to use than target-centered ones? Make it so double tapping the action executes it and limit your ground target cursor range to actual range of the spell. Also, remove most ground targeted abilities except for a few and make them humongous so it defeats the purpose of them being ground targeted.

I think this often results in them over-correcting the problems, sometimes removing a system entirely. It's like each individual solution is often enough, but they're bundled together so players never really have a chance to assess each fix individually, and they're always going to get pushback removing either because now players are acclimated to it no longer being a concern, especially ones that particularly didn't like whatever the removed issue was.

[IDontPetLalas]

I like to point out they tackle the same problem from multiple angles, also.

Game's too hard in Gordias? Simplify the job design AND loosen the damage tuning.

Positionals got melee players down? Remove em AND add True North. Make certain enemies all assflank. Make assflank a new temporary condition.

People can't bank enough gap closers cuz they deal damage? Add charges to em AND remove their damage components.

Healers are intimidated having to juggle GCDs between dealing and healing damage? Remove cleric stance, remove many damage GCDs, give many oGCD healing actions that are usable while moving. Also, remove boss auto attack damage, make every boss attack telegraphed, and remove healer mitigations and give them to the group, and give the tanks heals and and and

Enmity tools causing headaches for some players? Remove enmity tools, also make tanks generate shitloads of enmity. Also, make heals over time generate 0 enmity. Also, remove adds that have aggro tables from boss fights.

Ground targeted abilities harder to use than target-centered ones? Make it so double tapping the action executes it and limit your ground target cursor range to actual range of the spell. Also, remove most ground targeted abilities except for a few and make them humongous so it defeats the purpose of them being ground targeted.

I think this often results in them over-correcting the problems, sometimes removing a system entirely. It's like each individual solution is often enough, but they're bundled together so players never really have a chance to assess each fix individually, and they're always going to get pushback removing either because now players are acclimated to it no longer being a concern, especially ones that particularly didn't like whatever the removed issue was.

Not only that but in order to fix a problem you need to ensure that it is actually a problem. If I look at the first sentence in this paragraph "Healers are intimidated having to juggle GCDs between dealing and healing damage? Remove cleric stance, remove many damage GCDs, give many oGCD healing actions that are usable while moving. Also, remove boss auto attack damage, make every boss attack telegraphed, and remove healer mitigations and give them to the group, and give the tanks heals and and and"

My first reaction is "no, that's not a problem that I reported" that's actually a desired behaviour.

However I would grant them the benefit of the doubt if they would at least provide some reasoning for the "fixes" that you listed, and explained the context, healer experience, etc. There's a lot of investigation that should have been done. maybe evening having a designer who really was invested in healer design.

[Isala]

I like to point out they tackle the same problem from multiple angles, also.

Game's too hard in Gordias? Simplify the job design AND loosen the damage tuning.

Positionals got melee players down? Remove em AND add True North. Make certain enemies all assflank. Make assflank a new temporary condition.

People can't bank enough gap closers cuz they deal damage? Add charges to em AND remove their damage components.

Healers are intimidated having to juggle GCDs between dealing and healing damage? Remove cleric stance, remove many damage GCDs, give many oGCD healing actions that are usable while moving. Also, remove boss auto attack damage, make every boss attack telegraphed, and remove healer mitigations and give them to the group, and give the tanks heals and and and

Enmity tools causing headaches for some players? Remove enmity tools, also make tanks generate shitloads of enmity. Also, make heals over time generate 0 enmity. Also, remove adds that have aggro tables from boss fights.

Ground targeted abilities harder to use than target-centered ones? Make it so double tapping the action executes it and limit your ground target cursor range to actual range of the spell. Also, remove most ground targeted abilities except for a few and make them humongous so it defeats the purpose of them being ground targeted.

I think this often results in them over-correcting the problems, sometimes removing a system entirely. It's like each individual solution is often enough, but they're bundled together so players never really have a chance to assess each fix individually, and they're always going to get pushback removing either because now players are acclimated to it no longer being a concern, especially ones that particularly didn't like whatever the removed issue was.

Worst part is, outside of the ground targetted AoEs being annoying, literally every single one of those complaints can be boiled down to "skill issue"... AoEs aren't because of the difference between M+KB and Controller. Having accessibility to deal with that is a GOOD thing, not removing skill from doing it.

[Ramiee]

I said it many times before but CBU3 sees a problem and instead of fixing the problem they remove the system causing the problem.

Some people struggled with stance dancing as tank, could of been so many ways to fix this such as only having 1 or 2 tanks with this but no stances just generate Aggro.

Healers DPS is too hard for casual players, solution rework 1 or 2 healers to have simpler DPS or combined healing and DPS for accessibility, instead make DPS for healers across the board too brain dead.

The only time I have saw them rework something to try and actually fix it and keep at it was diadem. Besides that they always erase the system causing the problem, it's so reductive and a terrible design philosophy, at least try to fix something first without removing it.

[Wildheaven182]

I think this is such a hot issue because it's the beginning of the end. People seeing this now either want to give feedback, or desperately attack those who want to help the game's shortcomings because they can't bear to believe there could possibly even be any.
The devs have forgotten the values they spoke of after the 1.0 flop, and in their arrogance, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Square Enix's finances are struggling, and their game design in all of their titles are falling short, failing to make back their costs. They're outsourcing to companies with political motives to cover their layoffs and lack of creative risk.
In 4-6 years, we'll be talking about how DT was the beginning of the downfall of FFXIV, like cataclysm for WoW. Squex's PR sweetheart Yoshida will apologize and step down eventually. There's always a turning point. And this is just the game sunsetting, only just barely the very beginning of that sunset.
There's only so many other FF games they can plagiarize and lift content directly out of for their lack of story writing ability.

[Rolder50]

Did notice the other day that I had to wait a little over 5 minutes as a tank for an Expert roulette.

[BunnyQueen]

Did notice the other day that I had to wait a little over 5 minutes as a tank for an Expert roulette.

Noone wants to heal, it is braindead easy.