#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Jojoya]

I can’t believe I have to explain that “enough people probably tolerate the decision that there is no point considering if it was bad” is not a viable way to run a live service game in the long term

By your own logic you could make literally every bad change imaginable and justify it with “people either don’t care enough or just grew to tolerate it”. Is it so bad that people want to actually enjoy the game they pay for, not learn to barely tolerate it

You're forgetting the third option: quit the game.

And that's what most players actually do when they feel bad decisions are getting made over and over. They quit. They don't hang around thinking that if they just keep screaming loud enough the developers will decide to make the changes they want.

Players quitting over bad development decisions have effectively killed MMORPGs (gone into true maintenance mode if not shutting down servers completely). It's only the major franchises that some companies rest their reputations on that try to hang on when players start abandoning their games because it takes a while for player attrition to put the games into the danger zone.

WoW has been there. Blizzard got extremely lucky that they had built up to 12 million active paid subscriptions at its height. It took a very long time but most of those players did disappear. Ironically what saved the game was Classic WoW. The popularity rammed home that players really did like some of the older systems more than the new systems added over time. Blizzard learned.

This game has been there. Look at 1.0. Players quit. The Meteor Survivor list in the 2.0 end credits may look impressive but that really is not that many names (32,000) compared to the number of copies sold in its first 2 months (over 600,000 - I couldn't find a number of total copies sold before the servers were shut down). SE took notice. They learned.

How many players are quitting right now? And specifically because of healing problems?

Doesn't seem to be a whole lot considering this Savage tier has already had the highest number of clears than has been seen in years. Only a tiny number of those clears have happened without healers.

Where are all the complaints from those healers about the state of healing? Shouldn't they have the best insight of all having cleared all the content?

You're trying to assert that every single one of them were just gritting their teeth and tolerating healing for the sake of their statics. Can you not accept that some of them truly are fine with it? It's possible to see problems with a system and still be satisfied or even happy overall.

PFs looking for healers? PFs have always been looking for healers. It's not new to this expansion. It's not specific to this game. My first character in WoW was a hunter. Why did I pick up a healer and become a healer main? Because my friends and I were having problems finding available healers. So I picked up healer so we'd have one and discovered I truly enjoyed healing.

I still enjoy healing. I can see the problems with the system here and wish that SE would address them but it does not stop me from enjoying healing.

I don't know what things are like on the JP side beyond the comments from the JP posters early on in this thread. Evidently, the healing design is what JP healers expect from a JP game. I may be used to something different because of my experience with western games but this isn't a western game. Where I and others have enjoyed the pressure that comes from western style healing, evidently JP players don't. I have to be flexible and learn to adapt to what's standard for JP games.

It's unrealistic to expect anything to change with healing design in this game. We can always hope but I wouldn't bet on it. It's not a western game. They're not going to make changes just to please the western audience at the expense of the JP audience.

Either adapt or stop healing completely. Don't cave to pressure from friends. If the group needs a healer, someone else can pick up the job just as I did for my WoW friends all those years ago. If they say they don't want to, you don't need to say anything other than "I don't want to, either. I've already done my share. It's someone else's turn". If they won't accept that, you just learned they were never really your friends in the first place.

Actual friends would understand. Actual friends would be happy to take turns filling the unpopular role so one person wasn't always left unhappy. That's what my WoW friends would do for me on those rare occasions when I didn't feel like healing and wanted to play my hunter again. One of them would switch to one of their alts that could heal.

[Aravell]

I don't know what things are like on the JP side beyond the comments from the JP posters early on in this thread. Evidently, the healing design is what JP healers expect from a JP game. I may be used to something different because of my experience with western games but this isn't a western game. Where I and others have enjoyed the pressure that comes from western style healing, evidently JP players don't. I have to be flexible and learn to adapt to what's standard for JP games.

It's unrealistic to expect anything to change with healing design in this game. We can always hope but I wouldn't bet on it. It's not a western game. They're not going to make changes just to please the western audience at the expense of the JP audience.

What information do you have to back up that this is just them designing a JP game for a JP audience? Are you claiming that anything pre-Shadowbringers is not a JP game?

We're not even asking them to design something specifically for non-JP audiences, we're asking them to return to a design that already existed at some point in this game's lifetime, so the argument that they shouldn't cater to non-JP players doesn't fly.

[Supersnow845]

snip

You cannot remotely compare this because legacy was just out and out a shit game with near no redeeming qualities. If you quit in legacy nobody wondered why because nobody actually enjoyed it. The 30,000 or so of us to made it to the final fall of dalamud basically did it out of a weird combo of self inflicted pain and seeing how they would actually end it. If you made it to 1.23b it certainly wasn’t because you were actually playing the game

Meanwhile modern 14 does have good qualities and a reason to play it. If you see mostly satisfied with a game but unhappy with one or two parts you don’t go nuclear and quit, you leave feedback. Don’t act like squares radio silence is the fault of the players not being nuclear enough. This is 100% squares fault because they won’t even take time to acknowledge our feedback

But for the record I have been trying to hit squares wallet. My second character who I raid on I’ve quit their subscription (a standard subscription) and I’ve stopped looking for new glams on the mogstation. So now all square is getting out of me is my piddly legacy subscription on my main. They’ve gone from getting close to 40 AUD out of me a month to getting like 11. I bought a lovely new speedo with the money difference this month so I could sit on the beach and not play 14

If I’ve given this much feedback and cut my spending that much it’s not my fault for not being nuclear enough for them

[PercibelTheren]

SNIP

I don't know why you think the Savage clear rate is indicative of how many players there are. This tier, compared to Endwalker raids, is much less of a pain to prog because there are a lot fewer bodychecks. If you mess up, you usually either just kill yourself or your stack partner. Healers can actually save bad pulls again. People who are messing up a lot can also get carried much more easily.

The healers who are healing in my static are generelly fine with playing the role but I don't think either of them particularly loves it. This makes me a little sad because being fine with playing a role and actively loving it (like some are loving the new jobs and like I'm loving Dancer) are two very different things.

I want everyone to have fun while playing the game. Not just feel meh about it.

[ForsakenRoe]

Either adapt or stop healing completely. Don't cave to pressure from friends. If the group needs a healer, someone else can pick up the job just as I did for my WoW friends all those years ago. If they say they don't want to, you don't need to say anything other than "I don't want to, either. I've already done my share. It's someone else's turn". If they won't accept that, you just learned they were never really your friends in the first place.

Actual friends would understand. Actual friends would be happy to take turns filling the unpopular role so one person wasn't always left unhappy. That's what my WoW friends would do for me on those rare occasions when I didn't feel like healing and wanted to play my hunter again. One of them would switch to one of their alts that could heal.

'If nobody in the friend group wants to suffer through the current healing gameplay, they aren't actually 'friends''

????

Your stance is effectively 'Don't like the policies that your government is enacting? Don't protest about it, don't try to convince people that the government isn't working for the people, don't campaign to get a different government elected. Just move to a different country'. I shouldn't need to explain why this is a very silly stance to take.

And for all the assertions that this thread/the healer forums section is 'an echo chamber', if all the people who have an issue with the game leave, you'd be left with nothing but yes-men all agreeing with themselves that 'the game is perfect no changes needed', so... an echo chamber

You also once again went for the tired line of:

'Can you not accept that some of them truly are fine with it? It's possible to see problems with a system and still be satisfied or even happy overall.'

Can you not accept that there were players who would be satisfied or even happy overall, if we took the healing design back more towards something akin to Stormblood? If we added a new damage button or two to each healer, that 'players would be satisfied or even happy overall' with that new damage action? I remember how excited people were about the SHB WHM reveal, because it showed Misery, a big damage nuke. I remember discussions on Reddit and such about the 6.1 trailer, which showed a WHM using Purgation in PVP. A big damage nuke. I remember people being excited about seeing that in DT there will be new damage actions (Glare 4, Baneful, Oracle, Psyche), all big damage nukes.

I said it in a post a couple of pages back, but I'll say it again: The argument that 'most players are satisfied with healer design' cuts both ways. Those same 'most players' would likely be satisfied with a healer design that takes a more Stormblood approach. After all, we can look at the amount of posts on places like Reddit, or these forums, and see how many people were making complaints about healer design then vs now. And back then, the main concern was not 'tanks are doing the healing for us so we feel like our presence is not needed' or 'our kits are full of OGCDs we don't need to use', IIRC the main complaint was 'WHM is kinda lacking compared to AST and the Lily system kinda suck'. The solution to that should have been 'make WHM play better' (which they did with SHB's Lily system rework), not 'also bring SCH and AST down'.

But I do take personal offense to the idea that I should stop suggesting ways for the issue to be resolved (eg by posting ideas for designs that could help satisfy all player skill levels), and instead 'just quit'. I'm far too stubborn, and too passionate about the subject of game design, to just say 'nah f### it, it can't be salvaged, it's gg'. Do you not remember when, at the end of EW, we told the embodiment of 'just quit, just give up' to get stuffed? That we would continue to fight even if it all seemed like the struggle was doomed to fail? If you want to take the same stance as Birdbrains, then you can do you. Meanwhile, I and others will continue to mention that we have issues with the current design of the game (issues that are actually surprisingly easy to address), because we want the game to be 'the best it can be', rather than settling for 'its good and that's all I need it to be, just 'good''

[Kes13a]

How many players are quitting right now? And specifically because of healing problems?

since you have ALL the answers.... how would they know why people quit when.. THERE IS NO EXIT SURVEY?

oh right.. they know just because they always know and always make the right decisions regarding everything.

[Alice_Rivers]

I don't like the idea any more than you do but I think they're probably right, really. Look at the tags, would you really take this any more seriously than that if you weren't invested? Honestly I think we should just accept that healing is doomed to be a early game or vestigal role as everyone else gets increasing amounts of self sustain, DRK is overdue a rework at this point and looking at the other three tanks, do you really believe they're going to break the new tank model when they finally do rework the job?

The devs can just ignore healers and even if everyone who is serious about this stopped paying their sub completely tomorrow, we wouldn't make a dent in the game's revenue.

[Aravell]

The devs can just ignore healers and even if everyone who is serious about this stopped paying their sub completely tomorrow, we wouldn't make a dent in the game's revenue.

Game revenue isn't the only concern in an ongoing MMORPG.

If everyone that cares about the state of healers stops playing the role or outright quits the game, the game revenue will likely not register much of a hit, no.

But what do you suppose will happen to the actual game? Well, we've been seeing hints of it since the Abyssos tier. Veteran healers quit, making the amount of available healers to fill PF scarcer, and to make things worse, PF parties end up only getting bad or inexperienced healers, which leads to other problems.

In this tier alone, we've had people complaining about all the bad healers they're getting and how it takes so long to fill a PF. Ignoring the concerns of your players for 7+ years causes the role to stagnate and bleed out, huh, who knew? Certainly not SE!

[Alice_Rivers]

Unfortunately SE's actions say everything we need to know. They've had seven or more years to start caring and from what I've read they've only lowered the bar, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide "well people are struggling with the healing, we'll lower the requirements (further) or maybe we'll increase their healing to make it easier." afterall, why change the habit of a half decade?

I admit I'm in a fairly pessimistic mood writing this but I really don't see why they'd change course now given the time and littany of options they've had to improve the situation.

[Supersnow845]

Unfortunately SE's actions say everything we need to know. They've had seven or more years to start caring and from what I've read they've only lowered the bar, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide "well people are struggling with the healing, we'll lower the requirements (further) or maybe we'll increase their healing to make it easier." afterall, why change the habit of a half decade?

I admit I'm in a fairly pessimistic mood writing this but I really don't see why they'd change course now given the time and littany of options they've had to improve the situation.

Because it’s only recently that PF has actually started hollowing out and this is a big drama on 2chan so it’s not just aether acting like aether problems are world problems

Ever since abyssos where the community collectively decided that the shield healer is responsible for them not pressing feint causing healers to abandon the role combined with them not fixing the roles problems for 7 years has led to the current dilemma.

If square doesn’t want high end content to die after 2 weeks they need to fix healers and physical ranged because you can’t play favourite melee’s into fixing this problem forever and the fact that this is still a problem in light heavyweight despite light heavyweight being the most well designed tier from a healing perspective since promise shows that people aren’t interested anymore