#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ZephyrMenodora]

No worries! Of course, people that don't play the game aren't going to care! So as you said, it's common sense! Y'know what's also common sense? That not all FFXIV players support or care about the Healer Strike. It's no surprise. We know it's an uphill battle, we're very aware of that just from the amount of people that're against it in this thread! Bonkers right?!? <3

My real frustration comes from that fact that Healers have been here for years. We didn't just become unhappy now with this thread. We've complained for years. People have already striked from healing, just not on any coordinated level but I have seen posts and people doing this already.

And for what? Dawntrail comes and nothing has changed. Years of feedback - just ... *poof*

I have literally thrown up my hands with having any hope for change. Maybe this time will be different. I guess the thread doesn't need my pessimism. I'm just bracing myself that this is how healing is going to be in this game.

[Turtledeluxe]

The existence of something liked 2300 times is just as much data as this thread being liked 240 times. Stop talking out of your ass just because you don't like that there are people out there who don't care. They exist. Pretending I am lying about a Tweet I saw because it's counter to this thread and what you want to hear doesn't make me a liar.

Stop bringing up algorithms tailoring to bias on one hand and then saying on your other that history is irrelevant, since that is what an algorithm uses.

I did not use my for you page, I did an objective search and saw several people agreeing or joining, some partial agreeing, and some negative. Just like this thread.

If someone used your post as truth, although you did not explicitly state it's universal, you and I both know that's how someone biased would interpret it, and theyd come out of it misinformed. "I saw people laughing about it on Twitter and I'm not in support of striking." That's what your post says. It is confirmation bias.

There really was no reason to invoke Twitter. You did it to lend credibility to your viewpoint. And other users have done it before you. "My discord is laughing". Who cares

[OgruMogru]

This isn't a literal labor-law situation, and I don't think anyone is confused about that.

However, language and communication sometimes requires people to adapt words to best-match a concept which may not have a precise word for it yet, or in order to provide a less-convoluted way of quickly referring to something.

In this case, "strike" is a commonly-used and well-accepted colloquialism for "people mutually-refusing to do something".

Furthermore, if you abstract-out your thinking even slightly, queuing for a Duty as Healer absolutely is a form of "contract" with "the designers", wherein you agree to:

• Enter the instance in a timely manner when your queue notification arrives
• Participate in the content to the (hypothetically) best of your ability
• Coordinate with your Party as-necessary to complete mechanics
• Provide all necessary services of the Healer Role

In exchange for complying with these expectations, you are rewarded with compensation such as:

• Approval to continue your Quest Storyline
• EXP
• Currencies
• Equipment
• Cosmetics
• (etc)

Potentially, some people do this "solely for fun". However, I suspect that if Duties were not required for Storylines, and both baseline Duties and Roulettes offered absolutely zero rewards besides "gameplay experience", then queue times would probably reach the order of days or months.

ie — Duty Finder is obviously perceived, and used, as a compensated service, in which Players agree to do something in exchange for a promised reward. Furthermore, this is implicitly expected to be done on a regular schedule, in order to ensure the overall functioning of a wider system.

This is close enough to a system of "work" — if not formal employment, then at the very least, "gig work" — that it is not unreasonable to apply labour-related terms to contextualise it.

In fact, it's something of a commentary on how dreary the experience has become for many Healers in FFXIV that they intuitively jumped to "labour" terminology when deciding how to refer to the situation.

Fantastic, it has even more in-common with a lot of real-world jobs, then.

Even overlooking this extremely well thought out reply. They're called JOBS. The clues in the naaaaaaaame!

[Bright-Flower]

I have seen on Twitter people posting pics of all-healers in need already, so it's possible the strike already is having an impact. Usually its mostly tanks in need with some healers in need.

I think the real issue is that their design for healers in Dawntrail is complete. They aren't going to make any significant changes in a month, and I have no idea how they would rework healers in any significant way mid-expansion. Maybe they can pull it off, but I'm sure healer design has an impact on encounter design and class balancing in general, with a lot of encounters already designed. I think even if the Strike works, we won't see too much change until 8.0.

I have already seen some adverse reaction from Warriors on social media to not wanting to give up their immortality, so part of these changes likely would need to hit the Tanks and DPS sustain skills.

A screenshot of all healers in need feels pretty anecdotal. It'll need to be a consistent pattern. All through SHB and EW, not countin the initial expansion launches where people trying new jobs can skew things, my healer queues and tank queues have been pretty even. With a mix of tank and healer in need across my roulettes. (WIth the very rare dps, usually for alliance raid I think.) As of yesterday this hasn't really changed from my perspective.

We'd need to see a consistent, long term shift to all healer in need to really draw anything from this.

And yeah, regardless of whether the strike is noticed and taken seriously or not we won't see any actual changes in 7.0. Possibly not until 8.0. Though if it was seen it could be mentioned in an interview or live letter as something they acknowledge.

I don't really expect it to take off though. Not because I don't think healers have valid concerns but I'm just don't expect it to make enough of an impact to change their design decisions, especially since from what I hear earlier in the thread apparently the Japanese playerbase largely doesn't feel the same way? At least from a couple posts way back anyway.

I do think paladin and warrior have a bit to much self sustain. I wouldn't want to see it go away entirely though. For paladin, I like the idea that if the healers go down I can sustain things TEMPORARILY with clemency etc but being able to just solo things for a whole boss fight is too much I think. Being able to support and salvage a near wipe towards the end of a fight, or help keep people alive until resses go out to healers can be fun, but it shouldn't be at the point we don't even need healers in casual content.

I suppose in a sense that goes for all roles. You could do dungeons without dps, it would just take longer and nobody wants to do that. You could probalby do dungeons without a tank, but it would require an on the ball healer, probably a good deal more effort than it would take for no healer dungeon run with the right tank.

[Galvuu]

The ratio is just one metric. Don't forget about the sheer amount of sub counts, that's an absolutely more valuable metric to SE than anything else in the game. If every healer main unsubbed from the game, you'd be damn sure SE will try their damned hardest to get those players back urgently.

I think this type of action (the healer strike) is more fruitful than outright unsubbing.
When you unsub, sure, you send an indication to SE, but you're also no longer a paying customer- and SE is more likely to care about paying customers than non-paying people.
This way, you kinda get a bit of the best of both worlds- send a datapoint that things are not ok, but also empower your voice by the fact you're still here.

[MitsukiKimura]

People have pointed out the dps ques will get longer. And those healer quiting healing response is too join the dps players and suffer, not understanding they would be adding to the problem. More dps higher que times for all dps common logic. I want healers changed but I am not going to do something that will burden dps with higher que times.

Im pretty sure you won't need a healer for most dungeons so people can just que 3 dps and one tank into the dungeon. As it has already been done with it's first dungeon in the media tour.

[Jet_Kreiss]

While I agree healers and healer-mains have every right to be upset about once-again seeming to have been neglected, I don't think this is going to go anywhere. I agree that the job should feel fun and engaging regardless of content - but this isn't the first healer strike I've seen. They've all failed. This one will too. Here's the problem.

Refusing to play a role in a game where the role isn't already needed - no major impact.
The intro says the point isn't to interrupt the game for others, but that's the whole point of a protest. Interruption until your demands are met. Just like the recent writers' strike in Hollywood. All productions stopped. Those people were needed. If the general consensus is that healers aren't needed... what's the objective? Increasing queue times for everyone else? Well there's Duty Support. If living, breathing healers won't support people - the NPCs will. No impact. Also, Dawntrail mechanics are already locked in. It's not going to change whether there's a strike or not. The movement is over before it's even begun. If any major changes are going to be made you won't see them for another 2.5 years.

So... I'm not saying healer-mains are wrong to feel the way they do. I don't even disagree. I just think the strike is a fruitless endeavor.

My only hope is that all the discourse, in and of itself, has created enough of a stir to grab Yoshi-P's and the devs' attention so that the changes people want are implemented in a future expansion.

[NanaWiloh]

Im pretty sure you won't need a healer for most dungeons so people can just que 3 dps and one tank into the dungeon. As it has already been done with it's first dungeon in the media tour.

Way to much confindence in the average player.

[Kayokane]

This isn't a literal labor-law situation, and I don't think anyone is confused about that.

However, language and communication sometimes requires people to adapt words to best-match a concept which may not have a precise word for it yet, or in order to provide a less-convoluted way of quickly referring to something.

In this case, "strike" is a commonly-used and well-accepted colloquialism for "people mutually-refusing to do something".

Furthermore, if you abstract-out your thinking even slightly, queuing for a Duty as Healer absolutely is a form of "contract" with "the designers", wherein you agree to:

• Enter the instance in a timely manner when your queue notification arrives
• Participate in the content to the (hypothetically) best of your ability
• Coordinate with your Party as-necessary to complete mechanics
• Provide all necessary services of the Healer Role

In exchange for complying with these expectations, you are rewarded with compensation such as:

• Approval to continue your Quest Storyline
• EXP
• Currencies
• Equipment
• Cosmetics
• (etc)

Potentially, some people do this "solely for fun". However, I suspect that if Duties were not required for Storylines, and both baseline Duties and Roulettes offered absolutely zero rewards besides "gameplay experience", then queue times would probably reach the order of days or months.

ie — Duty Finder is obviously perceived, and used, as a compensated service, in which Players agree to do something in exchange for a promised reward. Furthermore, this is implicitly expected to be done on a regular schedule, in order to ensure the overall functioning of a wider system.

This is close enough to a system of "work" — if not formal employment, then at the very least, "gig work" — that it is not unreasonable to apply labour-related terms to contextualise it.

In fact, it's something of a commentary on how dreary the experience has become for many Healers in FFXIV that they intuitively jumped to "labour" terminology when deciding how to refer to the situation.

Fantastic, it has even more in-common with a lot of real-world jobs, then.

In the end WE are consumers of a product, those who are 'striking' are cutting out a portion of the content and saying we aren't going to interact with this portion of the product we are paying for until it is fixed* to our satisfaction. It is in the end still closer to a boycott than a strike.


*varies between player, but general consensus seems to be, better dps rotation, (not as complex as a true dps, but more interactive than 1, button occasional 2) and nerfing the other jobs sustaining abilities in order to make the healing side of the kit more important in content

[ZephyrMenodora]

I did not use my for you page, I did an objective search and saw several people agreeing or joining, some partial agreeing, and some negative. Just like this thread.

If someone used your post as truth, although you did not explicitly state it's universal, you and I both know that's how someone biased would interpret it, and theyd come out of it misinformed. "I saw people laughing about it on Twitter and I'm not in support of striking." That's what your post says. It is confirmation bias.

There really was no reason to invoke Twitter. You did it to lend credibility to your viewpoint. And other users have done it before you. "My discord is laughing". Who cares

I think this line of argument between us is unproductive. I didn't mean to bring up these people on Twitter to say I don't support what the thread is trying to do. Unlike maybe some of the others, I want healers to be more fun.

I'm just jaded. I'm a healer main, they've been boring for years, watched other healer movements before that fizzled out, seen endless discussion only to see it go nowhere now in 7.0 whatsoever. Still going to be pressing Glare for hours.

I actually hope this movement matters, more than all of the other discussions about Healers...but I think even if it works, I'm looking at 2 more years of the same.