#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[CrimsonGunner]

Soo... whats the goal here? Acknowledgment from devs? I mean ultimately what could the devs do to fix/bandaid healers at this very moment? Meaning no new skills, only adjustments to the current kits. Gotta keep in mind their dev process takes them ages to get anything major done especially if blindsided them and didnt plan ahead; planning>development>testing>art/animation/sound>translations>update...

tbh acknowledgment is major. second they can change the already added dps skills they gave to each healer and make it more repeatable in healing downtime which i think will improve it massively.
lastly turn the DOT spells to AOE already, like come on its 2 expansion where healers need to target switch each mob to cast it in a bundled group.(last one is my personal opinion if it wasn't clear)

[Loggos]

[HB]

TLDR
There's a lot of tangible reasons that the game, nowadays, very intentionally doesn't bother trying to hold players to any sort of performance standard until suddenly slamming you into EX / Savage / Criterion like a moose on a windshield.

But I think that continuing to express dissatisfaction with it — preferably in a coherent, well-organised, and reasonably-diplomatic manner — is still productive, and will still influence the developers... even if it's slow, or their response is incomplete compared to what would ideally be desired (the exact specifications of which will fluctuate wildly from player to player, anyway).

I completely agree with this but I think it's also really sad because games like Elden Ring have shown how popular and "mainstream" the "overcoming hard challenges" type of gameplay can be.

There is obviously also a huge self-selection effect at play but the game's impressive growth compared to older Soulsborne titles could indicate that far more people are willing to try content that requires you to fail and learn if they are eased into it.

(And the funny thing is that ER doesn't even make it easy for new players. You have a lot more tools to make the game easier for you as you play but the beginning is still really tough for newbies.)

Now imagine a game that actually slowly introduces their players to increasing difficulties step by step and teaches you to gradually get more comfortable with harder content. If done right I really think this could work.

I'm not advocating for FF to adopt ER levels of difficulty of course. But I wonder if it's not just a problem of "what" (difficulty) but als of "how". As in, how your initial encounter with content that challenges your current skill level goes and how organically you can progress on that difficulty curve.

I wonder if proper game design could successfully utilise the psychology behind positive difficulty (having a good balance of rewards and frustration, with the scales tipped in such a way that the frustration doesn't become so big you want to quit but instead motivates you, while the rewards are fulfilling enough to generate a strong pull and intrinsic motivation themselves).

Because right now I think FF14 does a terrible job at dealing with those underlying psychological mechanisms, often making it a lot more stressful for casual players to even consider harder content.

Naturally you will never win everybody over to try harder things but I still think there is a lot of room for improvement in FF14's current game design and communication to make increasing difficulty exciting for inexperienced players without risking losing them or pushing casuals out.

[Aurora428]

tbh acknowledgment is major. second they can change the already added dps skills they gave to each healer and make it more repeatable in healing downtime which i think will improve it massively.
lastly turn the DOT spells to AOE already, like come on its 2 expansion where healers need to target switch each mob to cast it in a bundled group.(last one is my personal opinion if it wasn't clear)

It's important that the devs recognize an issue before the mid-patch of the first raid tier.

Historically they have allowed poorly designed jobs to rot for the next 20 months if they haven't taken action by then.

[Connor]

Given how long players have been raising these issues I honestly think most would even be happy with a ‘we are working on the issue around healers’ at least like once lol. I mean, I would be at least.

Instead the closest we’ve ever had to acknowledgement was developers telling healers to play ultimates if they’re ‘bored’

[Kacho_Nacho]

This always reminds me of the hilariously out of touch Scholar change in the middle of Shadowbringers, where they nerfed Energy Drain from 150 down to 100 potency with the explanation that Scholar players were focusing on DPS too much...
And then you looked at actual Scholar logs and saw that they were doing more healing than their co-healer almost every time.

Exactly! This fear healers are focusing on dps rather than health bars is so deeply entrenched that it affects all CBU3's decision making about healers, even when the data doesn't support their conclusions. In short, the devs are in an ivory tower and only listening to themselves rather than the feedback the game and its players are providing them.

Ultimately, that's why so many healers are unhappy. Years of feedback have been discounted because of Yoshi and his team made up their minds before listening to even one message from someone who actually plays a healer in the game.

[Aurora428]

Ultimately if they are unable or unwilling to make the actual act of healing the party interesting, they have to give healers better DPS buttons.

I don't necessarily agree that the healer role should become damage focused, but the fact of the matter is that it is and if they aren't changing that it may as well not be one button spam.

[Isala]

Given how long players have been raising these issues I honestly think most would even be happy with a ‘we are working on the issue around healers’ at least like once lol. I mean, I would be at least.

Instead the closest we’ve ever had to acknowledgement was developers telling healers to play ultimates if they’re ‘bored’

Jokes on them, I played other games since I was bored... Literally took all of Endwalker off, because healers were still in the dumpster for enjoyability, which is super depressing as an ARR veteran.

[Turtledeluxe]

I completely agree with this but I think it's also really sad because games like Elden Ring have shown how popular and "mainstream" the "overcoming hard challenges" type of gameplay can be.

There is obviously also a huge self-selection effect at play but the game's impressive growth compared to older Soulsborne titles could indicate that far more people are willing to try content that requires you to fail and learn if they are eased into it.

(And the funny thing is that ER doesn't even make it easy for new players. You have a lot more tools to make the game easier for you as you play but the beginning is still really tough for newbies.)

Now imagine a game that actually slowly introduces their players to increasing difficulties step by step and teaches you to gradually get more comfortable with harder content. If done right I really think this could work.

I'm not advocating for FF to adopt ER levels of difficulty of course. But I wonder if it's not just a problem of "what" (difficulty) but als of "how". As in, how your initial encounter with content that challenges your current skill level goes and how organically you can progress on that difficulty curve.

I wonder if proper game design could successfully utilise the psychology behind positive difficulty (having a good balance of rewards and frustration, with the scales tipped in such a way that the frustration doesn't become so big you want to quit but instead motivates you, while the rewards are fulfilling enough to generate a strong pull and intrinsic motivation themselves).

Because right now I think FF14 does a terrible job at dealing with those underlying psychological mechanisms, often making it a lot more stressful for casual players to even consider harder content.

Naturally you will never win everybody over to try harder things but I still think there is a lot of room for improvement in FF14's current game design and communication to make increasing difficulty exciting for inexperienced players without risking losing them or pushing casuals out.

Elden Ring caters to lots of different gamers because it's just straight forward enough that anyone can get it, but it's diverse enough that build crafters can get very creative and challenge runners can really sink their teeth in. If it's too hard, there are tools in the game to get help. It's hard for an MMO to replicate this kind of game on a mechanical level but it's worth considering conceptually. A lot of MMOs, including XIV, undo a lot of the things (like killing job complexity) basically because of endgame, to be as nonspecific and non accusatory as possible. Jobs are not being simplified (in general) because of ultra casual players. It is to make it so nothing non-standard and non predictable exists for the sake of endgame.

[Rolder50]

Ultimately if they are unable or unwilling to make the actual act of healing the party interesting, they have to give healers better DPS buttons.

I don't necessarily agree that the healer role should become damage focused, but the fact of the matter is that it is and if they aren't changing that it may as well not be one button spam.

Wouldn't even be difficult to get a good start going. Take the new 1-2 minute dps buttons, give them a shorter cooldown so they are regularly usable (adjust potency of course), and give some kind of proc like thundercloud for the dot or something else along those lines, and boom that'd be enough for them to show they care.

[PercibelTheren]

Given how long players have been raising these issues I honestly think most would even be happy with a ‘we are working on the issue around healers’ at least like once lol. I mean, I would be at least.

Instead the closest we’ve ever had to acknowledgement was developers telling healers to play ultimates if they’re ‘bored’

This is something I wish we had more of for all cases, really. Just acknowledge the feedback, even if it's "we hear you guys but we don't agree, our vision for the game is different".