#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Kes13a]

I agree with you, but I think balance is a lie perpetuated by CBS III so they can homogenize jobs. They keep dumbing down jobs over the years, somehow they still fail to achieve job balance. A good example is Picto, a job that brings party utility and damage buffs while also outperforms DT BLM by a mile in terms of damage output. There are more examples, but this is not the time nor the place.

I disagree with you on this point. Balance is not a lie by CBU 3 at all. the mythical "balance" is a concept thats been around in mmo's for as long as I can remember. great gaming companies have long sought this beast and few obtain it unless they only have 1 class/job. because i is impossible to find. even with 1 class/job it is hard to find, why? because you cannot balance out people.

the PLAYERS scream for "balance". because even with one job, as we know, everyone has different skill levels. so damage output will always be.... different. some people do no like less, so they complain. FFXIV has what.... 30 jobs now? and people beg for more. if we can expect variations in play between two people on a single class/job.... how much more is to be expected with 30+ jobs and hundreds of thousands of people? look around, its US that perpetuated the lie of balance.

if we want unique jobs, we have to allow the jobs to be unique, some will output more damage, some will do less. the problem with that is, then some jobs will be less desirable because of that. because the collective 'we' as players cannot allow that. the whole 'meta' concept is based on "optimal", speed running roulettes, its why tanks pull wall to wall now.. not because its a load of fun, but because people want to rocket through things. why cant you read notes and things in dungeons? because thats not "optimal".

we have asked for "balance", the players, not CBU 3. we expect fast runs, and anything that gets in the way of fast, and smooth, and lowers our output, is seen as bad for balance. asking for our fun back as well? thats a crime because it will interfere with the "balance" I imagine and thats what most fear.

Edit: this mythical "balance" and fun cannot co-exist. I play jobs I find fun. they dont have to be OP, but they have to be enjoyable to play. if they do good healing, or good dps, thats a bonus. fun creates OP jobs for a cycle, but not forever. OP creates complaints from others of the job class who want o do the same.. and the balancing ruins all jobs. if you think hard about it, you can see this is true. accessibility has little to do with it. if we can one day accept the imbalances, which I doubt will happen, then job uniqueness can rreturn, along with the fun.

[Ozmandis]

I disagree with you on this point. Balance is not a lie by CBU 3 at all. the mythical "balance" is a concept thats been around in mmo's for as long as I can remember. great gaming companies have long sought this beast and few obtain it unless they only have 1 class/job. because i is impossible to find. even with 1 class/job it is hard to find, why? because you cannot balance out people.

the PLAYERS scream for "balance". because even with one job, as we know, everyone has different skill levels. so damage output will always be.... different. some people do no like less, so they complain. FFXIV has what.... 30 jobs now? and people beg for more. if we can expect variations in play between two people on a single class/job.... how much more is to be expected with 30+ jobs and hundreds of thousands of people? look around, its US that perpetuated the lie of balance.

if we want unique jobs, we have to allow the jobs to be unique, some will output more damage, some will do less. the problem with that is, then some jobs will be less desirable because of that. because the collective 'we' as players cannot allow that. the whole 'meta' concept is based on "optimal", speed running roulettes, its why tanks pull wall to wall now.. not because its a load of fun, but because people want to rocket through things. why cant you read notes and things in dungeons? because thats not "optimal".

we have asked for "balance", the players, not CBU 3. we expect fast runs, and anything that gets in the way of fast, and smooth, and lowers our output, is seen as bad for balance. asking for our fun back as well? thats a crime because it will interfere with the "balance" I imagine and thats what most fear.

I agree with everything you said. I think SE should simply balance the game such that every job is viable even if there is a huge gap between them. They should simply add to the ToS that excluding someone based on their job is a bannable offense even inside PFs. It's absolutely crazy how many people insist on playing "meta jobs" when they can't even juice out 30% of their potential while they'll be doing litterally more damage by just playing summoner.

[Kes13a]

I agree with everything you said. I think SE should simply balance the game such that every job is viable even if there is a huge gap between them. They should simply add to the ToS that excluding someone based on their job is a bannable offense even inside PFs. It's absolutely crazy how many people insist on playing "meta jobs" when they can't even juice out 30% of their potential while they'll be doing litterally more damage by just playing summoner.

balance is only needed in PVP. outside of that... in an mmo world where we are playing with other people, its really not needed since we are "on the same side" against npc enemies.

[Evergrey]

EDIT : added meme

I think the difference is that dps don't go shouting that they are going to play something else.
There has been many healers who's changed jobs since Stormblood and no one bat an eye. Because people simply started playing something else without making an announcement of it.
It wasn't until this Strike people "noticed". I doubt that it's a coincidence.

However, the strike isn't solely about players changing jobs, it's to make their voices heard and that SE will pay attention to what a lot of people think the Healer jobs might be lacking when it comes to enjoyable gameplay.
But because it's made public that people are switching jobs it's that what people are focusing on, not the reason of why.

[Somnolence]

There are actually a lot of people who dont want warrior nerfed because they want to be able to solo dungeons.

WAR is like 70% of hunt train composition right now. Easy contribution tagging with stance and primal rend, thrill equilibrium if eating attack and generally won't die which is important since trains are going fast.

[Doriann]

I miss the "busy" scholar in stormblood, who spend it's free time casting damage over time spells on mobs when not shielding people (while fairy did most of it's spot healing). This is just an example of an alternative way to play as a healer, and the closest we've got right now is Sage, but they not only stopped the stacking of DoT spells but the class is most relegated to a single button press.

I want to have other healing archetypes than we've got now. Leave WHM to be the most straightforward one, since its the core healer of the franchise, and go crazy/explore with other archetypes to heal. Offensive/defensive support, damage-oriented healer, etc.

[Aword3213]

I disagree with you on this point. Balance is not a lie by CBU 3 at all. the mythical "balance" is a concept thats been around in mmo's for as long as I can remember. great gaming companies have long sought this beast and few obtain it unless they only have 1 class/job. because i is impossible to find. even with 1 class/job it is hard to find, why? because you cannot balance out people.

the PLAYERS scream for "balance". because even with one job, as we know, everyone has different skill levels. so damage output will always be.... different. some people do no like less, so they complain. FFXIV has what.... 30 jobs now? and people beg for more. if we can expect variations in play between two people on a single class/job.... how much more is to be expected with 30+ jobs and hundreds of thousands of people? look around, its US that perpetuated the lie of balance.

if we want unique jobs, we have to allow the jobs to be unique, some will output more damage, some will do less. the problem with that is, then some jobs will be less desirable because of that. because the collective 'we' as players cannot allow that. the whole 'meta' concept is based on "optimal", speed running roulettes, its why tanks pull wall to wall now.. not because its a load of fun, but because people want to rocket through things. why cant you read notes and things in dungeons? because thats not "optimal".

we have asked for "balance", the players, not CBU 3. we expect fast runs, and anything that gets in the way of fast, and smooth, and lowers our output, is seen as bad for balance. asking for our fun back as well? thats a crime because it will interfere with the "balance" I imagine and thats what most fear.

Edit: this mythical "balance" and fun cannot co-exist. I play jobs I find fun. they dont have to be OP, but they have to be enjoyable to play. if they do good healing, or good dps, thats a bonus. fun creates OP jobs for a cycle, but not forever. OP creates complaints from others of the job class who want o do the same.. and the balancing ruins all jobs. if you think hard about it, you can see this is true. accessibility has little to do with it. if we can one day accept the imbalances, which I doubt will happen, then job uniqueness can rreturn, along with the fun.

Perfect balance will never be achieved, that's for sure. I, too, prioritize fun and uniqueness over balance. I have a tendency to pick the least popular jobs/build in every game I play. However, the environment we have been having since EW does not justify the homogenization.

When they homogenized all jobs, I expected better balance between jobs. There's still be a threshold they should not break. SE overstepped my tolerance for their balance. That's why I said balance is a lie. People say homogenization makes it easier to balance. Except, the balance is still terrible, so terrible that I think balance is just an excuse.

[gllt]

Fighting games have suffered from the same issues, both the games design themselves and it's players, over designed games and being concerned with the least interesting least important part of gameplay for your skill level

Lots of new FG players trying to pick a top tier character and do an optimal combo they don't need to do, whining about miniscule differences in character balance (high level players guilty of that one too) this stuff is as old as time but it does seem worse now, it's the attitude I think the dev team wants to try and deal with when they talk about not judging each other for things like damage output, people care way too much about it in places where it genuinely doesn't matter

Experimenting with standardization and failing and patching out stuff players find instead of embracing it has been a big issue too

A lot of fighting games have also dealt with these issues better in recent times though or in late patches have tried to spice things up and embrace the core of the design they ended up with while still trying to make it fun again with varying degrees of success

I think a lot of what is perceived as balancing for the sake of fairness in 14 is actually something else. I think they balance to a certain degree for fairness in regards to competition in high end content but I think the other half of it is just overthinking the design of the game as whole.

We learned too much about fighting games and overcorrected a lot of things and had to either back off or adapt once it got tiresome. Now it's hard to create cool and interesting stuff because we have too many preconceived ideas for what a fighting game should and shouldn't be.

I think that's what happened to 14 jobs. I know this is just explaining the "lowering the skill floor to allow more players to enjoy the job and lowering the skill ceiling as well as balancing things for competitive reasons" thing but long winded, but I think it's the reason that mentality came about.

I think the attitude of caring too much about being good came about for a lot of reasons, comp games, online resources, tier lists, esports and content creators etc. and just evolving social dynamics in online gaming.

But the transition from having to be directly exposed to certain content to start caring too much to now where it feels like people who have never even seen a tier list or a guide still care about playing a video game efficiently and optimally in a casual setting who aren't doing it for their own self gratification but some kind of internalized or externalized pressure.. what happened?

But yeah, I think the devs overexposed themselves to their own game. Maybe they need a new person to shake stuff up or to go play some other games again like they did when researching for ARR.

[ForsakenRoe]

stop asking for silliness like "I want more dps buttons to press on my white mage". You can't do that and in another thread complain that jobs don't have identity or class fantasy.

The 'Identity' of the WHM in FFXIV's lore is that it was half of a calamity, and I personally refuse to believe that the WHMs caused that calamity by outhealing the BLMs too hard. They must have used offensive magics to fight back, surely.

The issue with our damage kits is that they're so disconnected from our healing kits, and ironically, WHM is the healer that has the best way of showing how the two can be linked, with Lilies/Misery. Why don't we have effects wherein dealing damage 'helps' with the healing? Why can't we have, for example, 3 DOTs on SCH (Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare), and then add a trait that says 'the damage an enemy's autoattacks do is reduced by X% for each SCH DOT active on them' or some such? It doesn't have to be so strong that it's 'required', just small things that make it feel like the kit is one cohesive kit, rather than two different kits glued together

The thing that people are missing about adding more damage buttons to healers, is that there's a 'baseline', of just spamming Glare/Broil/etc. and by balancing potencies of additional actions around that baseline, the performance difference between 'the optimal rotation' and 'player spamming only Glare' remains quite close. This way, the players who want to keep spamming Glare as their playstyle, still perform with 95%+ of the output of a full-optimization player. Eukrasian Dyskrasia, before its untimely death, was a good example of this in action: Casual players could ignore it, and lose only 40p per 30s. Hardcore players could interact with it in ST, and gain that 40p per 30s. Nobody would have had an enrage caused because they didn't use E.Dyskrasia to get that extra 40p. The complaints that would arise from designing actions in this way, are effectively 'I want to be told I'm optimal, without putting in the effort to BE optimal' which is not a mindset to develop around.

Besides, if you have a mini-rotation for healers, eg WHM has Stone/Aero and Water gets added, meanwhile SCH has Bio, and gets Miasma/Shadowflare readded, then surely this reinforces job identity, not detracts? WHM being more 'burst' focused in the way it deals damage, SCH being more DOT focused? The way a healer deals damage can be an aspect of its identity just as much as 'how it heals'. Look at WOW, nobody would say that Holy Paladin and Holy Priest play anything alike beyond 'both use the Light', because one of them is going to be dealing damage to things in Melee to generate resources. Even the two Priest specs play wildly differently.

(how is increasing healing checks not gatekeeping?)
The same way increasing dps checks isn't. It's your JOB. You sign up to heal when u play Healer XD. Jus like when I sign up for content as a dps I know ill be expected to dps.

I guess that means we can ramp up the healing required in EX roulettes to be just as demanding as some of the more heal-intensive Ultimate phases, eg P1 TEA? After all, increasing Healing checks is apparently 'not gatekeeping', and the casual player signed up to heal. So they should be fully capable of healing at the level Ultimates demand of them, right?

[Wildheaven182]

Balance? Tell that to bloodwhetting. One of the four people on the job design team must main warrior.