Can you use cure, mummy?

If you are interested in the articles I have written about my game time in Final Fantasy XIV – feel free to visit Life in Eorzea.

With Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn released just a short while ago, I have somewhat got back into playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) on a casual scale and as per normal I pick a healer as I prefer them over the others.

After playing the first few dungeons with little to no problems and making a few in-game friends within the nice community that the Moogle server has to offer – I started to pick up again something that I learned in Final Fantasy XI: that the healer seems to be the “mother” of the overall group.

The first example is that you are normally expected to put everyone else before you and ensure they are completely fine. So basically you are “expected” to keep everyone else alive and cure them and if you have all taken damage you are then expected to make sure they are all restored to a good amount of health before you should cure yourself. And then if you do not do that you are often blamed for the party’s downfall should you suffer a wipe because you know, if a healer dies it is not like the party will survive long enough.

The next example is an old classic – you are blamed for every bad thing that could happen even if it is due to others not doing their roles correctly. Then it goes further than people moan at you because they expect you to be able to clean up every mess they do and then brag about how great they are when you solve the problem. The next problem with this is that you are expected to “never give up” and keep playing even if things are failing. Still, oddly enough most others are free to go as they please and then blame the healers for being useless and ruining their gaming experience which brings me to my next and most annoying point.

While I understand the role of a healer many others seem to think that a healer is simply playing for “other’s people benefit” and not their own. This makes others believe that they are more important than anyone else who is playing and pushes healers down to feel like they are non-playable characters kinda like shopping assistants checking out items for someone in a supermarket.

It is the above problem that causes those players to then moan at healers when things go wrong because it is their gameplay that is being ruined and everyone is not playing how they want regardless of the others who are also playing the game. But on the plus side at least when those players “grow” up in the game they become very thankful for that healer who has kept healing them although abuse has already been thrown at the healer and they unlikely even remember the healer’s name they did it too.

Does the above remind you of anything?

If your answer was dolphins then what the hell are you smoking!? It should remind you of teenagers moaning about their parents always ruining everything for them although it is always their fault.

While I do admit there are many players not like this and many of them are a pleasure to play with do remember this – do not piss off the player who can always skip a cure!

And for the damage dealers and tanks out there that respect the healers then thank you – we respect you too unless you are a dick