AST cards rework idea (share your own, too!)

had an idea for a rework to the card system that i wanted to share because i really liked it. i'm aware that, currently, they intend to leave it as is but it doesn't stop me from dreaming!

for starters: Balance, Arrow and Spear would return to how they worked before, but Bole, Spire, and Ewer would be removed from the Draw system and implemented as OGCD's... but not as they were.

Bole, Spire, and Ewer would now act as the buffs you could apply to cards by using Royal Road on them, and perhaps share a 30s cooldown.
Bole would double card Potency
Spire would double card Duration
Ewer would Spread the effect to the party

an example of how this system would work would be:
you use Draw and obtain Arrow (10% Skillspeed/Spellspeed increase)
(optional: use Redraw to get Balance (10% Damage increase) or Spear (10% Crit increase) instead)
activate Bole, putting it on cooldown
Arrow (or your card of choice) now has a 20% boost
give it to your Black Mage and watch them cast fast!

so yeah tl;dr Balance, Arrow, and Spear are returned to how they used to be, Bole, Spire and Ewer are removed from Draw and turned into effects that mimic the Royal Road boosts for your currently drawn card.

This is my favorite so far, a mix of the old and new, something for everyone, shameless steal:

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

If the problem was the lack of consistency, why don't we just delete Draw/Play/Redraw altogether and do something that returns the unique card effects but in a way that can be controlled.

Here's an example of what I mean:
Solar Draw: Draw either The Balance or The Arrow
The Balance boosts direct hit + gives a Solar Seal
The Spear boosts critical hit + gives a Solar Seal
Solar Draw is meant to be played on DPS allies.

Lunar Draw: Draw either The Bole or The Spear
The Bole reduces damage received + gives a Lunar Seal
The Arrow Increases healing received + gives a Lunar Seal
Lunar Draw is meant to be played on tanks.

Celestial Draw: Draw either The Spire or The Ewer
The Spire increases Reduces MP costs by X% + Gives a Celestial Seal
The Ewer grants MP refresh to the target + Gives a Celestial Seal
Celestial Draw is meant to be played on Healers

Solar Draw, Lunar Draw, and Celestial Draw share a recast timer under normal circumstances.
Sleeve Draw removes this aspect temporarily, allowing you to use a card from each Draw, but you can't obtain seals while Sleeve Draw is in effect.

Divination gets removed and Horoscope adopts its identity, as Horoscope thematically will make more sense with the new AoE card effect:
When you have 1 of each Seal, you can activate Horoscope.
When used, Horoscope will...
Apply The Balance AND The Spear to all DPS party members.
Apply The Bole AND The Arrow to all Tank party members.
Apply The Ewer AND The Spire to all Healer party members.

Minor Arcana no longer consumes your current card. Instead, it's just its own Draw effect on a separate CD from the other 3 draws.
Lord of Crowns and Lady of Crowns return to their old effects: Lord of Crowns deals damage while Lady of Crowns heals an ally.
When using Minor Arcana, Lord and Lady will always alternate. This means if you draw The Lord of Crowns, the next card drawn by Minor Arcana will ALWAYS be the Lady and vice versa.

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This! However I worry for the lore behind the cards. The way they stripped the identity itself of the cards from the lore left me not wanting to play the class anymore. I hope they see this.

I posted this in the AST discussion thread, but I might as well drop it here, too:

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Originally Posted by Hatstand

So, some suggestions of my own (quite possibly which have been written elsewhere by other people but if they have I don't remember who or where):

Keep the current lord/lady system but revert the original cards (in effect if not in potency, and putting something new on spire). Now every card can be a damage buff. No useless cards

Force the fates (cooldown): allows you to forcibly draw a card of your choice (would temporarily change your basic moves into card icons for selection much like the dancer steps). Now you can have reliable mana restoration or damage mitigation as its needed, and if you feel comfortable without that assurance you can burn it for more damage instead.

Bag randomisation (there's a thread for this one): ensures that you won't draw the same card over and over by picking from the cards you haven't already drawn until you've drawn all 6 is sequence. This, along with:

Shuffle (cooldown): resets the bag randomisation, so if you just got all the cards you want in a row you can have a chance at drawing them again without having to draw the ones you didn't want first.

I know some people will say that we should be focusing on how we can fix the new cards because there's no going back, but... to be quite honest I don't think there's any salvaging the new cards. Unless they actually differentiate between the effects of each card. At which point they might as well go back. And I know there are some people who like the new system, but clearly a lot of people don't, and I will continue to push for change because the only two classes in this game I really loved (SCH and AST) are currently in a place I can't bring myself to play them any more.

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Add onto this a cooldown to manipulate the durations of buffs.

For me, the core of AST is working with whatever you draw, so I wouldn’t want to remove the defensive cards from the set that could be drawn, or otherwise give us too much regular control over what we draw. On the other hand, I see the desire to have some sort of reliability, which is why I suggest the current minor arcana system to ensure that every card can be used offensively if needed, and the force the fates cooldown to ensure that AST can plan to have a defensive card on hand.

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

This is my favorite so far, a mix of the old and new, something for everyone, shameless steal:

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Shameless steal, accepted ;P

Also I noticed there's a typo still where Arrow and Spear are swapped when I explain Solar and Lunar draw, because someone pointed out how Spear should be critical hit based on lore.

I don't think they need to be reworked per say. But simply adding some of the previous effects to correctly played cards would be very helpful. Play a blue card on tank, give bole-like mitigation. Play a red card on healer, give MP refresh akin to Ewer. DPS players could receive small direct- / critical hit buffs on top of the damage buffs. This would incentivise playing cards correctly, while giving us back some of the strategic options.

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Originally Posted by Dnc

I don't think they need to be reworked per say. But simply adding some of the previous effects to correctly played cards would be very helpful. Play a blue card on tank, give bole-like mitigation. Play a red card on healer, give MP refresh akin to Ewer. DPS players could receive small direct- / critical hit buffs on top of the damage buffs. This would incentivise playing cards correctly, while giving us back some of the strategic options.

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I'm not sure what you mean by Blue and Red Card...

If what you're suggesting is basically that cards all grant damage buffs, but each one adds something additionally, like Bole also mitigates damage, than you're right back where you started. You can't pull support cards when you need them, and you don't want them any other time because they're a DPS loss in comparison to Balance which also increases Direct Hit or Critical Hit.

If what you're saying is that all cards still do exactly the same thing, it's just that you get an extra effect depending on who your target is, then you're not fixing the problem that players have: Wanting the different cards to be meaningful and not just the same thing.

Here is what I would like cards to be:

-Balance, spear, bole, and ewer revert to their old effects.
-Arrow now gives direct hit, because not many classes actually liked the attack speed.
-Spire is now a heal that functions like excog, but with weaker potency.

When you use draw, the card you get will alternate between offensive (balance, arrow, spear) and defensive (bole, ewer, spire). If you redraw on an offensive card, you will get another offensive card. Same with defensive cards. Divination is now unrelated to seals and is just a flat party damage buff on a 2 minute cooldown, but 6% might need to be adjusted if only 50% of your cards are offensive cards now. Redraw no longer needs 3 charges, and is now only has 1 charge like the old system. Minor arcana will work similar to the old 150% potency royal road, and instead will sit on a cooldown so it can't be used on every card. This way, the rng aspect of cards is kept to a minimum while still keeping the flavor of having six unique cards.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I'm not sure what you mean by Blue and Red Card...

If what you're suggesting is basically that cards all grant damage buffs, but each one adds something additionally, like Bole also mitigates damage, than you're right back where you started. You can't pull support cards when you need them, and you don't want them any other time because they're a DPS loss in comparison to Balance which also increases Direct Hit or Critical Hit.

If what you're saying is that all cards still do exactly the same thing, it's just that you get an extra effect depending on who your target is, then you're not fixing the problem that players have: Wanting the different cards to be meaningful and not just the same thing.

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By blue and red cards I'm basically referring to the colored border the cards have. Blue for tank/melee, red for ranged. I should've clarified to begin with.
But I do agree that having additional damage buffs on top of the already existing damage buff would negate the "need" for the other effects. That's something I've been hesitant to suggest, but I can't currently think of what kind of an additional buff damage classes could receive from the cards.

And yes, it wouldn't fix the biggest problem many in the healer playerbase have, but Yoshi P made it clear we're going to be sticking with the current iteration of the cards. So I'm simply suggesting something subtle to bring back even a hint of flavor back to the cards without completely reworking them. Though this is a rework suggestion thread...

If I were to rework the cards, however, I'd rather they were mitigation tools and additional effects on our heals. No damage buffs at all. For example cards could achieve what neutral sect currently does. In all honesty, I feel like sects in general could've been baked into the cards. Minor arcana could have been the sure way of "switching" between shielding and regen. But that's closer to a whole job rework rather than just the cards.

(Also, apologies if I'm rambly. I never were the best at forming my thoughts into coherent paragraphs.)

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Originally Posted by Dnc

By blue and red cards I'm basically referring to the colored border the cards have. Blue for tank/melee, red for ranged. I should've clarified to begin with.
But I do agree that having additional damage buffs on top of the already existing damage buff would negate the "need" for the other effects. That's something I've been hesitant to suggest, but I can't currently think of what kind of an additional buff damage classes could receive from the cards.

And yes, it wouldn't fix the biggest problem many in the healer playerbase have, but Yoshi P made it clear we're going to be sticking with the current iteration of the cards. So I'm simply suggesting something subtle to bring back even a hint of flavor back to the cards without completely reworking them. Though this is a rework suggestion thread...

If I were to rework the cards, however, I'd rather they were mitigation tools and additional effects on our heals. No damage buffs at all. For example cards could achieve what neutral sect currently does. In all honesty, I feel like sects in general could've been baked into the cards. Minor arcana could have been the sure way of "switching" between shielding and regen. But that's closer to a whole job rework rather than just the cards.

(Also, apologies if I'm rambly. I never were the best at forming my thoughts into coherent paragraphs.)

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For all the good it'll do, I did add the build I made in the past which someone quoted in the second comment of this thread under the feedback section of the forums. I have heard that this is something that is actually looked at and feedback from players is taken into consideration. I also made an effort to clarify that I wasn't trying to imply that my idea was the best and they have to implement it that way, but rather to at least inspire some design ideas that could keep the consistency of the current cards while returning the individuality of the old cards in a fashion.

I also understand that the new system is here to stay for a while, but it is not a good system. It's something that has very clearly poisoned the player base, frustrated AST mains, and caused a lot of grief despite its functionality. This is not something that will get swept under the rug, and sooner or later the team is going to have to face it. Talking about it now isn't about being impatient or demanding immediate change, it's about creating waves that will capsize the current system over time and change it in the future, be that as far as 5.2, 5.3, or perhaps 6.0. It won't happen for a while, but the more noise we make, the better the chance that we'll see this fixed.