AST card arrangement

I'll start by saying that I'm one of those people who is okay with the new version of the card system, although I'm not married to it. I feel the complexity just shifted from effect to usage making it quite a bit busier than it used to be and requiring slightly more thought.

That said, the one thing that irks me about it is why SquareEnix made the choice for which cards do what in the new system. The current system has cards arranged like so:
https://i.imgur.com/HoKcJKw.png?2
(This is my visual reference in game so the macros don't actually do anything. It just lets me see at a glance which cards do what. Melee/tank cards on the left, ranged/healer cards on the right. Sun, moon, star seals from top to bottom. The currently drawn card lights up too, which can be handy.)

What bugs me is that under the old system, the pairings for Royal Road were Arrow/Spear and Ewer/Spire but they broke those pairings for the seal pairings. It would have made far more sense to keep the pairings the way they were. Especially with the Spire and Ewer which would have been obvious a single seal pairing with Spire for melee/tank and Ewer for ranged/caster/healer. Spear would have made sense as the melee/tank one and Arrow as a caster one too. A quick edit of the image shows what I think it should be for the seal assignations:
https://i.imgur.com/tKA1PaU.png

This is a very minor detail, yes, but it's the only real beef I have with the new card system.

It doesn’t even make sense for the Elemental wheel, while your suggestion would.
Earth, Water, Air (Bole, Ewer, Arrow) Umbral elements
Fire, Levin, Ice (Balance, Spire, Spear) Astral elements

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

It doesn’t even make sense for the Elemental wheel, while your suggestion would.
Earth, Water, Air (Bole, Ewer, Arrow) Umbral elements
Fire, Levin, Ice (Balance, Spire, Spear) Astral elements

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You have it a bit backwards. Fire, Lightning, and Wind are Astral elements, and Earth, Water, and Ice are Umbral.

This new iteration actually follows the elemental triangles found inside the cycle of elements.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/m...ka_Anemos7.png
Plus, the uses are broken up by the offensive and defensive properties the cards initially had. The Balance, Spear, and Arrow were offensive cards, and the Bole, Ewer, and Spire were defensive(or more passive in the latter two's case)

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Plus, the uses are broken up by the offensive and defensive properties the cards initially had. The Balance, Spear, and Arrow were offensive cards, and the Bole, Ewer, and Spire were defensive(or more passive in the latter two's case)

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This is a bit of a stretch. It was originally paired up by damage (direct increase and decrease), speed (oGCD and GCD) and resource (TP and MP). The oGCD speed card got changed to crit chance later on.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

This is a bit of a stretch. It was originally paired up by damage (direct increase and decrease), speed (oGCD and GCD) and resource (TP and MP). The oGCD speed card got changed to crit chance later on.

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It's not a stretch, it's just how it's broken up. Whether that was intentional or not I dunno.

Odds are it was broken up into the two triangles as stated/shown in the prior post, more so.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

It's not a stretch, it's just how it's broken up. Whether that was intentional or not I dunno.

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It's a stretch because there's no delineation between 'offence' and 'defence'. That's just something you made up to sort of fit your view. You even had to fudge it a bit by referring to 2 of them as 'passive' which could just as easily apply to the original oGCD cooldown reduction of the Spear which you labelled as 'offence'.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Odds are it was broken up into the two triangles as stated/shown in the prior post.

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This, however, I can see and can accept. I would still prefer the seal pairings to match the old Royal Road pairings since those are baked into my muscle memory and they were originally obvious two sides to the same coin (...card?).

Sun: Damage increase <> Damage reduction. (RR Potency)
Moon: Ability speed <> Weaponskill/Spell speed. (RR Duration)
Star: TP regen <> MP Regen. (RR AoE)

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

It's a stretch because there's no delineation between 'offence' and 'defence'. That's just something you made up to sort of fit your view. You even had to fudge it a bit by referring to 2 of them as 'passive' which could just as easily apply to the original oGCD cooldown reduction of the Spear which you labelled as 'offence'.

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To be completely fair, though, the OG Spear was more useless than a Spire (TP was actually a bit of a problem for some jobs in HW). It was pure RR fodder until they changed it, and since Spear being Crit was far better received, that’s probably why players put it into the offensive category instead of defensive. Technically, there’s nothing “defensive” about lowering the cooldowns of abilities anyways. Even MP/TP refresh wouldn’t fall under “defensive”, so I’d categorize them as “offensive” cards and “utility” cards: melee get all the “offensive” cards, and ranged get the “utility” cards.

I don’t really see the issue with the way they split it. This isn’t saying I don’t have an issue with the cards—just I don’t see this particular one as being anything worth making a change for.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Snip

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Ah yes, my mistake.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

To be completely fair, though, the OG Spear was more useless than a Spire (TP was actually a bit of a problem for some jobs in HW). It was pure RR fodder until they changed it, and since Spear being Crit was far better received, that’s probably why players put it into the offensive category instead of defensive. Technically, there’s nothing “defensive” about lowering the cooldowns of abilities anyways. Even MP/TP refresh wouldn’t fall under “defensive”, so I’d categorize them as “offensive” cards and “utility” cards: melee get all the “offensive” cards, and ranged get the “utility” cards.

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Thank you.

I'm not actually the only person that I've seen break it up that way. The main reason for that is probably do to a "law of opposites" phenomenon or whatever it's called. Basically, we we can name something, and then we have to name something else that is similar but fundamentally different somehow. Well the easiest thing to do is just name it the opposite of the name you gave the first thing; or a perceived opposite since some things we pair aren't opposites but mentally we link them together.

North/South, High/Low, Left/Right, Alpha/Beta, Red/Blue

It's easy to label the first set of cards as offensive, so mentally, by default, the other set are defensive. But as you said and I sorta indicated in my initial post, utility or passive would probably be more accurate.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

It's a stretch because there's no delineation between 'offence' and 'defence'. That's just something you made up to sort of fit your view.

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It's an interpretation multiple people have come up with separately, though. It's also how I memorised the split between the two groups of cards - though I labeled them "attack" and "support" groups.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's an interpretation multiple people have come up with separately, though. It's also how I memorised the split between the two groups of cards - though I labeled them "attack" and "support" groups.

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Same, that's how I split them as well (and someone in my FC said "oh, okay, so melee got all the useful cards and ranged got all the stupid ones"...lol)

Wouldn't it have made more sense for them to split it by the seals it gave though? For example the balance seal giving more damage to dps, the crescent seal giving more damage to range, and the moon seal giving an equal but lower amount to both classes. That way people would not have to look at the seal then take more time to look at the outline color nor would they have to try to rememorize cards.

The only thing I could see being a problem is when you convert the cards to lords and lady's but that could be elevated by making a new card (possibly dukes?) That gave the same damage effect to both range and melee but at a lower amount.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's an interpretation multiple people have come up with separately, though. It's also how I memorised the split between the two groups of cards - though I labeled them "attack" and "support" groups.

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Out of curiosity, how do you split the seal groupings in your head? That's more what my question about why the devs split them the way they did and suggestion is about. I.e. the pair breaking. We had pairs in the old system and pairs in the new system, but they're not the we pairs anymore. Ewer/Spear and Arrow/Spire don't have any connection to each other and is the main reason why I keep a visual reference on my hot bar for them. Without glancing at it I couldn't tell you 100% if Arrow was a lunar or celestial seal, for example. If Arrow was still paired with Spear though it'd be easy to associate Lunar seal with Royal Road duration without needing to think about it.

Edit: oops, got my pairs wrong. Case in point lol! Ewer/Arrow and Spear/Spire. I guess... I could associate it as the "S" ones. Celestial, Spear, Spire. Astrologion alliteration.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Out of curiosity, how do you split the seal groupings in your head? That's more what my question about why the devs split them the way they did and suggestion is about. I.e. the pair breaking.

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I think Ewer/Spire was the only pair I remembered, so I don't have to unlearn the old pairs.

Still memorising the seals and I don't really see an underlying logic to the choices, but...

Solar
BALANCE: has a sun as its primary symbol
BOLE: trees need sunlight? (Also, starts with a B like Balance)

Lunar
ARROW: crescent moon --> bow --> arrow
EWER: water --> moon and tide

Celestial
SPEAR: the snowflake on the card is star-shaped?
SPIRE: a tower reaching to the heavens

Until astrologian has been fixed so that the cards aren't such busywork (or the benefits made WORTH the bother), I honestly think it's dangerous to make suggestions for visual appeal or fluff ... the way things have been going, it'd be our luck that devs would spend time on the fluff so and then say "See? We listen to you guys." ������

This isn't a visual appeal or fluff suggestion. It's mechanics suggestion to make it easier for those who have Royal Road pairings seared into their memory to transition to seals without having to rewire their memory.

If you haven't re-learned the card values this many weeks after the expansion has been live, I'm not sure it's worth asking all of us who have, to go through the trouble yet again. ;)

I've learned them, but nowhere close to the automatic degree that years of Ewer being paired with Spire has. The analogy would be learning a new language and translating on the fly in your head because you think in your first language.

Anyway, I already.said it was minor way back in my first post and I know I will get more used to it. I still think it was the wrong decision to make when they redesigned the cards. The elemental triangle, while a neat bit of lore, wasn't worth breaking the existing pairs.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

Until astrologian has been fixed so that the cards aren't such busywork (or the benefits made WORTH the bother), I honestly think it's dangerous to make suggestions for visual appeal or fluff ... the way things have been going, it'd be our luck that devs would spend time on the fluff so and then say "See? We listen to you guys." ������

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The cards are a substantial portion of your DPS. Use your cards, kids.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

I've learned them, but nowhere close to the automatic degree that years of Ewer being paired with Spire has

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You don’t even need to commit the new ones to memory. Each card has its seal above it, and the background colour matches the role (blue melee pink ranged)

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

You don’t even need to commit the new ones to memory. Each card has its seal above it, and the background colour matches the role (blue melee pink ranged)

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...

How did I not even notice that lol! Well that does help, thanks.

Edit: although it does kind of make me roll my eyes a bit at the blue is for weapon using boys and pink is for magic using girls thing it has going on.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

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How did I not even notice that lol! Well that does help, thanks.

Edit: although it does kind of make me roll my eyes a bit at the blue is for weapon using boys and pink is for magic using girls thing it has going on.

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Would it make you feel better if I said the color is more a magenta/purple hue as opposed to pink?

Though... really. Are we really going to complain about the colors here... ._.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Though... really. Are we really going to complain about the colors here... ._.

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Sure, why not. I'm happy to discuss that if you want to. Changes to systemic misogyny and homophobia, however minor seeming, will never happen without it being brought up. It's the same outdated reasoning behind the gender restrictions on Viera and Hrothgar.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Sure, why not. I'm happy to discuss that if you want to. Changes to systemic misogyny and homophobia, however minor seeming, will never happen without it being brought up. It's the same outdated reasoning behind the gender restrictions on Viera and Hrothgar.

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Dude... it’s just a color. Personally, I don’t assign genders to colors. And I like seeing my men in pink. But if this is a soapbox you wanna get on, go for it, I guess? Just don’t see why it’s a complaint that has to be brought up in relation to card background glows in a video game. I hardly doubt the image you quoted was what the devs were going for here... especially since 3 of the ranged aren’t magic-wielding girls anyways...

Just. Wow.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Sure, why not. I'm happy to discuss that if you want to. Changes to systemic misogyny and homophobia, however minor seeming, will never happen without it being brought up. It's the same outdated reasoning behind the gender restrictions on Viera and Hrothgar.

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... except that wasn't their reasoning. They outright explained why they came to that decision. Hrothgar had been in development long before Viera but the community kept pushing for the latter, the dev opted to split the difference. And since they already had a female model to use as a reference, it made more sense to split them the way they did. Bear in mind, each gender is essentially a race in terms of development time. So it was either do one gender of each or omit one entirely. Don't me wrong, I think it would have been better to just do Viera but people wanted a Bestial race.

But if we're really going to jump on this reach. What's next, complaining Umbral Ice is blue while Astral Fire is red?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Dude... it’s just a color. Personally, I don’t assign genders to colors. And I like seeing my men in pink. But if this is a soapbox you wanna get on, go for it, I guess? Just don’t see why it’s a complaint that has to be brought up in relation to card background glows in a video game. I hardly doubt the image you quoted was what the devs were going for here... especially since 3 of the ranged aren’t magic-wielding girls anyways...

Just. Wow.

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Alright, it's clear from your tone and derision of the topic that you don't want to hold a discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming. Carry on.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Alright, it's clear from your tone and derision of the topic that you don't want to hold a discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming. Carry on.

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Nah, man. I just think the thing you’re complaining about isn’t that deep. The only one applying the stereotype in this conversation right now is you. I’ve never seen anyone else apply this kind of reach to the glowing color around the AST cards by anyone until you made that comment. And I highly doubt that the developers were attempting any type of gender stereotyping when it came to this design choice. Like, geez. Not everything comes with homophobic or misogynistic undertones or negative stereotyping...

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Nah, man. I just think the thing you’re complaining about isn’t that deep.

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Neither did I. I just said I rolled my eyes at it a bit. When you effectively rolled your eyes at my eye roll I offered to have a discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming in an effort to steer the conversation in a productive and positive direction. I'm still happy to have a real discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming in general if you want, but I don't think you actually want to do that.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Neither did I. I just said I rolled my eyes at it a bit. When you effectively rolled your eyes at my eye roll I offered to have a discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming in an effort to steer the conversation in a productive and positive direction. I'm still happy to have a real discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming in general if you want, but I don't think you actually want to do that.

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To be frank, you must have thought it important enough to make a comment about it when someone pointed out melee and ranged cards have different glows around them. I don’t think it’s anything even worth an eye-roll—at least, not in the context in which you’re doing said eye-rolling. The colors chosen for the glow are highly unlikely to be tied to any sort of gender stereotyping, much less homophobic or misogynistic tendencies...

I think there are times and places for conversations like the one you’re wanting to have. I don’t think that the time and place is this thread. However, I think you’ve clearly already set up your own biases against me and what I might say, so I don’t know how productive any conversation about it could be. I do think that it’s an issue completely unrelated to your eye roll, though; it’s quite out of the blue, and triggered by something so incredibly minor that it’s a bit flabbergasting. And I have no idea why you brought Male Viera and Female Hrothgar into this when they’re completely on the other side of the topic pool compared to AST cards and coloring choices.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Alright, it's clear from your tone and derision of the topic that you don't want to hold a discussion about gender stereotypes in gaming. Carry on.

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Dude, it's always good to discuss that topic...But...this isnt the forum to do it in.

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Originally Posted by Brandedblade

Dude, it's always good to discuss that topic...But...this isnt the forum to do it in.

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Exactly. This isn't the topic or place for such discussion.

Honestly I thought the melee cards glow blue because they are linked to the lord of the crown who buffs melees, while the lady of the crown buffs ranges so the range cards glow pink. And while this indeed may be a gender stereotype (lord=blue, lady=pink) I think it's just easier to recognise.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

If you haven't re-learned the card values this many weeks after the expansion has been live, I'm not sure it's worth asking all of us who have, to go through the trouble yet again. ;)

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once i figured that
4.0 good cards are for melee and 4.0 mediocre cards are for Range it was ok

From day 1 I believed that spire and arrow should swap their buffs because I always saw arrow as a ranged item and spire as more melee. I never understood why arrow was in the melee buff. I agree with OP that the two should swap albeit for different reasons.