Astro Reboot : Party Cards

***Please bare with me, I had to re-write this because @IdontPetLalas had a valid point. Context without explanation doesn’t make much sense and FF Fourms has a very small written character allowance. My explanation is here and my actual proposals are in Reply #3.

"They're still struggling to find Astros Identity." I just can not help but think that everyone (even the devs) forget a very important thing.

It's all code. Nothing is permanent. Should they decide to completely erase and remake Astro (or just healers), it is completely in their power to do so. It would not be the first time they've done that to a class; completely ignoring existing lore, fan favoritism, or the practicality of redoing years of coding history. The same can be said to making exceptions to rules or out right breaking rules of their game, which they've also done before. Please keep this in mind when you read the Card Proposals in Reply #3.

Moving on, if there was EVER a suggestion I wish they'd take to heart..

Drop the "Apply to One Person" System or "try something else".

Switching the Single Cards to Party Cards is my token suggestion. You can have complex game play without forcing Tab-Targeting outside of regular healer Spot and Mit healing.

Why I suggest Party Cards (applying an affect to more than 1 person) has nothing to do any personal dislike for the single-target system. I LOVE speed Astro because of it's mechanical complexity in the face of boring dps cards. I have the advantage of a Keyboard and a mouse. I'm fine with any iteration of Astro that they do; no matter how complex or mind-numb they make it.

I think exploring this idea could be an exciting new world; however, I have a couple of points on why I suggest this particularly extreme style of reboot.

1. The vast majority of the player base cannot say the same as me because they are on controller and have to go thou menus and lists just to select another player. This is a complete off putting introduction to any controller wanting to try Astro for the first time but never had to deal with interacting with menus with any frequency as Astro does. A solution to this is for everyone to continue to ignore this problem, as they have for 10 years. Even thou Raids and Dungeons are getting faster than ever.

Here's an example:
Me on PC to play 1 card : Draw, select, play, tab target boss, GCD, repeat process.
My Console Astro Friends: Draw, Menu, Scroll, Select, Party list, Select, Scroll, Player Select, Play, Tab- select boss, GCD, repeat process.

*edit note* It's been pointed out to me this is Console Hard Select and what Astros learn to do in Dungeons. This is how 3 out of 4 of my console friends raid even though I'm told this is wrong and not how they should be raiding even thou this is how the game taught them and one of those friends has been an Astro since Stormblood, long before I started playing. Is Lost-in-Translation an acceptable excuse for poor instruction? idk.

2. They can also ignore console Astros giving into getting a K/M to be on par with PC players w/o risking their health and sanity, which ea person has variable mileage on. It's no different than Devs ignoring a problem with the game and now we have people making 3rd Party tools for those problems.

3. They can also ignore that my Astro Console friends who continue being faithful to a controller are getting Gamer Carpal Tunnel at alarming rates when they play Astro for any sustained amount of time. I can go all day raiding as Astro and I'm approaching 40. My friends? I give all of them an Hour, 2 hours tops before their hands are out of commission and most of them are in their early to mid-20s. THAT is a very serious issue and poor game standpoint I CAN'T ignore for my own personal enjoyment of being able to speed Astro on a PC in the comfort of my own home, health risk free, no matter my preference.

So, while I know everyone wants to keep the "Single Player Cards" for complexities sake, I'd like to hear other thoughts on how to make Astro different but still Astro. People give into this misconception that different is impossible or change (no matter how extreme) would make the class boring.

It does not have to be this way.

My card proposals and class changes under the assumption of "Party Cards" are in Reply #3, which I had to move because of Forum limitations. Even if you don't like the Party buff idea, it's worth a shot in looking at some of the other card flavors up for discussion.

My thoughts on this:

1: You say this is to bring back 'flexible thought complexity', i would say that it removes even more thought from the cards, as 'who to target' is an aspect of the complexity cards currently have, and might be the only aspect left when DT's cards hit. This would just be 'draw card, press play', no thinking about who to even play it on.

2: Haste is a terrible idea, as you'll force jobs to misalign their rotations from the 2min burst. Certain jobs want to go into their 2min window on a specific Combo Step, to the point where they build specific SkillSpeed levels to attain that. If you want every DPS in the game (except BLM) to hate you, then Haste away

3: AOE party cleanse would be cool to see, but it'd sting that it was removed from SCH, and then given back to AST, unless SCH got theirs back too

4: I don't know what you mean with Eclipse Card being 'erase damage aspect', are you trying to say Macrocosmos 'erases' some of the damage taken? Because it doesn't, you just heal back for a portion of the damage you took, you still have to survive the damage in the first place

5: The 'court' would make more sense if it used other Minor Arcana Suits if you want to keep Crowns as a naming, and Stars is not one of the Suits

You say RNG gives you 'useless card choices and single person application'. You might think this removes the 'useless card choices', but in fact, it removes choice entirely. You also have 'useless card choices' even here, such as Lady of Crowns, or the party wide Esuna in any content that doesn't apply cleansable debuffs (90%+ of the game).

Party Card Suggetions :

Please remember names are place holders, and descriptions are not exact and merely convey concepts and ideas. I would LOVE to see other thoughts and suggestions that play into alternatives they haven’t done yet or would be cool to explore. I'm specifically being general because I'm not the devs, I would think THEY know better than anyone in the community what is best if they take any suggestions from the community and how best to apply them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Draw Timer: 1 set of 4 RNG cards, 40s timer. 3 sets in 120s = 12 playable cards (aka BRD Song Times)
New Skill: Card Sacrifice: Active until executed or 60s has passed. Discard/reject any 3 cards for a bigger personal dps return. Not executing before 60s Duration is loss of those cards and any potential gain.
- In 120s, 0:3:6 of 12 cards could be sacrificed if you don't like them or not situationally applicable.
- aka Misery equivalent on a timer
- Astro Unique Chance: Leave behind card after-images and execute is BLU Trident with cards.


Damage Slot Options

• Balance Card: X% Party Crit Chance Increase
• Arrow Card: X% Party GCD Haste
• Sun Card: Party Reflect : 1x hit
  Mini-Macro - dps aspect only
  Astro Unique

Utility Slot Options

• Ewer Card: Y% Party MP Recovery
• Spire Card: Y% Party Movement Speed + Lost Action Re-raise
  Astro Unique: Time Stop from the Tower of Zot : re-raise= Frozen #s. Party Wipe: all dead/frozen.
• Moon Card: Party Debuff Cleanser
  aka BRD The Warden's Paean but party-wide
  Astro Unique

Heal Slot Options

• Bole Card: Z% Party Damage Reduction
• Spear Card: Z% Party Passive Health Recovery Increase
• Eclipse Card: Party Stack of Time Reverse
  Mini-Macro - heal aspect only aka Lily Bell/Panhaima.
  Astro Unique

Court Slot Cards: Personal Cards 1 in 4 rng chance

• Lord of Crowns: current iteration of Flat DPS Damage
• Lady of Crowns: current iteration of Flat Party Heal
• Lady of Stars: Astrodyne#3 buff: Speed UP, Heal potency up, DPS UP
• Lord of Stars: X% of all personal dps in buff window applied to enemy at end duration. (aka MCH Wildfire)

General:

• Boost Divination (Party Buff) by 2% and get rid of all % DPS cards.
• Trash Prerequisite : Aspected Helios activates Neutral Sect.
  Maybe convert Neutral Sect to similar "SGE Holos" Raw Shield with secondary activation like "SCH Emergency Tactics" Raw heal conversion.
• Trash Prerequisite : Helios (any kind) triggers extended Horoscope but keep Extended and early execution.
• Trash All Solo Cards requiring Draw-> Alt-Target-> Play-> Re-target aspects.
• Redraw : keep to "reshuffle" only none played cards in a hand.

About RNG: I personally vote keep rng because I adore it; however, I don't think anyone would care as long as every card opportunity is beneficial to more than just one random person.

@Kamishawe ForsakenRoe has some valid points. If someone points out a perceived weakness in a proposal, and takes the time to explain why, that is being constructive. Why start a forum thread and expect to get feedback if you get so abrasive at the first person who comments?

Ah, you're quite correct @IDontPetLalas. I do often come across as abrasive, I'm not arguing. I do apologize if I read a little to much into someone else writing tone, when mine is probably not much better.

I re-arranged the 2 messages to make more sense

Well, those are some interesting points. I would counter with if this is driven principally by console players and the UI- why not express it that way, as you have above, maybe it's possible to introduce some options in the UI specifically for controller players?

I can't comment on console, on PC there are ways to make (for example) selecting the target/playing your cards much easier so that you can switch between players and the boss- however on PC I definitely went through a lot of setup on the basic UI.

because I would prefer that changes are introduced based upon improving the job design, if at all possible, and not due to what may be a poor use of system controls/UI.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kamishawe

Controller Astro : Draw, Menu, Scroll, Select, Party list, Select, Scroll, Player Select, Play, Tab- select boss, GCD, repeat process.

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You never played on controler or never did a proper set-up right? because it's : draw, scroll the party list with up or down arrow of the D-pad to highligh the member you want to play your card on, play the card then the mob is automatically selected again.... It's called soft select.
You don't need to hard select a member to heal, buff or play a card, you just have to do a soft select.... The only moment when you an hard select as an AST, it's when the tank is doing a very big W2W.

It's doesn't take long to select the member on 4 people dungeon.... On a 8 party it take just tiny wesy bit longer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lorika

You never played on controler or never did a proper set-up right? because it's : draw, scroll the party list with up or down arrow of the D-pad to highligh the member you want to play your card on, play the card then the mob is automatically selected again.... It's called soft select.
You don't need to hard select a member to heal, buff or play a card, you just have to do a soft select.... The only moment when you an hard select as an AST, it's when the tank is doing a very big W2W.

It's doesn't take long to select the member on 4 people dungeon.... On a 8 party it take just tiny wesy bit longer.

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I do not play controller and no one on earth would make me try it. That was my best description of what I see most of them do, granted they also blur thou what you call "hard" select so fast I can't "SEE" every step of the process either, just the basics. I think only one of the 4 does something close to a "soft select".

I have no idea if that's a lost-in-translation-issue, a compatibility controller issue, a lack of knowledge issue, or just looking at the same thing thou different lenses for them or they're just not very good at it. What I do know is that it's not just my friends. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But you can also say this about a lot of counter intuitive things your learn though the ARR experience and leveling process that stick, even 8 years later for one of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kamishawe

I do not play controller and no one on earth would make me try it. That was my best description of what I see most of them do, granted they also blur thou what you call "hard" select so fast I can't "SEE" every step of the process either, just the basics. I think only one of the 4 does something close to a "soft select".

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I was like you 6 month ago.
Then, after 25 years of MMO on PC and 10 years of FFXIV on Pc, i didn't had the choice but to swtich to controller on PS5... And you know what? it's different but work very very well.
It's even better on some point, but well worst on others.

And, seriously, your answer smell like someone that is trying to find a culprint, because soft select it's on by default on controller.... So all the player using controller have experienced it and only low level newbie doesn't use it.
And another thing : what you saw it's, with a very high chance, casual PC player that do Mouse click.... Thoses are legion.

Sp, i'm doing you a favor : Controller player aren't your culprit.

Congrats on liking the transition from PC to Console! What I'm trying to say, is thank you for telling me about Soft Select even thou it is one among many topic points up for offer. I'm not trying to argue with you, their problem isn't that they're "newbies", they're "old". Maybe that makes Point#1 irrelevant to newbies since your also a "newbie" trained to Consoles despite you playing FF14 PC for 10 years.

I just don't play console myself. I think MY last console game was Alice Madness Returns, fabulous game. Most Game Developer design choices just drive me up a wall and down another, that why I don't play them. Personal preference in the end. I'm aware of phony PCers pretending to be console players, lol. I've listened to enough of my friends problems with other PS4/5 issues to know they're not pretenders and visit 2 of them regularly to see them Hard selecting the entire time.

I'm not trying to point fingers and find culprits, or judge people on how they play since I had to teach my Stormblood Astro friend how to do a proper opener, what proper gcd up time, and a 2 mins burst on Astro could look like last year and is one of the Hard Selectors. The Game itself taught them to play as Hard Select, kitchen sinking, and that it's ok to be hard carried. If you want another interesting nugget, I did Raid with a Laptop player for a year and change that refused to use custom key bindings, zero macros and would only use her mouse to click activate skills as a War despite people trying to help set-up something more streamlined. That particular one was her personal choice.

It's off-topic but it does make me wonder, is it a flaw in design if you have to have extensive pre-setup to play efficiently let alone raid as a class? I don't have any Card Macros, and neither do any of my friends but I've heard of them. It's a mot point at this point where to draw the line of game design convivence when Astro is reworked every expansion.

Targetting on a controller does sound like a pain, but rather than change the Job to suit the controller's targetting method, I think it'd make more sense to just make a better controller targetting method. For example, if you could hold the button to play the card, and it brought up an 8-way selector thingy (think Monster Hunter Radial Menu). Select your target for the card with RightStick, and let go of the held Play Card button to play that card to that target directly, without having to ever unselect the boss

The best part is, such a system could be expanded from just cards to other moves. Esuna, Essential Dignity, Exaltation/Celestial Intersection, Synastry, stuff on other jobs like Fey Union/Lustrate/Excogitation, Afflatus Solace/Benediction/Tetragrammaton. Even on non-healer jobs, like how many times have you seen complaints about how annoying it is as a DRG to target an ally for Dragon Sight, or how people use a Macro to auto-target an ally with it? Or how about those tank shareables, like the 25s CDs (TBN/Nascent/Heart of Whatever), or Aurora in particular on GNB. This would help with that too!