Was Strategy Board a successful addition?

Now that most people have had their time with it,
was this system an addition that people actually started to use?

I still see people post raidplan links, so my assumption is that it's lacking in some key features?

Like, oh I dunno; pages?

We have folders for that. As far as I've seen we still follow raidplans and videos and such but there's some fights where a cheat sheet does come in handy for quick reminders (M11S weapons 2 spread, M12S phase 1 act 3, train ex intermission spread, etc.) so I've gotten some use out of it.

People are also having fun with it in other ways.

It is a feature in a very bizarre position.

It was super well-received, people share strategy boards regularly, and in a lot of ways they improve the raiding experience.

...those boards also do not provide any strategy, what was given is less a tool to elaborate on raid strategies, and more of an elaborate in-game MS Paint, plenty of jokes and some very creative art pieces use strategy board, it is genuinely amazing what people can pull off, and the limitations only serve to push that creativity even further.

So it ends up being a successful feature that isn't being used for anything resembling its intended purpose.

Doing runs to get 100 totems from Doomtrain, I've seen it used like once to share strats... The rest of it has just been memes.

It's a potentially useful tool, but 99% of the time it's just memes.

I've seen it used both the same way a raidplan would be and for memes. I have saved a handful of individual pages out of full shared folders that I've pulled out for specific mechanics to remind myself when I don't need the rest of the plan. It's been useful for its intended purpose and to see people make memes and art pieces out of it.

And, I am genuinely impressed that people have kept their naughty boards to themselves. I KNOW people have made them, but I haven't seen any, so good job being a stand-up, civilized community.

It works in some areas. However, most of the time, people would simply go back to raid plans for the simple fact that you can look and discern mechanics in sequential order. The board, in that regard, remains limited.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

However, most of the time, people would simply go back to raid plans for the simple fact that you can look and discern mechanics in sequential order. The board, in that regard, remains limited.

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Make a folder, put each board in order within the folder. When reviewing, you can look at each board in sequential order just like a raidplan. There's even an option to highlight your role if you want while reviewing each board. It'll fill up fast if someone shares a really big folder with a lot of boards in it, but if they keep things tidy you can save several fights in it as long as they don't have dozens of boards in them.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

And, I am genuinely impressed that people have kept their naughty boards to themselves. I KNOW people have made them, but I haven't seen any, so good job being a stand-up, civilized community.

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As I recall they were threatened with having their favourite toy taken away if they didn't stop. Personally I want an off switch - I've seen a grand total of one actual strat shared with it.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

As I recall they were threatened with having their favourite toy taken away if they didn't stop. Personally I want an off switch - I've seen a grand total of one actual strat shared with it.

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An off-switch would be nice. Respecting mute list would be nice too; I had muted someone for too many macros and they could still send too many strat boards. So there's room for improvement in the feature.

The vast majority of Strategy Boards I've seen from other players have been jokes. But the few times it has been used for its intended purpose have be really good. Strategy Boards are a really powerful tool, but they're only as strong as a player's visual communications skills, and imagination.

Some additional features I want
the ability to group objects with the ability to move grouped objects together on the board, and up, and down through the layers
stop letting me select objects I have locked
the ability to move an object's pivot point for more control over how they can be rotated -- especially when creating objects that represent cone aoe attacks to fine tune their origin point
the ability to change the color of text
a wider variety of debuff icons with options to indicate if they can be cleansed (different aoe shapes, near/far, doom, pyretic, etc)
icons for all the elements (lightning, fire, earth, ice, water, wind, light, and dark)
find a way to simplify the shareable codes

I've only seen it used once or twice for anything besides memes, and in both cases it was just basic positions for one specific mechanic to complement a guide from elsewhere.

To be honest, I think people are just gonna continue using the raidplan site. It's less cumbersome, can be viewed and shared outside the game, and has those useful end-of-URL characters (USB, WDZ, etc) to quickly distinguish strats and communicate them in the PF description. You could maybe do something similar with a strategy board name, but anyone can edit those and unless you already have it saved you can't see the strategy without joining the party and asking for it.

The strategy board is also missing vital features like boss hitboxes, debuffs and fight-specific arenas and objects. I can think of several fights which the strategy board would be physically unable to represent because it's just too limited. You'd think they would've at least tested it with the raid tier the feature released with, but you can't even use it for M12S since the fight uses multiple debuffs. Hell, I don't think there's a single fight this tier it can show for one reason or another.

Sadly the strategy board is kind of unusable in its current state. It would need several improvements to be worth considering over the existing options.

The Strategy Boards are alright and people do occasionally share the boards for the raid itself, when they aren't using it to share their artwork and memes. But obviously people still use the raidplan links instead.

There is a way to convert raidplans to Strategy Boards and vice versa, so it seems at least that SE made it possible to convert them like this. It's a bit ironic though that SE won't add basic features to the game like an FC finder or Static Finder, but adds those as websites instead that most people don't use, then when they actually add a feature to the game, everyone uses a website for it.

The main problem with the Strategy Boards is the bugs that have been reported with them not always fully saving and things like that, as well as it being easier to convert (ideally this feature is needed on the raidplan website directly) and that way it's easy to make them on a website and then easy to share them in the game.

Regardless, there is a benefit to the feature which is live sharing, which allows you to move objects around in real time to explain strategies. That's especially useful for a statics because trying to do it with waymarks and running around can potentially pull the boss.

I can't make heads or tails of raid plans anyway, so it was never going to be useful to me even without the memes.

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Originally Posted by Kirutsuki

Now that most people have had their time with it,
was this system an addition that people actually started to use?

I still see people post raidplan links, so my assumption is that it's lacking in some key features?

Like, oh I dunno; pages?

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This feature is widely used, and to my opinion extremely successful. THE REASON it was a success is because people love sharing memes on it. Was that its intended purpose? No, but does it matter? If you build a feature and it gets used pretty much on every raid for one reason or another then you did a good job.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

This feature is widely used, and to my opinion extremely successful. THE REASON it was a success is because people love sharing memes on it. Was that its intended purpose? No, but does it matter? If you build a feature and it gets used pretty much on every raid for one reason or another then you did a good job.

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Personally I've used it for tic-tac-toe and chess. Wish it was a bit more easy to re-share and edited board instead of needing to constantly save a new one for each share :D

To follow-up with my personal thoughts;

I've seen it used for one mechanic in Doomtrain EX, that's about it and I feel like that's it's current state, you pretty much share the hardest raid mechanic in a single page.
But a more throughout step-by-step you'd go to raidplan site.

Here's my sort of reasoning why it isn't going to be so widely used for the entire raid fight and all of it's durations.
For one as someone stated it seems to be missing some key features that are unique to a specific raid.
and the more raids they are going to be adding the more of those unique things are going to be missing unless it's actively updated alongside EX's & raids.
Which, truth be told sounds like a lot of work for the devs to keep yet another system up-to-date all the time, unless they automate the process of it.
So when they add a new debuff icon that would automatically be added in the strat board.

But even if the strat board would be flawless, my main concern remains and it's that there isn't a central place for strat boards that work, which the community
can use at a moments notice. It'll never really be more than a meme machine.

One of the reasons Raidplan site works is that in general there are a handful of plans that the community uses, most of which boil down to 2 variations and generally they are location based, so JP/EU or NA/EU.
and people can pretty easily trust that those plans are pretty solid, legitimate and don't have weird wonky stuff in them unless it's a blind prog plan.

But unless there's a central place for people to go look for strategy boards in game that actually work for each fight, they will never be widely used because no-one will actually trust a random shared strat board super easily.

I hope they keep working on it and automate a lot of the process the devs themselves have to do with it, but also add like a central place for stratboards that people can upvote on to keep them or remove them.
The issue would be that such a central database would be filled with memes, but surely by adding a central page for memes would fix a bit of the mess it would make. :D

I think the devs did a great job with the feature. They can definitely improve it over time, like allowing you to write more text in a single text element and allowing more boards in a single folder, but overall I'd say the feature was a big success. You see a lot of memes because most people don't raid and most of those who do just want to receive the strat from someone else, they don't want to spend an hour or two translating an entire fight to strat boards. Not much the devs can do about that, but for statics or people who just enjoy making them they're very useful. I made one for the math robot in Ridorana for example and random roulettes groups have seemed to appreciate it.

Yes they did a great job with this feature. I have a cheat sheet for M12s which helps tremendously because I am on console and prior to that I had to either remember the raidplan perfectly or use my phone as a second screen. Overall its a great addition, including the meme ones.

The board is quite good to keep in a corner of your screen for particular mechanics that might require it. Essentially it's like having a second screen but in-game and available to console players too, so it's great.

It's a good feature for sure but for all the time they claim they spent to make it "better than the alternative" its still way more clunky to use.
Like a lot of things in final fantasy, it suffers from half-baked-assery syndrome

- Not possible to share multiple pages at once, and grouping them manually is inconvenient
- Not possible to attach them to partyfinder
- Not possible to save waymarks onto them
- Probably a skill issue on me but them disappearing on their own
- Limited elements
- Actual controls of making them is slow and clunky, having too many clicks to change parameters, in comparison the tools we use so far, or hell, even ms paint.
Probably as a result of needing some way for it work on console

It's still major failure is its much easier to distribute raidplans and agree beforehand than inside instance.
Reviewing strategy boards outside of the raidtime is also nearly impossible which is when you need them most

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Originally Posted by KurisuCerrias

- Not possible to share multiple pages at once

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This you can do. Share the folder.

I'm willing to take it in stride if that's skill issue on my end, but that just shares the first one from the folder

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Originally Posted by KurisuCerrias

I'm willing to take it in stride if that's skill issue on my end, but that just shares the first one from the folder

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Pretty sure it shares everything under the folder. I transcribed the entirety of M9S onto strat boards when the tier first launched and people said they were receiving them all at once.

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Originally Posted by KurisuCerrias

I'm willing to take it in stride if that's skill issue on my end, but that just shares the first one from the folder

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I think it's a bit obtuse, but it does share everything in the folder. To see everything, you have to use Review Strategy and then click the arrows to cycle through the different boards in order.

Making boards can definitely be a bit fiddly, and maybe they can eventually make a larger library of signs and symbols, but with a bit of out of the box thinking it's more powerful than it looks on the surface.