Goodbye Astro

[LariaKirin]

The new card system is better.

[ReiMakoto]

The new card system is better.

Thats like your opinion, care explaining why

[KanameYuuki]

Old cards were just as braindead and only gave the illusion of choice. You just had to fish for aoe balance (first best) or other aoe dps buffs (spear or arrow). Other cards were either useless (bole) or royal road fodder.
At least now they can balance jobs depending on a predictable rdps contribution provided by cards.

Even if you "fIsHeD FoR BaLaNcE AnYwAy" at the very least the old system was engaging and your "useles cards" are what made the atk ones work, I have literally fallen sleep while healing with how boring AST has become.

I can't wait for next expansion when they even notice there is no point of that ranged / melee nonsense and just make it a single target 30s cooldown buff and then a 2m party damage buff without any bs "mechanic" since that's all those are, seals are brain dead and not like getting whatever makes any difference.

Not jut cards, would have killed them to let Horoscope detonate on time out, what about a better MP management.

[Lastelli]

And you are the problem of why this happend. All cards had their uses. Bole was great for aoe attacks with the Aoe royal road.

Now our choice is...balance or balance or balance or balance

No they didn't, unless you were playing the job wrong. Relying on a rng dmg mitigation is the most ridiculous thing one could do in a game with predictable incoming damage. Relying on ewer/spire was foolish with skills like tactitian and refresh (in their old form), which is why they were just used for RR or lord/lady. Before you had: good dmg boost, meh dmg boost and weak dmg boost. Now we just have dmg boost + seals management. I'll take that, at least I won't roll my eyes anymore when rng decides to give me useless cards only.

[Dnc]

I really don't mind the new card system. Half of the previous cards were damage buffs anyway, just slightly different flavors of damage buffs. However, while Bole especially was a neat card, I do have to agree with Lastelli that a damage mitigation tied to RNG system in a game with predictable incoming damage was dumb.

The main problem I see with the current card system is how little a difference there is betwee tank/melee and ranged/magic buff values. (Not to mention the difference with Divination buff values). On that front I would like small additional effects for cards when played on correct targets, to more encourage correct usage. What those effects could be, I'm not sure at the moment.

EDIT: Well, actually.. The additional effects could easily be something similar to that of the older cards.
* Giving the card to a tank would grant him some mitigation. This would greatly benefit in big pulls, or before tank busters. Even if it were like 5% dmg mitigation, it would still be something.

* Healers could receive MP regen for the duration of the damage buff.

* For damage roles, I'm not sure if also increasing direct or critical hit chances would be too much on top of the dmg buff, but it certainly wouldn't hurt?

[Hatstand]

Well, I guess that's one less job to worry about levelling this expansion. In a sense it's kind of a relief. Levelling AST in the hopes of having it ready when they fix it has been excruciating.

[Lagomorph]

The new card system is better.

You are actually one of the few people I've seen who manages to defend almost every bad/unpopular design choice made with the 5.0 healers.

[NorthernLadMSP]

At first I thought I'd hate the new system, but after playing it I don't. It's mord consistent and you know you're always buffing someone's DPS vs. the old times when you'd get Spire after Ewer after Spire.

[Ubbernaut]

We are truly sorry about the initial issues with the feel of the job. That said, card effects were changed to their current iteration because we received feedback from all regions that players did not want "useless cards." It does indeed lower the feeling of "drawing a good card," but if we make certain cards significantly more powerful than others, then we'll just return to fishing for the good ones, so we decided to simplify it. We plan on continuing with this style for now.

Okay I want to look the person in the eye who says 'We made Astro only draw useful cards' when my party has all ranged or melee DPS. I want to look them in the eye and hear them explain how 50% of all the cards we can get aka +3% buff are NOT 'Useless card'. The change makes it that we get not ONE but HALF of our total cards to be useless, instead of the old systems single card (which still had its uses for Royal Road!)

The Original developer of the Astro card system likely was moved away from the project, because right now CLEARLY SE has no idea what made Astro interesting, fun and flavorful to play. Since whoever wrote up this excuse has no idea what they're talking about.

The worst part is 'We plan on continuing with this style for now.' in other words, any hopes for major overhauls are likely gone till next expansion or THIS is the new 'Astro' forever. Extremely disheartening news indeed.

[Cain-Galeserpent]

It's the same with Bard, less Flavor to the job. Now they became a brainless random dps.
No more Buff..
SE is going the casual way, they have done the same with FFXI when they was close to abbandon the game. ������

P.s. sorry for the broken english. I main french language.