Please continue bringing up AST and SCH issues.

[tesni_g]

It's taken me a while to really pin down why I don't like the new cards so much.

At first, I said it was because each card doesn't feel impactful. It's more than that, though.

I can't remember too clearly how much targeting was required in SB cards, but I can say it was "a lot less targeting" than now. I used single target cards when it was the best option, but in general, I'd wind up doing that a few times a fight? Compared to now, which is seven times every two minutes, with three of those happening in quick succession. Controller player here. 3x in quick succession is doable but it's not fun and it's not satisfying, it's just stressful. I will echo the sentiment that I no longer look forward to drawing a card. Playing it is a chore and it's only reward is that I avoid the punishment of not using it.

The other complete but subtle change was the burst of cards. The goal of getting a card and an effect took a minute to build up, 90 seconds if you got a bad redraw or whatnot. Sleeve draw helped push out cards more often, but for the most part 1x a minute, you burst out cards and then build up again. Only the end result of this required targeting, and not every time. Often, we used aoe road effects which we used our own character as the center point for it, just like an aoe heal. Even then, targeting one player every sixty or ninety seconds for a powerful buff didn't feel bad. Clunky, but worthwhile.

There were "bad cards" but that's not a problem when there are plenty of ways to use bad cards. Worst case scenario was a bunch of Crowns. Less than optimal, but still worth using. Lord of Crowns never once felt bad to use.

The system now took the backloaded burst and sprayed it throughout the fight. This cycle requires most of the card shuffling as before with the added burden of putting each tiny buff on players to build a non-interactive gauge. Each card is little, the buff is little, and the burst is a yawn. Maybe it adds up to the same buffage as the old card system, but every moving part feels like nothing, so the whole thing feels like nothing.

Add in that Play as an ability is "spongey" makes this even less fun.

I could have adjusted to the "little buffs to little burst," because a strong burst is completely personal preference, but the targeting kills me. I could switch to keyboard and mouse, but that seems so unsatisfying. Why should I have to change my whole mode of operation to search for joy in the class I once loved so much? AST in its current iteration is broken for PS4 players. That's seven player targets every 2 minutes (with minimum six button presses to put one tiny buff on the first melee dps, more with redraw and arcana), on top of all the targeting we do for tanks/tethers/etc.

And again, it "can be done." I'm sure there are AST players on controllers who like the new system, who don't mind that it takes 4 presses just to target the first melee in the raid, or two for the last caster, seven times every two minutes, on top of the spot healing required. I've thought about making a macro where Melee cards go to Player 4 and Ranged cards go to Player 8 (sorting party so BLM goes in the last spot, SAM in the first). Less than optimal, sure, but it's probably less clipping for me (and less frustrating) to use a macro than to actually choose a meaningful target.

That's broken.

I realize that part of this is entirely subjective (how much targeting other players is too much?) but it's too much for me. Buffs are supposed to be fun, not a chore trying tab down to the right target and pray that my ping will let the card "play" the first time in the span of a gcd.

I switched to SCH because Eos might be laggy but at least I don't have to change targets while I spam the button for Fey Blessing. Still not as buggy as Play!

And now that I fully understand why the system doesn't work (for me), I can't go back, not till 6.0, maybe not ever. Let the PC players have AST. It's clear the developers never once thought about what AST might feel like on PS4, because anyone paying attention would realize that six+ buttons to execute a single ability so frequently was not going to work out for the majority of players. I'm stubborn; I tried.

Six or more buttons (with four of those relegated to navigating the player list) to execute a single ability is not good game design.