Ideas to improve the AST card system

[ty_taurus]

Regarding the idea of splitting the draw between 3 buttons: The Offensive button, the Defensive button, and the Resource button, the Offensive button will be chosen most of the time for sure. That said, if you still have Divination in place, or a form of additional DPS gain that requires the additional seals, then both your Defensive button and your Resource button are contributing to rDPS. The difference here is that, in the duration of divination's Cooldown, you're looking for the moments where the Defensive and Resource buttons are best useful so that you have Divination ready to go when it comes off cool down. You could just burn them for the sake of burning them, the that's what the novice AST would do. The skilled AST would try and find the moments when they are most helpful in the 120 second time frame.

Because of that cool down, you're looking at most situations being 2 Solar seal cards, 1 Lunar seal, and 1 Celestial seal, because you'll need to use each the Defensive and Resource buttons once per 120 seconds. The major difference is choice. You are the one that gets to choose when the non-DPS utility cards are most useful, not RNG.

[Morningstar1337]

Regarding the idea of splitting the draw between 3 buttons: The Offensive button, the Defensive button, and the Resource button, the Offensive button will be chosen most of the time for sure. That said, if you still have Divination in place, or a form of additional DPS gain that requires the additional seals, then both your Defensive button and your Resource button are contributing to rDPS. The difference here is that, in the duration of divination's Cooldown, you're looking for the moments where the Defensive and Resource buttons are best useful so that you have Divination ready to go when it comes off cool down. You could just burn them for the sake of burning them, the that's what the novice AST would do. The skilled AST would try and find the moments when they are most helpful in the 120 second time frame.

Honestly I might go further and have the all 6 cards have three different effects based on what buttons used, with the offensive button being the current effects.

As for the other two types:

Defensive:

• Bole: Max HP increase
• Ewer: A chance for an otherwise leathal attack to instead bring the target's HP down to 1
• Balance: Bloodbath effect
• Spire: Cover effect (target takes all hits that would be taken by nearby players)
• Arrow: Target's attack inflicts Atk down
• Spear: Knockback resistance

Utility:

• Bole: Adds one "gague" to target's job bar where applicable
• Ewer: MP refresh
• Balance: Removes all debuffs on target or averages out target and caster's HP
• Spire: All Spells have no cast time (useful only for casters...and healers) for the duration of the effect
• Arrow: Removes 1 debuff from target and nearby allies (may be switched with Spire)
• Spear: CD reduction like the old effect, but applied retroactively

That way all cards would be useful in at least one type in most situations

Though of course people might gravitate towards the offensive button, so I might prefer that be on a separate longer CD

[ty_taurus]

Honestly I might go further and have the all 6 cards have three different effects based on what buttons used, with the offensive button being the current effects.

We can't even seem to get 6 card effects right at the moment. I really don't think increasing that to 18 card effects is the solution.

[AnotherPerson]

In my last post, I already pointed out that tying any utility to a RNG based card system doesn't work. This doesn't just apply to splitting up a defense buff. Avoiding useless or unfavorable draws is also something I brought up. That is why I proposed eliminating RNG almost entirely. When you draw, you draw all six cards, and then use them as the situation calls for them. If you still have cards left when Draw is about to come off of cooldown, Royal Road can return to burn them, or perhaps consumed by Minor Arcana.

The problem is having all 6 being hotbar'd at one point. Not to mention having 6 cards to cycle from when drawn at the start would cause terrible carpal tunneling to maximize skill benefit for those optimizing in raids to pull off their huge combo (assuming cards are used for a DPS buff like divination currently). Not having all 6 cards drawn at once and letting you pick causes the second issue of having 6 slots dedicated to each draw being a terrible design due to the amount of slots taken for other skills in the hotbar. This is especially important for those who are playing on the game controller. The only way this would work is if the AST system builds up using cards only for their future skills and enhances and modifies these skills like the ninja system without having many more existing oGCD skills.

Having any utility to a RNG based system can work as long as the RNG is controlled through the card system. Besides, the whole lore of AST isn't to have the draws you want, but to have draws where you can use to maximize the situation. This means making any card fit a general use in a party of 2 to 8. Having a controlled set of RNG (cards you can draw for what you need with a general baseline) allows this to work because it reduces the uncertainty factor to something where gameplay wise ASTs can manage and adjust as needed and still leave that uncertainty in the lore. That's why I supported ty_taurus's idea.

It's tough isn't it? When encounter design favors DPS contribution, it is extremely difficult to come up with DPS-free utility that is not only useful, but desired. And we're trying to come up with six.

Not really, the thread is doing great at brain storming for ideas. Maybe not one person can figure out a good combination, but the collective ideas of the thread easily came up with over 6 different utilities that can fit for general utility. Some of them can even be used to open more doors to other types of abilites.

Here's the thing, having the draw be 3 different buttons can still work even if we eliminate the DPS cards. I'd just rename them to Potential/Defense/Resource.

Potential replacing the Damage button by having:

Not a 3000 character limit

[AnotherPerson]

Potential replacing the Damage button by having:

1. Grant a 10% to 30% Defense buff that scales depending on the HP of the character you give the buff to (like Essential Dignity) - 'Balance'
1a. Grant bloodbath ability like Morning Star suggested for 15 seconds
2. Target attacks cripple the enemy, applying a slow (6 seconds) - 'Arrow' for 15 seconds.
2a. Target moves so blindingly fast/sees the incoming flurry of hits that they get dodge rate up by 50% for 15 seconds.

Potential has the potential to be more useful, but there are varying degrees based on how the target preforms. I think this is as close as we can get to not giving DPS and having a functionally useful buff takes its place.

The main issue would then be probably to move all the DPS to a different mechanic. It would probably be better to make a DPS gain require any 3 seals to avoid AST from playing one particular rotation style.

Regarding the idea of splitting the draw between 3 buttons: The Offensive button, the Defensive button, and the Resource button, the Offensive button will be chosen most of the time for sure. That said, if you still have Divination in place, or a form of additional DPS gain that requires the additional seals, then both your Defensive button and your Resource button are contributing to rDPS. The difference here is that, in the duration of divination's Cooldown, you're looking for the moments where the Defensive and Resource buttons are best useful so that you have Divination ready to go when it comes off cool down. You could just burn them for the sake of burning them, the that's what the novice AST would do. The skilled AST would try and find the moments when they are most helpful in the 120 second time frame.

Because of that cool down, you're looking at most situations being 2 Solar seal cards, 1 Lunar seal, and 1 Celestial seal, because you'll need to use each the Defensive and Resource buttons once per 120 seconds. The major difference is choice. You are the one that gets to choose when the non-DPS utility cards are most useful, not RNG.

I agree with the sentiment because after everything has been said and done, players who optimize would choose to use the damage button more since they have a higher skill level to adjust better. I can also see why people would complain because they would be focusing on the DPS button more, but honestly I think this is the best solution since it gives a higher skill cap to those who would use them more efficiently and a lower ceiling for those who wouldn't due to the actual variety of buffs they can draw.