Quote Originally Posted by hiz View Post
In your post you suggest that the old 4.x iteration of AST rewarded player skill more, but this statement is simply untrue. In fact many players in JP (and NA/EU as far as I can observe) that play this game at the highest level voice a very strong preference towards the 5.x card kit because its optimization factors are magnitudes deeper than the 4.x iteration of the kit.

Put simple:
4.x optimum: Spam AoE on trick. Very heavily luck dependent.
5.x optimum: Spread every party member's potency timeline and choose the maximum. Far smaller luck factors.
Plenty of 4.x speedkill ASTs made incorrect card decisions, but their mistakes were typically obfuscated by the randomness of the system. I assume that's what you mean when you talk about "rewarding player skill".

As someone who has been involved in speedkills in the past (mostly Alexander Creator, a bit in Sigmascape), optimization of the current card system just seems tedious. You're not innovating, you're dissecting FFLogs for the correct answer. I can see how that's interesting to certain individuals, but it just seems like busywork to me. I also find it amusing that this "depth" lies clearly in an area that Square Enix don't want to draw focus to (ACT/parsing).

Don't get me wrong, I didn't like the randomness of 4.x AST when doing speedkills either. It was often frustrating to have times beaten due to another team having better AoE Balance luck, even though they made no strategical breakthroughs.