Astrologian changes feedback

[Ioletia]

Okay, well, I'm not going to argue with you people, but the reality is that FFXIV isn't a "sweaty" game. There is one small subsect of content that requires concerted effort to overcome, but the vast VAST majority of players are showing off their glam or pretending to be dead in Limosa between roulette duties (or at some private party in some FC's house). And, guess what, they're the people buying new glam from the store, spending money on reskinned mounts, and are actually supporting the game. The people who want a hyper tuned, high skill ceiling class are slim- and the fact that not many people play Astro speaks to this. So, yeah, that's not content that's going to be made. Sorry that you're frustrated by that.

The weird thing is that the people who are playing at that hyper tuned high skill ceiling weird paradox cast rotation for BLM level... Want consistency. Fishing for balance was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the extra 1%/2% damage increase for Divination was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the 5% damage increase off astrodyne was inconsistent. When inconsistency can cause a wipe to an enrage timer, people aren't going to want it at that high level of play.

So, I'm going to re-iterate this. Making the Astro less "sweaty" will make the class more inclusive to everyone- and if that comes at the small expense of a few gamers getting their emotions in a knot... Don't think Square cares. The game is meant for everyone, not a select few people who want to swing their high APM trophies around- and this comes from someone who can swing.

So, back on topic. What I'd like to see on the cards...

Defensively, I'd like to see something akin to Arm's Reach on a card. Because it is criminal how many tanks don't use that to slow enemy attacks- and slowing would fit in with the Time Mage aesthetic. Or make it a full Stop ability. Anything to make it more flavorful than 10% damage mitigation.

Offensively? It would be nice if the cards activated off Divination. You get two offensive cards every two minutes, which would line up with the meta, and when placed on a target they just sit there giving maybe a 1-2% damage increase until Divination is cast where they give the target the full 6% damage increase for the normal 15 seconds. It would reduce the crazy burst window the Astro has, but still give about the same damage increase potential.

[Kissune]

Okay, well, I'm not going to argue with you people, but the reality is that FFXIV isn't a "sweaty" game. There is one small subsect of content that requires concerted effort to overcome, but the vast VAST majority of players are showing off their glam or pretending to be dead in Limosa between roulette duties (or at some private party in some FC's house). And, guess what, they're the people buying new glam from the store, spending money on reskinned mounts, and are actually supporting the game. The people who want a hyper tuned, high skill ceiling class are slim- and the fact that not many people play Astro speaks to this. So, yeah, that's not content that's going to be made. Sorry that you're frustrated by that.

The weird thing is that the people who are playing at that hyper tuned high skill ceiling weird paradox cast rotation for BLM level... Want consistency. Fishing for balance was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the extra 1%/2% damage increase for Divination was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the 5% damage increase off astrodyne was inconsistent. When inconsistency can cause a wipe to an enrage timer, people aren't going to want it at that high level of play.

So, I'm going to re-iterate this. Making the Astro less "sweaty" will make the class more inclusive to everyone- and if that comes at the small expense of a few gamers getting their emotions in a knot... Don't think Square cares. The game is meant for everyone, not a select few people who want to swing their high APM trophies around- and this comes from someone who can swing.

Cool! Well I have some fun facts about you: As it turns out, AST is completely playable in all of its states even without interacting with the card system or not even remotely trying to optimize it. If you're a casual player, playing AST, as I was when I first started... I just fucked around. Played cards. I couldn't remember what any of them did so I just kinda played them when I felt like it. And I was literally never punished for it.

No casual gives a shit about consistency. It's all about aesthetics and gamefeel. And AST wasn't a busy class unless you knew what you were doing. If you drew and played every once in a while and put the card on yourself or a tank, it didn't matter. It made no difference, you were having fun. Casual players aren't even going to notice a difference in playstyle bc they weren't playing AST at its most optimal peak anyways. But for those of us that were? No fucking AST main worth anything who actually played the class for how it played wanted it to just feel like white mage. Whether we wanted stormblood cards or not, we played it to feel like we were playing the hand dealt to us, not the hand assigned every time. AST isn't just 'less sweaty', it's not AST. It's white mage with aetherflow.

Inclusivity and making every job accessible is defeating the point of having any jobs at all. You can have high skill ceilings and low skill floors, and now AST is rock bottom on both. AST was very easy to pick up and play around with. If you wanted to engage with higher end content, I'm sorry but if you were incapable of doing AST's reactive gameplay you probably were incapable of doing savage mechanics. So why does it matter? Why does the class have to become white mage 2 just for the sake of people who weren't even playing it for its gameplay anyways? For the people that liked the optimization style, which doesn't exist on any other class, where do they go? People who didn't like how AST played had three other healers to pick from. People who like how AST played had AST, and now they don't. If the burst window was too much, there were a dozen ways to make it more streamlined than 'completely remove cards as an actual mechanic'.

High skill ceiling can exist with a low skill floor. But having things take effort is just too difficult for the average FF player.

[KanataNanaya]

Fishing for balance was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the extra 1%/2% damage increase for Divination was inconsistent- fishing for seals to get the 5% damage increase off astrodyne was inconsistent. When inconsistency can cause a wipe to an enrage timer, people aren't going to want it at that high level of play.

If you wipe at 1%, I don't think a single boosted balance or 2 more EW's card gonna help you. That's literately the entire party's skill issue and can be easily overcome if 2-3 people did better in their next attempt.
You are scraping the bottom of the barrel, hell, even if that's the case, your precise answer is switching to white mage.

as for your suggestion, you seriously think they gonna implement some elaborate effect and not just recycling some of the pre-existing effect into the new cards? please.

[Kissune]

If you wipe at 1%, I don't think a single boosted balance or 2 more EW's card gonna help you. That's literately the entire party's skill issue and can be easily overcome if 2-3 people did better in their next attempt.
You are scraping the bottom of the barrel, hell, even if that's the case, your precise answer is switching to white mage.

as for your suggestion, you seriously think they gonna implement some elaborate effect and not just recycling some of the pre-existing effect into the new cards? please.

If the problem is 'a bad AST can't contribute enough damage to beat enrage' the answer should not be 'make AST easier so that the bad AST can contribute enough' it should be 'stop being bad'.

DPS checks aren't real until 3/4th floor savage and ultis. If someone fails enrage bc their divination was 1% less than usual or they drew too many range cards I take them about as seriously as the people in TOP that cried 'b-but my hyosho didn't crit!!'. Most of astro's damage comes from malefic/combust, not cards/divi. And if you want more consistent damage you switch to white mage or sage. Same answer I give to people who complain dancer is too inconsistent. Machinist is right there if meta slaving is all you care about. Personally, I play AST for the playstyle, not its balance. I ran nocturnal sect and to quote my favourite ff14 content creator. 'It wasn't optimal, but it sure was viable.' I'm so tired of explaining to people why I play the class, and why these changes completely kill that in favour of a playstyle I could get from any of the other healers. If people weren't good enough to AST at the highest level (because EVERYONE is good enough to play AST at the lowest, bc there's no punishment for not being optimal), they should have gotten better or found a new job.

[ArtemisSeraphin]

Making the Astro less "sweaty" will make the class more inclusive to everyone- and if that comes at the small expense of a few gamers getting their emotions in a knot

1. Not every class has to be "inclusive" to everyone. No job can be made that will be "inclusive" of every single player. Not all CONTENT has to be inclusive of everyone. I'm one of those photosensitivity people who couldn't handle Paradigm's Breech. Am I whining to SE that the raid isn't inclusive of me, I need the glam pieces from there, so can they just redesign an entire encounter for me? No. Not everything in this game can be for everyone.
2. AST was ALREADY inclusive. If you just wanted to run normal raids/DF, you did not even need cards. Week 1 of EW, I rolled into the lvl90 Trial w another AST. That AST was a sprout. It was their first week playing. They never drew a single card. No Lord, No Lady, No Bole, definitely no Balance. Did we clear on the first try? Yup. You do NOT have to play AST optimally to faceroll through normal content with it. The challenge aspects of AST are entirely optional.
3. Classes can absolutely have a low skill floor. AST already has that. But an MMORPG needs to have at least one class in each roll with a high skill ceiling. Otherwise, players who want a challenge leave. I love challenges. I do blind-prog for on-content, and min ilvl/no echo of old savages. I've been raiding in ffxiv since BCOB & no, we did NOT do the 3-healer enrage strat--we passed that rot like Yoshi-P intended. I find ways to add challenges where I can. One of those ways is to pick the jobs with high skill ceilings & the devs have been eliminating those.
4. You mention buying glams, spending money, and only casuals do that, not sweaty gamers. Us sweaty gamers aren't the ones "actually supporting the game" therefore our voices shouldn't count? I've been paying SE a monthly subscription since 2003 when XI came to NA. I've bought physical CE's every single expac--both XI & XIV. I have an embarrassing number of the carbuncle & fat cat plushies, multiple copies of every volume of Encyclopedia Eorzea. I don't stream those OSTs from Spotify; I got the Blu-ray discs. My alts? I've got plenty. And they all have /playdead. Retainers? I'm paying for a few. I bought the Fairy Tale Princess attire just for the skirt. I have a serious problem with buying Carbuncle mounts. Seriously, they release another one of those and I'm in trouble. "Vast amount are showing off their glam..." Why the heck do you think I got into raiding if it wasn't b/c the Allagan Coat of Healing was cute as heck? Why the heck do you think I kept raiding if it wasn't b/c the High Allagan Coat was even MORE cute?

It is perfectly acceptable to be average at AST. But demanding that AST's ceiling be lowered so that your "average" is now "peak" is ruining the game for others. Yes, others who also pay for the game and have sunk, rough calculation, more than $5,000 on it.

[Kissune]

4. You mention buying glams, spending money, and only casuals do that, not sweaty gamers. Us sweaty gamers aren't the ones "actually supporting the game" therefore our voices shouldn't count? I've been paying SE a monthly subscription since 2003 when XI came to NA. I've bought physical CE's every single expac--both XI & XIV. I have an embarrassing number of the carbuncle & fat cat plushies, multiple copies of every volume of Encyclopedia Eorzea. I don't stream those OSTs from Spotify; I got the Blu-ray discs. My alts? I've got plenty. And they all have /playdead. Retainers? I'm paying for a few. I bought the Fairy Tale Princess attire just for the skirt. I have a serious problem with buying Carbuncle mounts. Seriously, they release another one of those and I'm in trouble. "Vast amount are showing off their glam..." Why the heck do you think I got into raiding if it wasn't b/c the Allagan Coat of Healing was cute as heck? Why the heck do you think I kept raiding if it wasn't b/c the High Allagan Coat was even MORE cute?

It is perfectly acceptable to be average at AST. But demanding that AST's ceiling be lowered so that your "average" is now "peak" is ruining the game for others. Yes, others who also pay for the game and have sunk, rough calculation, more than $5,000 on it.

I bought a several hundred dollar statue just so I had something to use while I was idling in PF or discussing strats with my static in an instance. I have multiple retainers to help me gather the materials to sell so I can buy materials for tincs and food. I have alts for running split clears, all on the same server for ease of access, so I have to pay the more expensive sub. I raid to get dyeable armour and flashy weapons. The entire reason I picked up raiding was because I wanted the TEA weapons! Just bc casuals buy stuff doesn't mean I don't. I'm not running raw with no glams or raid gear. I spend so much time in this game doing other things, and playing AST was a joy I always came back to. And now it's gone and for what? So the casuals have a fourth braindead healer? I pay my damn sub too, why don't I get a say? Why is me wanting to enjoy casual AND hardcore content by having a job that maintains a complexity and path to optimization while being easy to pick up being denied in favour of people who only want a class for an aesthetic?

I don't get these people...