Stormblood

[Carighan]

I really don't get this hype. When I look at old Astro I just keep thinking "Yeah, this is how old MMOs used to work, before devs learned that this is bad". It wasn't even very novel, it was just unfun design, even though it looks nice when looking at someone else play it.

* The cards weren't unique, rather you had 1 ~ 1.5 "Wins" and a bunch of duds which are all factually the same. Or rather, they were no more unique than the current cards. Does it matter whether you toss 4 on the tank right now or you tossed 4 straight into the bin back then?
* Royal Road was just a measure to reduce the impact of drawing duds so frequently.
* Time Dilation is just... busywork? Why not have +15s duration in the effect to begin with, split over the usage amount vs recast time of Dilation? It had no meaning or purpose. Again, it's something that looks cool when reading the tooltip, but serves no gameplay purpose and in fact creates actively negative gameplay (1 extra button press to get back where you ought to be as the baseline).
* CO was the same thing.

What was the benefit here? As in, nothing about that was more than button-press busywork to play a "Draw the right card for actual party gain or not"-gamble. Couldn't you at least reduce that to a single button that says either "Nice!" or "Better luck next time" to reduce RSI? Why have sooooo many abilities just to play a minigame that serves so little actual purpose in the game?

[Valence]

I really don't get this hype. When I look at old Astro I just keep thinking "Yeah, this is how old MMOs used to work, before devs learned that this is bad". It wasn't even very novel, it was just unfun design, even though it looks nice when looking at someone else play it.

* The cards weren't unique, rather you had 1 ~ 1.5 "Wins" and a bunch of duds which are all factually the same. Or rather, they were no more unique than the current cards. Does it matter whether you toss 4 on the tank right now or you tossed 4 straight into the bin back then?
* Royal Road was just a measure to reduce the impact of drawing duds so frequently.
* Time Dilation is just... busywork? Why not have +15s duration in the effect to begin with, split over the usage amount vs recast time of Dilation? It had no meaning or purpose. Again, it's something that looks cool when reading the tooltip, but serves no gameplay purpose and in fact creates actively negative gameplay (1 extra button press to get back where you ought to be as the baseline).
* CO was the same thing.

What was the benefit here? As in, nothing about that was more than button-press busywork to play a "Draw the right card for actual party gain or not"-gamble. Couldn't you at least reduce that to a single button that says either "Nice!" or "Better luck next time" to reduce RSI? Why have sooooo many abilities just to play a minigame that serves so little actual purpose in the game?

The problem lied in the battle system and encounter design, the former that was already seriously weakened with the release of SB, and encounters that were already starting to turn into the damage focused DDR with one boss on a platform model that we would come to know today.
There was a reason that in HW we used shit like manasong. A lot of the cards from AST could have had more meaning if they were inclined to, as for the remainder, SE in their infinite wisdom couldn't be arsed to see how a 20% damage card would become instantly meta when the 2 other damage cards couldn't even compete.

Old AST was definitely rooted in the opportunity/cost/resource scarcity model of early XIV. In concept it was sound, it's the execution that was flawed.

Also let's be honest, there were other cards that were used in content other than savage/trial/raid bosses. Bole was great on tanks during dungeons, etc.

[Carighan]

Also let's be honest, there were other cards that were used in content other than savage/trial/raid bosses. Bole was great on tanks during dungeons, etc.

Yeah but that's the same now, no?

[Valence]

Yeah but that's the same now, no?

What's the same?