Please bring back Royal Road and Time dialation mechanic

[TheFibrewire]

Royal Road was a great and fun concept that added flavor to the AST class. The earlier royal road suffered because of individual cards being unbalanced, now that SE has normalized the cards let this mechanic be back. It's a great concept like undrawing cards and predicting the future for better benefits.

This works perfectly well with AST predicting the fates, the time dilation mechanic also need to brought back as it was one of the most strong things AST brought to the table.

Currently AST is just WHM with weaker heals and extra steps. One can just play WHM instead.

Please bring back the card management mechanic and make a gameplay style revolved around that. Please stop making every class same by filling a gauge and dishing out stuff.

Thanks and hope Dev team listens to the feedback and take these points.

[Eclipse12187]

I’m interested in hearing how you think this could work out, considering the card seals are needed for divination that limits you to a single card that you can afford to use royal road on per 2 minute cycle. Would the royal road effect work on minor arcana cards as well? Or strictly base cards.

Expanded effect lowered the increase of the cards to 50% of base but allowed them to hit the whole party, so with current cards (assuming no minor arcana) that would be a 3% party wide for one set and 1~2% increase for the other (split between melee and ranged) making it a minor divination for 15 seconds.

Enhance was a 50% increase on the next card played, so assuming no minor arcana again it’s an increase from 6% on a single target to 9%.

Extended effect was a doubled up duration which would make its next card last for 30 seconds (of 6% damage up) as opposed to 15.

Again all of these effects need to take into account that you’re burning one of the 4 cards you need for 3 different seals every 2 minutes to not clash with divination, and with sleeve draw on a 3 minute cooldown to get any seal you may be missing.

Time Dilation increased the duration of buffs you put on a target for 15 seconds, which could be used to extend regens, cards, and divination. You can increase an enhanced card (9% base, 12% if minor arcana worked) and divination (up to 6% increase) to last for 30 seconds on a high dps, which could potentially break whatever balance the devs think they have with current AST.

Going for other time related options, Celestial Opposition used to increase the duration of any of your beneficial effects on targets by an additional 10 seconds. Again, you can couple this with regens, cards, and divination and in this case, lucid dreaming on yourself (hello 40 seconds of enhanced damage increase and divination on a single target, 25 seconds for the rest of the party).

I enjoyed royal road and prior ast gameplay, however with the way the cards currently work I do not believe bringing back the previous royal road mechanics and time spells could work, not without some major retuning.

[Jeeqbit]

That would ruin the current system, where you work your way up to an AoE buff (Divination) that is more powerful if you used 3 unique symbols on the right roles.

[wereotter]

It doesn't really work with the current system... but after so many people complained that "if it's not Balance, it's useless!" and only ever fishing for spread balance despite jobs like monk and bard being able to get really good use out of the spear or monk and black mage getting good use out of the arrow.... the devs caved and just made every card balance with a build up to spread balance.

Sure, I'd prefer a more involved system where different cards had different buffs... but I don't think we'll ever be going back now that they've dumbed it down.

[Fland]

Again all of these effects need to take into account that you’re burning one of the 4 cards you need for 3 different seals every 2 minutes to not clash with divination, and with sleeve draw on a 3 minute cooldown to get any seal you may be missing.

Especially since Minor Arcana doesn't give you seal. So if you're screwed by RNG and can't get different seal even with redraw, you have to Minor Arcana'd more than one card and have no spare card to burn for RR before the next Divination.

[Shurrikhan]

That would ruin the current system, where you work your way up to an AoE buff (Divination) that is more powerful if you used 3 unique symbols on the right roles.

It's a bit appalling that this is seen as such plentiful depth that we can't even consider far more nuance-capable reworks...

but after so many people complained that "if it's not Balance, it's useless!"

That was a problem of the cards being imbalanced, not the ability to sacrifice cards for bonus effects on a later card use.

_____________

To be clear, RR carried problems of its own in its implementation (not its fundamental concept):

• Expand was balanced around roughly 6 people. In a light party, it was useless. In a full party, it was your only real choice for versatile throughput cards.

  This could have been easily fixed by scaling its multiplier with the number of allies (e.g. splitting a duration of [175+(12.5n)]% across the party).

• Extend was hamstrung by the fact that a player could not have two received cards effects active at the same time.

  This could have been easily fixed by simply removing that limitation.

• Empower had only half the relative strength of the other forms (a 50% bonus to the overall card effect, as compared to Extended's 100% or Expanded's up to 300%).

  This could have been easily fixed by just having it double the effect. Duh.

• Royal Road effects could not be saved, but instead always had to be used on the next card, which might not be worth, say, Expanding.

  This could have been easily fixed by having Royal Road instead affect your most recent cast, Extending its duration by the original duration, Empowering it by 100% for the remainder of its duration, or Extending that duration to all allies in range.

As for its interactions with Divination and the Seal system (each of which could otherwise be boons for the more varied card effects, as they'd bring a further balancing effect to each), consider:

• At present, Minor Arcana provides no Seal despite using (consuming) a Card.

  But why? While I can understand the choice in the present context, it is nonetheless an arbitrary and entirely reversible one.

• Royal Road likewise uses (consumes) a Card. Ought it, then, provide a Seal as would the (major) Arcana or no Seal as does the current Minor Arcana?

  In the end, it is a design choice we can easily toggle to fit its contexts.

[ItMe]

Especially since Minor Arcana doesn't give you seal. So if you're screwed by RNG and can't get different seal even with redraw, you have to Minor Arcana'd more than one card and have no spare card to burn for RR before the next Divination.

Oh snap, yeah... this is a really good observation.
Man... I'm not sure I'd be happy to see Royal Road come back if it's supposed to work with 5.x AST's kit.
Who knows what 6.0 will bring, but unless they change the seals I'm not top confident about it coming back.

[Kiurai]

Slightly unrelated but I suppose it's semi worth mentioning, weirdly enough they gave a character in one of the recent msq sections the old version of Lord of crowns (the high potency attack)

[Vyrerus]

I’m interested in hearing how you think this could work out

Easy. Make Royal Road give us the seal from the card we ate, since it's still using a card.

Turn the AOE degradation from a flat 50% reduction to a 50% reduction on all party members beyond the initial target, as though it were a diminishing AOE potency skill. Use the initial target's role as the base %+ That way it's equally effective across all comps. Single target enhancements don't really need a change.

Time Dilation, they could just simplify it to be on the same cooldown as Divination, so that you're always using it to buff someone's divination buff and not just a card buff, though ideally you'd want to have both.

And I'd love for them to bring back Celestial Opposition's buff aspect, but it's a heal now. Though I will say they should still bring back the stun on it. It's criminal that it was taken away.