AST: Suggestions on QoL

[glamazon]

It makes me sad that there are so many people here who want them to completely gut cards... Honestly, the card system is what drew (pun) me to the class in the first place, even though I joined after they had already been watered down.

I would honestly prefer if they went back to the old card system and made it so they all weren't just flat damage buffs.

Me too
Why did they water down all the healers in 5.0

[ASkellington]

It makes me sad that there are so many people here who want them to completely gut cards... Honestly, the card system is what drew (pun) me to the class in the first place, even though I joined after they had already been watered down.

I would honestly prefer if they went back to the old card system and made it so they all weren't just flat damage buffs.

Oh I certainly want the old cards back. I've been asking for them since I heard they got changed for Shb before I even started playing however long ago. The devs have flat out said they weren't coming back when we asked.

[Archwizard]

The problem with the Old card system is that it was too... random. Granting, the fishing we have in place already is, but it also has safety nets like "everything is The Balance, some are just stronger on a given role", so you generally always know what you're getting.

But what I mean is, the use cases of the cards were extremely different.

Back then, three of the cards were relevant: The Balance, the Bole, and sometimes the Ewer. The others were just fodder for Royal Road or Minor Arcana.
But, Balance is a card you would either want to either save until you could Royal Road it into a raid buff, or just use immediately. Bole and Ewer you would want to hold for specific moments. It's rather like the Minor Arcana system we have now (where we dump Lord immediately but Lady forces us to hold her and is rarely useful besides)... if you also had a 50% chance to just draw jack all.
So you had RNG determining not only your relationship to your cards, but your overall effectiveness and behavior within the raid, to a much more significant degree than just "I didn't 3 seal my Astrodyne".
Oh, and you had like twice as many actions devoted just to card control.

Even if they were going to bring back something like the old card system, they would need to remove certain effects (not least because old Spire would have no effect today), and probably rework the remainder for parity -- which is exceptionally hard since every job has different values on Critical Hit and Direct Hit and Determination and Sp/Sk Speed, and even in an ideal world where there's not one lording over the others to create another Balance card, that would mean the AST having to memorize what everyone wants.

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm disappointed with the current card system. Shadowbringers made the cards themselves boring and Endwalker made its rewards esoteric.
I'm just cognizant of the fact that while it's not as fun, it is a general improvement that makes our raid output less dependent overall on RNG.

[Archwizard]

Apologies for the double-post, but on the topic of QoL, I also wanted to drop this here from another thread:

I feel like AST's top priority problem is just the sheer volume of buttons it has, many of which don't feel impactful to use because they're just extra knobs for controlling the randomness of its card system... which just gets progressively busier each expansion.

So, a couple thoughts:

• Rework the Astrodyne effects. Each seal should have one specific effect attached to it (for instance, Haste on Celestial seals, Refresh on Lunar seals, Potency Up on Solar seals).
  For each additional copy of a single seal that you stack, the potency of that one effect given by Astrodyne grows, but with a diminishing return (so 3 of the same seal is only, say, 1.75x as effective rather than 3x). If you have all 3 unique seals, you get the spread of all 3 effects as now; if you have duplicate seals, you get a slightly stronger version of each effect you doubled- or tripled-down on to compensate.
  While still retaining the element of randomness and encouraging a spread for best effect, this should provide consolation so that bad RNG strings are no longer a punishment for the player.

• Rework Minor Arcana. Go back to the old system where it transmuted your active Major Arcana into a Crowns card, but have it provide a consistent effect regardless of what card you transmute, or at least have a trait where it does. Something where you don't want to necessarily game Minor Arcana over using Draw effectively, but can use it to safely dump a card you don't want without having to think further on it.
  For instance, when you activate Minor Arcana, the cooldown of Draw is reduced by a few seconds, in addition to changing the card and gaining its own effects.
  • Rework Lady of Crowns specifically, or remove it.
    Lord of Crowns is a semi-effective dump card since cards are always being drawn in a combat situation to enhance ongoing damage; if you get Lord during a pull, you dump it immediately without a second thought because oGCD damage is always valuable, even coming from the hands of an Astrologian. The current Lady of Crowns is, instead, ideally held for a scenario where healing is valuable... but its healing potency is so minor and niche so that it won't turn the tide even if you can use it without overhealing, and even in a scenario where all healing is "necessary", it's unreliable to obtain in the first place.
    Lady of Crowns' effect should instead be of equal value to Lord's -- which in this case is to say, consistent even if functionally inconsequential.
    If this cannot be done without making it the same effect as Lord or creating something players would try to game... then simply scrap Lady. Minor Arcana was made to mitigate the RNG of a 6 Major Arcana system; retaining two outcomes within that mitigation element is already extremely counterproductive. (And then Minor Arcana suddenly has a consistent effect.)
    And heck, if Minor Arcana only had one outcome, you could even save an oGCD and just have Minor Arcana activate its effects directly instead of using Play again.
  • Whether Lord of Crowns retains the current/original "direct damage" iteration or returns to Shadowbringers' "consolation buff" iteration is... largely irrelevant here and a matter of design preference. I have no objection to the current one staying as-is; personally, I even think having an alternative option that doesn't just tread the same ground as the Major Arcana is an idea with its own potential, even for niche scenarios.
    I will say if it does go back to the ShB iteration however, absolutely scrap Lady. Just have one card that gives a flat damage buff regardless of what job you use it on, slightly weaker than if you'd used a specialized Major Arcana but stronger than if you'd used one on the wrong role (so, 4-5%). If you don't have a ranged DPS in your party, choose whether to Minor Arcana away your ranged cards for a better buff on melee.

• Remove Crown Play and Undraw... and possibly Redraw. With the changes to both Astrodyne and Minor Arcana above, you wouldn't necessarily need Redraw.
  Not to mention repeatedly Redrawing just never feels good -- it wastes multiple oGCDs and feels like "RNG just screwed me over... twice." At least when you were discarding via Minor Arcana, you had a fallback.