The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[ASkellington]

Moving to the topic of AST, I actually didn't find its 1 nuke/1 DoT rotation in SB to feel as stale as it does for the healers currently, because the burden of knowledge on the old cards was a lot more complex. You were actively paying attention a lot more to what cards you were getting, what you stored, what you burned, and the factors that your cards applied to. Like as a SB AST, I would actively be paying attention to MP values in case a Ewer could help my cohealer. Additionally, AST's only OGCD healing resources were Earthly Star and Essential Dignity at the time (Lady too technically, but you rarely wanted to sit on her because she ate into Minor Arcana's CD), so you had to resort to GCD healing for most raidwide damage. Even now, I actually don't think AST's lack of an offensive rotation is what's making it feel awful to play. It's the card system feeling unnecessarily complex for a very lackluster reward in Astrodyne.

In group content no. Its 100% the cards being lack luster as you said.

As a person who actually went through Shb and EW as an AST though, I'll respectfully disagree. Its by far the worst of the three healers considering half your cards don't benefit you and you do the lowest damage because buffing healer. It can still use a Phlegma type ability.

Even with old cards back.

[ty_taurus]

In group content no. Its 100% the cards being lack luster as you said.

As a person who actually went through Shb and EW as an AST though, I'll respectfully disagree. Its by far the worst of the three healers considering half your cards don't benefit you and you do the lowest damage because buffing healer. It can still use a Phlegma type ability.

Even with old cards back.

That's fair, and moving forward, I wouldn't want to just return to that format either. I've spent a lot of time trying to crack the code to the perfect card system because it's just an almost impossible concept to do well in this game's format. Trying to create 6 cards that are both randomized, feature different effects that aren't a burden on the player to remember, and are also somehow perfectly balanced is just a nightmare. I have examples of concepts that I think do well enough, but each features its own flaws.

But one thing I try and think about in terms of ensuring its consistent loop is engaging at all levels is making it very set-up focused. I've brought it up before, but essentially, certain supportive GCD actions generate stars that orbit you that, when triggered, will detonate around the target of spells and weaponskills as additional, Malefic potency damage. You could apply an effect that allows you to trigger these for soloing, or pass them over to your teammates for them to detonate for you.

I've brought up before the idea of GCD cards where you still do a lot of weaving to pass these stars around, and I believe I recall you not liking cards on the GCD no matter what.

Lately, I've been wracking my brain around something a bit different, though it's a very nebulous concept at the moment. Basically, my head is circling around the idea that rather than drawing random cards, you have a "hand" like you would in a TCG of some sort, where each card is a one-use resource. You start with 3 random cards in your hand which would appear on your gauge, and those would enable specific actions. For example, maybe rather than playing the balance as its own effect, the balance is a token used to activate Divination, or something like that. You can draw back up to a max of 3 cards. Cards retain having a solar, lunar, or celestial affinity, and playing the new action "Reverse" swaps your current card with the other of the same affinity if it's still in your deck, and once one of your cards is used, that card is essentially in your discard pile. The idea here is you're meant to have 1 use of each card per "rotation" and the new action "Reshuffle" shuffles that back into your deck so you can use those resources again.

It sounds more complicated than it would be in practice I believe, but the actual specifics of how it mechanically works and what resources each card gives you isn't something I've been able to figure out yet. But conceptually, regardless of whether or not you had a party, these card actions would still be usable solo, even if granting you effects you don't necessarily need, and you can still earn these stars to detonate with your own Malefic casts.

Your direct offensive library would be very shallow, but because it's being supplemented with card playing and/or card-costing actions that generate stars, its a lot more varied. My headspace is in this general direction for your offensive library:
- Malefic stays as your filler
- Combust is replaced with an action that generates multiple stars on a GCD cooldown of 30 seconds with charges.
- Gravity's damage to your first target is the same as Malefic and is 50% less for remaining enemies, has a slightly higher MP cost, and also applies a 5% damage reduction debuff on your targets for 5 seconds, effectively merging it with the old Disable action and has you use Gravity in single target situations to respond to incoming attacks.
- Premonition is a new action that would have a lengthier cooldown, such as 2 minutes, and is a point-blank AoE spell that consumes all your current stars and puts a 3 second cooldown with a stack for each star consumed that works kind of like a reverse Haima, dealing damage and consuming the stack over and over until all stacks are consumed when its duration expires, and the next stack takes another 3 seconds.

[IDontPetLalas]

So, why would AST need to be in point-blank range for the new skill, when it currently doesn't need to be? That's one of the benefits of Gravity, especially for a pure healer.

[ty_taurus]

So, why would AST need to be in point-blank range for the new skill, when it currently doesn't need to be? That's one of the benefits of Gravity, especially for a pure healer.

Oh, I just meant that it's an AoE around you rather than something that needs to be targeted, but I imagine the range would be something like Standard/Technical Step where you don't need to actually be at close range to use it.

EDIT: So this is not really what the skill would end up looking like necessarily, but Lisa's elemental skill in Genshin was kinda what was playing in my mind as I was imagining it:

[ForsakenRoe]

cards idea

Interesting, with the hand thing. My mind wanders in a different direction, of draw X cards, X being decided by balance/how finicky it is for gameplay (maybe 3), and play them in order. But the order you draw them in is random, so you might have eg melee melee ranged, or ranged melee ranged, or whatever, so it's like DNC step RNG? If they're miniGCDs like steps, and had a strong buff effect to make up for the fact they're slightly eating into your GCDs, I wonder if it'd flow well. OFC, you'd 'set' the cards, not immediately play them, with Divination triggering them all. Maybe make it so multiple cards can be applied to one player as long as they're not duplicates, so the optimization is 'ah I have Balance Bole Arrow. The MNK already has Balance set, so I'll Balance the DRG, Bole the BLM, and then the MNK gets the Arrow'. If you had to deal out 3 cards in this manner every 30s like DNC Standard Step, it'd definitely make the rotation feel pretty active. And with the 'Divination activates the cards' thing, you'd not be in any rush necessarily to do the buffs at exact timings. As long as they're out by the time Div comes out, there's versatility on when you actually do the card-dance.

Might need a way to have one set applied before combat, so your first Div isn't horrendously misaligned. Or maybe not, if you went (prepull malefic), Combust at 0s, weave Draw, Play Play Play (5.5s in now), Div, Malefic spam, I think that lines up at 3rd-ish GCD? If there's some other idea for removing the 'malefic spam' part and replacing it with something else, that can be whacked in there in it's place.

Oh, I just meant that it's an AoE around you rather than something that needs to be targeted, but I imagine the range would be something like Standard/Technical Step where you don't need to actually be at close range to use it.

If it were a PBAOE like that, would it decide it's 'primary target' based on what you have targetted at the time, or the same logic as Dances (the closest target is the 'primary target', regardless of what you're actually targetting)? I don't personally mind having to adjust where I'm standing to 'force priority' onto a specific target, but others might want to stand in Narnia. Though I guess some people do stand in Narnia as DNC and miss their Dance AOEs already so /shrug

[IDontPetLalas]

Oh, I just meant that it's an AoE around you rather than something that needs to be targeted, but I imagine the range would be something like Standard/Technical Step where you don't need to actually be at close range to use it.

EDIT: So this is not really what the skill would end up looking like necessarily, but Lisa's elemental skill in Genshin was kinda what was playing in my mind as I was imagining it:

Ah thanks, and boy would I love something like that!

[ty_taurus]

Interesting, with the hand thing. My mind wanders in a different direction, of draw X cards, X being decided by balance/how finicky it is for gameplay (maybe 3), and play them in order. But the order you draw them in is random, so you might have eg melee melee ranged, or ranged melee ranged, or whatever, so it's like DNC step RNG? If they're miniGCDs like steps, and had a strong buff effect to make up for the fact they're slightly eating into your GCDs, I wonder if it'd flow well. OFC, you'd 'set' the cards, not immediately play them, with Divination triggering them all. Maybe make it so multiple cards can be applied to one player as long as they're not duplicates, so the optimization is 'ah I have Balance Bole Arrow. The MNK already has Balance set, so I'll Balance the DRG, Bole the BLM, and then the MNK gets the Arrow'. If you had to deal out 3 cards in this manner every 30s like DNC Standard Step, it'd definitely make the rotation feel pretty active. And with the 'Divination activates the cards' thing, you'd not be in any rush necessarily to do the buffs at exact timings. As long as they're out by the time Div comes out, there's versatility on when you actually do the card-dance.

Might need a way to have one set applied before combat, so your first Div isn't horrendously misaligned. Or maybe not, if you went (prepull malefic), Combust at 0s, weave Draw, Play Play Play (5.5s in now), Div, Malefic spam, I think that lines up at 3rd-ish GCD? If there's some other idea for removing the 'malefic spam' part and replacing it with something else, that can be whacked in there in it's place.



If it were a PBAOE like that, would it decide it's 'primary target' based on what you have targetted at the time, or the same logic as Dances (the closest target is the 'primary target', regardless of what you're actually targetting)? I don't personally mind having to adjust where I'm standing to 'force priority' onto a specific target, but others might want to stand in Narnia. Though I guess some people do stand in Narnia as DNC and miss their Dance AOEs already so /shrug

AST is currently disliked for a number of reasons. What is very likely the biggest reason is the amount of single targeting you have to do to play cards. I have very little doubt that whatever we get in 7.0 is going to kill playing cards on individual players because it's driving away the common player. The second biggest issue is that Astrodyne is a terrible reward and doesn't feel worth the effort it takes to get all 3 signs. The third reason is the current iteration of every card is the same flavor of nothing is loathed and defeats the entire purpose of having a card system in the first place. It makes the card system a convoluted mess.

Personally, the single targeting aspect never bothered me, even as a controller player. That said, I don't think the system can only function that way either, so I'm entirely open to exploring the avenue of having them be AoE, or not requiring targeting for some other reason somehow. Beyond that though, I have a negative amount of interest in entertaining the current Astrodyne or keeping all the cards in this melee vs ranged disaster we've been stuck with. I don't ultimately have a say of course, but as far as playing around with AST rework ideas is concerned...



As for the AoE factor, I didn't include it having any fall-off, but even if it needs fall-off for balance reasons, it really doesn't matter. AoE is not a thing in this game outside of trash mobs. As long as you're not whiffing enemies, which wouldn't happen with a large circle AoE, you're ultimately dealing with a difference in milliseconds of how quickly things die. Maybe in Deep Dungeons it could matter more, but if you're soloing Deep Dungeons as an AST.... May the Twelve help you.

[IDontPetLalas]

Astrodyne isn't the worst, I get more annoyed with the minor arcana actually. The single-targeting - on a PC- hasn't been an issue for a long time thanks to a very easy change to the HUD using a mouse-over macro, but without that it was painful. If we actually had a dedicated healer designer, then rather than lobotomizing the job, then the designer should be able to consider alternatives such as UI improvements.

I'm not saying that it's the right answer- just that our options seem to be limited with the design team that we have at present.

[Shurrikhan]

AST is currently disliked for a number of reasons. What is very likely the biggest reason is the amount of single targeting you have to do to play cards. I have very little doubt that whatever we get in 7.0 is going to kill playing cards on individual players because it's driving away the common player.

I just want to see if there's any sort of universal design solution that could be helpful here.

In a few other MMOs (mostly recently added on WoW, but GW2 and --though a bit differently-- TERA are probably the most common examples), targeted skills may use soft targeting or preferential targeting rather than necessarily hard targeting. (Preferential targeting is essentially soft-targeting, except in that it can snap to or prefer your hard target when applicable -- i.e., the right type [party|friendly|hostile] and in range when the skill is queued or actuated.)

That soft-targeting is handy because if you have a skill that can, say, only attack enemies, you can just keep your current allied target and the skill will simply target will simply follow your cone-center targeting (admittedly, not super polished in XIV, but workable for all but small AoEs) at the time you give the command.

Most relevantly to most AST concerns, one wouldn't have to worry about tabbing back to the given enemy after selecting an allied Card target, and can generally just use Target of Target to handle the current tank while otherwise leaving one's target among the dps, where they'd only have to tab up or down the party list twice at most per draw in order to appropriately place a Card. (Granted, if we go back to more than a single Card effect, it'd still have some troubles.)

There are a few other other features, too, though, that may typically be bundled with this (at least when one includes addon features):

1. action-specific cone starting points and widths (ally-buffing actions may start further back and/or use a wider cone, as to still be able to tab through or be aimed through allies behind or well to the sides of you),
2. a game might set actions to set their target on button release, while indicating the target while that button is still held down,
3. variable indicator opacity and appearance (e.g., when there are more relevant targets in the cone of detection, the indicator may),
4. automatic deployment at end up uptime period (as not to be potentially punished for releasing the button, and therefore setting the soft-targeting, too late),
5. optionally longer queuing periods (if one wishes to almost all their targeting in this way but wants to be sure also that they've enough time to get their targeting in correctly),
6. skill-specific target interception (an ally-targeting skill cannot be intercepted by enemies), and
7. action-specific target snapping (a no-falloff AoE will prefer targets nearer to the center of the enemy/ally pack, while a skill that increases %damage may snap to the nearest DPS and skill that increases %eHP would snap to whomever highest eHP).

Put those together and even controller-based AST players wouldn't likely struggle with the job regardless of oGCD single-target Cards. And the whole game benefits.

[ForsakenRoe]

AST is currently disliked for a number of reasons. What is very likely the biggest reason is the amount of single targeting you have to do to play cards. I have very little doubt that whatever we get in 7.0 is going to kill playing cards on individual players because it's driving away the common player. The second biggest issue is that Astrodyne is a terrible reward and doesn't feel worth the effort it takes to get all 3 signs. The third reason is the current iteration of every card is the same flavor of nothing is loathed and defeats the entire purpose of having a card system in the first place. It makes the card system a convoluted mess.

Yeh the idea is trying to keep sort of in line with the limitations we have atm, namely 'the design team needs some fresh ideas', but I'd like to think what I posted solves all of those problems in some regard. Singletargetting to play cards is an issue now because how how much you do in such a short window. While I can't really say without it existing and being playable, I think my idea would help alleviate that somewhat, yes you're playing more cards per 2min cycle, but you don't have to play them all at the 2min mark. You could theoretically play one per 10ish seconds. This would also allow for some malleability in not getting screwed by 'I have to play cards, but the mechanics are all going off too' like in eg Manifold Flames.

Second issue, Astrodyne, is part of a larger issue, that is, 'cards dont really feel rewarding to play around'. You do everything right and you get a pretty crummy payout. I think part of the reason for this is SE's apparent allergy to the idea that players can potentially mess up. Every card does the same thing, and has relatively low effect, because that way if a player isn't good at doing the card thing, they don't drag their team down as much. We can adjust the cards to make them both feel more impactful, and also less punishing to mess up. For example, currently if you play a card, it buffs by 3% on the incorrect role and 6% on the correct role. So if a player got every card 'wrong', they'd be losing 50% of the card system's effectiveness. Instead, we could boost that to say, 10% for wrong, and 12% for correct, making the difference just 16%. At the same time, this makes the cards feel way better in a vacuum I think, because their effect is stronger.

Third, having the same effect sucks yes. Having everything as different colors of 'it does the same damage buff' is likely here to stay, so we'll have to work around it. And my idea to throw in the ring would be 'make it so players can get several different cards at once, but not duplicates'. Unfortunately this conflicts with 'make it less punishing to get wrong' from point 2, as playing a Balance on someone who has a Balance set already would be a 100% loss of damage. Maybe a system where 'if a duplicate card is played, it's effect is reduced by 2%' could work. EG, a player who does not care about their performance at all could throw Balance on the MNK 3 times, and no other card. The first is worth 12%, the second 10%, the third 8%. A different player who is peak optimization brained, would throw a Balance, an Arrow and a Spear on the MNK, which gives 12, 12 and 12%, as none of them are duplicates. The 'zero optimization' player would turn a 1000p skill into 1,330.5p, and the super optimal gamer would turn 100p into 1,404.9p, a difference of 74ish potency. That's like, half a Gauss Round.

Since we don't need to remember the effects of the cards (they are all damage), and we don't need to remember which are better on melee/ranged (the job gauge tells us), the thing to watch out for under this system would not be what the cards do, or who they're best on, just who already has that one. We can even remove seals with this, because they're only use atm is to try and get you to use different cards. With this rework, the reason to use different cards is implemented in a different way. One that matches the lore better, IMO. Don't some IRL tarot card readings have 3 cards drawn, to correlate to past, present, future?

edit: having this change, we could also learn a passive trait at 60, in reference to that bad AST who we fight. IIRC he channels power from all 6 cards for a timestopping attack, so we could have similar, where if we have all 6 card effects on ourselves (only on the AST), it increases our damage output not just by the amount for each card, but also by a bonus amount. Not enough to be the optimal way to play in group content, but as a way to make AST's solo experience a bit less crappy.