The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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.