Astrologian changes feedback

[Calysto]

I'm not really an AST player, but...

Just drawing 3 cards at random would mitigate most of the rng "issues".
Still too much Rng ?
-bring back royal road
-play a card reversed for a different effect
-go papercut damage

oh no, that would require balancing I guess, forget it. Here your stickers

[Olivia_G]

After all these days, what I still can’t understand is that — Why, after these years, did they make all the jobs “easier” for the sake of so-called players’ feedback/needs? Who actually needs this??

Certainly, there’re jobs with vastly different difficulty levels (such as BLM). However, the high or low difficulty of a job does not necessarily correlate to the player's skill level. This is simply one way to cater to the preferences of different players.

Yes, what I’m saying is that, it doesn’t mean that players are worse than other people who can play it well (especially when they won't go to high-end content or some illegal websites). It can just mean they’re a happier player or a busy person who can’t play this game for so much time.

And if they start playing AST and find that they can’t handle the card system, they can just ignore it. If that’s not a savage nor ultimate, no one will care abt it. In fact, most DPSs barely notice it unless they’ve an AST fd. Even if they’re playing extreme, I don't believe many people would really mind if they haven't used any cards (of course, people might blacklist them afterward, but they won’t realize it, right?). It’s fine.

Getting back to the topic, for beginners or players with limited time, "simple jobs" can surely be an appropriate choice. They can experience the core enjoyment of the game and play without too much stress. On the other hand, challenging jobs are an attractive option for dedicated gamers and players who enjoy a challenge. By having both simple and difficult job options coexist, the game can provide a more inclusive and enriching experience.

Or let me say it clearly, if I love WHM that much, I’m already playing it. No need to make any other jobs becoming WHM, thanks.

Rather than completely overhauling the job for new players, the most important point is to find ways to narrow the gap between "new players/casual players" and "existing players/hardcore players". For example, putting sth like "the Hall of the Novice" for endgame content in the game, or providing guides or tutorial videos similar to what Yoshi-P did for BLM, could be more appropriate for adjusting the learning curve for new players to reach endgame content.

If players want to play AST so much bc it’s beautiful but then complain that it’s too hard to understand, the best way is to teach them how to learn and practice. Ruining a Job is never an appropriate way.

In EW, They’ve made the worst possible changes to the ShB system, letting many players complain abt the so-called RNG issues, and finally we’ve got the RNG being totally removed.
No matter who did this, I think that staff should be members of Mensa. That staff must be a strategist.

And finally, to make it easier for the team to treat me as a player with feedback: I can accept HW, SB, ShB system or any AST with an adjustable RNG system, but DT AST? No, thanks

[Zaytex]

After all these days, what I still can’t understand is that — Why, after these years, did they make all the jobs “easier” for the sake of so-called players’ feedback/needs? Who actually needs this??

The state of gaming today is all about ''inclusivity'' and making sure absolutely everything in a video game can be accessible. We're not allowed to have jobs with a higher skill floor and ceiling because it'll make new players actually have to improve, which is a risk, since there is a portion of people who just give up at difficulty. Those are paying customers, so obviously SE wants to keep their business.

The MSQ enjoyer who wants to play the pretty star aesthetic healer and not feel bad they're not good enough, is prioritised over the high-end raiders who have optimised AST and have fell in love with it due to its skill expression and difficulty to mid max its toolkit.

So here we are. Everything has been streamlined, casualised and homogenised in favour of those newer or bad players. AST, the last healer which had any form of complexity or nuance to it which set it apart from its brethren has now been reworked to feel, at the core, essentially the same as a WHM but with a couple of minute differences. Do you want to afflatus solace or throw a guaranteed card to single target heal that person?

Utterly disgusting how homogenised this game has become, the healer role especially. Mash one button for 90% of your encounter and occasionally press a OGCD cooldown which is functionally the same as what another healer has. You played AST to have something more exciting to do if no healing was needed? Sorry, we gotta gut it for the casuals because they pay more on the mog station x

sigh

[Olivia_G]

The MSQ enjoyer who wants to play the pretty star aesthetic healer and not feel bad they're not good enough, is prioritised over the high-end raiders who have optimised AST and have fell in love with it due to its skill expression and difficulty to mid max its toolkit.

My job used to be fun before. It changed one day, and someone just keeps saying, 'Oh, you can quit the game if you're unhappy.'
sigh

[Sylvain]

We're not allowed to have jobs with a higher skill floor and ceiling because it'll make new players actually have to improve, which is a risk, since there is a portion of people who just give up at difficulty. Those are paying customers, so obviously SE wants to keep their business.

That's actually the case for most people. We just don't have the same threshold on what difficulty is.

Unfortunately for most people on those forums complaining about job simplification, the threshold of the average player might be too low for our taste.

As much as people complain about SMN all the freaking time, BLM are a rare breed.
Did some TOP pf this week-end. I saw 1 BLM, well over 10 SMN/RDM.

Yesterday had a my static prog TOP, we usually have a BLM but he couldn't make it so a friend came in as a SMN with 660 gear. Never done TOP as a caster, went just fine because... "how can you fail at SMN?"

I mean, dpsing as a healer is harder because moving with only slide casting is harder than SMN.

So let's be honest for a minute here, SE reworks a convoluted job (which was loved for that) and remake something thematically quite nice, i mean it does feel like a SMN. But the skill floor is so low that once the initial buzz fades away, people realises it's a rather boring job to play unless you want to watch netflix at the same time. Yet, despite this it became the default caster you see in every single freaking group.

BLM has been praised as the most interesting caster, with non standard rotation and all that stuff, yet... you barely see any.

You're right, people give up on difficulty, and apparently the average folks, even those doing TOP, rather play SMN/RDM than BLM because "scary hard".

Same goes for SCH & AST. 90% of all TOP pf are WHM/SAG

I don't like that SMN is so brain dead, I'd rather have most job with a decent amount of complexity like BLM.

And I mean, they could, they could make RDM and SMN less brain dead. But the fact of the matter is, SMN is a huge success. No matter how much you dislike it, SMN is a big hit, simplificity is a big hit.

I just hope their comment on "making the game a bit more stressfull" will actually result in things being a bit harder and technical.

[Olivia_G]

So let's be honest for a minute here, SE reworks a convoluted job (which was loved for that) and remake something thematically quite nice, i mean it does feel like a SMN. But the skill floor is so low that once the initial buzz fades away, people realises it's a rather boring job to play unless you want to watch netflix at the same time. Yet, despite this it became the default caster you see in every single freaking group.

BLM has been praised as the most interesting caster, with non standard rotation and all that stuff, yet... you barely see any.

I think the point is, you can still choose a complicated job as a caster after SMN's remake, but only WHM and WHM with stars are left in the ph role after DT's launch.

Just like some are saying "practicing as RDM, clearing as BLM and re-clearing as SMN", sometimes I use WHM for P10S because I feel burned out after wipes and wipes, but I can still choose AST when I'm well-rested that day.
Also, for alliance raids, I prefer AST because I don't want to fall asleep (oh, sorry WHM mains).

The key point is that, the dev team should provide a greater variety of jobs for players to choose from, rather than "deciding for the players" and assuming they just like simple jobs.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the point is, you can still choose a complicated job as a caster after SMN's remake, but only WHM and WHM with stars are left in the ph role after DT's launch.

Just like some are saying "practicing as RDM, clearing as BLM and re-clearing as SMN", sometimes I use WHM for P10S because I feel burned out after wipes and wipes, but I can still choose AST when I'm well-rested that day.
Also, for alliance raids, I prefer AST because I don't want to fall asleep (oh, sorry WHM mains).

The key point is that, the dev team should provide a greater variety of jobs for players to choose from, rather than "deciding for the players" and assuming they just like simple jobs.

I think that, rather than the current Caster situation of 'BLM for big brain, SMN for easystreet, RDM for prog' or whatever, each job should have its own individual sliding scale of complexity. Take SCH. If someone wants to spam Broil as their damage rotation, then they should be able to do that for any content without an Enrage (and they can). But if someone wants to spin a lot more plates, juggling three different DOT timers, they also should have the option to. We keep hearing about how 'people want to play X job for the aesthetic, but don't want to put the effort in to learn it', but the opposite must be true as well. If I want to play a complex healer, but also I like the WHM aesthetic, then I should be able to play WHM with a degree of complexity. It shouldn't be that I have to accept I'm playing 'the simple healer, for players who want a more casual experience'.

Said 'complexity' can be made 'optional', or at least, 'much less punishing' with simple potency value tuning. I like to use SCH as an example:

Broil 5: 300p
Biolysis: 35p per tick for 30s (total 350p)
Miasmalysis: 20p, then 30p per tick for 24s (340p)
Shadowflare: 120p, then 40p per tick for 15s (320p)

By making the potency 'gained' from engaging with the extra complexity be a smaller amount, it makes it feel less 'required'. In this example, by using Broil in place of the DOT refreshes, the player would lose a total of 560p over two minutes. By comparison, the 6 Energy drains you'd get over that duration would be 600p. Casual players would not care about 'Oh I cast a Broil there instead of refreshing my Biolysis on time, I just lost about 5 potency' (maths means it's an average of 5p lost, not 35p). But optimization players WOULD care about the difference between Broil spam and 'optimal gameplay' of refreshing all the DOTs on time, because it'd result in more damage, no matter how slight the increase is. If Energy Drain is enough of a reason to try and optimize around, even at 100p, then something like this would be too.

With the current DOT situation on healers, of 30s duration and their being over 200% of the damage of a filler spell, they've got the worst of both worlds: They've got a huge impact on our damage output (meaning dropping them is more punishing), and at the same time, their longer duration can make it harder for some players (for example, me) to remember that it needs to be refreshed (meaning it's more likely to get dropped for a few ticks). I never had this issue back when we had Aero at 18s or Aero2 at 12s back in HW

Did you know that at one point, BRD's Venomous Bite was only 9s duration?

[Sylvain]

The key point is that, the dev team should provide a greater variety of jobs for players to choose from, rather than "deciding for the players" and assuming they just like simple jobs.

But you can swap it around.
You, as a good player, have the opportunity to choose your job because you can play any job.
So the choice between WHM/AST or SCH/SGE or BLM/SMN is up to your liking because you'll excel at all these jobs.

A bad player doesn't have that choice because well... they're bad.

So WE are left with WHM and WHM with stars, but atm some players are left with WHM because WHM with stars are too complicated. (Not that I believe the change will change much)

I think that, rather than the current Caster situation of 'BLM for big brain, SMN for easystreet, RDM for prog' or whatever, each job should have its own individual sliding scale of complexity.

They should, they "kinda" do, it's just that the sliding scale for SMN and BLM are just light years appart. I don't find AST healing to be that complex, but the card system does put off many people. So again, we can choose, they can't. If "they" is 5 times as many as "we" then technically speaking it's better for the game to have more people able to enjoy more jobs.

By making the potency 'gained' from engaging with the extra complexity be a smaller amount, it makes it feel less 'required'.

Yes, I agree 100%.
It is kind of the case with SCH and the AF or AST with proper cards management vs just "throwing any card whenever it's up".

Indeed they could go for more. But clearly they don't want because apparently it would make healer scarier to play. Personally I've never heard anyone say "I'm afraid to play a healer because I don't think i'll be able to keep up with the rotation".

[Aravell]

Just.. what was the point of ShB pruning healers? This is anecdotal but it really feels like the amount of healer mains have decreased on every skill level. Casual content is always insta-queue, high-end content recruitment is usually recruiting a healer. Trying to trial a healer for your week 1 static? Good luck. They have the number and the feedback, so what's going on there? Why are we stuck in this state for 3 expansions?

Judging by Yoshi P's responses to the issue so far, he seems to believe that the path they're taking is the right one and that people just need to give healers a try.

He seems to completely believe that engagement can come fully from the encounter design while his team designs fights that are unrecoverable when someone fails a mechanic but does barely any damage otherwise (causing the healers role to become eroded).

There's a fundamental disconnect somewhere.

[Olivia_G]

Pls allow me to quote this here. I love this post.

if you want a job to change because it's too hard, then maybe it just isn't for you, if you like the aesthetic but don't like the playstyle, those who like it don't have to suffer the changes because of you, and honestly, you can play pretty much however you like in casual content, those who play the job at a high level should have more of a say, as they have the knowledge and play it how it was intended to begin with.

Sorry if it sounds rude, but this is the kind of mentality that has driven the job to changes that only appeal to people who complain that it's hard and those of us who love it for what it is and currently play it are left out. What they showed just isn't AST anymore. It needs to be fast, complex and has to keep you thinking, drawing cards every minute won't do that for me.

I didn't like Astrodyne, heck, I don't love the randomness that much, it just needs to be complex and fast-paced in a way that makes sense with the lore, and those changes don't look like that.

We need a rework, but that ain't it.