Astrologian Card System Feedback

[LittleArrow]

You know what's cards with no rng that come back up every 60s?

Standard OGCD cooldowns.

This is my biggest complaint about the card system they're planning.

RANT: I 100% do not envy the devs in trying to find a compromise for those that have their pitchforks over a bunch of useless niche cards that no one ever used except in savage or because yeah definitely the tank needed that little extra buff in that one boss fight that no one remembers that players used in specific situations and other players that enjoy the mini game but don't want to spend 5mins before big pulls for balance / want that nice serotonin rush seeing 3 dps buffed before a pull with the current system.

I really enjoyed the card system as it was. It took the ingame meta of looking for dps and made into a fun little mini game between ranged / melee. It was a bit simple, but it was simple enough I had something fun to do while healing and pressing 1.

FEEDBACK: My biggest concern with this new feature is the 60sec cooldown. This 100% just makes these cards OGCDs. There's nothing special about them. They're just lame OGCDs. It's sad, but I honestly wouldn't even know how to build upon the system they have now without upsetting every other healer with how unbalanced AST is with buffing.

Sadly, that's all I got. Just concerns without solutions. I hope they look at this system again and reconsider the long cooldown and the no rng aspect they've added.

[ty_taurus]

One idea that has been living in my brain for a while as well is having cards that you don't play on people, but rather that you use to add effects to existing actions. If we bring Celestial Opposition back to pre-Shadowbringers days sort of, we can imagine it as a cooldown that simply stuns nearby enemies. And under normal circumstances, that's it. However, if you were to draw and play Bole, for example, the next time you use Celestial Opposition, it will also add a 10% mitigation to the party. Just something that came back into my head that I thought I'd share.

[Valence]

RANT: I 100% do not envy the devs in trying to find a compromise

There is no compromise to be had with players that don't understand that rng is inherently tied to the core identity of a job. I've suffered it with MCH enough already.

Rng generates choices, agency and delinearizes fights to add variety and spice every run. If you're not ready to accept that as a player, then the job is probably not for you. Trying to force the devs into changing it so that you can enjoy it by definition makes you a threat to my very enjoyment of the job that I main. Well, I main MCH, not AST, but you get the idea.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I’ll be frank. I don’t get about what sort of ‘compromise’ the dev are making that people sometimes mention in the board. Just a bit of illustration:

A: I like RNG. Please keep it.
B: I hate RNG. Please nerf it.
Dev: Ok so we learn y’all like diff things. But now we have decided to remove the RNG.

That, is compromise? Like, literally butchering an entire aspect? Hooboi lmao.

[Aravell]

That, is compromise? Like, literally butchering an entire aspect? Hooboi lmao.

I mean, the dev team clearly cannot find balance between 2 sides.

Job design vs fight design
> All in on fight design

Damage kit vs healing kit
> All in on healing kit

Tank independence vs healer dependency
> All in on tank independence

And so on.

[Valence]

Having learned that they're happy with the general direction of this, it only makes me think that it's what they do want. I wish they gave us the actual reasoning behind.

[Gemina]

The card system is why I don't really play AST. It might be a skill issue, but I just find the high APM to be the most cumbersome aspect of the whole mechanic. It doesn't really matter what they do with it. The system just feels like a lot of work that doesn't feel as rewarding as it should be for playing it properly. The new system seems to be a discount sleeve draw that retains every bad choice they have made with the card system reworks. I'll give the job a go again come the new expansion, but I am already guessing that I will just default to playing WHM as usual when the SCH/SGE slot is already taken.

Unrelated, but I do love the Macrocosmos and Star abilities. If these skills were initially designed to somehow be tied to the card system, good chance it would have changed my whole view on AST.

[Kamishawe]

As Verbally or Powerpoint Stated:

• You have 3 "flavors".
  Any Card Set = [Offensive] + [Defensive] + [Curative] + [LoC].
  **The 8 demonstrated cards are static to those slots.
• Zero Card RNG
• Astrodyne and Astrosigns Removed -> replaced mentioned but unnamed
• Redraw removed
• Removing the Tank/Melee, and Caster/Ranged aspect

As Presented in video:
Cards are given all at once in a stack of 4.
You can play your cards whenever you like in 60s.
--> The above points are also verbally confirmed in the LL.

0s Marker - Pre-Draw:
Draw Set 1 -> [Balance] + [Arrow] + [Spire] + [Lord]

60s Marker:
Draw Set 2 -> [Spear] + [Bole] + [Ewer] + [Lady]

New visual animations: no info given by the Astro Gauge or the talkers; and no confirmation if they're connected to cards or new gcd/ogcd:
1. A party animation activated before or because of card draw sets.
2. A new Astro personal skill with the 12gods symbols.
3. A new High-Graphic Skill possibly @ 120s

END of Astro Part of LL

Their presentation skills are very lacking and we just don't know a lot of missing information

There's no way to tell if they did [For example] bring back a version of HW/STB cards and Royal Road, OR do something completely and utterly new. With no card ability/effect context and no new non-card ability context we just don't know. This is old monk, where a lot of the old and even ancient infographic is mixed with the new. We get a hodge-podge of, "Wtf is this, what does it mean, and how does it affect me?"

It does not help that Astro is a very Non-Visual class. A lot of abilities and all the Cards deal in affecting the {Status Info Windows}, not showing the visual effects of what it's doing.

Important Notes:

They use 8 old card Icons for assigned slots in the Astro gauge; HOWEVER, all names and abilities associated w these icons are community speculation of Historical/Lore value and not confirmed by CBU3 as being the same as past iterations.

They use the old Cyan/Purple role aspect as set designations but nothing is confirmed if there is any additional caveats to that.

The generated "Cards Per Min" ratio is no different between EW and DT. [3 cards] + [LoC] every 60s. It just looks different. Redraw (+ 3 new card shuffles every 60s) is technically as aspect of Astrodyne and Astro Signs and not part of the "CPM" timer.

Things not mentioned or confirmed:
What the cards are named.
What the card abilities are.
Where they're drawing inspiration for individual card abilities.
The reward system for using the Cards (aka Astrodyne like skill or equivalent WHM Misery or SGE no reward)
Are card slots restricted to specific roles as demonstrated in the video or can they still go to any player of our choosing?
What is the 120/2min for Astro?
Is APM restricted with the changes or it is now just personal preference?
Are all the cards restricted to a single person application or are there aoe and party utility applications mixed in?
What are new non-card abilities.
What are they changing in current skills to fit w the new card system or help button bloating.
Will the removal of rng be replaced by a different aspect of intellectual or mechanical engagement in Astro?

As much as people are up in arms about rng, static cards, and variety ability cards; we can't really say yes or no about any of it.

[SieyaM]

This is my biggest complaint about the card system they're planning.

RANT: I 100% do not envy the devs in trying to find a compromise for those that have their pitchforks over a bunch of useless niche cards that no one ever used except in savage or because yeah definitely the tank needed that little extra buff in that one boss fight that no one remembers that players used in specific situations and other players that enjoy the mini game but don't want to spend 5mins before big pulls for balance / want that nice serotonin rush seeing 3 dps buffed before a pull with the current system.

I really enjoyed the card system as it was. It took the ingame meta of looking for dps and made into a fun little mini game between ranged / melee. It was a bit simple, but it was simple enough I had something fun to do while healing and pressing 1.

FEEDBACK: My biggest concern with this new feature is the 60sec cooldown. This 100% just makes these cards OGCDs. There's nothing special about them. They're just lame OGCDs. It's sad, but I honestly wouldn't even know how to build upon the system they have now without upsetting every other healer with how unbalanced AST is with buffing.

Sadly, that's all I got. Just concerns without solutions. I hope they look at this system again and reconsider the long cooldown and the no rng aspect they've added.

I do have fond memories of using an extended Bole card on the tank in a dungeon run and just throwing a regen on them and then it was carefree gravity all day. The reason that was satisfying was that I had aligned the cards correctly to be able to use a spell like gravity without worry, now it's just using gravity all the time because that's all there is to do. During the HW and StB expansions AST had a lot of agency and variety with Royal Road and then with Lord/Lady that gave the cards a great deal of flexibility. People in high end content insisted on the Balance card not to clear content, but to pad parses and give them higher numbers on FF logs.

[Raikai]

It would be nice if you did a second survey asking what types of effect people like in the cards.

I'd love more Utility, Reduction, GCD Haste or Movement Speed cards over a silly dps card when they can just boost Divination for Party DPS buffs instead of opening the can of worms known as Dps cards.

I personally would love getting rid of Solo cards for Group affect cards eliminating the need for tab targeting.

People saying they liked HW/STB and DT isn't very helpful, nor is asking what cards they liked best since there's been 3 different iterations of them and they all meant something different under the same names.

Sadly XIV's combat system won't really allow for many 'creative' utility effects beyond damage.

Things we already have:
- Damage reduction, both offensive and defensive
- Movement Speed
- Movement displacement (gap closers, teleports, etc)
- MP regen (which is kind of meaningless)
- Increased healing taken

I'm not quite sure what else we could have. Thought about vulnerability / damage down stack cleanse, but that would have to be tied to a big cooldown.

Actually if they said they want to focus on better encounters for DT, hopefully we'll see new utility niches emerge based on that.