Please Return Randomness to Astrologian's Card System

[Carighan]

People can whine for the game to be made into an auto clicker simulator instead of requiring brainpower, and I'll still mainly blame the devs for pulling that trigger and their incompetence.

I won't, not if - as Zaytex says - it's then evidently a success and gets played a lot.

It's a business. If ballet fights of neverending performances + simplified jobs get people to stay subscribed in numbers, that's what you do. If complex unique jobs that cannot balance but are vastly diverse to play get people to stay subscribed in numbers, that's waht you do. Evidently, it is the former. Which, mind you, tracks with every other MMO ever, so why would we think this one is unique in its aging process?

[Valence]

What makes you think this design is actually drawing more people to the game?

[Carighan]

What makes you think this design is actually drawing more people to the game?

What makes you think it isn't? We know player feedback in MMOs is essentially useless vs how the game is actually doing. Or well, not just in MMOs. Look at all the gacha games making bank despite all readable feedback being how exploitative tactics are bad and microtransactions are annoying. Yet it's working. Silently.

Now Square isn't going to not want to milk FFXIV. So if they have reason to believe this is working, they'll do it harder. If they had reason to assume that it's doing the opposite and going 180° would work better, they probably would. And now of cours subscription numbers are from all we can tell down, but... better or worse than expected? Worse, they might flail wildly and bring Stormblood Astro cards back. Better, they'll give Yoshi P a pay raise and ask him to do what they're doing harder. Which means, looking at the past 4+ years, that what they were doing was working at the time, at least. Or they would have already 180'd by now.

[Valence]

I mean I'm not the one that asserted that it did lol. I don't know if it does or not...

[Carighan]

I mean I'm not the one that asserted that it did lol. I don't know if it does or not...

Yeah that was my point, we can't know but evidence suggests that whatever metrics the publisher has access to seems to support the course, considering how long they've kept it. I mean we still don't know either way, but SQEX can know better than we do, even if we cannot find out whether they actually do or not. But the fact they never tried otherwise seems to suggest there's some truth to the idea that this works, as a concept.

[Supersnow845]

I mean WAR is basically the perfect representation of why square enix’s job design arguably “works”

If this was a proper trinity game that actually respected the trinity then WAR in its current form wouldn’t even come close to existing because it spits in the face of everything that makes a trinity game

But it’s arguably also the most popular class (it’s only competitor is WHM who is also one of the worst designed classes in the game)

I hate admitting it but if your only metric is “logged into the game and maybe ran a roulette” a lot of square enix’s god awful job design decisions actually make alot of sense

[velswen]

I mean WAR is basically the perfect representation of why square enix’s job design arguably “works”

If this was a proper trinity game that actually respected the trinity then WAR in its current form wouldn’t even come close to existing because it spits in the face of everything that makes a trinity game

But it’s arguably also the most popular class (it’s only competitor is WHM who is also one of the worst designed classes in the game)

I hate admitting it but if your only metric is “logged into the game and maybe ran a roulette” a lot of square enix’s god awful job design decisions actually make alot of sense

Talking in regards to this thread's topic specifically, I don't think that really applies here. I don't think it makes a difference to most low-end players (no hate) what order they draw their cards in. I doubt most of those players even know what all the new cards do.

But having there be some randomization in the card order has not only been integral to every prior iteration of Astro, it's also the number one thing that set Astro apart from the other healers and gave you something you could continue improving on over time. I think having systems that give you room to grow and improve is vital to keeping this game fresh for its players. You aren't going to be prevented from clearing savage if you can't play your cards as soon as you draw them. You can still clear savage even if it takes you a moment to analyze them.

That's why I really, really hope SE adds SOME randomness back to the system. Just a simple choice between drawing one of two possible cards for each category would basically make the class perfect in my eyes.

[Supersnow845]

Talking in regards to this thread's topic specifically, I don't think that really applies here. I don't think it makes a difference to most low-end players (no hate) what order they draw their cards in. I doubt most of those players even know what all the new cards do.

But having there be some randomization in the card order has not only been integral to every prior iteration of Astro, it's also the number one thing that set Astro apart from the other healers and gave you something you could continue improving on over time. I think having systems that give you room to grow and improve is vital to keeping this game fresh for its players. You aren't going to be prevented from clearing savage if you can't play your cards as soon as you draw them. You can still clear savage even if it takes you a moment to analyze them.

That's why I really, really hope SE adds SOME randomness back to the system. Just a simple choice between drawing one of two possible cards for each category would basically make the class perfect in my eyes.

My point wasn’t whether a class has a high skill ceiling or not regardless of the floor

My point was entirely “if your metric for job design is basically ‘logged in and maybe did a roulette or two’ then kneecapping AST and seeing its popularity go up would be considered an overwhelming success on square’s end even if anyone who has a shred of competency at AST realises this star WHM isn’t a good design”

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Consider this. WHM having the largest playerbase plus AST being made into "WHM but star VFX"... does anybody actually surprised to see the number AST players skyrockets with DT's change (but still the least played)? lol

[Azurarok]

Liking one aspect of a job but hating another, asking for thing they dislike be removed or changed into thing they like from another job, even if that might be a big component of its identity and damn anyone who enjoys it for what it is? preposterous