Random Cards Were The Only Reason AST Felt Good/Different

[BabyYoda]

It’s also worth mentioning that I’m not sure how people could have complained about rng considering we’ve have Shuffle since Heavensward, plus Sleeve Draw when that existed, not to mention time manipulation abilities like Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition to extend buff duration when you do get the card you want.

I don’t think Astrologian has ever been held back by its ‘rng’ nature precisely because it had abilities to tip the scales in its’ favour. The biggest problem is that with neither buff manipulation nor rng existing the entire card/support aspect of Astrologian is extremely passive; you draw, throw card at the appropriate role, that’s it until the next draw. There’s absolutely nothing satisfying about using them at all now

I believe devs change it just because it is easier to design and balance..
Like why we have same kit for 4 jobs? Simplicity? We can have simple kit for 4 jobs but why they actually 90% the same?

It is laziness.. and I don't blame devs they are forced to develop another NFT project that will never see the light

[Ramiee]

I have no idea of what iteration of AST you're referring to when you say "It was the community who boo'd random cards off the stage, utterly and consistently despising it at every corner

I'm guessing they're talking about "The Balance Fishing" that was kinda prolific in HW/SB. Even so the rest of the cards weren't bad it's just that the balance was the best. The only problematic card was The Arrow and that was only really for monks and ninjas besides that there have been zero community issues with the old cards of AST.

[IDontPetLalas]

I'm guessing they're talking about "The Balance Fishing" that was kinda prolific in HW/SB. Even so the rest of the cards weren't bad it's just that the balance was the best. The only problematic card was The Arrow and that was only really for monks and ninjas besides that there have been zero community issues with the old cards of AST.

Agreed, that is possible, it's not clear- however the point I was trying to make- and perhaps not very well- is that there was not one single opinion regarding RNG and cards at one point in time, nor was there one way that cards worked over several expansions. Add to that, SE couldn't even interpret those opinions into a rework without requiring a hotfix at least once, nor (in my own opinion, for what it's worth) without leading to an improvement in the job.

[IDontPetLalas]

Not that Reddit is necessarily an authority, however as someone who also has read numerous threads- nope, recent threads would disagree. Here's an example - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...at_we_have_it/. In this thread you'll get a popular post that would seem to agree with you, however multiple posts (less popular, but still 20 plus upvotes each) https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ption_here_is/ or this thread that is more positive towards RNG https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ey_ruined_ast/

There was NO consensus about RNG, some comments were likely from novice and veteran ASTs, or players that preferred as specific rework. Some players didn't understand how astrodyne worked, or its benefits, so that could have affected their opinion.

Blaming this on the players is not only non-productive, it's wrong, given (1) the lack of interaction between SE and its healer community (2) the lack of any way that players can interact with or provide feedback to healer changes prior to go-live (3) the glacial pace at which SE reacts to healer job design changes once they do go-live.

[Ramiee]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Astrodyne either but it was at least dynamic. There's a lot of actions I don't like in jobs such as Dissipation and Double Down but I can accept not liking things but not demanding then to be removed.
It seems a lot of players can't handle this concept.

[Connor]

So in other words: Randomness will naturally come with being benched for high-end prog. It has to. Otherwise it's meaningless randomness (we had this, it's called Astrodyne).

Uhh, hasn't Astrologian/Scholar been the prime healer comp in ever single raid since forever though? The randomness certainly didn’t bother them then.

It’s also worth mentioning frankly I don’t see the value in balancing content around literally the very top 0.1% of players doing cutting edge high end progression in ultimate. Otherwise you literally get the jobs we have now, and people aren’t exactly happy with them (because their kits are designed for the 0.1% prog content which makes them extremely boring and disproportionate in strength and value in any other content).

Additionally Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition always affected any buffs applied by the Astrologian. Aspected Benefic, CU, Exaltation, cards, shields, would all be increased (assuming it was the same skill as Heavensward)

[Sylvain]

Additionally Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition always affected any buffs applied by the Astrologian. Aspected Benefic, CU, Exaltation, cards, shields, would all be increased (assuming it was the same skill as Heavensward)

I mean you don't have to consider the top end to realise how broken HW/SB cards were.
On a good run you could have half the fight with a 5-10% damage boost. Like that's just beyond bonker when it comes to balance.
The variance was just too high and yet again... 6 cards to only use 3, Spire/Ewer to burn and Balance to be spreaded. The *whole* system was about simply throwing AoE balance (or spear eventually).
Like, I really don't see how this was better than the current system.

Regarding Time Dilatation (in case it was regarding my feedback) i meant I wouldn't mind as long as it only affects those buffs and not the cards. Because if it would then... Just buff the cards duration to 30s because this is exactly how it will be used, to boost the balance/spear to 30s.

[Connor]

quote

Why would they have to be identical values to Heavensward cards? Bards can have a 2% damage buff up for entire fights, and that’s before Radiant Finale and Battle Voice contributions were added. And I’m pretty sure Bards aren’t considered OP right now.

Frankly I don’t see how the current system is any way better either. We went from burning cards for AoE to having them literally just be clones of our pre-existing abilities? Honestly I’d rather have the illusion of choice than no choice whatsoever personally. Not to mention as said above they can just like, adjust the values of Balance etc as necessary. It doesn’t have to be 10% lol

That’s not even going into the fact that the whole ‘balancing’ scapgegoats is kinda the whole reason the jobs are all in the state they’re in. ‘Why have more than 1 card if you’re always going to be using the damage one’ = ‘You literally just get a damage card’ like SB. Which, I mean I guess we could go back to if people really want? Frankly I thought the seal matching thing was even worse than what we have now, but at least they didn’t have that pesky illusion of choice.

I mean, realistically the current cards are pretty much the exact same though? You still only use the damage card . The other two might as well not be there, and most Astrologian’s just throw them at the tank or straight overwrite them to get to the next damage card quicker. I mean, why would anyone bother with them when they already have the corresponding ability in their toolkit? Nobody needs 10% damage reduction twice (Exaltation and Bole), or a 10% healing boost outside of making meme SCH shields (Arrow). Spire is Celestial Intersection in a fake moustache, as if we needed more shields on top of Neutral Sect lol. Ewer and Aspected Benefic result in hilarious levels of overhealing.

There’s also a specific card priority for which dps should always get it that (generally) isn’t context specific (I.e unless they literally stop attacking a VIP/SAM is always best option for melee damage, PIC/BLM for ranged), or you have a party of Summoners and Dancers and just throw it on whoever has the highest HP lol.

So I guess we should just delete cards all together, since it doesn’t matter what they do it’s always going to be the damage card. So why even bother? If we’re gonna optimise literally everything in the game to oblivion we might as well start asking them to delete everything but one single job…that’s the only way you’re ever actually going to achieve ‘balance’; variations will always exist otherwise. Or they could just accept those variations and actively work to mitigate them in times where they become an issue?

[Carighan]

So I guess we should just delete cards all together, since it doesn’t matter what they do it’s always going to be the damage card. So why even bother? If we’re gonna optimise literally everything in the game to oblivion we might as well start asking them to delete everything but one single job…that’s the only way you’re ever actually going to achieve ‘balance’; variations will always exist otherwise. Or they could just accept those variations and actively work to mitigate them in times where they become an issue?

Yes.

Actually.

Sadly.

Plenty MMORPGs have shown that before.

Importantly however, in particular long-lived ones like EQ1 or WoW have also shown how flavour and uniqueness works or doesn't work, and the current system (of all jobs, this is not an AST specific problem) has extremely little job-flavour on a mechanical level (visuals and sound are strong, the latter very strong in many cases). But that's not a problem you can solve on the level of a single job. The combat system and in particular the fight design implies the current setup. Again, sadly, but eh, so be it.

They could add a lot of flavor to jobs, but they'd need to make space for it first. For example, healers are inherently reactionary in other MMORPGs. There's actual damage to heal that is not on a fixed timetable (say constant random hits on random partymembers) and you need to react to that. Such a situation can easily have on healer by more easily able to handle this, in return for having a portion of their healing kit (note that I said healing kit, and only that) be locked behind random chance. You take a portion of the reactionary nature away, in return for making the player also react to the random draw.

That's doable. Easily in fact. Only... for that to work, healers would first need to heal in FFXIV. And that's just a single aspect of where the issues in job design are unsolvable before or without the combat encounter design being reworked. And even then, some things just won't work. Other MMOs have tried things, and they've all universally eventually removed it or trivialized it. Pet classes for example are such a thing, pets always get trivialized into external DoTs/HoTs with fancy graphics at some point, or flat out removed. Do I hate that we lost our two actual pet classes? For sure, old Scholar was my main. Did I fully expect it to eventually happen? Of course, evidence suggests this is a natural lifecycle event for an MMORPG.

So basically... don't do random cards as a design point. If there were space for them to fill in a viable way, they'd be cool, but that space would need to be created, and in particular in FFXIV's design I just cannot see such a tectonic change in combat encounter design happen. Sorry.

[Ramiee]

They could add a lot of flavor to jobs, but they'd need to make space for it first. For example, healers are inherently reactionary in other MMORPGs. There's actual damage to heal that is not on a fixed timetable (say constant random hits on random partymembers) and you need to react to that. Such a situation can easily have on healer by more easily able to handle this, in return for having a portion of their healing kit.

I mean this is what early XIV was like, i mean the bosses could crit their auto attacks, there was a lot of reactionary healing its part of the reason why SCH was so insane in ARR because lustrate healed a percentage of HP so during cleric stance so there was no healing loss for it, WHM didn't have anything like that. It was pretty much none healers who complained that healing was too scary that led to the removal of all the interesting support options of healing and for everything they did right they did more wrong and overdid it, having a healer with simple damage for new players? good idea, great even. Turning every healer into that? not so much.