Random Cards Were The Only Reason AST Felt Good/Different

[Rydia_Misuto]

One DoT, one single-target spell that's the only single-target non-DoT GCD, one AOE spell that's the only repeatable AOE GCD.

A heal bomb OGCD, a bad single target heal, the correct single-target heal, a regen effect, an AOE heal that sucks, an AOE heal that's good and has a regen attached, the same raise and esuna spells with the same lore and same flavor and same animation. An OGCD that increase your own healing, an OGCD that refunds mana, another one that refunds mana and is the same for every job and works the same for every job, and OGCD that heals and does damage in an enormous AOE (because god forbid it be possible to miss it).

The only difference between Astrologian and White Mage (and I would argue any healers at all, even if you say there's a meaningful difference between heal bombs and shields is there THAT much of one when you have the same number of spells used the same with the same properties and the ONLY difference is whether or not all the healing is up-front?) is the fact that the thing Astrologian does outside the exact same basic kit every healer has is give pitifully small buffs.

If the buff doesn't hit double digit percentages I don't care.

If the class whose entire gimmick is playing around the whims of fate and sometimes cheating them instead sticks to the exact same things in the exact same order with no room to ever have variation or surprise, I don't care.

I want either less effective heals that come with actual MP gauge management and require me to actually try to keep people alive, and less self-sustain for every job (especially tanks) so that my presence actually means anything at all whatsoever, OR I want more involved DPS rotations/supplemental mechanics. Victory holds no meaning if failure is impossible. This game has catered to people whining that it's too hard ever since Shadowbringers' launch, and every single role has suffered for this - but none as much as healing.

At least back in the day, you could argue that WHM being boring and one-note was fine because it was the Token Boring Healer and AST/SCH got to be fun and have complexity. I am so tired of healer being the same thing no matter what, every time, and each job being a choice of fashion and a minor mechanic that's less important than the same generic spells everyone has AND is so simple you cannot possibly screw it up. Every gauge just plays itself for you. Either hit the button whenever you can, or wait and do what you would have already done anyway and get rewarded for it. There's no decision-making ("when do I use each of the same 4 cards" is not a decision that means anything) and no surprise. No tension, no failure, so success means nothing.

Randomness and being a pseudo-gambler was the thing that made AST fun. Cards had impact and meaning, so getting the right one felt good and winning came because losing was possible. So what's the point now?

[Carighan]

If the class whose entire gimmick is playing around the whims of fate and sometimes cheating them instead sticks to the exact same things in the exact same order with no room to ever have variation or surprise, I don't care.

Uh, but the job identity is predicting the future?

Hence the stronger element of auto-firing "future" healing, Earthly Star, Horoscope, Macrocosmos, Exaltation? You want to use these so that ideally they automatically heal after damage is applied, so timing them right and predicting when the damage will come in is the game.

Plus, one could argue that Astrology - taken to it's coocoo roots - has nothing to do with randomness, and hence a random selection of cards would be utterly unfitting. If anything, all card draws should already be decided and predetermined before you start drawing.

[IDontPetLalas]

Uh, but the job identity is predicting the future?

Hence the stronger element of auto-firing "future" healing, Earthly Star, Horoscope, Macrocosmos, Exaltation? You want to use these so that ideally they automatically heal after damage is applied, so timing them right and predicting when the damage will come in is the game.

Plus, one could argue that Astrology - taken to it's coocoo roots - has nothing to do with randomness, and hence a random selection of cards would be utterly unfitting. If anything, all card draws should already be decided and predetermined before you start drawing.

No, the way that the skills you list in the first paragraph didn't relate to the way cards work in DT i.e. a static and predetermined selection. I agree completely with what you quoted from Rydia. I would prefer having to make decisions and being able to redraw/reshuffle if I didn't get an optimal deck, rather than having a limited/ semi-useful selection with limited decision making forced upon me. Lore be damned.

[Connor]

Uh, but the job identity is predicting the future?

.

Don’t they explain several times in the job quests that Astrologians can’t literally see the future. If they could , I imagine Sharlayan would have much less issues last expansion lol (if they could just get someone to tell them what’s going to happen before it does).

An Astrologian’s true purpose is to guide people along the path fate will take them on; you guide them across the royal road. The cards simply inform the Astrologian how that journey will go, not what the final outcome will be. I.E They may forsee that strength will be required by pulling Balance, but it’s up to the Astrologian to interpret ‘what the stars are trying to tell them’.

In terms of gameplay mechanics I’d say it actually translated much better with old versions of cards. The RNG is essentially ‘fate’ determining the path you take, and then the decision of how to use that card reflects how the Astrologian can’t use the cards to literally tell them what happens; it’s up to them to understand how to apply them.

There’s also an element of self-fulfilling prophecy lol. Like, ‘Balance tells me this guy is gonna be the top dps’, then you use it, and they actually become the top dps lol. I mean, obviously it’s not that simply but I just mean conceptually lol. Similarly with like ‘This dps with 80 vuln ups isn’t going to die here’, so you use Bole on them, and suddenly the future you ‘saw’ came true because you made it by your own hand.

Basically I think the RNG elements of Astrologian actually fit very well with the lore of ‘mages that foresee what’s to come (and guide people accordingly). Honestly I’d say the biggest thing missing is the time manipulation abilities like Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition. Gameplay wise it gives the Astrologian more ways to adjust things to their advantage whilst making card usage less of a passive experience, whilst lore wise it would reflect how the Astrologian uses their abilities to influence events they’ve foreseen.

[Sylvain]

Basically I think the RNG elements of Astrologian actually fit very well with the lore of ‘mages that foresee what’s to come (and guide people accordingly). Honestly I’d say the biggest thing missing is the time manipulation abilities like Time Dilation and old Celestial Opposition. Gameplay wise it gives the Astrologian more ways to adjust things to their advantage whilst making card usage less of a passive experience, whilst lore wise it would reflect how the Astrologian uses their abilities to influence events they’ve foreseen.

Time Dilatation was fun, the issue imo lies in that as per usual, it would only be used to enhance damage which makes the ability not fun.
If it's to add 10-15s to the melee card every 2min, I don't want it back.

However, if Time Dilatation would instead affect other buffs such as Horoscope, Macrocosm, Earthly Star and Aspected buff, sure, that'd be neat. Could pull some interesting combination.

[Carighan]

Time Dilatation was fun, the issue imo lies in that as per usual, it would only be used to enhance damage which makes the ability not fun.
If it's to add 10-15s to the melee card every 2min, I don't want it back.

However, if Time Dilatation would instead affect other buffs such as Horoscope, Macrocosm, Earthly Star and Aspected buff, sure, that'd be neat. Could pull some interesting combination.

Yeah that was the core reason the entire design was changed to begin with after all: Beyond ultra-casual play, there was no flexibility or player choice or agency with it anyways.

Now you could argue: Yeah but there isn't now, either! Yes. But that's the point, complexity was reduced at no loss of depth, as the depth was just an illusion before. There was none.

I struggle to think how to re-add something like that. Randomize cards and you back to lucky-vs-busted as only +damage effects matter, everything else is a blank ticket for purposes of non-trivial content. It could maybe work if no +damage cards existed, not even indirectly. Say all +damage is from Divination, and the cards are all support-augmentative only, giving damage reductions, healing boosts, add-shields-to-healing, add-regen-to-healing, etc. Maybe actually a +movemenspeed but even that I could see people use for DPS gain so best not go there. Then it might work, but I also feel plenty players would once again not enjoy that, as effectively the randomness is still neutered then. All cards are "fluff", so it has little importance which you draw.

And that is something more players need to realize I think: You felt that the old random card draws were meaningful because they could make you more or less valuable to your group based on random chance. But this only happened because they impacted damage - the only important metric. So naturally, the very element that led to them being removed for being unbalanceable, the damage gain, is the only part that made them valuable from a nostalgic perspective.

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).

[Carighan]

Yeah but old cards provided nothing of that. You either got the good cards, or you "busted". There was nothing else, as nothing of the combat system was built to accomodate the "lesser" options. And since the fights weren't balanced to work with randomized card draws - and don't get me wrong, I love randomness in MMORPG classes - it just had no purpose.

Plus, let's not forget: It was the community who boo'd random cards off the stage, utterly and consistently despising it at every corner. All SQEX did was listen to their community, and that's why we're here now: Where every job is neutered, tanks defend themselves, healer DPS is 1-button-only and no randomness anywhere while all fights and jobs are built around a 120s cycle for burst purposes.

[IDontPetLalas]

Yeah but old cards provided nothing of that. You either got the good cards, or you "busted". There was nothing else, as nothing of the combat system was built to accomodate the "lesser" options. And since the fights weren't balanced to work with randomized card draws - and don't get me wrong, I love randomness in MMORPG classes - it just had no purpose.

Plus, let's not forget: It was the community who boo'd random cards off the stage, utterly and consistently despising it at every corner. All SQEX did was listen to their community, and that's why we're here now: Where every job is neutered, tanks defend themselves, healer DPS is 1-button-only and no randomness anywhere while all fights and jobs are built around a 120s cycle for burst purposes.

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'

That sounds more like SE that you're referring to since AST has gone through multiple reworks, however there's been no such monolithic "community" that has "despised" random cards within the player community.

Nor is there any such proof that "SE listens to their community" with respect to job changes, it's more to the contrary- SE introduces job changes in multiple instances that is based upon their interpretation of what players may want, however they do not gather any feedback before the changes go live and those changes frequently fall flat on their face.

[Zaytex]

Yeah but old cards provided nothing of that. You either got the good cards, or you "busted". There was nothing else, as nothing of the combat system was built to accomodate the "lesser" options. And since the fights weren't balanced to work with randomized card draws - and don't get me wrong, I love randomness in MMORPG classes - it just had no purpose.

Plus, let's not forget: It was the community who boo'd random cards off the stage, utterly and consistently despising it at every corner. All SQEX did was listen to their community, and that's why we're here now: Where every job is neutered, tanks defend themselves, healer DPS is 1-button-only and no randomness anywhere while all fights and jobs are built around a 120s cycle for burst purposes.

As much as I hate to say it, you're right. Just look at any recent AST thread on reddit about the rework and one of the top pieces of feedback given is ''thank god they removed astrodyne'' or ''I'm so glad I have a second charge of Lightspeed'' or ''I'm happy for the RNG to be deleted''

This community will bitch and moan about homogenisation, yet are a primary influence for why jobs in this game get simplified so much. People just couldn't accept AST was different from the other healers and if you disliked the concept of playing around RNG in your toolkit and having to actually fucking think about your movement mechanics (AST's only former weakness), apparently just picking one of the other three healers wasn't enough. Clearly there was enough negative feedback about ShB/EW AST that led to what we currently have. Now look what's happened:

''I hate card RNG'' = now cards are no different than generic cooldowns, fucking boring and uninteresting gameplay. A Bole is no different than an aquaveil now.

''I want utility cards back'' = we've returned to the HW/SB issue of fishing (or in DT, overwriting) for DPS cards ASAP.

''I hate astrodyne'' = now we have no seal system and less form of kit interaction, in a game where jobs desperately need more of it.

''give us a second lightspeed'' = now AST has the most broken movement out of the healers and any former skill in took in EW to plan your movement is gone. Just press a button and it's done for you, fuck having to learn how to mitigate and play around a job's weakness right? Just let the game do it for you.

So here we are, the most dog shit version of AST ever seen. See you guys in 8.0 where we go back to every card being balance but it'll be somehow done x10 worse than ShB/EW.

[Connor]

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