Was Strategy Board a successful addition?

[Underscore]

I've only seen it used once or twice for anything besides memes, and in both cases it was just basic positions for one specific mechanic to complement a guide from elsewhere.

To be honest, I think people are just gonna continue using the raidplan site. It's less cumbersome, can be viewed and shared outside the game, and has those useful end-of-URL characters (USB, WDZ, etc) to quickly distinguish strats and communicate them in the PF description. You could maybe do something similar with a strategy board name, but anyone can edit those and unless you already have it saved you can't see the strategy without joining the party and asking for it.

The strategy board is also missing vital features like boss hitboxes, debuffs and fight-specific arenas and objects. I can think of several fights which the strategy board would be physically unable to represent because it's just too limited. You'd think they would've at least tested it with the raid tier the feature released with, but you can't even use it for M12S since the fight uses multiple debuffs. Hell, I don't think there's a single fight this tier it can show for one reason or another.

Sadly the strategy board is kind of unusable in its current state. It would need several improvements to be worth considering over the existing options.

[Jeeqbit]

The Strategy Boards are alright and people do occasionally share the boards for the raid itself, when they aren't using it to share their artwork and memes. But obviously people still use the raidplan links instead.

There is a way to convert raidplans to Strategy Boards and vice versa, so it seems at least that SE made it possible to convert them like this. It's a bit ironic though that SE won't add basic features to the game like an FC finder or Static Finder, but adds those as websites instead that most people don't use, then when they actually add a feature to the game, everyone uses a website for it.

The main problem with the Strategy Boards is the bugs that have been reported with them not always fully saving and things like that, as well as it being easier to convert (ideally this feature is needed on the raidplan website directly) and that way it's easy to make them on a website and then easy to share them in the game.

Regardless, there is a benefit to the feature which is live sharing, which allows you to move objects around in real time to explain strategies. That's especially useful for a statics because trying to do it with waymarks and running around can potentially pull the boss.

[Aidorouge]

I can't make heads or tails of raid plans anyway, so it was never going to be useful to me even without the memes.

[Ath192]

Now that most people have had their time with it,
was this system an addition that people actually started to use?

I still see people post raidplan links, so my assumption is that it's lacking in some key features?

Like, oh I dunno; pages?

This feature is widely used, and to my opinion extremely successful. THE REASON it was a success is because people love sharing memes on it. Was that its intended purpose? No, but does it matter? If you build a feature and it gets used pretty much on every raid for one reason or another then you did a good job.

[Kirutsuki]

This feature is widely used, and to my opinion extremely successful. THE REASON it was a success is because people love sharing memes on it. Was that its intended purpose? No, but does it matter? If you build a feature and it gets used pretty much on every raid for one reason or another then you did a good job.

Personally I've used it for tic-tac-toe and chess. Wish it was a bit more easy to re-share and edited board instead of needing to constantly save a new one for each share

[Kirutsuki]

To follow-up with my personal thoughts;

I've seen it used for one mechanic in Doomtrain EX, that's about it and I feel like that's it's current state, you pretty much share the hardest raid mechanic in a single page.
But a more throughout step-by-step you'd go to raidplan site.

Here's my sort of reasoning why it isn't going to be so widely used for the entire raid fight and all of it's durations.
For one as someone stated it seems to be missing some key features that are unique to a specific raid.
and the more raids they are going to be adding the more of those unique things are going to be missing unless it's actively updated alongside EX's & raids.
Which, truth be told sounds like a lot of work for the devs to keep yet another system up-to-date all the time, unless they automate the process of it.
So when they add a new debuff icon that would automatically be added in the strat board.

But even if the strat board would be flawless, my main concern remains and it's that there isn't a central place for strat boards that work, which the community
can use at a moments notice. It'll never really be more than a meme machine.

One of the reasons Raidplan site works is that in general there are a handful of plans that the community uses, most of which boil down to 2 variations and generally they are location based, so JP/EU or NA/EU.
and people can pretty easily trust that those plans are pretty solid, legitimate and don't have weird wonky stuff in them unless it's a blind prog plan.

But unless there's a central place for people to go look for strategy boards in game that actually work for each fight, they will never be widely used because no-one will actually trust a random shared strat board super easily.

I hope they keep working on it and automate a lot of the process the devs themselves have to do with it, but also add like a central place for stratboards that people can upvote on to keep them or remove them.
The issue would be that such a central database would be filled with memes, but surely by adding a central page for memes would fix a bit of the mess it would make.

[CidHeiral]

I think the devs did a great job with the feature. They can definitely improve it over time, like allowing you to write more text in a single text element and allowing more boards in a single folder, but overall I'd say the feature was a big success. You see a lot of memes because most people don't raid and most of those who do just want to receive the strat from someone else, they don't want to spend an hour or two translating an entire fight to strat boards. Not much the devs can do about that, but for statics or people who just enjoy making them they're very useful. I made one for the math robot in Ridorana for example and random roulettes groups have seemed to appreciate it.

[Derio]

Yes they did a great job with this feature. I have a cheat sheet for M12s which helps tremendously because I am on console and prior to that I had to either remember the raidplan perfectly or use my phone as a second screen. Overall its a great addition, including the meme ones.

[Aco505]

The board is quite good to keep in a corner of your screen for particular mechanics that might require it. Essentially it's like having a second screen but in-game and available to console players too, so it's great.

[KurisuCerrias]

It's a good feature for sure but for all the time they claim they spent to make it "better than the alternative" its still way more clunky to use.
Like a lot of things in final fantasy, it suffers from half-baked-assery syndrome

- Not possible to share multiple pages at once, and grouping them manually is inconvenient
- Not possible to attach them to partyfinder
- Not possible to save waymarks onto them
- Probably a skill issue on me but them disappearing on their own
- Limited elements
- Actual controls of making them is slow and clunky, having too many clicks to change parameters, in comparison the tools we use so far, or hell, even ms paint.
Probably as a result of needing some way for it work on console

It's still major failure is its much easier to distribute raidplans and agree beforehand than inside instance.
Reviewing strategy boards outside of the raidtime is also nearly impossible which is when you need them most