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Egann on 24 September 2014
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Intrinsic said:
Egann said:

I've never actually played with the gambit system, but it looks like they're ridiculously overthinking this. Dissidia had tight and easy controls and was actually designed to work on a technically inferior input, at least compared to the DS4 or the One's controller. And yet they're worried about input queueing and combat macros? That's just great. The thing enemies needed the most in Final Fantasy was MORE health so routine enemies take a long time to beat. Enemies have such high health we have to use macros to beat them. Fantastic imagination, S-E.

I really hope I'm reading this wrong, because that looks terrible.

You have to first understand what the gambit system aimed to do.

There are a lot of redundant comands you have to do in your typical final fantasy game. A lot of menu shuffling. You actually spend more time going through menus than actually playing the game. What FF12 aimed to do was automate a lot of those commands. So basically, instead of having to shuffle through menues to select cure whenever a characters life was under 20%, you just set a gambit for that and which ever supporting character you assigned that gambit to will cast sure automatically. You only have to worry about casting cure when that character is killed.

FF15 seems to be taking that even further and fine tuning the feild or context of gambit activation. This is why tabata said "its about movement and positioning" in one of his interviews. Gambits can be fine tuned in relation of the distance of a character from an enemy or an ally. In addition to this, gambits are set for the main character too, so you set gambits for what kinda attacks you do and at what range and with what kinda button prompt. This way, you can set a gambit for exactly what kinda attack chain you pull off if attacking an enemy from the rear, or if attacking a group of enemies while next to an ally.

So rather than being about enemies taking forever to kill, this is about executing single commands instantly. That's modestly better, but it still kicks the player out of direct control and undermines the action-feel S-E is going for.

The problem is that this teeters dangerously close to XIII's automated combat. FF games inherited a clunky UI, and rather than properly streamlining it--like they should--they automate it and kick the player out of the gameplay. No, you make good games by forcing the player to make choices on what spells and abilities they equip. This is called "opportunity cost." If you don't have the right stuff equipped somewhere in your party you deserve the game over, or at least be defenseless while you have to menu-surf in the middle of a fight. It works quite well in Dark Souls. I don't see a reason why it couldn't work in Final Fantasy.