I don't think people understand Final Fantasy 7 Remake's battle system; Let's talk about it.

[JWeinCom]

Hiku said:

JWeinCom said:
The combat was ok. The AI too often stood there doing nothing instead of attacking to fill ATB gauge. And having to hold their hand to make them do everything in no way enhanced my experience. I kind of figured after Cloud yelled at Barett to use lightning he'd just kind of use it. Maybe it will make more sense when enemies require more complex strategies, but here it was just a nuisance.

This is really nothing like the "classic" battle system except in the vaguest sense that commands are still a part of it. And even if it were, then that's not necessarily a good thing. We've been doing action rpgs for a while and figured out what works and what doesn't. So, it would make sense to what was learned and implement it.

You had to hold their hand to do everything in the original game, or else they'd just stand there raising their ATB while taking damage, waiting for you to issue a command. And so you do that here as well.
Except they will now decide how to raise their ATB gauge, which involves regular attacks (which are not the equivalent of normal attacks from the first game, but much weaker), blocking, or trying to get hit as little as possible, which may be why you saw it do nothing. That too raises ATB, and may be the more effective option in some situations. Though it could just have been stupid.

I understand preferring one combat system over another. But it's probably not a coincidence that if a character is given an A.I. that does anything, even something minimal, people expect it, or want it, to do more. That's probably ingrained in our minds, after playing many other games.
I've read some comments to the extent of "well if it does X then it feels weird if it doesn't do Y", but that's narrow way of looking at.

What would be a better way to implement "full control" of party members in an action based combat system like this?
If your allies did absolutely nothing by themselves, would that be better? I think that would be very strange in an action based system like this, not to mention immersion breaking.
So having the characters do minimal, some times insignificant, damage seems like a good compromise. It matches the intensity and pace from Cloud's normal attacks, and the mechanical 'excuse' for it is that it raises the ATB.

So for people who prefer a different combat system, that's fine. But it's supposed to be "full control" like the original, in an action based format.
So do you guys have any suggestions for how "full control" in an action based combat system can be improved?

The original was a turn based game.  Something that makes sense in a turn based game does not necessarily make sense in a real time action RPG. If the characters in there acted on their own, then I would literally be doing nothing.  

What would be a better way to implement "full control" of party members?  I don't know.  But that's the wrong question.  The better question is should they implement "full control" in the first place? Does having full control over how the characters spend their ATB points actually make the game any more fun?  It might in the full game when there are more options and bosses presumably require more strategy.  But, in the demo, it didn't improve things at all for me, it just added an extra chore that took me out of the rhythm.