Gambits

[Ellie]

Would you employ FFXII style gambits, or some other form of automated gameplay, in your games? Do you consider them to involve skill, or do you think they defeat the purpose?

I played FFXII all the way through with gambits, and found it great, allowing me to focus on exploration and the storyline which were far more interesting than the battles. Didn't even find much need to change gambits out of the generic heal if down, attack if no magic, otherwise BLAST IT WITH PISS MAGIC.

But then it does somewhat defeat the purpose of battles.

In Guildwars 2 I typically use an array of turrets and then lure and pick off enemies one by one while the mob are dealt with automatically. I have the turrets set up to explode when dead, and better shielding, etc. It would be interesting to play a game where you went around setting traps, explosives, and then sat back and watched the battle play out while hiding in safety.

 

[coyotecraft]

I welcome it if it's a time saver. In an active time battle you don't want to waste time scrolling through your inventory to find an antidote. The real skill is planning your strategies, and you're the one making those decisions, not the computer. You could say timing is a skill, waiting for the right moment to do the right attack.

I never used the auto setting for Final Fantasy tactics because they did stupid stuff and I could finish battles much quicker manually.

Now, auto lock on for shooting games would be taking out skill from a game.

 

[Juan J. Sánchez]

Definitely a skill. Of course, when they tried to remodel FFXII into the FFXIII battle system it got way out of proportion. To this date, I still don't understand how fights in FFXIII work. I just press buttons and hope for the best. There's probably some middle ground... They say the Final Fantasy XV battle system is going to be a spectacular adaptation of the FFXII system, kind of what they wanted to do with FFXIII, but failed miserably doing so.

 

[Xhukari]

I don't know what this gambit system is, as Final Fantasy games struggle to hold me at length. But your description of it reminds me of another game; Dragon Age Origins. Each character has amount of slots (which increase as you level up) and through these slots you had whole lists of behaviours and criteria to choose form to perform activities.

To me it sounds like this Tactics system is a more in-depth version of the gambit system; the game featured fully realised real time battles too. The tactics were interesting to say the least; on easier difficulties, you could easily select tactics to make your party to manage themselves, allowing you to focus on only your character really (if you wanted to). But at higher difficulties *coughhardestcough* the Tactics system was better at removing some micromanagement aspects of the game, or having the computer automate things you may forget in the heat of the battle; such as healing other characters!

This 'Tactics' feature was in a game that, on the higher difficulties, had incredibly joyful combat if you liked WoW-esque combat of threat and Crowd Control, so wasn't something you did to bypass the mundane, but rather to allow you to focus and immerse yourself more in *your* character, and less of the party as a whole and/or significantly reduce time spent paused.

 

[Xilef]

Auto fight setting with ATB.

Anything else over complicates.

Hold Right Shoulder and press B at any moment to discard the auto fight list, hold Left Shoulder and press A when ATB is full to add character to auto fight.