Imagine chess.
Then imagine chess wherein you are entitled to make a move every minute every minute regardless of whether or not your opponent has moved.
That's ATB.
Final Fantasy 16
- Thread starter Old_Hunter_77
- Start date
Then imagine chess wherein you are entitled to make a move every minute every minute regardless of whether or not your opponent has moved.
That's ATB.
Any game where the player is not able to make an action until their turn becomes available is turned based, this includes being able to move around but not actually being able to do anything. It is irrelevant whether the enemy or NPC is able to act regardless of whether the player can currently act or not.
To put it another way, if you can press the attack button 100 times and you'll swing your sword, shoot, etc. immediately accounting for the time it takes to do the animation 100 times, it's an action RPG. If you press the attack button 100 and nothing happens until a bar fills up or you've got a menu pop up or whatever, it's a turned based game.
That's what speed chess is. If you don't act in a certain period you forfeit your turn and the opponent gets to go again. There are still express turns going on in either case.
No, you wait for a turn. The bar does nothing but indicate when the turn is about to become available. ATB is the same thing as turn based. The sole difference between ATB and turned based is the player can actually see the point the turn becomes available rather than whose turns and when they're up being completely under the hood, that's it.
Cooldown means you can still DO other things but you can't do that specific thing until it's over. If you can use fire and then not be able to use it for 10 seconds but can still immediately cast ice regardless, that's a cooldown. If you can't do anything whatsoever until a bar fills up, that's a turn.
IIRC you can actually set the options for certain games with ATB as to whether the ATB will continue filling or not while you navigate menus. Apparently FF7 has three settings for it -
Active - ATB fills regardless of what's happening.
Recommended - ATB pauses during attack animations.
Wait - ATB stops while doing menus and during attack animations.
Anyway I would argue for games like FF7 that it's still sorta turn based regardless of the setting you picked - since you can't do shit unless one of the bars is filled. Thus enabling your 'turn'. It's just a messier way of dictating turns. I can sorta see your point but I'd hesitate to call an ATB system anything more than a whackier turn based system unless there was some sort of perpetual real time component to it. Such as being able to constantly move. Like FFXII - where you can still move around, change targets, disengage while waiting for your bar to fill up.
Games that use the Wait setting are 100% just turn based with less clarity.
Setting aside whatever you want to call things, I feel like the Active/Recommended settings are kinda just dumb or unfair advantage towards the enemy. They can make decisions instantly. You have to faff about the menus, even if you have already prethought and premade your decision before the bar fills up.
The difference is that anybody can act. That's a clear material difference between ATB and turns.
How is it your "turn" if anyone else on the field can act during it?
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ATB is basically just a clever term to disguise the fact that it’s still ultimately a form of turn based strategy. The participants aren’t bound to follow a particular order or sequence (hell, this can even be true of actual turned based games with certain perks or skills), but either way they’re still all “waiting for their next turn” at some point.
Enough of the ATB arguments already. Regardless, ATB is still turn-based with a fancier, actiony look, and that is all I have to say in a matter. This is the FF16 thread, not "let's argue about Final Fantasy 7's if it's turned based or not!" thread.
Combat. After looking at the video a couple times, I am already loving it. Can't wait to see what else is brought to the table. I do hope there are air combos and Air juggles. Who am I kidding? Of course they're going to be there. I know that you're only playing as a one character, but his range attacks are the magic he can cast himself, or whatever comes from his assists. The summon battles are obviously a spectacle, but a fun spectacle. The qte's eye exactly don't mind in this case, cuz it looks like they're more of the Asura's Wrath variety. They shouldn't be too intrusive. Besides, Kingdom Hearts 3 still has QTES and action commands, and I didn't hear anybody complain about those. I know my big bro is getting this for PS5 later, so I'll just play it at his place.
Combat. After looking at the video a couple times, I am already loving it. Can't wait to see what else is brought to the table. I do hope there are air combos and Air juggles. Who am I kidding? Of course they're going to be there. I know that you're only playing as a one character, but his range attacks are the magic he can cast himself, or whatever comes from his assists. The summon battles are obviously a spectacle, but a fun spectacle. The qte's eye exactly don't mind in this case, cuz it looks like they're more of the Asura's Wrath variety. They shouldn't be too intrusive. Besides, Kingdom Hearts 3 still has QTES and action commands, and I didn't hear anybody complain about those. I know my big bro is getting this for PS5 later, so I'll just play it at his place.
I feel like the term JRPG started off as a positive, before it started to have a negative connotation in the PS3 era. But I remember back in the PS1-2 era, the term JRPG was a badge of honour. It was synonymous with long play times, good bang for buck and big epic stories.
I don't deny there was a time of discrimination against the term, and against Japanese games in general. Though I do feel many Japanese developers did fall behind the curve when we began to enter the HD era. So I get the somewhat negative sentiment during the time, but I do think Phil Fish was a dickhead, and various devs downright slandering the Japanese development in games media to have lacked decorum.
Anyway I feel like the term has kind of evolved beyond what the original term. Like how the term "ARPG"(as in the acronym specifically, spoken with the letters pronounced "A-RPG") is kind of a blanket term for Diablo-likes rather than action RPGs in general which are called a more specific "ACTION"-RPG. I always found this really fucking confusing and I hate it, but it is what it is. Somehow despite what the acronym actually means, people have created a new category of A-RPGs that aren't all Action-RPGs. Whacky shit.
CRPG, which stands of Computer RPGs also is used as a blanket term for old school style PC RPGs. There's plenty of RPGs on Computers nowadays, but that's not how the term is used. It was used for the old isometric GURPsey DnDey type RPGs like Baldur's Gate or OG Fallout, and is still a relevant term for newer entries into the genre like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin. But you won't see people call Daggerfall or Skyrim a CRPG.
To me anyway, JRPGs kind of refer to a more linear-narrative style of RPG. There's a lot of indie developers that take up a lot of Japanese influences in terms of gameplay, design or art style and I personally have nothing against them getting the JRPG or Anime label even if they aren't Japanese. I'm also totally fine with older titles in the vein like Septerra Core or Anachronox being called a JRPG. Something like Undertale wears its Mother/Earthbound influence on its sleeve.
I also noticed the term TRPG being used, almost like a subset of JRPGs but not always. But at least where I talked about shit, we wouldn't call FFT or Disgaea a JRPG, we would call them TRPGs to differentiate them. Since they focused on grid based combat, and the gameplay was almost entirely a mix of story or battles and it lacked the whole open world exploration and dungeons angle - which made them quite distinct compared to a more typical JRPG.
I'm also kinda against just calling everything an RPG just because it has some sorta level up system. So I kinda get where the Dark Souls discourse comes from. I'd hesitate to call it an RPG at all, much less a subset of the RPG genre. I feel like Souls-likes have a closer relationship to action adventure games or Metroidvanias. I remember having my share of conversations with people regarding whether the typical JRPG was a 'real' RPG or not, due to the general absence of any real role playing elements. It sounds bad, but at least within my discussions it was more about changing up terminology rather than an excuse for discrimination.
The Pokemon thing is also interesting cause I feel like there is a genre of monster taming/breeding/collecting type games so I can see why people might want to categorize it further. I never thought too deeply about it but I don't see it as a "the world likes Pokemon therefore it's not a JRPG" deal.
Maybe we do need a new term nowadays. Kinda like how System Shock and Deus Ex style games used to just be action RPGS, or maybe shooter/FPS- RPG or whatever but we did get a new term for them recently - immersive sims. But new terms don't mean anything if it ain't adopted on a large enough scale.
I do think the whole discrimination against anime-isms was a bit stupid. Just look at shit like Genshin Impact now, fully embraces the Japanese/anime side of thing while being a Chinese game. Like it or hate it, regardless of your thoughts on mobile/gacha shit - you can't deny how bloody successful and impactful it has been. I don't know how it's like in Western countries, but down here in Malaysia Hoyoverse-stuff keeps getting cross promotion with bubble tea shops and whatnot and I just find it absolutely bizarre.
Anyway despite a shitty period where the term was used in a discriminatory fashion - I personally am not against using countries to define game genres if a specific place does have a rather distinct culture or style. Like you're not always going to get Italian, French or Chinese chefs for restaurants of those specific cuisines but we're going to call them that anyway. It can be discriminatory, but isn't every form of categorization prone to that anyway?
I don't deny there was a time of discrimination against the term, and against Japanese games in general. Though I do feel many Japanese developers did fall behind the curve when we began to enter the HD era. So I get the somewhat negative sentiment during the time, but I do think Phil Fish was a dickhead, and various devs downright slandering the Japanese development in games media to have lacked decorum.
Anyway I feel like the term has kind of evolved beyond what the original term. Like how the term "ARPG"(as in the acronym specifically, spoken with the letters pronounced "A-RPG") is kind of a blanket term for Diablo-likes rather than action RPGs in general which are called a more specific "ACTION"-RPG. I always found this really fucking confusing and I hate it, but it is what it is. Somehow despite what the acronym actually means, people have created a new category of A-RPGs that aren't all Action-RPGs. Whacky shit.
CRPG, which stands of Computer RPGs also is used as a blanket term for old school style PC RPGs. There's plenty of RPGs on Computers nowadays, but that's not how the term is used. It was used for the old isometric GURPsey DnDey type RPGs like Baldur's Gate or OG Fallout, and is still a relevant term for newer entries into the genre like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin. But you won't see people call Daggerfall or Skyrim a CRPG.
To me anyway, JRPGs kind of refer to a more linear-narrative style of RPG. There's a lot of indie developers that take up a lot of Japanese influences in terms of gameplay, design or art style and I personally have nothing against them getting the JRPG or Anime label even if they aren't Japanese. I'm also totally fine with older titles in the vein like Septerra Core or Anachronox being called a JRPG. Something like Undertale wears its Mother/Earthbound influence on its sleeve.
I also noticed the term TRPG being used, almost like a subset of JRPGs but not always. But at least where I talked about shit, we wouldn't call FFT or Disgaea a JRPG, we would call them TRPGs to differentiate them. Since they focused on grid based combat, and the gameplay was almost entirely a mix of story or battles and it lacked the whole open world exploration and dungeons angle - which made them quite distinct compared to a more typical JRPG.
I'm also kinda against just calling everything an RPG just because it has some sorta level up system. So I kinda get where the Dark Souls discourse comes from. I'd hesitate to call it an RPG at all, much less a subset of the RPG genre. I feel like Souls-likes have a closer relationship to action adventure games or Metroidvanias. I remember having my share of conversations with people regarding whether the typical JRPG was a 'real' RPG or not, due to the general absence of any real role playing elements. It sounds bad, but at least within my discussions it was more about changing up terminology rather than an excuse for discrimination.
The Pokemon thing is also interesting cause I feel like there is a genre of monster taming/breeding/collecting type games so I can see why people might want to categorize it further. I never thought too deeply about it but I don't see it as a "the world likes Pokemon therefore it's not a JRPG" deal.
Maybe we do need a new term nowadays. Kinda like how System Shock and Deus Ex style games used to just be action RPGS, or maybe shooter/FPS- RPG or whatever but we did get a new term for them recently - immersive sims. But new terms don't mean anything if it ain't adopted on a large enough scale.
I do think the whole discrimination against anime-isms was a bit stupid. Just look at shit like Genshin Impact now, fully embraces the Japanese/anime side of thing while being a Chinese game. Like it or hate it, regardless of your thoughts on mobile/gacha shit - you can't deny how bloody successful and impactful it has been. I don't know how it's like in Western countries, but down here in Malaysia Hoyoverse-stuff keeps getting cross promotion with bubble tea shops and whatnot and I just find it absolutely bizarre.
Anyway despite a shitty period where the term was used in a discriminatory fashion - I personally am not against using countries to define game genres if a specific place does have a rather distinct culture or style. Like you're not always going to get Italian, French or Chinese chefs for restaurants of those specific cuisines but we're going to call them that anyway. It can be discriminatory, but isn't every form of categorization prone to that anyway?
Yep. Just as Sterling covered in the video. Exact same thing.
Phil Fish and all the others can still fuck off for that. Fish apparently apologized a few years ago, but I rather he done it on camera and not in some later written interview quietly done on the side. You were brave enough to run your mouth on live camera back then, why not do the same now with an apology?
In Michigan, we get plenty of anime stuff and Downtown Detroit always has an anime convention every year around April or May. While anime is still somewhat niche, it ain't unpopular to like for those in my age range or older. Ont the discrimination against anime/almost anything Japanese, is what hate most about Generation 7. You had a bunch of these know nothing numb-nut critics, jock douchebags, or straight up assholes who thought they were better than everyone else, because they don't like anime and embrace "Western values". That and in itself is a form of self-fellatio for doing nothing, but being an egotistical douche. All the more ironic as the roles have reversed. A lot of Western AAA games, publishers, and developers are on the decline, while the Japanese have been regaining their place since the mid 2010s. It's not the like the Golden Age back in the pre-HD days, but is better than nothing at all.
I have to admit, I'm a bit of an anime bigot.
I don't think anime is intrinsically bad, but I do think that a lot of games which use an anime aesthetic tend to fully lean into the worst, most cliched, laziest parts of that aesthetic.
I would add though, I think there's also a degree of bias in that anime games which don't do that tend not to be recognized as anime at all. Like, Dark Souls is still kind of anime, it has anime themes and anime storylines and even anime aesthetics. Half of its shit is blatantly ripped from Berserk. it's just different from typical anime games so those elements don't tend to get picked up on.
Jrpgs is neither positive nor negative inherently, it's about the context and the speaker's views. I just say it for clarity, cause I play a lot of Wrpgs too.
Turn based is my preferred system for all rpgs, western and Japanese, if you let me play an isometric Crpg as either real time with pause or fully turn based, I will always go fully turn based.
At the same time, I love fighting games and action games, and I always go into a game with an open mind. Action gameplay sucked in XV (mainly cause the game kinda played itself and your imput was more of a suggestion than a full command), but action was incredible in VII-R, so it can be done well and terribly in a FF game.
I think a lot of the issue here is companies trying to deflect from valid criticism of their action gameplay by describing a segment of the fandom as having been calcified into only liking turn based and nothing else.
I do like turn based primarily if I'm playing a FF game, because that's what it was for 13 games give or take, which is not an unreasonable view, and to pretend it is would be silly. At the same time, like I stated above, VII-R was incredible and so if the game does action well I will also appreciate that too and have no complaints at all.
Jrpgs are always gonna be inextricably anime-influenced. That's basically the entire flavor that differentiates them from westernized content. I literally was a Jrpg fan before I knew what anime was, at an age range where everything animated was a cartoon in my young eyes, and then as I aged I discovered the reason I liked FF so much was because it was like anime, made in Japan, and had a myriad and one inherent aspects of it that are uniquely anime-like and Japanese in origin. You legit can't make it not be anime, and if some random idiot is biased against anime because they have explored only a tiny segment of it, you can dismiss them in the same way one would dismiss someone who says all books in general suck because they didn't like the first chapter of Twilight and stopped their investigation right there.
As for FFXVI, I have no fucking clue how that's gonna turn out, cause I hate spoilers and have only seen the announcement trailer. Lets hope it's worth the ps5 purchase
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People seem to only analyze these combat systems at lvl 1 when you just start the game, when they actually take a while to be fleshed out cause they ease you into the complexity, and you wanna look at them when you're like lvl 50 and have all the tools available at your disposal. Sure, if your entire arsenal of actions is like
Attack,
Magic -> Fire/Cure,
Item-> Potion-x3,
Run Away
and nothing else to spice things up that's one thing but for the majority of the playtime a whole lot more things go into it. And I'm not even touching on enemies that just do two moves each turn and all that kinda stuff.
I remember hearing this guy claim Sailor Moon isn't anime, because he liked it, and he can't like anime. Same thing with other stuff like dbz too, though that one was a while back. Some people are just super irrational so we don't need to worry about em lol.
It's also not a scientific term, it's just colloquial definition. In Jp they just call it "command battle". It's not meant to be too literal.
Turn based is my preferred system for all rpgs, western and Japanese, if you let me play an isometric Crpg as either real time with pause or fully turn based, I will always go fully turn based.
At the same time, I love fighting games and action games, and I always go into a game with an open mind. Action gameplay sucked in XV (mainly cause the game kinda played itself and your imput was more of a suggestion than a full command), but action was incredible in VII-R, so it can be done well and terribly in a FF game.
I think a lot of the issue here is companies trying to deflect from valid criticism of their action gameplay by describing a segment of the fandom as having been calcified into only liking turn based and nothing else.
I do like turn based primarily if I'm playing a FF game, because that's what it was for 13 games give or take, which is not an unreasonable view, and to pretend it is would be silly. At the same time, like I stated above, VII-R was incredible and so if the game does action well I will also appreciate that too and have no complaints at all.
Jrpgs are always gonna be inextricably anime-influenced. That's basically the entire flavor that differentiates them from westernized content. I literally was a Jrpg fan before I knew what anime was, at an age range where everything animated was a cartoon in my young eyes, and then as I aged I discovered the reason I liked FF so much was because it was like anime, made in Japan, and had a myriad and one inherent aspects of it that are uniquely anime-like and Japanese in origin. You legit can't make it not be anime, and if some random idiot is biased against anime because they have explored only a tiny segment of it, you can dismiss them in the same way one would dismiss someone who says all books in general suck because they didn't like the first chapter of Twilight and stopped their investigation right there.
As for FFXVI, I have no fucking clue how that's gonna turn out, cause I hate spoilers and have only seen the announcement trailer. Lets hope it's worth the ps5 purchase
.You also have modifiers to this though, speed/agility determines how quick the atb fills, and you can cast spells that speed you up or slow your opponent down. Imagine how chess would be if every time you castled you got an extra move and every time you queened a pawn your opponent had to wait an extra minute for the next 4 moves or something.
People seem to only analyze these combat systems at lvl 1 when you just start the game, when they actually take a while to be fleshed out cause they ease you into the complexity, and you wanna look at them when you're like lvl 50 and have all the tools available at your disposal. Sure, if your entire arsenal of actions is like
Attack,
Magic -> Fire/Cure,
Item-> Potion-x3,
Run Away
and nothing else to spice things up that's one thing but for the majority of the playtime a whole lot more things go into it. And I'm not even touching on enemies that just do two moves each turn and all that kinda stuff.
I remember reading an article that decried the female chars in fromsoft games for being kuudere (they didn't use the term but that's what they were describing in their normie ways) so people do catch on to that. Though it's kinda hard to not notice souls being Japanese influenced when you have literal katana and iai moves that are super authentic in them. And sure they have the obvious berserk stuff too, not quite as obvious as Dragon's Dogma but it's there lol.
I remember hearing this guy claim Sailor Moon isn't anime, because he liked it, and he can't like anime. Same thing with other stuff like dbz too, though that one was a while back. Some people are just super irrational so we don't need to worry about em lol.
It's turn based, it's just unfair turns that are modified by your competence (mainly your speed), instead of a board game type of fair and balanced turn allotment, because the purpose of the combat system is to depict agents of varying talent battling in a realistic fashion. If you're a slowpoke fighting against a martial arts god he will obviously do 10 things in the time it takes you to do one.
It's also not a scientific term, it's just colloquial definition. In Jp they just call it "command battle". It's not meant to be too literal.
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And then sometimes you get the worst direction where said persons only watch DBZ, Sailor Moon, or whatever they consider mainstream, because any other anime is "too boring/different" or not like the thing they actually enjoy.
It's like the folks who only play halo/madden/CoD and ignore every other game out there. Some people just like vanilla and are too incurious to experiment.
Hey at least the younger generation broadly is not like that, cause stuff like Kimetsu no Yaiba and hero academia are super huge, so I have hopes for the future.
You know the phrase or meme "everybody's gangsta till..". Those are those type of people. They either want the blandest thing, something super normal and not "weird", or afraid of any type of difficulty and challenge. I remember meeting this one guy at GameStop who claimed to be an old school Doom fan, but was scared to pick up the the new Doom 4 at the time. He was scared of the difficulty, even though I showed him the early stages on normal mode. And I even told the guy you can always pick easy mode. Nobody's going to judge you nor force you on to play on the heart of difficulties. He decided not to pick up the game and ran out of the store. Or this one of the guy I knew and he claimed to always play Call of Duty on the hardest difficulty. I show him and his friends one gameplay footage of Bayonetta 2 on normal, and they all get scared or freak out. "Too rich for my blood!", they say.
You still have people who just watch the one anime or two in the younger generation. It's not as many as it used to be, but it's still there. I will say that there are people my age who are in their 30s, that are more willing to look at other genres or shows. I noticed a lot of anime reaction people are more than willing to look at other genres of anime or older anime. A majority of them seem to be fine with it
I've heard that criticism before and it always struck me as nonsensical, the kind of thing that only people who've never played the game would say. The game doesn't "play itself" in any fashion and if a player tries to do that, they'll get their butts kicked. Yes, you can hold down the attack button and the Player Character will just keep striking without you having to do any further presses and the party will attack without you going into menus and selecting every action for them, but there's a hell of a lot more to it. You have to play tactically and skillfully or you're going to lose against anything you're not vastly overleveled for, sometimes even then, and not to mention when you're fighting something on the same level as you.
Ok so the issue is that there's a whole plethora of animations that happen when you hit 1 button, and each one ought to be broken down in multiple unique specific inputs so that you are free to control your character. Basically the attack button should have been broken into a multiple part action mechanism that contains a jump button, two attack buttons and a roll/dodge/sidestep type act. It would look less cinematic and not flow as smoothly but it would be actually fun to control.
Add to that that the AI controlled allies are over-competent and can carry you, and that you can't control them directly on the fly like in VII-R but can only do some specitic prompt combo moves, and you are left with a flashy but hollow gameplay experience. To contrast this, in VII-R I would constantly jump from 1 char to the next to optimize triangle button cooldowns and ATB. Start with Barret cause his cooldown on triangle is the longest, switch to tifa to build her levels with some atb hits, go to cloud to go triangle stance and build back the atb, back to Barret to throw some big magics. It just works so smoothly and beautifully. I haaaaate being stuck controlling just 1 char, it feels super inefficient and it feels like the game is playing itself.
I think this is them trying to do the batman game thing, where it's more context-based, instead of each specific input doing one specific action identically all the time. That may work for messy western games, but 1: I'm not a fan of those games that do this either, and 2: I expect better of SE because they made KH1 20 years ago so they clearly know how to do this right.
I own the Royal Edition and I wanted to love the game to death. Hell I'm a proud FFXIII defender, so I don't enjoy shitting on XV at all.
