ALL RPG's tend to be extremely light on tactics, not very innovative, and a simple treadmill for the vast majority of their "dozens of hours" of gameplay. Except from the occasional boss and sub-boss (where tactics is emphasized merely because of their threat and toughness in general and a heavier emphasis on "strengths and weaknesses")
How was tactics presented in the past? Well, previously there was a lot of trial and error, the occasional "information" spell to cast to find out enemy weak spots... now it's mainly called "read a FAQ if you want to know." And what did it functionally do...? Well, certainly not ensure you WIN. After all, you're playing from the hero's standpoint, and heroes aren't supposed to die to random encounters, so... really, for 95% of the chaff encounters in a game, it makes you win the combat a BIT faster so you can head towards the next plot point, or manage your resources better so you're being THAT much more efficient. You can stress tactics and personal difficulty yourself mainly by moving as fast as you can, so you get to tougher enemies before the designers think you SHOULD be getting to them, so... That's not real design, however; that's being at a different point on the graph or voluntarily trying to take on a big, unknown risk or "above your level" area.
RPG's--JRPG, PC-RPG, and MMO alike--share any number of features, and most specifically THAT feature. The vast majority of combat is there to look cool, make you feel powerful, and stretch out the playtime; unless you're actually playing a full-fledged tactical RPG, the encounters are almost universally chaff, and "tactics need not matter." Why do you think almost every "I like XXX" and "I dislike YYY" comment from fans of one genre or another cluster around story, character design, plot in general and multi-threaded options, cutscenes (and within that "in engine" or "CG"), NPC conversation, how "roleplaying-y" it feels to them (such as "it's important that I play one character of my own construction to be ME")... Certainly tiresome gameplay elements are brought up as well, but usually no broader comparative context, and usually with no analysis of similar tiresome elements of their favored genre. "Taste" is overriding, and "an in-depth tactical analysis of combat" is WAYYYY down on the list.
Random encounters--one of the biggest staples of RPGs but JRPGs especially--was completely removed, as is being FORCED to fight most combats (as in, "trapped areas" or "kill them all to open the gate"). You can avoid as much as you want, and run through almost everything else--though you'll take a bit of damage while doing so. That makes for travel without pointless combat delay and without needing to resort to a "teleport wherever you want to" menu that tends to detract from the world itself feeling solid.
The much-maligned (and IMHO, much-misunderstood) Gambit system is, in a word, glorious. It's called "automatically streamline whatever tasks in the game you find annoyingly repetitive or pointless," and who in heck wouldn't want that in ANY game? How many people ENJOY going through a few submenus to their healer to full up the HP bars on their party outside of combat? (And how often do people curse killing that last enemy too quickly so your healer doing GET a final heal off, forcing you TO use the menu system.) How many FF skills, like stealing, fell by the wayside because they were repetitive, didn't reward you highly, and slowed down combat? Just how FUN is it to hit one button repeatedly to "attack, action stops, attack, action stops, attack, action stops, attack" during a lot of those encounters where you just don't care, and your characters are simply swinging their way through a trivial combat? I mean, people complain about CG cutscenes "taking them out of the game..." Why do they also not complain about continual combat subscreens, transitions, an menu access for even the most trivial tasks?
Meanwhile, you can play FF12 anywhere between "manually do EVERY little thing" to "gambit only the stuff you find most annoying" to "really spend time working on complex programs;" you're not FORCED into any one scheme, unlike almost every other RPG. (Though it would have been nice to toss the "turned base devoutists" a bone and have an option that would auto-stop the live action and switch to a character when their attack came up, because otherwise you're manually timing it and flipping around with the shoulder buttons.) And amusingly, what do the Gambits themselves represent? Basically what every gamer is MENTALLY doing the whole time anyway. They figure out when it's better to use the mana efficient heals, when you need to use the higher-effect ones, when to use consumable items, what to use in-combat versus out, who can be more easily dedicated to one task or another... Eventually, a whole lot of your actions are MENTALLY automatic anyway (and you're not applying any meaningful "active tactics" to them), and with Gambits you could simply make them functionally automatic, without having to bother with multiple key presses, menu switching, or whatever.
FF12 is very much a change-up on the FF format, and IMHO an extremely good one. You can still play what you want, but moreover you can speed up or remove a whole lot of the pointless chaff that's pretty much a way of life on all the other FF's, and JRPGs at large. And meanwhile it makes for a more seamless game, and one where you're looking more at the world and everything in it than tensing up for the next random encounter to find out if you should even remotely care about it. Some things like the License Board were good but milquetoast, and certainly there is still more that can be tuned and experimented with... But FF12 was a league away from earlier games in many ways that I've been hoping for AGES. I'm just hoping they don't backpedal.
Meanwhile, "innovative tactics" in almost all mainstream RPG's are functionally stunted. They're playing around, but mainly what they're playing around in is the border between "turn-based" and "realtime," "on board action" versus "battle board," "single character" to "small party" to "large group" mechanics... How many do you see experimenting in even some of the simplest things tactical games have had for damn near decades? Flanking and rear-arc attacks? Formations? Elevation? Equipment (such as shields) with pronounced situational effects and bypasses? Mainstream RPG's are very much designed away from that kind of complexity, and seemingly has no interest in pulling it in. (Though I'm hopeful with some of the footage I've seen from White Knight Story.) We're seeing more "combos," but then those are nice and showy, can be cinematic, and tend to amount to little more than "multiple PC's getting their attacks off before the enemy."
I'm not holding my breath.
...
/looks up
--ahem-- Sorry for the lengthy tangent. We now return you to your Lost Odyssey thread, already in progress.
How was tactics presented in the past? Well, previously there was a lot of trial and error, the occasional "information" spell to cast to find out enemy weak spots... now it's mainly called "read a FAQ if you want to know." And what did it functionally do...? Well, certainly not ensure you WIN. After all, you're playing from the hero's standpoint, and heroes aren't supposed to die to random encounters, so... really, for 95% of the chaff encounters in a game, it makes you win the combat a BIT faster so you can head towards the next plot point, or manage your resources better so you're being THAT much more efficient. You can stress tactics and personal difficulty yourself mainly by moving as fast as you can, so you get to tougher enemies before the designers think you SHOULD be getting to them, so... That's not real design, however; that's being at a different point on the graph or voluntarily trying to take on a big, unknown risk or "above your level" area.
RPG's--JRPG, PC-RPG, and MMO alike--share any number of features, and most specifically THAT feature. The vast majority of combat is there to look cool, make you feel powerful, and stretch out the playtime; unless you're actually playing a full-fledged tactical RPG, the encounters are almost universally chaff, and "tactics need not matter." Why do you think almost every "I like XXX" and "I dislike YYY" comment from fans of one genre or another cluster around story, character design, plot in general and multi-threaded options, cutscenes (and within that "in engine" or "CG"), NPC conversation, how "roleplaying-y" it feels to them (such as "it's important that I play one character of my own construction to be ME")... Certainly tiresome gameplay elements are brought up as well, but usually no broader comparative context, and usually with no analysis of similar tiresome elements of their favored genre. "Taste" is overriding, and "an in-depth tactical analysis of combat" is WAYYYY down on the list.
You indeed don't understand his complaints, else you wouldn't be harping on "innovative combat," which is something he didn't even bring up. His specific complain was about the "mention of Final Fantasy and comments on JRPG's in general," which is something that FF12 certainly did break in form to good extent. It didn't "innovate combat" wholesale so much as streamline it, and the rest of the game as well.
Random encounters--one of the biggest staples of RPGs but JRPGs especially--was completely removed, as is being FORCED to fight most combats (as in, "trapped areas" or "kill them all to open the gate"). You can avoid as much as you want, and run through almost everything else--though you'll take a bit of damage while doing so. That makes for travel without pointless combat delay and without needing to resort to a "teleport wherever you want to" menu that tends to detract from the world itself feeling solid.
The much-maligned (and IMHO, much-misunderstood) Gambit system is, in a word, glorious. It's called "automatically streamline whatever tasks in the game you find annoyingly repetitive or pointless," and who in heck wouldn't want that in ANY game? How many people ENJOY going through a few submenus to their healer to full up the HP bars on their party outside of combat? (And how often do people curse killing that last enemy too quickly so your healer doing GET a final heal off, forcing you TO use the menu system.) How many FF skills, like stealing, fell by the wayside because they were repetitive, didn't reward you highly, and slowed down combat? Just how FUN is it to hit one button repeatedly to "attack, action stops, attack, action stops, attack, action stops, attack" during a lot of those encounters where you just don't care, and your characters are simply swinging their way through a trivial combat? I mean, people complain about CG cutscenes "taking them out of the game..." Why do they also not complain about continual combat subscreens, transitions, an menu access for even the most trivial tasks?
Meanwhile, you can play FF12 anywhere between "manually do EVERY little thing" to "gambit only the stuff you find most annoying" to "really spend time working on complex programs;" you're not FORCED into any one scheme, unlike almost every other RPG. (Though it would have been nice to toss the "turned base devoutists" a bone and have an option that would auto-stop the live action and switch to a character when their attack came up, because otherwise you're manually timing it and flipping around with the shoulder buttons.) And amusingly, what do the Gambits themselves represent? Basically what every gamer is MENTALLY doing the whole time anyway. They figure out when it's better to use the mana efficient heals, when you need to use the higher-effect ones, when to use consumable items, what to use in-combat versus out, who can be more easily dedicated to one task or another... Eventually, a whole lot of your actions are MENTALLY automatic anyway (and you're not applying any meaningful "active tactics" to them), and with Gambits you could simply make them functionally automatic, without having to bother with multiple key presses, menu switching, or whatever.
FF12 is very much a change-up on the FF format, and IMHO an extremely good one. You can still play what you want, but moreover you can speed up or remove a whole lot of the pointless chaff that's pretty much a way of life on all the other FF's, and JRPGs at large. And meanwhile it makes for a more seamless game, and one where you're looking more at the world and everything in it than tensing up for the next random encounter to find out if you should even remotely care about it. Some things like the License Board were good but milquetoast, and certainly there is still more that can be tuned and experimented with... But FF12 was a league away from earlier games in many ways that I've been hoping for AGES. I'm just hoping they don't backpedal.
Meanwhile, "innovative tactics" in almost all mainstream RPG's are functionally stunted. They're playing around, but mainly what they're playing around in is the border between "turn-based" and "realtime," "on board action" versus "battle board," "single character" to "small party" to "large group" mechanics... How many do you see experimenting in even some of the simplest things tactical games have had for damn near decades? Flanking and rear-arc attacks? Formations? Elevation? Equipment (such as shields) with pronounced situational effects and bypasses? Mainstream RPG's are very much designed away from that kind of complexity, and seemingly has no interest in pulling it in. (Though I'm hopeful with some of the footage I've seen from White Knight Story.) We're seeing more "combos," but then those are nice and showy, can be cinematic, and tend to amount to little more than "multiple PC's getting their attacks off before the enemy."
I'm not holding my breath.
...
/looks up
--ahem-- Sorry for the lengthy tangent. We now return you to your Lost Odyssey thread, already in progress.
