Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (gameplay/combat)

[pearl02556]

I would very much prefer open world and active combat myself.

 

[Loxetta]

haha I think XII did this.

If I remember correctly there were a few times my party members dropped dead AFTER I was done with a fight because I wasn't paying attention.

I think that happened to me too (it's been YEARS since I played XII tho)

I love stuff like this because I don't like the separation of battle gameplay and field gameplay, or the separation of general game mechanics from the story. I know some of it is necessary, but close the distance and it can really enrich the world of the game, and make it more immersive and challenging.

I'm playing CC again atm and noticed that status effects like poison stay with Zack after battles, but never affect him outside of 'combat mode'. It takes me out of the game a little bit.

 

[Diamonddark]

The more and more I think about this remake, the more I realise it will be awful (for me). And for one single reason (for me) - it was the battle system in the OG that made the game the game. If you weren't battling, you were watching the story unfold. The rest was simply running around, collecting items, breeding. Nothing another game couldn't do.

These "action RPG's" are terrible (for me). Horribly BORING button bashers. ALL of them. They are not RPG's.

The "remake" cannot touch on this as soon as you make it any amount of action-based fighting. No matter how much they add it to make it seem like a cross-between.

It cannot be a remake without the same (of VERY similar) battle system. Without it, it's just another version of the game, not a remake of a wonderful masterpiece.

 

[Ite]

I have the same impulses, Diamonddark, but the original isn't going anywhere. This looks to be similar to the combat system seen in Dragon Age and FFXII, which are about as button-mashy as the original FF7 (I remember the old joke from the 90s: Press X to win FF7)

 

[Tennyo]

XII's battle system is awesome. If the remake is anything like XII I'll be happy. :3

Also, wouldn't you technically press circle?

 

[Diamonddark]

Also, wouldn't you technically press circle?

Beaten by a technicality...

 

[Diamonddark]

Button bashing = no need to do anything BUT attack vs thinking five or more moves ahead in a fight is what I am referring to.

I can't see any sort of strategic thinking happening with this. Slash-Slash-Heal, rinse and repeat.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'm withholding judgment until we see more.

 

[Octo]

Ysee. I want the battle system to be the same, because I could do that and tbh in FFVII I didn't find myself having to think too far ahead. I mean lets face it, unless you don't know about materia and elemental weaknesses, FFVII's battles are pretty easy.

Anything where I have to move around, as well as having to do all the other shit like look after other party members and cast spells/use abilities. I totally fail at. *coughcough*MassEffect*cough*

But I'm ok with the modern Zelda games, because it's just Link you have to deal with.

Anyway, I doubt SE are going to accomodate my mental deficiencies

 

[Diamonddark]

..and tbh in FFVII I didn't find myself having to think too far ahead. I mean lets face it, unless you don't know about materia and elemental weaknesses, FFVII's battles are pretty easy.

Thinking ahead was not because the fights were hard, but because it was set-up that way. And I enjoyed it.

Tennyo, I found XII's battle system a good middle ground actually, if not a little on the boring side.

With every game, magic and strategy become less important, making way for movement and attack. Which, isn't what an RPG is about.

Anyone remember Soul Reaver?...

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

With every game, magic and strategy become less important, making way for movement and attack. Which, isn't what an RPG is about.

Depends on the RPG, really. FFTactics combined strategy and battlefield movement extremely well.

Granted, that was a tactical RPG, but, really, the perfect blend of an action RPG with other elements is just waiting to be developed. I'd rather they not give up on the search in favor of deciding that it's already been done as well as it can ever be.

 

[Tennyo]

To be honest I've never at really spent a lot of time "thinking ahead" in FFVII. Most battles I just hold down the circle button and it's over. Make sure I heal when I need to and I'm good.

X and XII were the games that I felt pushed me the most in terms of strategy. X's battles sometimes felt like a game of chess where as XII was kind of like team management and I loved it.

 

[Loxetta]

I don't think many people will agree with me here, but I found I had to use more strategy in Crisis Core than in FF7.

In FF7 I had three characters that I could specialize so that none of the fights surprised me. And at higher levels the battles really started to stagnate.

In CC I only had Zack With the materia I could strengthen Zack in many different directions, but it was hard to make him good 'all around' fighter, so I had to be careful about some of the battles. I died a lot because of Zack not being equipped properly for certain fights. (Movers were the worst until I learned about Graviga).

As long as they don't fuck up the materia system I'll be happy. I don't care for the turn-based system. I must confess, in fact, that I actively dislike it. I'm an impatient kind of player.

 

[Ite]

I am more invested in the exploration aspect of gameplay. If the camera control is anything like FFXII, I will be a very happy man. If it's like FFX, I will be a sad panda.

I want to walk around the slums with the camera angled up at the Plate. I want to scan the horizon, looking for a settlement in the seemingly endless Grasslands.

In my ultimate fantasy there would be a first-person mode like TES, but that's not something I've seen Square ever do so I'm not holding my breath.

 

[ForceStealer]

I actually kind of like the oppressive feeling a locked top-down camera can provide to an environment like the slums.

 

[Lex]

^I agree force, but I also think they can pull off the oppressive feeling with a free camera. When you look up, all you see are shanty metal sheet roof coverings and if you can see behind them, the plate. I loved the look of the slums in the first trailer actually, I feel like they nailed the style without it being a carbon copy of the original.

Visually at least, all they've shown me has made me excited for more.

 

[ForceStealer]

Definitely. I love the white, cold light streaming between the plates.

 

[Tetsujin]

Button bashing = no need to do anything BUT attack vs thinking five or more moves ahead in a fight is what I am referring to.

I can't see any sort of strategic thinking happening with this. Slash-Slash-Heal, rinse and repeat.

So, the same as the original FFVII then?

There is no strategic thinking with the ATB, it's kind of impossible due to its "active time" nature. You can't think several moves ahead when whose turn it is next constantly shifts with no possibility to see the enemies' ATB bars.

I can understand people not being into action-based combat but I find it strange when the ATB is made out to be this strategic thinking man's system when it was a conscious move away from that.

 

[Diamonddark]

Tetsujin. Cool. I guess Chess isn't strategic BECAUSE you can't see what move your opponent will make next, or that you can't plan ahead due to the sheer nature of that fact.

I clearly saw the battle system differently to you, and maybe enjoyed and could predict better the cause and effect of levelling has on each character? After the initial few seconds of a battle, it's very simple to determine what my strategy would be based on a number of factors including; the state of the battle (pre-emptive/back attack, the orders of my characters ATB bars and how I have set each character up).

Setting up relevant defences first could mean skipping your first characters move to fend poison (for example) etc etc etc.

I guess you just chose your first characters strongest attack every time?

 

[Tetsujin]

No, chess is very much a strategic game. But ATB ain't chess.

Chess has each player take turns back and forth. ATB doesn't. Enemies can attack while you're still thinking about which action to select next.

The amount of strategy that goes into FFVII's system can still be applied to a more action-based system, and the button mashing of an action system still very much works on the ATB.

 

[Ite]

Chess isn't comparable to FF, unless you mean FFT. FF has always been based on D&D, and the ATB is kind of like an angry DM that's like "roll initiative, what do you do? *waits five seconds* You haven't decided? You're being attacked." Strategy comes from delaying actions and setting up combos, it just isn't like chess at all.

 

[hian]

So, the same as the original FFVII then?

There is no strategic thinking with the ATB, it's kind of impossible due to its "active time" nature. You can't think several moves ahead when whose turn it is next constantly shifts with no possibility to see the enemies' ATB bars.

I can understand people not being into action-based combat but I find it strange when the ATB is made out to be this strategic thinking man's system when it was a conscious move away from that.

Now, ignoring the fact that you can set the ATB to wait, reducing strategy to "having time to think" is an overly simplistic view on strategy.

Yes, the ATB forces you to think on the fly before the enemy acts, that however does not prevent you from thinking several moves ahead.
I personally, have no trouble planning moves ahead with the FFVII ATB speed. In fact, I now have it on max, and still always think moves ahead.

Not knowing when the enemy is going to act does not prevent you from thinking several moves ahead either.
You always have a rough idea of how fast the enemies are, and you always have a rough idea after a few rounds what their attack lists and patterns are, which are the only elements you need on par of the enemy for thinking ahead in battle.

I just braved the Midgar Swamps, killed the Midgar Zolom and got the Beta Enemy skill with a level 16 party. That requires strategy. In fact, it only requires strategy and nothing else.

Not to say that FFVII is some sort of king of strategical games - it still is more strategical than, say, Kingdom Hearts (by far).

Most people who could "bash the circle button" to complete FFVII are, in my experience, people who power-level as a matter of fact in-between each dungeon because they're RPG veterans, or they're people who already know FFVII inside-out.

 

[Tetsujin]

Now, ignoring the fact that you can set the ATB to wait, reducing strategy to "having time to think" is an overly simplistic view on strategy.

I didn't, but I couldn't be bothered with a tl;dr about all the other ways in which chess would be more strategic and how it allows you think "several moves ahead" whereas FFVII doesn't. I'm not saying you can't think ahead but it'S the phrasing of "several moves ahead" that I take issues with, because a system like ATB doesn't even have proper turns you can take.
It allows for knowing what attacks an enemy can use but it's not the same as the back and forth of a chess game where one move of yours will leave your opponent certain options and you try to put yourself in their position and predict what they might do based on their remaining pieces and yours, so that their move a will lead to you doing b and them hopefully doing c because then you take them out with your d ( ).

That's what I think of as thinking "several moves ahead" whereas I'd think of the VII stuff as more of a "general preparedness".
It's more like 'okay so this enemy uses this attack so I'm going to protect myself ahead of time and it's weak against this stuff so that's what I'm gonna use in combination with other attacks, aaand go.'

 

[hian]

]I didn't, but I couldn't be bothered with a tl;dr about all the other ways in which chess would be more strategic and how it allows you think "several moves ahead" whereas FFVII doesn't.

"More strategic" is a difficult topic to wrestle with since "strategy" is simply the act of planning for an encounter, and the amount of strategy a game allows for goes down to the amount of variables that go into the game.

FFVII has more variables than chess. Even if you break down all the potential chess moves that can possibly happen, that is still less than all that can happen in the FFVII battle system, considering how many more variables go into that system with more "pieces"(characters and NPC enemies), "moves"(magic, attack etc.) and the presence of the system math behind it all (which does not exist in chess).

Now, many people will argue that having too many variables ruin strategy (I'm one of them) because humans cannot reasonably account for all of them, meaning that the more variables you present the less viable your predictions get and the more random everything will appear to be (Street Fighter VS Tekken is an excellent example of this debate on strategy) - however, the point here is that it isn't as clear cut to the point that you can easily dismiss ATB systems as non-strategic.

The FFVII variables aren't so obtuse and plenty that the game system breaks into the territory of random. And, I would argue that if FFVII had a versus online component, that would actually make the game more strategically demanding than chess by far. I would also argue that the relative "lack of variables"(of which there are still countless) in chess, is what makes chess the better balanced game. More strategical necessarily though? No. Just better balanced.

I'm not saying you can't think ahead but it'S the phrasing of "several moves ahead" that I take issues with, because a system like ATB doesn't even have proper turns you can take.

Which is irrelevant. Jenova casting "time" is one move. The next time she acts, is her next move.

It is perfectly possibly to, at the moment Jenova casts time, go "Oh shit, Jenova might cast time two more times and then my entire party will be paralyzed for an indefinite amount of time, so I need to heal and buff now in case that happens" (which would be thinking two moves ahead), or "I'll use bolt with all to spread the damage around with Cloud, then I'll attack individually with Barret and Red aiming for the two enemies that had the last attacks (meaning they'll be the next enemies up granting they all move at the same speed) taking out two enemies to manage their total damage output before my next time to heal.".

These are all concrete examples of thinking several moves ahead, and these are all things I think constantly while managing my fights in ATB games.

It allows for knowing what attacks an enemy can use but it's not the same as the back and forth of a chess game where one move of yours will leave your opponent certain options and you try to put yourself in their position and predict what they might do based on their remaining pieces and yours, so that their move a will lead to you doing b and them hopefully doing c because then you take them out with your d ( ).

Actually it does. Me using "Mind Blow" on Midgar Zolom means Migdar Zolom cannot use "Beta" down the road. It is literally the exact same kind of strategical thinking as in Chess when you bar a move through positioning or capture.

That's what I think of as thinking "several moves ahead" whereas I'd think of the VII stuff as more of a "general preparedness".
It's more like 'okay so this enemy uses this attack so I'm going to protect myself ahead of time and it's weak against this stuff so that's what I'm gonna use in combination with other attacks, aaand go.'

If the person you replied to had said "several turns ahead" I'd be more inclined to agree, except he didn't.
As for general preparedness, I don't see the distinction. Unless you're a chess mastermind, and/or have actually limited the pieces down to the point that you can easily see the exact moves your opponent is limited to, then your "general preparedness" is exactly what most people open their chess games with, when the board is open and non of the pieces have moved yet.

As I've already shown, there are plenty of moves in FFVII that you can do as counters to specific moves of enemy NPCs.
"Reflect" is one. Setting up your materia to nullify or even drain certain magic attacks, or using specific skills to nullify other specific skills.

Yes, in general, FFVII can be played on general preparedness - just casting cure regularly, and using all your strongest attacks.
It can however, also be played with restrictions (not necessarily contrived ones either - just simply ones like not power-leveling, or not stealing better equipment ahead of time they appear in shops) that call for very specific tactics in order for enemies to be overcome-able.
One might argue that this is another proof of FFVII's depth, as it allows for a much wider game-play experience than a lot of other games.

Again, is FFVII super strategical? No. Does it have the balancing, and by result, the depth of Chess? No. Is it without strategy, or even meaningful strategy? No.

It's a strategic game, and the ATB system is no bar to that what so ever.

 

[Random Nobody]

OK but how they gonna do the slapfight scene, like, this shit keeps me up at night.

I mean, in the best (worst?) case scenario, it'd be like the Snake/Liquid Ocelot fight, but I can't tell if that would actually be a good thing, or if I just secretly want to see someone get mollywhopped in stilettos.