Quote Originally Posted by Shin Gouken View Post
Quote Originally Posted by I'm my own MILF View Post
I found XIII to be a successful attempt at what XII had tried, and failed, to do. Whereas XII just had a programming minigame at its heart, in XIII you set the overall tactical direction of your party, which I found a hell of a lot more fast-paced, more rewarding, and downright more fun than I ever found XII to be.
XII didn't fail at what it tried to achieve, it gave you complete contol over the AI of your team so you didn't have to babysit characters you were too lazy to control. XIII gives you a number of set strategies to choose from and forces you to constantly shift them. But shifting paradigms is all you do.

As for the AI in FFXIII, it's completley flawed, as AI is in most games.

Here are some examples.

Medics will heal you out of critical but no further until debuffs have been removed. Fail. Some debuffs would be better suited removing as priority. But more than this, if you are expecting an enemy to ready his bigboy attack, you wont survive while medics simply remove negative status ailments.

Synergists will continue to cast the same buff on a character who is having that buff removed every turn. A tank will have protect recast on them every turn as the enemy auto dispels it with every attack, therefore making a synergist useless.

Commandos will attack random targets. If i fight a Long Gui and stagger one of the legs and bring out three commandos, two of them only have a 1 in 3 chance of attacking the staggered leg.

The list goes on. The fact is, AI is not perfect and having a system which is dependant on it fails.

Before the FFXII counter arguements start, i would like to remind people that FFXII is not reliant on Gambits. Even if it was, you can change Gambits at a moments notice. You can also overwrite gambits with manual commands on ALL THREE characters.

FFXII gives you the freedom to simulate a paradigm shift system. Character set ups can be changed whenever you want. Characters can be equipped as Sentinals, Medics, Synergists, Sabatours, commandos or ravagers and switched at a moments notice. The gambits can be tweaked to prioritize whichever buffs you want. Whichever way you look at it, XII is a superior system to XIII.
I can go over all sorts of things wrong with this. "The Commando attacking randomly fails because it's out of my control", this is in your control, the control of knowing when to use what Paradigm. You're looking at the entire thing on a microscopic level, which the game isn't meant for, it's meant for a macroscopic, don't use Cerberus when there are multiple enemies, instead, Cerberus will shine when you get that adamantoise on the GROUND (lol reference), instead, focus on group based paradigms until then, like Relentless Assault, Smart Bomb, and Delta Attack.

As for valuing the classes, comparing a combination such as com/com/rav and rav/rav/com has little value. The latter will stagger enemies more quickly while the former will stagger enemies more slowly, and actually splits your efforts between multiple enemies since the other com won't attack only the party leaders target.
...it doesn't seem like you don't know the battle system in and out. Each role strengths different parts of your team. Having more COM's out increases the damage EVERY CHARACTER does based off multiplier that depends on your role level and number of COM's. Having Sentinels decreases damage taken by a percentage depending on the number of Sentinels and their role levels. RAV's will increase the rate you bring up the stagger bar, not just because their attacks bring it up more, but because each Ravager increases the ENTIRE PARTY'S overall effectiveness at bringing up the stagger bar.

I don't understand how anyone can say there is no strategy involved, situations in the game are very... situational. Hordes of small enemies make me break out COM's because the damage output needs to be beefed up, but spread out, more difficult hordes, require Multi-Sentinel and Medic backups, to be able to save suddenly near-dead party members. However, 2 medium strength enemies will make me want to have COM/RAV/RAV setups with buffs and debuffs to be able to focus on individual enemies. High HP and damage output monsters like the turtle families (lulz), benefit from, ironically enough, party's similar to the small hordes, because the COM's will be grouping up now, however, 999% stagger is necessary to make best use of the full COM'd party, switching to leading Light or Sazh is often done before battle.