I'll give this a whirl...

Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
The Charge System. In itself, not a bad idea. But taken way too far. The huge cast times on some abilities are ridiculous. Does anyone use Aim +20?
I feel NeoCracker nailed this one, they are high cost moves that only work well when you put it together with a team, as opposed to buiding a team of individual death machines. It makes classes like the Mystic more useful, while also giving hope to fanboys who want to see Cloud's Omnislash and Cherry Blossom Limit Breaks.

The Zodiac System. Ok, so people's birthdays have a direct effect on combat...because..? Yeah, I've never understood this system. I mean, the birthday events and nods are fine, by why make all the weird connections in terms of which characters can best support or attack others? It's a system you have so little control over, and can't adjust or tweak. Why is it in the game?
Well it is the Zodiac Brave Story and you can actually affect this stat since you simple cast out generics and keep recruiting until you get one with a stat you want. Story characters and story mission generics also never change their signs so it's pre-set and you can pre-plan if you want for that. The system itself is pretty much based around the actual Zodiac, so characters have high compatibility with like signs so water signs deal better against other water signs, and the opposite signs are ones to look out for, so I genuinely give Ramza my personal zodiac sign of Scorpio (which is debatably one of the best signs to give him since it gives him a major advantage against most of the nasty bosses) so I can deal greatly with Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces signs cause they are all water, whereas I have to avoid Taurus (earth) because it's my opposite sign. Its actually a pretty amusing system and I find it amusing how much thought went into and how well it actually aligns with astrological thought.

The Bravery/Faith system. Another one I don't really get. What does this serve? What is the purpose of these stats? Don't we already have attack, defense, magic, and power? Isn't that simpler? What does this achieve?
They affect reaction commands, Find-Item, the success rate of magic, and both help alter power and magic as well. They are basically easily manipulated Spirit, Staminia, and Luck stats all rolled into two simple stats. I also like how they affect you're view of the characters since they partially reflect the characters outlook when you look at some of the story character stats. Overall though, they are just renamed versions of M.Defense and a visible percentage of success rates. Faith does actually affect magic damage formulas but I feel this is largely an issue of balancing the game and keeping it away from the Linear Warrior, Quadratic Wizard issue that plagues RPGs (and is an issue in FFTA series). Bravery is a bit more balanced with it only affecting damge with Knight Swords and Bare fist, meaning only two classes actually benefit physically from having a high brave stat whereas Faith is pretty universal for all mage classes.

I like to think they work better than directly affecting the main four stats because the game has a heavy focus on min/max and it would be really annoying to know you can accidentally permanently lower your physical defense by screwing around with certain abilities. They are largely there for two reasons, for newbie players, they allow you to cause a lot of statistical damage with little effort, Raising a characters Brave twice is going to have a more dramatic effect than using accumulate to raise your strength stat by two points. On the other hand, knowing how to permanently manipulate the systems can offer veterans a way to build a more specialized party, like either keeping your parties Faith low so enemy magic won't work and then rely on Chemist and Monks for healing or go the opposite and raise the Faith stat high to keep Mage classes more effective.

So on the one hand, they are actually simpler if you are simply playing for the short game of achieving victory, or they can be complicated if you want to play a long game with a specific strategy for your units in mind. The other stats are also being affected by equipment and which classes you are leveling so simply having "raise/lower magic" stats may not be as simple if we have to factor in all that. Of anything, I would think making Faith and Bravery be the wild card stats in damage/healing calculations would largely simplify things since so many other elements in the game affect the basic four stats. It would allow an easy way to manipulate the formula without getting into too much of the game's algorithms.

My only personal beef with Bravery and Faith, is that I feel Bravery has no real flaws, Faith is a double edged sword and how you deal with it pretty much factors into what kind of player you are; but there is no real good reason not to have high Bravery. Even the idea of affecting Rare Item Find rates isn't a big deal where you can't just make an item finding mule to do this and then max out everyone else.

The Support Magic system. Oh my gosh. Why, oh why can support spells miss? They're already of limited utility, with such short durations and range for so high a cost (in MP and cast time). Yet then you make it so you can cast Protect on your party and miss on all five. Ooh, or better yet, casting Raise, and having it miss. I mean, what the heck?!
Honestly, they don't have short durations, I actually feel that Tactics makes support magic last longer than most other RPGs. The other issue is that their flaws can be circumvent by how you build your party. If magic isn't landing, then you need to start trying to manipulate the Faith stat and your characters gear. This game takes min/max more seriously than... well most games of the genre so usually there is an easy way to get around these flaws by just approaching how you build a character.

The Egg System. Why is my party full of Chocobos after one month on the map? Why do I have to keep purging these beasts? Why can't the game understand that having one Chocobo in my party doesn't mean I want a dozen?
The poaching system. Poaching also has a common/rare item chance and if you want to get some of the rare items in the game you will need to have a steady supply of monsters to play the odds, not to mention some monster classes will never be fought in the game so the only way to obtain one is to hatch it.

And why didn't they adjust or tweak any of these when making War of the Lions? We know they can make better gameplay, they made FFTA and FFTA2.
Your Mileage May Vary... I personally don't like FFTA's dumb down mechanics and I felt it really sucked the customization possibilities away while also wrecking game balance, but that is my own opinion.