Switching Party Members confirmed! (EDIT: No longer confirmed. Quite anticonfirmed.)

[fat_moogle]

Well that's kind of disappointing, but I can deal with it. No Ignis fire combo for me

Oh well.

Also, I'm with Taiga. Doesn't really make much sense when we get so many playable characters in Type-0.

[FFFFsephychibi]

Meh I guess I'm okay with it when I think about there being no character switching during combat. Noctis seems interesting enough to be entertaining for a whole game.

Honestly all I really wanted was 3rd person shooting mode with Prompto T_T

Oh well.

[Del Murder]

Hopefully you can at least direct the other party members with commands from Noctis rather than 100% relying on AI or pre-set gambits.

My main concern is that, during the flow of battle, what if you want to change your party's tactics? If you have to rely on pre-set gambits that can't be swapped out mid-battle, that's a problem. If you rely on the AI to adapt on it's own (like in FFXIII) that's a different problem: I want to figure things out for myself, thanks.

[Wolf Kanno]

I will gladly take pre-set gambits that can be swapped at anytime over the XIII A.I. so I am really hoping it's that.

[Del Murder]

Yeah, I was disappointed that they never took FFXII's gambit system to the next level (like Dragon Age does) so hopefully that's what we get!

[Loony BoB]

I must be the only person who hated the Gambit system. I mean, I saw the benefit of not having to do all the functions myself, but the system itself was full of gunk. I preferred the AI in XIII where all I had to do was say "HEAL, HEAL. GO HEAL." and they knew what to do. None of this "But, Daniel, his HP isn't below 40%. And which heal, Daniel? WHICH HEAL?" Let alone having to do all that setup for seven damned characters.

[Sephiroth]

I must be the only person who hated the Gambit system. I mean, I saw the benefit of not having to do all the functions myself, but the system itself was full of gunk. I preferred the AI in XIII where all I had to do was say "HEAL, HEAL. GO HEAL." and they knew what to do. None of this "But, Daniel, his HP isn't below 40%. And which heal, Daniel? WHICH HEAL?" Let alone having to do all that setup for seven damned characters.

I didn't like the Gambit at all.

[Taiga]

I must be the only person who hated the Gambit system. I mean, I saw the benefit of not having to do all the functions myself, but the system itself was full of gunk. I preferred the AI in XIII where all I had to do was say "HEAL, HEAL. GO HEAL." and they knew what to do. None of this "But, Daniel, his HP isn't below 40%. And which heal, Daniel? WHICH HEAL?" Let alone having to do all that setup for seven damned characters.

I didn't like the Gambit at all.

I'm with you guys.

[Del Murder]

If only you could do that with your main character too and therefore not need to do anything in battle at all. Oh wait, FFXIII did that and it was called 'Auto-Battle'...

You guys are lazy.

[Wolf Kanno]

I must be the only person who hated the Gambit system. I mean, I saw the benefit of not having to do all the functions myself, but the system itself was full of gunk. I preferred the AI in XIII where all I had to do was say "HEAL, HEAL. GO HEAL." and they knew what to do. None of this "But, Daniel, his HP isn't below 40%. And which heal, Daniel? WHICH HEAL?" Let alone having to do all that setup for seven damned characters.

See I'm the opposite, I prefer having lots of control over "Hey I need a group heal quickly Vanille! No... group heal none of this using Cure 1 five times, I mean everyone needs to be healed cause I don't want to waste a Phoenix down on this fight. GODDAMMIT VANILLE USE A smurfING GROUP HEAL YOU STUPID BITCH!!! smurf IT!!! I'll just do a party wipe since death is a slap on the wrist anyway...

At least if the A.I. smurfs up in XII I can only blame myself, half the actual challenge of XIII was getting around the A.I. issues. Especially since the enemy A.I. was smart enough to know how to trap the Synergist A.I. in an endless loop, making them useless in some fights.

If you're going to do A.I. party members, I prefer having some level of control besides "Heal anyway you feel like it regardless if it's the least optimal way".

[Taiga]

Ah, your post made me realize that my previous post is misleading, so I'd like to add something, just for the record. I agree with the "I didn't like the Gambit system" part, but I'm not exactly a fan of AI systems as used in XIII (as mentioned by Loony BoB) either. I didn't mind it in XIII (definitely prefer it over the Gambit system, which was just annoying in my opinion), but most of all I prefer controlling all party members myself during battle instead of giving them preset orders via strategy menu.

[Wolf Kanno]

No worries, I enjoyed the Gambit System but I understand why others didn't and I also prefer having classic full party controls but if I have to deal with A.I. I much prefer having control over it because what the programmers think I want is different from the actual reality of what I need. I felt XIII certainly proved my point of an A.I. that is smart enough not to be completely useless but still dumb enough to be more trouble than it's worth.

[Taiga]

Yeah, I get your point. :)
Every system has its pros and cons, and I personally enjoy the variety in systems of Final Fantasy games. I might not like all of them, but it would be pretty boring if every battle system was the same for each game. Still sad about Noctis being the only playable character though. But I'll live. ;)

[Vyk]

Mmm, algorithms...

[Del Murder]

Imagine how fun it would be to have fluid programming control over AI rather than the standard drop down menu for a single 'condition', 'target', and 'action'. I doubt XV would have that kind of flexibility but if it did it would be truly impressive. You could have nested conditions based on various scenarios or types of monsters, and different actions taken based on the initial results. Also an unlimited number of gambits would be nice instead of the typical dozen or so.

For example, say your attacker is getting beat down. You have a gambit to heal if their HP gets below 50%. But say, this happens like 5 times during a span of 2 minutes. Instead of the back and forth of hurt cure hurt cure, maybe you set a gambit that says 'If [Healing Gambit] is triggered 5 times, Cast Protect on X'. Or, at the very least, you can have a Protect gambit ready to manually swap on if you see this happening in battle.

This is what the additional computing power of the newer machines should be used for rather than improved visuals.