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

[DMKA]

Sigh, so it's only Noctis. Well, I hope at the very least there's some sort of gambit system or you have some level of control over your other characters, but I doubt it.

But when the game was first announced it was announced as having an "evolved form" of the Kingdom Hearts battle system, which was limited to control over only the main character, so it's not really that earth shattering a revelation. Still, those Prompto shooting scenes looked pretty awesome. ;___;

[Wolf Kanno]

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.

Actually the Gambits could have been far more advanced if the XII team wanted them to be but Ito realized they made the game way too perfect to automate and wanted the players to have to manage some work. In the scenario you gave, the XII system would expect you the player to realize the problem and use Protect.

Sigh, so it's only Noctis. Well, I hope at the very least there's some sort of gambit system or you have some level of control over your other characters, but I doubt it.

But when the game was first announced it was announced as having an "evolved form" of the Kingdom Hearts battle system, which was limited to control over only the main character, so it's not really that earth shattering a revelation. Still, those Prompto shooting scenes looked pretty awesome. ;___;

I must be the only person happy not to have to deal with a Mass Effect combat clone element creeping into the game.

[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.

Actually the Gambits could have been far more advanced if the XII team wanted them to be but Ito realized they made the game way too perfect to automate and wanted the players to have to manage some work. In the scenario you gave, the XII system would expect you the player to realize the problem and use Protect.

Oh yeah, that's fine too, but of course it requires you to have some direct control of what your teammates are doing outside gambits/AI. So far it doesn't sound like XV will give us that.

[Depression Moon]

Yeah, apparently the description in the PS Store was a misunderstanding.
Tabata said that after the last E3 trailer they decided that it would be "too complicated" to have switchable characters (whatever he meant by that). Says the man who gave us 14 playable characters in Type-0.

That's unfortunate. I think I recall a while ago in one of the earlier trailers when it was still Versus that the player was playing from the perspective of the dude with the gun.

[chionos]

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.

I would love a system like that. A system of "write your own gambit" would be heavenly.

If there's no gambit system and no switching characters, I'm gonna be sad. More lame, static combat. Perhaps the MMOs have spoiled me, but I like dynamic on-the-fly combat that requires mid-fight changes. I like adds and near wipes and dealing with all the sleeping and crowd control and all that. FFXIII had none of that, and I really really hope FFXV goes a different route.

I want to be mad at Tabata, because his excuse sounds like a pile of horsetrout, but I'm just glad the dude came along and took over from Nomura. We'd have never gotten the game at all without him, and even if it sucks in the end, at least then we can move past it and start hyping FFXVI (since VI is my favorite FF, I'm hoping FFXVI brings the magic back to franchise).

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I don't put too much fault on Tabata with this one. Pretty much all the stuff we saw with Nomura was an idealized version of the game that looked awesome, but I highly doubted was really worked into the game. I honestly feel like most of XV never left the conceptual stage while Nomura was in charge of it. I imagine Tabata was handed the reigns of the project and probably told "Make this come out quickly."

Maybe Tabata could have had us switching party members (who seem to have pretty vastly different play styles). Tabata doesn't have 8 more years to try to match Nomura's idealized version of the game to switch from action to 3rd person shooter on the fly while balancing it all out and everything. I've always been more concerned about them nailing the characters and world down rather than have the multiple parties. I suppose we'll see how it all turns out soon!