Final Fantasy 16 was announced

[Ayuhra]

I like how people casually forgets the recent FF7 remake...

To be fair to them the remake is post FFXV.

I haven't played the remake but the action combat in FFXV was kinda meh. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing most of the time and never died. There was probably some depth to be had in the combat but it was lost on me as I just spammed warp strike on the final boss until he died.

FFXVI, if it has a combat designer from DMC, does have a chance to be more meaningfully deep with its combat system.

[Vahlnir]

To be fair to them the remake is post FFXV.

I haven't played the remake but the action combat in FFXV was kinda meh. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing most of the time and never died. There was probably some depth to be had in the combat but it was lost on me as I just spammed warp strike on the final boss until he died.

FFXVI, if it has a combat designer from DMC, does have a chance to be more meaningfully deep with its combat system.

The difference between FF XV and FF7R's combat is like night and day. FF7R was vastly superior on that front though, in my opinion. It also had a fair amount of depth to it.

[M0rrigan]

There was this game, that for a Final Fantasy game, was kind of mediocre, but would have been okaysh as its own thing. Came out in 2013. Starred a pink haired girl who was coming back to the forefront after not really being around for a few years. Was action combat. Used a paradigm system to let you change active ability sets on the fly.

Required an absurd amount of precision timing in harder modes.

It felt a LOT like the trailers for ff16. (16 reminding me of that and 15 is why 16 sounds horrific right now)

I know its not a fever dream I had for a week or so.

FF13 trilogy didn't have action combat, it was a semi turn based one. You still had to pick your attacks and queue them up and wait for them to charge, even if we count the attack auto picker spamming X. You had no control over enemy attacks other than maybe your characters doing their attacks as soon as the enemy started theirs and delayed them, or vice versa. The only thing close to action combat was being able to move your character around the battle scenario VERY slowly to position yourself closer/farther or the back of enemies, but you still wouldn't dodge enemy attacks if they targeted you. Action combat means your battle flow depends completely on you, and you can dodge everything and never get hit if done right, unless an enemy has some special wide area attack.

[Kaliesto]

I liked FF7R revamped combat; it was like a hybrid ATB system, but allowing unique ways to handle character switching which I thought was done pretty well.

Much as I like the classic ATB system too, but I'm getting tired of the whining about it.

[Ayuhra]

The difference between FF XV and FF7R's combat is like night and day. FF7R was vastly superior on that front though, in my opinion. It also had a fair amount of depth to it.

I have been holding off on FF7 because it's just a chapter and not a complete game.

Although I've been told this is the wrong line of thinking and that the content released so far clocks in at about the same length as FFXV so I may have to rethink things and get the game.

I've been intrigued.

[Iscah]

Moreover, I don't think you're understanding what it means to add a cc to create an off shoot character. This character will not be the one you control as you go through the story. It'll just be one of the options in your party, mainly for battle content and specialized quests. The way it would work is that the choice is yours, to use the main character as the character you do battle content with or you use the regular cast, but giving you that choice adds a lot of value to the game; cc is being seen as a widely accepted part of any modern "adventure/rpg" type game. Even games which are story heavy like Assasin's Creed eventually figured out where the trend was going, the trend is going to character creator. It doesn't take away from the main game and its story, it just adds more value to the game beyond just a 50 hour story clear.

This sounds like a really awkward idea to me.

"Here is a story-based RPG where you play the role of [important character]... or sometimes a random guy that we just put in for the sake of appealing to people who need their own individualised character to enjoy the gameplay."

Just because lots of games do it doesn't make them obliged to do it.

FFXIV has unfortunately hijacked the last few years of my videogame-playing experience and I haven't really ventured beyond it, but is it really a common thing in JRPG-style games or are you talking about other genres when you say it's widespread?

I don't feel like your "play as an individualised side character" proposal fits well with story-intense JRPGs as I know them. It would require that party member to be awkwardly off to the side and not involved in the plot? Why are they even there?

If the game is designed to be played beyond the scope of the story, you can keep doing it with the character that the game gives to you. It's a role-playing game where you take on the role of that specific character, not where you invent a role for yourself.

[CazzT]

FF16 - Generic action/arcade combat where you don't get to choose when you summon your primals/eikons/whatevers. Also looks like you'll be playing a solo character instead of a party.
Pretty graphics.
Painfully uninspired combat that you can get in literally dozens of other titles.

What's this ridiculous compulsion to make Final Fantasy into all the other bland action/souls games out there? Bring back ATB, add some creative spin to it. Just stop with the lame action combat. Leave that for games like Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry and the rest. Stop trying to be like everyone else.

[MikkoAkure]

FF16 - Generic action/arcade combat where you don't get to choose when you summon your primals/eikons/whatevers. Also looks like you'll be playing a solo character instead of a party.
Pretty graphics.
Painfully uninspired combat that you can get in literally dozens of other titles.

What's this ridiculous compulsion to make Final Fantasy into all the other bland action/souls games out there? Bring back ATB, add some creative spin to it. Just stop with the lame action combat. Leave that for games like Assassin's Creed and Devil May Cry and the rest. Stop trying to be like everyone else.

What you described in your first paragraph is literally Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (minus pretty graphics) which is already a direction that Final Fantasy has gone into. If the recent forays into action combat didn’t sell well, the SE would probably be more inclined to change it up, but this looks to be the direction they’re going.

Turn-based gameplay is now considered “retro” and “niche” and I don’t think there’s been a AAA title in the past 15 years that used it. Smaller games with smaller budgets can get away with it, and that’s where you get Octopath Traveler and Persona 5. But it’s harder to justify as the development costs go up and you need to appeal to a larger demographic.

No one is being forced to play the latest generation of Final Fantasy. There’s no continuation of a previous game or anything so you won’t be missing anything. There’s other turn-based games still being made and they’re putting new creative spins on turn-based combat too, like Bravely Default and Radiant Historia. If you don’t like the direction they’ve been going in, then don’t give them your money.

[Shurrikhan]

What you described in your first paragraph is literally Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (minus pretty graphics) which is already a direction that Final Fantasy has gone into. If the recent forays into action combat didn’t sell well, the SE would probably be more inclined to change it up, but this looks to be the direction they’re going.

Turn-based gameplay is now considered “retro” and “niche” and I don’t think there’s been a AAA title in the past 15 years that used it.

Divinity II and Persona 5 are, again, rather far from small, low-budget games. They were both the full $60 on release. 3 years later, the collector's edition of Divinity 2 is still $90, and the base game $45. Its prequel, back when the studio was borderline indie had a budget of over 4.5 mil euros, but that seems a small fraction of D2's -- I haven't seen the exact numbers -- though the game's release quarter was apparently ridiculously profitable.

I get that you dislike Turn Based, but it's far from something games just "get away with". It's a system still being meaningfully reiterated upon, to great success.

[MikkoAkure]

Divinity II and Persona 5 are, again, rather far from small, low-budget games. They were both the full $60 on release. 3 years later, the collector's edition of Divinity 2 is still $90, and the base game $45. Its prequel, back when the studio was borderline indie had a budget of over 4.5 mil euros, but that seems a small fraction of D2's -- I haven't seen the exact numbers -- though the game's release quarter was apparently ridiculously profitable.

I get that you dislike Turn Based, but it's far from something games just "get away with". It's a system still being meaningfully reiterated upon, to great success.

I don't dislike turn-based. All the turn-based games I described are games that I own. I'm just being realistic. Persona 5 and Divinity 2 may not be small, low-budget games, but they're not AAA titles either. Neither one of those was made to compete for the average person's attention against other AAA titles like Assassin's Creed. That's why both games are considered "niche". They're aimed at a specific demographic (that likes turn-based RPGs and also anime or tabletop respectively) and budgeted with the size of the demographic in mind. Both games are not made with the same budget that goes into Final Fantasy games, which have always been aimed at a wider audience.

FFXV had to ship 5 million units to recover development costs and ended up selling 8.9 million copies as of October of last year. Persona 5 including Royal has sold 4.6 million copies worldwide as of July of this year. Persona 5 and Final Fantasy are in two different worlds when it comes to both budget and how much they expect to sell and shouldn't be compared.