Quote Originally Posted by Kabooa View Post
Active Time Battle refers to a Turn Based System, where Turns come based on a value hitting the designated number (Usually '100'), often increased by a variable amount ('Speed'). You can toggle off the forced turn-wait in certain Final Fantasies, but in others it's enforced (Such as Final Fantasy 10).

ATB, in every iteration, is either a variation or an exact duplicate of the Turn Based System.

The GCD system is not. It is always 'your' turn, it's real time.
GCD is ATB in disguise, a variation if you will. You just have "off-turn" abilities on top of your normal "turns." Our current battle system is turn-based in every practical sense. That's why the people expecting an action RPG are so disappointed with it.

After hitting an ability, GCD (ATB) starts, and you need to wait for it to come back again. The speed of the GCD (ATB) depends on your speed stat, like in many other turn-based games. If you're a good player, you always input an action on your turn as soon as possible because there's no waiting, similar to ATB system with no wait time for input. However, to make things a little more interesting, we actually have abilities we can use "off-turn" (oGCDs). These things can't be used at the same time with other GCD actions, though, so they effectively have their own "turn" between the other turns, because delaying GCD actions is inefficient.

So what you're really looking at is effectively a turn based battle system, with two different types of turns where actions can happen. Just because there's no wait time for input doesn't mean it's not a turn based system. It's not always your turn.