Final Fantasy 16 was announced

[OMG]

[Vahlnir]

This amuses me, but I also feel attacked. XD I don't mind the fast paced combat of today but a part of me misses the turn based stuff.

[Barraind]

Up until XV no FF had done an action type combat system like you'd see in Kingdom Hearts or Devil may cry.

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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

XIII-LR doesn't step much into the available ground of action combat, though. It's basically just XIII combat without the ability to pool actions into turn strings and less initial delay, making it more responsive. Apart from that, though, there's nothing it manages that XIII couldn't with use of a rush turn command. You're still more alike to the strategist than the character herself; imputs beyond the commands themselves are largely irrelevant.

Though more "action-oriented" than its predecessors, most movement and such is largely automated. Timing is more of a thing, if you weren't already timing engages, Launch, and disengages to dodge in XIII and XIII-2, but not so greatly that it was anything in the realm of KH or DMC...

[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.

[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.