What do you dislike in ATB Systems?
05-21-2015, 11:45 PM
I was trying to think of a way to justify ATB but then I realised, well, I actually prefer CTB.
If you make ATB fast enough the wait time isn't a chore, you end up with enemies that will attack far too often to be manageable, unless you somehow balanced them to have "thinking" and "selecting menu option" periods. Since the player has to think or navigate menus, it creates extra time between their actions that enemies don't have. Having slower ATB helps balance this with enemies, but makes waiting sometimes really dull.
With CTB in this case, I'm simply assuming ATB but with time-pauses during actions or menu navigation. (There are other forms of CTB, like FFX's.) Here it's when slower wait times are a detriment, but faster speeds are useful because turns come sooner and you don't have to worry about the enemy dogpiling the player while they're trying to make a move.
As much as people hate the FFXIII series, it tried two different things with ATB that were interesting: In both the original and Lightning Returns, in different ways, you have different commands with different ATB costs. You can stock up 3-5 attacks on average because a basic attack only costs one ATB "segment". LR's numbers make it out a little more like MP+ATB, but it's the same basic idea. LR also though gives the player three ATB bars - one for each equipped command/equipment set, and the battles revolve around using one while the others recharge.
I prefer CTB, but I also like what FFXIII tried. I don't know if that sort of system would work terribly well combined with CTB, as you'd have to create enemy AI that decides how many actions to stack up in a single turn. That becomes some AI Roulette hell. In one RPG Maker game I discovered the whole reason I was having a hard time with the default battle system it used was because enemies were always attacking first, and single/double/triple attacks were based entirely on chance what would be selected. The player had two actions a turn, but you'd end up using one of those actions healing, another slowly pecking the enemy down. It was grindy and not fun.
If you make ATB fast enough the wait time isn't a chore, you end up with enemies that will attack far too often to be manageable, unless you somehow balanced them to have "thinking" and "selecting menu option" periods. Since the player has to think or navigate menus, it creates extra time between their actions that enemies don't have. Having slower ATB helps balance this with enemies, but makes waiting sometimes really dull.
With CTB in this case, I'm simply assuming ATB but with time-pauses during actions or menu navigation. (There are other forms of CTB, like FFX's.) Here it's when slower wait times are a detriment, but faster speeds are useful because turns come sooner and you don't have to worry about the enemy dogpiling the player while they're trying to make a move.
As much as people hate the FFXIII series, it tried two different things with ATB that were interesting: In both the original and Lightning Returns, in different ways, you have different commands with different ATB costs. You can stock up 3-5 attacks on average because a basic attack only costs one ATB "segment". LR's numbers make it out a little more like MP+ATB, but it's the same basic idea. LR also though gives the player three ATB bars - one for each equipped command/equipment set, and the battles revolve around using one while the others recharge.
I prefer CTB, but I also like what FFXIII tried. I don't know if that sort of system would work terribly well combined with CTB, as you'd have to create enemy AI that decides how many actions to stack up in a single turn. That becomes some AI Roulette hell. In one RPG Maker game I discovered the whole reason I was having a hard time with the default battle system it used was because enemies were always attacking first, and single/double/triple attacks were based entirely on chance what would be selected. The player had two actions a turn, but you'd end up using one of those actions healing, another slowly pecking the enemy down. It was grindy and not fun.