What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

[Eschaton]

I honestly think the great failure inherent in ATB itself is the fact that menus still need to be navigated in a real-tyme system. There needs to be an "economy of motion" in just about any combat system, or players will simply spam "attack."

DoubleX fixed that with the hotkey compatability fix in their script which is more awesome than a free cancer cure.

What I would love to see is something of a hybrid system in which the player presses a button to raise a menu which also pauses the flow of combat. Kinda like that menu on Mass Effect or Final Fantasy 12, in which they can set up their combat to be entirely menu free with hotkeyed powers and Gambits, or they can bring up a menu to assess the battle in a safe environment and make tighter tactical decisions with a menu displaying all of their options. Best of both worlds.

 

[Iavra]

Personally, i dislike ATB systems in general, because i much prefer CATB or real turn-based systems, as long as they allow faster characters to get more actions than slower ones. If there are tactical decisions to make, i like to take my time and be confronted with puzzle bosses in exchange.

 

[Eschaton]

I sort of agree with that. There should be an option in some of these games to simply turn it off. In my game in going to call it "easy mode" lol

 

[DoubleX]

So to generalize, we dislike atb systems with little to no choices(atb wait conditions, base atb fill speed, etc)

 

[Eschaton]

Now do you mean choices for the player or choices for the developer? Because as a developer, I would love to control wait conditions and ATB fill speed.

Edit: "chices" is not a dayum word, iPad!

 

[arekpowalan]

Unbalanced characters' stats, especially the speedsters.

Due to the nature of battle turns being determined by character's agility, fragile speedsters will become more preferrable. A super fast character will get up to 2 turns when a tank type character get only one turn. Having 2 turns instead of 1 makes that character more effective and flexible in a fast paced combat. On the flipside, a slower and buffier character may take and give hits, but since they are are so slow their meter never go up in time, they will take more damage in a long run.

For this, characters' speed becomes very sensitive in an ATB system. If abused, the gameplay will suffer twice compared to the turn-based system. If the difference or the bias is egregious, there'll be little points for the player to use any other character types at all except the speedsters.

'Final Fantasy IV: The After Years' is very guilty for this: Not only does the children characters get AGI so high they easily outpace their parents, but they also get better ability sets. Why would I use Cecil and Yang when Ceodore and Ursula, while weaker, are a lot more potent when it comes to their feet and combination move, plus the abilities to heal? Similarly, why would I use Palom - whose Black Mage's speed is so lacking - when Leonora - the so-called useless Red Mage - can do almost the same yet quicker than him, also can heal? In addition, Cid in this game is so sluggish he's argubly the worst character. 'The After Years' is an example of a horribly balanced game where the only reasons to use half of the cast is because some forms of favoritism and self imposed challenges.

 

[magnaangemon01]

I dislike them period because it doesn't give you enough time to think through your actions. I feel it makes me feel rushed and I die a lot because of it.

 

[Eschaton]

^Adapt. You're missing out on a lot of great games because they don't stop for you.

 

[magnaangemon01]

Oh, I've played a lot. I never said I didn't play them, just I didn't like them

 

[DoubleX]

Now do you mean choices for the player or choices for the developer? Because as a developer, I would love to control wait conditions and ATB fill speed.

Edit: "chices" is not a dayum word, iPad!

I mean both

 

[Iavra]

The thing with high speed in ATB/CATB systems is that it usually loses in effectiveness the longer the game goes. At the beginning you might be able to get 2-3 times the speed of your enemies and simply overwhelm them with your action spam, but with higher stats your advantage mostly results in you going first and getting like 1 extra action for every 5.

 

[Wavelength]

Unbalanced characters' stats, especially the speedsters.

Due to the nature of battle turns being determined by character's agility, fragile speedsters will become more preferrable. A super fast character will get up to 2 turns when a tank type character get only one turn. Having 2 turns instead of 1 makes that character more effective and flexible in a fast paced combat. On the flipside, a slower and buffier character may take and give hits, but since they are are so slow their meter never go up in time, they will take more damage in a long run.

For this, characters' speed becomes very sensitive in an ATB system. If abused, the gameplay will suffer twice compared to the turn-based system. If the difference or the bias is egregious, there'll be little points for the player to use any other character types at all except the speedsters.

I'm not sure bad balance hurts an ATB more than any other system, but it can be a little harder to get right because the predictability and value of the "turn" become less quantifiable.

What you say about the "fragile speedster" can become true if the designer underrates the potency of speed in their ATB system.  And I have to agree I've seen this mistake made a lot, even in professional games.  But there are several ways for a good designer to compensate for this.  To name a few:

• Make the overall pace of battle fast enough that using extremely high speed on your entire party will likely result in characters sitting idle with full ATB bars for a few seconds because the player is still inputting commands.  (You run the risk, however, of making it too fast for everyone.)
• Include another resource that must be spent to use the moves that you expect the character to make during battle (maybe Mana, maybe something like TP), which regenerates over time instead of with each turn/action.  (Be careful not to leave speedy characters with too many "useless" turns in such a system, though.)
• Make speed something that players will need to make significant sacrifices in other stats to achieve (e.g. a +50% increase in AGI/ATB fill speed would be worth about as much as a +70% increase in ATK (or MAG for a pure magic-user)), and carefully test your battles with all different character builds to make sure that each stat has a fair role in your system.