Poll: Final Fantasy 13 "auto battle" function. Yea or ney? Opinions?

[VonBrewskie]

A lot of Final Fantasy hardcore have panned the "autobattle" function of 13. Personally, I go with yea on this; I like that the autobattle hasn't made the game any easier in terms of strategy. Most of the time it just picks three functions I would've used anyway without me having to go through a lot of extra button pushes. I do most of my battlin' manually anyway. But I would like to know what the rest of the fans think. (Or non-fans, for that matter.) Break it down for me people. If you like it, explain why. If not, share your hate with us dear friends. I'd like to restrict the convo to the autobattle function only, if you please. There are a great many threads about the overall quality of the game already.

 

[Eremiel]

I like the autobattle function. When you have to ATB cancel every second charge and swap paradigms back and forth at the drop of a hat, you have better things to worry about than the exact setup for your actions.

Besides.. even if you hate the autobattle function the option is still there to do it manually.

 

[Dragon_of_red]

I only use it occasioanlly if its an easy battle., if i actually need to focus on the fight i battle normally and pick my attacks.

 

[Nikajo]

Yeah I think it's useful when you've spent a few vital seconds picking out the correct paradigm and your ATB gauge is full so you need to your character to act instantly, especially when fighting a hard boss.

Like Eremiel said, you don't have to use it if you don't want to. So yeah it's all good

 

[wooty]

I'll use it for just getting through the sword fodder in the map, but wont go near it during a major fight, it usually picks a few bad attacks for them.

 

[Aspering]

Great when grinding CP but i dont use it in boss battles expect eidilon battle where every second is needed to be used dont time waste

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've been using it constantly.

Just use Libra on an enemy you haven't fought yet and the auto function chooses the proper atacks that are available.
Maybe I haven't grasped system yet, but I see no need in doing it manually when the game does it for me.

 

[VonBrewskie]

I'll use it for just getting through the sword fodder in the map, but wont go near it during a major fight, it usually picks a few bad attacks for them.

See, I've noticed this as well. Like, three fires when I want a fira and a thunder. Or like, after Lightning pops a suckah up in the air, my thunder attacks seem to work best in keeping a bad guy up there, but my auto battle will pick three spells that don't work as well. I agree. When I use autobattle, it's for the little baddies, not really the bosses.

 

[VonBrewskie]

Autobattle is a pretty old JRPG function. If I wasn't lazy I'd find out which game had it first but I know a few older games had it for certain, not sure about FF games exactly but I know a bunch of turn based JRPGs have.

You know, I didn't realize that. Can anyone list the games that have an autobattle function? (No need to get all crazy. Just curious.)

 

[Jenova65]

Autobattle is a pretty old JRPG function. If I wasn't lazy I'd find out which game had it first but I know a few older games had it for certain, not sure about FF games exactly but I know a bunch of turn based JRPGs have.

I think Breath Of Fire used the auto battle function and so does Shin Megami Tensai, Lucifer's Call (Nocturne in the US)

 

[Jenova65]

Autobattle is a pretty old JRPG function. If I wasn't lazy I'd find out which game had it first but I know a few older games had it for certain, not sure about FF games exactly but I know a bunch of turn based JRPGs have.

You know, I didn't realize that. Can anyone list the games that have an autobattle function? (No need to get all crazy. Just curious.)

See my reply above ^ That is just two though, but they definitely have it!

 

[wooty]

I'll use it for just getting through the sword fodder in the map, but wont go near it during a major fight, it usually picks a few bad attacks for them.

See, I've noticed this as well. Like, three fires when I want a fira and a thunder. Or like, after Lightning pops a suckah up in the air, my thunder attacks seem to work best in keeping a bad guy up there, but my auto battle will pick three spells that don't work as well. I agree. When I use autobattle, it's for the little baddies, not really the bosses.

Would also like to add that the auto-battle comes in very handy if your the medic class in a battle, saves you scrolling through names to find out the worst injusred, so that would be only time I'd use the auto function consistently really

 

[VonBrewskie]

I'll use it for just getting through the sword fodder in the map, but wont go near it during a major fight, it usually picks a few bad attacks for them.

See, I've noticed this as well. Like, three fires when I want a fira and a thunder. Or like, after Lightning pops a suckah up in the air, my thunder attacks seem to work best in keeping a bad guy up there, but my auto battle will pick three spells that don't work as well. I agree. When I use autobattle, it's for the little baddies, not really the bosses.

Would also like to add that the auto-battle comes in very handy if your the medic class in a battle, saves you scrolling through names to find out the worst injusred, so that would be only time I'd use the auto function consistently really

Good call. Very right.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

The autobattle is SMART. I generally let it choose what to do, and focus of PShift'ing.

 

[Korolev]

It's useful. FFXIII is a fast moving game, and setting up every single action takes a bit longer than just choosing auto-battle. And as others have mentioned, the auto-battle system does a good job to choosing the right moves, more or less.

It would be too annoying to have to choose the moves, and shift the paradigms. Seeing as even some normal monster battles can last up to 5 minutes (especially if you don't have the right skills to stagger the monster), it allows me to just hammer X.

I don't think I would have bothered with it at all if they DIDN'T have auto-battle. It just takes the stress out of the situation, while retaining the strategy.

But on the other hand, I liked the battle system from FFX and FXII much more. This new one is serviceable, but it's too visually dense and distracting. I know it looks more "realistic", but it's just not really inspiring to me.

 

[CmdrGoob]

Does FF13 secretly aspire to playing itself? I mean, the maps are tunnels that force you to go where the game wants you to go, 2 characters are AI controlled and the player controlled character is practically forced to use the AI controlled autobattle most of the time because of the pace so in practice your input is mainly only paradigm changes, the crystalblahium system is capped every chapter so character development is forced into raising your primary roles pretty evenly, secondary roles are so prohibitively expensive you are forced to concentrate on the primary roles, hell even the selection of what characters are in your party is forced for 20+ hours. All traces of interactivity are being gradually stripped out...

Come on Square Enix, it's obvious you really just want to make movies.

 

[Sassafrass]

I use it fairly often for the smaller fights and at times in boss fights.
Like any people have said, it's hard to keep track of what's going on when you switch Paradigms every 20 seconds. It also gives you more time to focus on the major problem which is the parties health. Lose track of it for a moment and it'll be low.

Would also like to add that the auto-battle comes in very handy if your the medic class in a battle, saves you scrolling through names to find out the worst injusred, so that would be only time I'd use the auto function consistently really

God, that has saved me so many times. Auto-battle knows best in that occasion.

 

[reg42]

I'm good either way. I liked having full control of my party, but I don't think it's something which is going to stay fresh forever, so it's probably good that they changed it.
I seem to have misunderstood the topic.

I haven't actually played it, but anything which lets me not concern myself with killing those little monsters which just bug me, can't be bad.