Final Fantasy Tactics & Combat Initiative Systems | Game Design Guide 

They have Ko-fi.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6dD-DTFSwlk.html There is technically this as well, but, yeah, unfortunate

I hear you. There is a lot going on in the game and it is great to unpeel it layer by layer. This is my first go around and I'm just into chapter two. It is my first strategy rpg as well so it has been a slow learning experience. I really wish I was playing on a tablet instead of a phone.

And how's this going!

Thank you! We are absolutely working on new content (though, much much slower than we had planned) - we'll hopefully get into a regular rhythm of releasing content at some point soon :)

@@gamedesignguide4401 Well this comment did not age well.

GET OUT. ... just kidding :) -AffinityChris

Seriously great work! I am very excited to see where this goes.

Anthony Leyva nerds.

Hey, thanks for the awesome feedback! I was a concerned the script would get a bit convoluted. More visuals and text would probably have helped clear things up so we'll keep that in mind for the next episode!

Ooh, Octopath isn't out yet, is it? I've been excited to get my hands on it, so we'll definitely check that one out once it's available. And about the coffee - we have a page up on Ko-fi, which is just a donation service to buy us a coffee if you like what you see! It's no big deal if folks don't want to donate, but it's always nice to get a fresh cup of joe for our work :) ko-fi.com/affinityarchives -AffinityChris

The buying a coffee, is a different way to donate money to groups that you like! It's pretty cool!

Also what makes the battle system, clever? I would be interested to know! 😃

Nope, you're are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye

Awesome question. I know that earlier FF's had an active gauge where the character would be able to act once the bar filled up. Later they allowed players to use the "wait" system instead of active, where the game would stop when the bar filled up and gave the player time to think about their actions instead of rushing to pick the right thing. These bars filled up based on a speed stat as well so as the fight dragged on those faster characters were a little more useful because they'd get an extra action at some point. It really was a matter of playstyle but in it's own way it felt similar to how Tactics handles it. So my answer. As far as the visual, I liked it. I think it's important to show the player that information (unless the point was to hide it from the player) that way they can play accordingly. It also gave a certain amount of suspense because you'd sit there looking at the action bar raise, going "common, common, lemme attack!" while the enemy wailed on you. In response to how I feel about those systems I feel they're pretty safe and elegant. The downside was that there were times you were just waiting to go and the enemy was also charging their initiative, so the player wasn't doing anything. Watching the gauge rise could be intense if it was a hard fight, but otherwise felt cumbersome.

We're gearing up to get a regular release schedule - there should be some new stuff in just a couple weeks :)

@@gamedesignguide4401 love your video! Hope could see more soon

@@gamedesignguide4401 2020 (almost 2021) this randomly showed up on my front page, are there still plans for new videos?

Hmm, that's an interesting thought - arguably, the initiative system in The Banner Saga was intentionally simple, for the sake of focusing on the core system - the health = strength combat design. Were they to go the route of not forcing combat actions to alternate between sides, the game could quickly become unbalanced, allowing players (and potentially enemies) to go down a winning streak, killing foes so fast that they never get a chance to act. That said, I do agree that there's something more that they could have done - and we get a taste of that with the "last man standing" scenario. I think one area that would be a safe place to start is to incorporate initiative modifications through the "wait" function - this could allow players to plan for a string of attacks, working in conjunction with the formation mechanics - potentially offering a tactical system with some extra depth. It'd take a lot of re-balancing to make that work, but that's probably where I'd start. :) -AffinityChris

That is a fair thought. I feel like banner saga at its core is about its narrative, so maybe they wanted to streamline that initiative process.

Thanks! :)

i also suscribed, is hard to find yt channel about game-design/industry, most of them are "gaming channels", ugh

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. There's some good channels out there, but its tough to find more than the handful. That's partly why we made this show - hoping that we'll get more people in the RU-vid game design space! -AffinityChris

Hey man, great response. I haven't had the pleasure of playing either of the Divinity's yet but I heard pretty good things. From what I've watched the game seems to focus on how many action points you get rather than when people actually get to go. FFT is very different in that you only get a move action and attack action with no persistant resource carrying over (AP). That said, the system reminds soooo much of breath of Fire 5: dragon Quarter. You're characters would have AP on their turns as well (like 60-100 or something like that) and you used those to move around as well as do actions. In addition you could bank the AP for next round and could have up to double your starting total. Very very different game in most respects, but I feel the AP system is similar.

I also wanted to clarify the difference. In Divinity, every is in a set turn order. If Alice has a higher initiative stat than Bob, Alice will ALWAYS go before Bob. The action point system simply determines how much they can do on their turn. If Alice uses all of her AP to attack and move and cast a spell, she will be left with very few on her next turn. While Bob can save up his AP and cast a giant spell on his 2nd turn. In FFT, every character has a speed stat, and (let's call it) an initiative counter. Every clock tick, that character's initiative counter increases according to their speed stat. Once their initiative counter hits 100, they get to act. No matter how fast they reach 100, they can only do 2, 1, or 0 actions on their turn. Then the game resets their initiative counter accordingly (back to 0 if they did 2 actions, 20 if they did 1, 60 if 0). The key difference is in WHEN character's get to take their turn. In Divinity, a character is put into initiative order, and EVERYONE gets a turn. In FFT, it only depends on how fast you rack up to 100. If Alice has speed 50, and Bob has speed 20, Alice could act twice in a row before Bob.

Yeah, I'm curious too...

Breath of Fire 4(PS1)

Thanks for the feedback! We'll see if we can get our hands on a good pop filter - probably something we should have invested in a while ago to be fair. -AffinityChris

That is a great note! Thank you!

Story wise = let us cling together is the best