The Magic Of FFX's CTB Battle Gameplay System

[@Dansg08]

Thank you all for your patience, this one took a LOT of work to really try and get out all of the information I wanted. There's always even more to cover and discover but I'm hoping this will be a very comprehensive look at the battle system of my favourite game. Enjoy! ►Twitter & Instagram @dansg08 ► 24/7 FF Stream: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJK7lmqCgZqJjbc ► Support on Patreon: www.patreon.com/dansg08 - A HUGE thank you to all my Patrons on Patreon for the support they provide to the channel which help me to keep making LPs such as this one, a special thank you to the highest tier Patrons: ► Josh Murphy ► j85norway ► Jay_Wotw ► Jesse F ► CityMorgue ► Hedgelord42 ► El No ► Tevura ► Gabriel R ► Joseph L C ► PrincessMagical ► Streeter ► De_Life_Stream ► Cameron M

[@llamaclipz]

This system is JRPG perfection. They should have kept this for several games

[@hustler666100]

and when its eventually remade it will be anime action controls ruining it

[@Hyperbolic_G]

@hustler666100 it will just be a way to share this fantastic story with a wider audience... not ruining it. Obviously I'm here because I love the system as it is, lest youtube wouldn't have brought me here. Don't hate on new methods of sharing an experience with people -- this gives you more tools to connect with others and ultimately make more friends

[@zazza002]

I wish more games had this system

[@sanfordday]

Try out Pokémon Legends

[@princessmagical]

Yeah, I wish more Final Fantasy's would and it should since FF, even with the ATB system, has always been more about strategy than just hack and slash.

[@jknintendo]

@@sanfordday yeah but pokemon's version of ctb is actual ass, unfortunately.

[@yorshka6955]

FFX-3 needs it

[@caturiges]

There's a Lords of the Ring game for the PS2 that uses a very similar system. It is called Third Age.

[@evinkeith2272]

FFX is such a masterpiece. I wish more people, from newer generations would give it a go. It has stuck with me ever since it released.

[@vincenthammons6705]

the only thing I like about it was the leveling and combat system and how it used all the characters, MC was annoying the voice actor did not help either, the story was meh also, I would love to see remakes of the other final fantasy games with this leveling and combat system

[@narutoman93]

I think the majority of today's gamers are those that want to be in the action ASAP. Games like COD and Halo allow you to jump into matches very quickly, therefore satisfying that itch to pull the trigger. It's hard to get into FFX because, in my opinion, it has a slow start (bar the sick cutscene in the beginning lol). If they could just get invested (even a little bit!) into the story, I'm sure they'd be hooked.

[@Snakeskin94]

@@vincenthammons6705 please come back when you have an original opinion.

[@vincenthammons6705]

@@Snakeskin94 aww someone butthurt I have a negative opinion about their favorite game get over it.

[@pikminologueraisin2139]

@@Snakeskin94 some dude blaming again the voice actor smh

[@ppbirdman]

Was I wrong guys/gals I said this would be a great vid and a treat to all the pros and newcomers alike -- well done berk :)

[@shanedavis195]

So I was wondering, since casting haste has a CTB healing effect. Does that apply if the target is already hasted? Could I cast haste to make a hasted target turn come even sooner?

[@Oakeybloke]

​@@shanedavis195if you try to haste someone already in haste, it will miss, and haste needs to stick to heal CTB. Similar to when enemies inflict slow + delay, where the slow needs to take effect for the delay to do likewise, from what I know 😉

[@shanedavis195]

@Oakeybloke that makes complete sense 👏 thank you for the reply and answering my question

[@Oakeybloke]

@@shanedavis195 all good, 4 months is about my average time for a response 😁

[@princessmagical]

Up until a week ago when I saw the initial video, I never paid any attention to the different shades of pink/purple in the CTB window. I always just paid attention to the characters and enemy. This is very interesting and now looking at the CTB window, it makes sense. I guess I figured the different colors were just being creative and decorative. LOL!

[@AporiaLester]

Hey Dansg, I'm currently working on my own turn based RPG in the unity game engine and your technical deep dive in this video into FFX's combat system was AMAZING! It is exactly what I needed. Thank a lot for making this video. For people who are really interested into the technical details of it, this is just awesome.

[@LauraMichelleP]

Fantastic work Berk! Such an amazing and in depth look at a system I never knew even existed in the game til we became friends! Well done my man

[@Karifean]

Great video ^^ mostly already knew all this but nice to see the exact figures for Delay attacks and Revival, and confirmation that summoning works just as expected. 17:30 I think the most important takeaway regarding initial turn values is that going beyond 170 Agility even for the first turn is never worth it. Starting with a First Strike weapon and switching weapon on the first turn will always be equal or faster to not using First Strike at all, and it's even better if you have First Strike on a stand-in character and immediately switch them out for your real fighter on the first turn. Though always easy to forget that keeping to 170 Agility on your characters will likely mean a lot of your aeons have below 170 Agility, since they don't all scale positively with Yuna's Agility stat, especially poor Ixion. 54:55 I first learned about this effect very recently from watching a challenge battle against Evrae Altana where they stunlocked the boss by alternating between casting Haste and Slow on it. Amazing how that actually works. Minor detail on that front btw is also that 255 is the maximum of "ticks until next turn" you can get up to if you get insanely delayed. If you get hit by Slow when your next turn would come in 200 ticks, it will come in 255 instead of the 400 it should because it gets capped. 1:10:53 This actually nicely explains why if you get revived by Auto-Phoenix/Auto-Life you typically get your next turn EXACTLY before the enemy's next turn, if you match their Agility. Assuming they were using a Rank 3 move, the delay they get and the delay you get is the same, and your turn takes priority. Whereas meanwhile you can never get a turn in before the enemy if you revive manually. 1:15:48 Worth noting this is actually intrinsically tied from what I can tell; if a move has delay/CTB damage/heal and also inflicts or removes Haste/Slow, it will ALWAYS only apply said delay if the status change is successful. This kinda hit me when in the pbirdman mod, the only change to Dark Anima's Oblivion is that it no longer dispels buffs including Haste, but this now means its Strong Delay is unconditional and will delay a character into oblivion (lol) with its massive 16 hits of strong delay (if you survive, that is), whereas with its Haste-dispelling-based Delay it was only ever gonna be 1 hit of delay at most. This actually led to a fair bit of trivial misinformation in your boss guide breakdowns, where you mention attacks having delay attached to them but they're actually just conditional delays which won't ever affect you if you have Auto-Haste anyways (Dark Bahamut's Impulse being an example of this). One of the most notable exceptions to having conditional delay is Dispel. Using Dispel to remove Haste famously does NOT remove the CTB healing you gain(ed) from inflicting Haste, so you can actually (repeatedly) cast and dispel Haste to make a strongly delayed character's turn come quicker. Same goes for Esuna/Remedy for removing Slow which I believe can be used to delay enemies to eternity though I've never actually tried this. Glad you went into Regen as well. A lot of people still believe it's RNG how much HP it restores, when in reality it's completely deterministic. Recently also realized that neglecting the 100 HP ticks, Regen only recovers 3515 HP between regular enemy turns if you have 99999 HP, which makes it actually a pretty bad and ineffective healing method for BHPL strategies overall, just happens to still be "good enough". Though tbf the 100 HP ticks can add up to a solid 1000 or more HP extra if you use Quick Hits inbetween, so it's more around 4500~5000. Two addendums I can think of: - One regarding Petrification; while petrified you disappear from the CTB entirely but unlike KO I believe your counter value freezes in place. So when you are healed from Petrification you come back with the exact same turn delay as you had before. - Rikku's Mix actually lies to you about its Rank in the preview. It shows the turn delay of a Rank 5 action, but you actually suffer a Rank 6 delay. The same goes for Yuna's Grand Summon which shows a Rank 5 delay but it's actually only a Rank 3 delay, just like normal Summon.

[@ppbirdman]

I supplied Berk with a lot of Delay type stuff and some of the add ons you have provided were in there too with examples -- I think Berk wanted to keep it as informative but simple as possible so we decided to leave alot of it out plus of course it would drag on an already long vid - so used as little as possible but used the main ones you see more reguarily to make an impact --- but glad to see even Maesters like yourself get something out of this vid :)

[@Dansg08]

Great feedback, thanks for taking the time to add those tidbits! The depth is insane, Pbird supplied me with some of these as well but after a point I just couldn't find bits of the video to inject them in and it was really getting out of hand :D I wanted to really cover almost all of the main scenarios I could while including niche information too. There was a fun piece that Pbird shared with me as well about the only exception to revival countdown being tickspeed x3 is the auto-auto-life used in the final Yu Yevon battle where you get revived and return on the same tick so there's no delay from death/revival either. The depth is just endless

[@ValzoasArchive]

This video is amazing. I've always felt FFX had the most refined battle system (and my favorite battle system) of all, and this just reinforced that belief - *with maths*.

[@Soullessrun]

hour and a half long movie.... more interesting and enjoyable than most movies release past year.

[@Dansg08]

Appreciate it!

[@sircrashtonii9718]

As a game dev this stuff is very interesting and useful to learn about! Thanks for breaking it down

[@evdomos]

Me and my friends talk about how we miss CTB surprisingly often.

[@HydroSulphide]

You blew my fucking mind by showing the ctb damage a zombied character takes when being hasted. Thanks for the whole video and all your love you put into my favourite game of all time ❤

[@henybenyfofeny]

brilliant breakdown of a seemingly simple system! I know I won't personally utilize this as robustly as some challenge runners, but I will always tune in to learn more things about one of my favorite games!

[@CrowsofAcheron]

I've always found this system to be much more strategic than the usual ATB system. But it's really weird seeing people so nostalgic about ATB when the system had so many flaws, all of which CTB dealt with. This should have been the FF combat system going forward.

[@DirectorHMAN]

Agreed. The new action focus only made sense for 11 and 12 IMO. But feels forced in others. And has turned FF into QTE Cover System crap

[@ohcharlie428]

I mean....you could just set the atb system to wait and its just about the same as ctb. I prefer active time battle because it keeps you thinking faster. Ctb makes me feel like the game is always on pause. Atb keeps you on your feet. It's like a game of timed chess as opposed to...taking your time all of the time.

[@TheCecchino98]

​@@ohcharlie428 the fact that the game pauses is why I prefer ctb. I get the appeal of having to think on your feet, but most of the time I waste is navigating the menus, which feels dumb. If I wanted something fast paced I'd pick an action rpg

[@ohcharlie428]

@@TheCecchino98 but my point that the atb system has an option for you remains. There is the wait/active toggle. With the wait setting, you can take as much time as you want. At least atb give rpg players an option for something a little more action oriented without being an action game. Plus for me it's nicer...the unpredictability of battle is better expressed without knowing whose turn is coming when, all of the hp and stat meters spelling out weaknesses and whatnot. Parts of ffxs take on cbt got boring for me....tidus kills lizards and wolf's. Wakka for birds and bugs, Auron for armors, rikku for machines, and lulu for magics. I kind of preferred xenosaga ep1s take on the rpg formula. Played through part of the later half recently and it kicked my ass at 35...highly recommended. Ffx I played through recently and it was basic candy to me. I got Seymour Flux to kill himself....it was silly.

[@ohcharlie428]

@@TheCecchino98 weird....typed out a cute little response to you...and it was deleted. I didn't say anything mean. Looks like we can't talk about video games anymore either.

[@airkami]

Boy oh boy am I making spreadsheets of calculations using this data. I still have 1 hour and 11 minutes to watch, but the 6 most impactful agility scores worked out so far. This is going to be a wild ride.

[@OrpheusMC]

I felt my brain throbbing by the end of this video. But I feel like I understood most all of it! You were great at explaining everything!

[@ppbirdman]

Berk has an insatiable way of explaining things and always does it very well and a joy to watch and listen to

[@missbradicah]

Not that it's a big deal, but I do remember in the Spectral Keeper battle how the CTB window included a designation for the circle that would explode if you didn't move a character to safety. There was a time or two that I failed the timing aspect and sent them sailing into the air to their death.

[@Dansg08]

Yeah that was a cool mechanic to include and trying to zip across to another one before it blew up was pretty unique

[@TheAuron32]

"and im not talking about Yu Yevon" ooh, nice burn dude!

[@Sigourneyporpoise]

[@solidusblade]

First of all, thank you for explaining the system, secondly, for some reason I'm really greatful it's an in-depth 1:30h video that I can listen to, lastly, sorry for being late commenting, awesome stuff!

[@playboilit2424]

Loved the haste mechanic. We in the handful of people in the world to know this... 20 years after the release of the game. Fascinating FFX still going strong!

[@anavaeru]

This video… ticked me off *ba dum tiss* lol Love the in depth analysis. I won’t ever go this in depth when thinking about it but it’s amazing the insane amounts of love and work that was put into this battle system.

[@Dansg08]

Thank you for not letting me make the only tick puns around here

[@FreeShadow05]

Half of the time I'm just here because your soothing voice calms my anxiety

[@neonfatum]

Beyond its mechanical depth, I always appreciated that in FF10 your actions don't feel as disconnected from the battle as in other games. Like, you select attack, then the enemy, and Tidus jumps off and goes to strike it immediately. Then it's maybe Auron's turn and maybe you do the same thing with him. It's just enjoyable and ironically feels way more dynamic and immediate than ATB. You never have to sit there and wait for some arbitrary, pointless gauge to fill up. You don't even have to wait for the other character run back to their spot, mostly. What makes it extra cool is that it allowed the devs to play around a lot with the camera during battles too. Many boss battle have a variety of super cool camera angles and panning shots that the game will switch between. It's so cinematic and fun! Sadly, there has never been a game quite like that again. With more dynamic battle systems, you can't really do these things At the time, I think I was kind of disappointed that they switched from ATB to this then-new CTB. But nowadays I think they should've dropped ATB way earlier. As much as I love the games that have it, it's kind of just a pointless and bad system. They perfected it and unleashed its true potential in 10-2 though, and that is a fantastic battle system. I think between FF10's CTB, FF10-2's version of ATB and FF12's ADB, any of them (or hell, all of them) could and should have become a series staple. 13's battle system and 13-2's improved version are pretty good and sensibly designed in their own right, but I never found them as enjoyable as these others. Also, great choice of music! Challenge is one of my favourite FF tracks~

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

It isn't pointless and bad, ATB systems have their use, the ATB you take issue with is the Wait System which is useful for people who prefer more deliberate choices. The Active ATB system would feel the same as what you describe with the CTB unless you're just mashing attack blindly... and which point the issue is the game itself as attacking is the correct option. I actually find CTB far worse because of how damning Speed is as a stat and how in CTB actions have a recovery time which often makes lots of actions detrimental with no way to know unless you analyze things. With Haste being so ungodly broken without anything to provide an upper limit like ATB.

[@neonfatum]

@@Buglin_Burger7878 I was too harsh on ATB honestly. There are very cool things about it. It puts you under pressure to figure out a sensible next move quickly and it allows you to bide your time and let enemies take their turns for a while, which definitely has its uses. You can almost sort of redefine the turn order that way. It can make for interesting strategies that you can't do in a pure turn-based game. X-2 is the best version of it because turns can actually happen at the same time and it makes battles actually feel dynamic. You can even interrupt an enemy's turn indefinitely with the right timing. The problem I see with it at least in Active Mode is that even if you know exactly what to do, you still have to navigate a set of nested menus and select the correct action from it, which is really cumbersome to do quickly. So even if you know what to do, you will probably constantly lose turns to the enemy because you simply can't select stuff as fast as you'd want. So selecting things from a menu sort of becomes a gameplay challenge and that just seems a bit dumb. The ATB speed setting basically acts like a difficulty slider then. By playing in Wait Mode all of that's not a problem. However Wait Mode is kind of exploitable because you can pause the battle whenever you want and take forever to think and rethink, which goes against the whole idea of being under pressure to decide. Unless you just hold yourself accountable and don't do that I suppose. It feels like part of the challenge in ATB is self-imposed and I guess I don't like that either, even if having these options is a good thing really.

[@sdduke01]

I absolutely loved the breakdown that you provided in the video! Big props to you, ppbirdman, and any other person who spent time to produce this excellent content. It's this type of in depth analysis that really shows me why I love systems like the CTB and why I still have hope that developers will be able to iterate on and implement this type of system in future games, whether they be future FF titles or other IPs.

[@prickleykuriboh19]

Being a long time fan, popping in and out, leaving ffx for awile and coming back after years, im happy to see your still making vids on it

[@Turbovolver]

Wonderful vid! Appreciate this level of depth, especially as someone who has played around a little with trying to implement this kind of system.

[@js-ro5jk]

My favorite turn based system ever. Honestly a vast improvement over ATB. ATB always felt kinda disorganized and random to me, but in X everything feels fair and communicated to the player

[@RavOut]

I loved this, thank you so much, I could never understand what those ticks were, I knew they had to do with the battle speed but didn't know what determined how many ticks they'd get or which appearance of the ticks determines how much sooner they'd get a turn

[@Dr_Donald_Duck]

What an incredible and interesting video. A true treat for every ffx fan! Well done! I love how after 20+ years, there's still stuff to learn about.

[@chapulincolorado6504]

What a great video! Personally, I probably won't sit there and dp maths when I'm playing FFX, but the breakdown of all the numbers certainly gives me more appreciation to the great lengths the development team went thru to create such a fantastic game. And Dansg08, thank you for making this video, it shows how much you care about FFX, you are the best🤗

[@fall9724]

I love turn based combat, and ffx has always been at the top of my list for how they do it. I didn't know how much I needed this video but it makes me so unbelievably happy to now have an understanding of what makes it so beautiful. Having played several times I was able to recognise patterns for how the turn order would change but seeing the raw mechanics at play makes me feel enlightened.

[@Red-fs1jw]

Thanks for doing this Dansg08. Cant wait to sit down and nerd out on new ffx content. Might have to run thru Spira again !

[@MiBrCo4177]

Having slowly been wanting to get back on to playing final fantasy from one all the way up until 15 again. Watching these videos is both a delight and a time sink LOL because I could be playing final fantasy. Keep it up!

[@randaljr.8581]

never understood this fully, so this was helpful! well done

[@kamudo999]

I am interrest in getting into game developement and one of my goals is to make a rpg with a combat system like that of ff x

[@AkselGeer]

After listening to this I've developed a pavlovian response to the word "ticks"

[@Robin_Raghunandan]

This was wonderful to watch Berk! I would love for you to cover damage constants and how damage is actually calculated in game. It has been area where I always wondered how much a Strength +4 would affect a normal attack for example. I am sure that formula definitely has some rng involved since each attack value is always different. Just super curious as Kimahri using Nova without a damage cap techinically has one of the strongest potential damage outputs in the entire game--wondering what plays into that.

[@jeffyard]

Well done on this video, some really interesting information here, it was amazing how in-depth you went with it, and the CTB tick healing/damage with haste and zombie was really cool. :)

[@Pedro-xz6wt]

definitely want to see more technically-minded videos like this.

[@RudyReyJr]

Been watching your original 100% run of FFX and have been hyped to see this video! Keep doing amazing work!!

[@TJ-vo3rv]

So, for Delays, in plain terms: - Weak Delay = Half the CTB effect of a regular, unhasted attack - Strong Delay = The CTB effect of a regular, unhasted attack Did I get that right? This should make the resulting turn order of any delays fairly intuitive to predict (even ones that are inflicted by enemies).

[@Dansg08]

Yes that's right, but harder to really see it intuitively I think because often times the enemy's move won't come at the exact same tick the previous character's move is. So you have to factor in how many ticks passed between the last character to get a turn and the delay move itself. Because the delay will be added to the countdown during the tick of the attack, not whenever the start of the countdown was for the character(s). Like the video example, let's say Cross Cleave is coming in a "small pink bar's" worth of ticks after Tidus' turn (assume we just go intuitively here so you don't know the exact number), then you have to factor in that gap between Tidus' turn and Cross Cleave before you add the extra CTB effect of the delay. So if a character normally unhasted has a 39 tick countdown when they use "attack", but 10 ticks have already passed in the battle before Cross Cleave was used, so 29 left, then add the 39 ticks for a total of 68 ticks remaining AFTER the move is used. To intuit all of that (not even factoring in haste) by just looking at the CTB I think is not really that simple. Can be done of course, but I wouldn't really say it's easy. But in terms of how the actual mechanics work, you have it right. If you have a turn then cross cleave comes on the same tick or very close to it then you can see it more intuitively, because it's basically like an entire turn's worth of delay (because Strong), so Tidus' next turn gets pushed down the 2nd turn you'd see below it on the CTB before the move was used, like the next turn being erased basically. But this moving at the same time instance is not that common. Half CTB effects are harder to really "see" anyway.

[@TJ-vo3rv]

@@Dansg08 Great breakdown, thanks. Yeah, I think you might be right about how hard it would be to "intuit." Hard to say without paying attention to it in my next playthrough. Might just take some practice? Mostly, I am looking for ways to utilize all the great info you put in the video in more practical, gameplay terms, where we don't have the exact numbers in front of us (Edit: aside from the very useful information about the agility soft-cap and ranks). Anyway, awesome work my dude.

[@MarcterChief]

Very specific question: How do Cid's turns in the airship battles work? What's their cooldown? Does he have a tickspeed too or does he follow his own rules?

[@ppbirdman]

Yes he has his own Agility Stat for the battle just count his ticks between his turns to work out his Agility Stat

[@MoodySelection]

Nice video as always, also glad to have seen you featured on the Resonant Arcchannel. Dude, what are you even waiting on starting a Kingdom Hearts playthrough?? The game is an absolute masterpiece, as magical as FFX as an experience. Cheers, have a good summer !

[@zero1991]

I always knew those pink bars had something to do with the turns but it was never mentioned in the manual or the in game tutorial

[@ShinyHunterAsh]

Amazing video making me want to play the game again and these extra nodes from not maxing out agility, will help invest in other stats

[@adubfree]

thanks for the heads up in the beginning i'll be back later with my notes

[@Blackbird1928]

Currently using this against the dark aeons to estimate regen values to decide if I need to heal or attack :)

[@sihaynes]

still blows my mind this game is over 20 years old. way ahead of its time.

[@Red-fs1jw]

Incredible academic breakdown of ticks and formula. I may have missed one detail. Do you have the exact figure for one full lilac, lavender, and violet bars? If im not being clear the max value before it turns the next color. Not sure how to do time stamps. At 1:09:54 rikku is KOd and lulu and Yuna are on the screen. It appears the bottom three turns the bars are maxed. The turns before that have not hit the maximum value before the next color. It appears to only be a single tick between the creation and lulu. Perhaps two?

[@SCE2803]

YEAHHH another dansg08 ffx video!! :D

[@gaspump]

Having just finished replaying FFX for the umpteenth time only to find this video in my recommendations... I think the most incredible achievement on the part of the developers is how the spaghetti of ticks vs. turns, all the modifiers/stats/etc, an element of RNG all combines into something that feels really intuitive and natural to play with. 10 was always my favorite mainline battle system between that and being able to freely swap characters around without a turn penalty. I lament the death of good turn-based systems and with FF16 going even farther towards yet-another-3rd-person-action game it's probably safe to say we won't ever see it in AAA again.

[@bigdaddyj3604]

Been waiting on this video a long time thanks

[@doomswell]

This is actually very similar to FFTactics' turn order system, so I had a head start understanding it from that and walked into this like it was kindergarten class. Props for making it clear and concise on top of that. If anyone reading this is curious, FFT turn order is briefly; divide 100 by the character's speed stat to determine how many ticks until their next turn. Certain actions like spells also have a speed stat and get tossed in the turn order as if they were a character waiting to get a turn. Unfortunately, fast characters are faster than strong spells, which makes magic less useful in the late game.

[@jvdach4652]

That's why they thankfully implemented the target character mechanic so they'll get hit even if they move out of range. Im most cases next to one of your other units 🤣

[@doomswell]

@@jvdach4652 Not only that though, but if your spell caster is faster than their own spells; then their turn interrupts their casting and cancels their spell if you do anything.

[@DrKreiger]

This was fascinating, especially how haste interacts with zombies.

[@khatharrmalkavian3306]

Huh. I always thought it stood for "calendar time battle". When I was studying simulation in college we had an assignment to design a simulation that used a calendar queue system instead of a real-time system. The difference is that in a real time system the simulation makes individual "ticks" and advances everything at once by the tick amount, whereas a calendar system works by having a "current time" variable and a queue of events (called a calendar) that are scheduled to happen in the future, sorted by the timestamp they're supposed to happen at. Instead of advancing the current time by one tick at a time, you just get the next item in the queue, set the current time to its timestamp, and then run the event (which may add new events to the calendar), effectively skipping over the time between events. Sound familiar?

[@frankwest5388]

I wish the game were clearer about things like this. Like how much CTB each move takes or how much damage it does. A potential remake of FFX should definitely update this

[@Karifean]

One question I actually still have that remains unanswered is Threaten - how exactly does it work? My understanding of it is that if Threaten is inflicted, the afflicted target's Turn Counter is set to equal to the inflicter's (so a monster will get its next turn after the Threatening character exactly) and until the inflicter takes their turn the target also has the Threaten status which is independent of this and makes the target visually 'freeze' and disables counter attacks. I'm not sure if this is really correct though. This would imply Shiva's Heavenly Strike actually permastuns unresisting enemies if you spam it endlessly since it inflicts Threaten as well. Anybody, like say pbirdman, know the details of this and can confirm/deny? ^^;

[@ppbirdman]

Yes when Threatened the victims CTB is set to the same tick as the attackers so it is more viable having it on a character who is Slow like Auron for example -- also as far as permastun is concerned it won't be a long term solution as Threaten gets progressively weaker over time

[@Karifean]

@@ppbirdman Thank you for the clarification ^^ by getting weaker over time you mean the chance of success goes down? Interesting, I didn't realize that mechanic existed, but I guess it's not unlike a status resistance that goes up every time it gets procced.

[@ppbirdman]

@@Karifean Well the mechanic does exist -- similar to Steal where that gets progressively weaker over time -- or like you say the success rate

[@reniferZiolo]

holy moly,now i have to revisit it yet one more time

[@Crystalgate]

Something interesting you can do is to slow the enemy, remove the slow and then rinse and repeat. The slow spell makes their tick count double, but it won't be restored if the slow is removed. If you keep slowing the enemy, you can bring their tick count up to the stratosphere.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

wait does that actually work?

[@DisplayThisOkay]

@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz Yes it does. Look up "FFX Slow Locking"

[@pyephyoaung7340]

The best explanation ever! Phd of FFX

[@lincolntravelconcierge4846]

I am a member of an elite fraternity that understands CTB healing and Regen calculations.

[@Karifean]

Just realized that if all your characters have First Strike, unintuitively, it's worse to get a Pre-emptive Strike than just having a regular case battle, as you don't get any extra benefit but the enemies all have their lowest possible ICV (Tickspeed * 3) as compared to randomly having a higher one instead. Fascinating how things work out like that.

[@ba6ymillz]

Ive been on my first play-through since I was 11. I have all ultimate weapons for the first time and Wakka and Tidus both have HP break armor with Haste, Ribbon, and Auto Regen. I have almost 10 of every monster captured so Ive recently been milking Shenryu or w.e his name is for wings to discovery, so I can get Rikku her HP break. I gotta say, you've shown me I still got a long way to go, but im taking my time. I wanna stay in Spira as long as I can this time :)

[@tikaal]

for Haste/Slow status explanation, i'm also assuming that because you're not in haste status before your turn, the enemy won't immediatly cast slow on you

[@kyronyxng3347]

I watch movies with my brain turned on. So this gets me going :) love your stuff

[@bobafettjr85]

I'm curious how auto-features are timed. Such as Toneberry's Karma or auto-phoenix. These two examples specifically because I was AP farming recently with overdrive to AP. I've seen it play out like this several times. Auron attacks, Toneberry takes his move(walks forward) then does Karma against Auron. Also I've seen Wakka gets KOd by Karma, Toneberry takes his turn of walking forward THEN Tidus uses Pheonix down.

[@calahoon22]

A great video, one thing that's not quite explained is how the 'ticks' are reduced for each character's ticks/countdowns; are they reduced in between actions? Does 1 tick = 1 second or is it based on something else like frames or even just a random timer they themselves produced?

[@revan8795]

definitely one of the most underappreciated gameplay mode by Square Enix for sure.

[@franimal86]

Never knew delay attacks did better the lower your agility is! Interesting stuff!!

[@franimal86]

Also, the regen healing being based on ticks makes me think delaying your own character when one is in critical could give you a full heal next turn.

[@ZeroxRaizen]

I beat FFX last month. I still need to fight the Dark Aeons, Penance and do the fights from the Monster Arena. I might go do them later this year.

[@airkami]

If my calculations are correct. Someone with 130 Agility has an equal chance that a 201 Agility character has of tying ICV of a 250 Agility character. The difference is the 201 Agility character has twice as good odds that s 130 Agility character has at getting a lower ICV than the 250 Agility Character. I have about an hour left in the video and I hope to find out how the game handles tie-breakers. Found it: 22:17

[@octosalias5785]

Maybe my favorite battle system in a Final Fantasy. It just FEELS good to hot swap party members. Id like to see it with a different leveling/magic system

[@legoerofeggos]

This is such a good video. Thank you for making this; I was very excited for it. One somewhat off topic question - Have you speedrun ffx at all? Obviously its a pretty silly game to speedrun, but as you've been playing the game for years and years it sounds like a natural thing to try at least once.

[@Dansg08]

I haven't, the run takes too long and so much of it has been mapped out meticulously already that it just feels like spending 10 hours and hoping for great RNG to finish as quickly as possible. Just doesn't appeal to me. Repeating runs with 0 interest in the story and gameplay (because your goal is to break it and complete it ASAP) would make me stop enjoying the game for what it is as much too. I only want to run the game to enjoy it or be challenged by the gameplay, not to complete it as quickly as possible by implementing a giant checklist and hoping I get lucky. Different strokes for different folks :)

[@legoerofeggos]

@@Dansg08 That makes a ton of sense, and thanks for making such great videos on ffx for so long. Community wouldn't be the same without you

[@scharajd]

You mentioned P Birdmans Ultimate Companion Guide. Where can I find that? Love your content!

[@Cocytus127]

FFX was my first final fantasy game. Imagine my shock when I learned that the CTB system was unique to FFX. I initially really hated ATB since FFX spoiled me, but it grew on me nonetheless.

[@enoyna1001]

In the old days, we joked about Lulu's Ultima Fury being so slow (highest Rank) that it would be faster to kill her off after the Overdrive and revive her again rather than let her recover from the massive delay.

[@dominicb3797]

I think a really interesting point for the agility 1st turn section is that someone with 169 agi has a 55% chance of going before a character with 170 agility, because so many more of the ticks are a lower value

[@NabsterHax]

I noticed that, too. In terms of ICV, you're actually downgraded a bit when you hit a new tickspeed tier.

[@enoyna1001]

@@NabsterHax Interesting observation, but the better tick speed should quickly make up for that.

[@andrewgillan2567]

Do we know if the positive heal buff thing is stackable for the 50% increases on tick speed when using haste?

[@ericpheymannicie5044]

I know this vid was already very long, but I'm surprised you didn't dive into things like implications of move choice and immunities. The thing that always got me on casual plays was when I plan out my turns based on what the CTB gauge shows me, and then my move happens and suddenly the CTB looks different. WTF, right? I had to learn that when I am picking Tidus's move, the CTB will update depending on the speed of the move I have highlighted with my cursor, then the CTB will change again once I select that move (like delay attack) and the cursor is now on a target; however, that second CTB shift cannot be trusted if you don't know the immunities that the target possesses. When I change from attack to Delay Buster, Tidus's next turn gets delayed based on the move rank for Delay Buster, so I'm sacrificing that time, and the payoff is shown when I target a Varuna and see its next turn fall way behind. But the moment I let Tidus swing his sword, Varuna's CTB position changes back because he was immune to that second shift. I can't tell you how many times I fell for this with unfamiliar enemies, or even sometimes when it just slips my mind and I wasn't thinking about the delay effect embedded in a move, like Shiva's heavenly strike. Great breakdown though. I'm glad to finally understand the disparity between regen ticks of 100 vs 89879870987987987. Now how about a video explaining why regen is the only thing in the game that breaks the second damage limit? Seriously, how do they just let it slip that 99999 isn't *really* the most the game can handle in a single exchange? lol

[@Walamonga1313]

I hope anyone who enjoys FFX plays Lord of the Rings The Third Age and Trails games. These games have my fav turn based combat by far.

[@jeanriviere2599]

Great video. But now I have a big question : let's say Tidus use Haste on Kimahri and the healing CTB thing happen, then it's the turn of the enemy and it uses Dispel... what happens ? Does the healing go away or not ? If this scenario happens multiple times, multiple healing CTBs happen before Kimahri gets his turn ? Now I'M curious.

[@franimal86]

As another commenter said, dispel does not remove the ctb gain from haste (or the ctb loss from slow), so yes, you could alternatively cast them to give yourself a huge ctb buff or give the enemy a huge ctb delay

[@franimal86]

You’d have to cast esuna or remedy to remove the slow status and keep the ctb delay

[@Trisaaru]

If only maths lessons in school were this interesting.

[@middle_pickup]

The CTB healing effect of haste is really interesting. Idk if you can find a use for weaponizing that info though. Maybe it would be easier to cast zombie and haste on an enemy than simply casting slow?

[@Awoken_YKW_Fan9001]

Late reply, but maybe if you inflict zombie on an enemy and alternate between hitting it with Haste and Slow you could have a worse version of Delay Buster.

[@signaltome]

I have played/DM'ed enough tabletop RPG's to actually understand turns and start values. Most of them have a simplified version of turns and who goes first. This in depth look at how the system works is really interesting. This comment is made at 19 minutes in but I have to start now because first I'll forget when we get to the end and second I have a comitment that does not enable me at the moment to watch wverything at once. Any additional comments will arrive as Edit: ;-) Edit: Well, apparently I didn't have much else to say, but interesting stuff nonetheless.

[@Finger112]

Do we get credit for our School Studies in watching this video? And will there be homework as well?

[@Primitive01]

It could be because FFX was my first FF game but I’m not really a fan of the ATB system, I much prefer the systems that have been used in X, XII and XV.. Mainly because with the ATB system you never really know when it’s the enemies turn.. In XII and XV you don’t really need to know because it’s so fast paced and they have their own mechanics to deal with that but in the games that have random battles the system X uses is so nice and allows you to enjoy it and actually play tactically instead of trying to guess when the enemy might slap you with something you weren’t ready for

[@coharn827]

It’s really interesting that haste has a healing effect but does that mean that slow has a negative healing effect? Like if you slow a zombie will they get the reverse negative ct healing effect from slow and then slow take effect on their next turn? Or does slow not have an initial effect like haste does?

[@ppbirdman]

Haste/Slow Spell BOTH have immediate CTB Damage effects but Haste has the Healing Flag enabled and Slow doesnt so as Zombie ONLY affects Healing stuff it will reverse Hastes Damage but it won't effect Slow as that doesnt Heal

[@windwaker0rules]

I kinda wish that they made quick hit have more downsides and made less enemies immune to things like delay hit, like in the grandia series.

[@EmpoweredTravels]

I definitely agree with this. Later in the post game, you can "quick hit" spam nearly every enemy to kill them. Magic and most of the summons become irrelevant. Most characters besides Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku become mostly unusable as well. That's the only gripe I have in an otherwise masterful game.

[@Karifean]

@@EmpoweredTravels To be fair, if Quick Hit didn't exist, you wouldn't be using those either, you'd just be spamming normal attacks. It's physical attacks that are broken, not Quick Hit. And idk, Delay effects can quickly become very broken if they don't at least have diminishing returns. In Trails of Cold Steel you can deny enemy turns so ridiculously much by stacking and spamming delay effects. It's a dangerous line to walk. But having it as a non-broken option would be nice yes.

[@EmpoweredTravels]

@@Karifean Physical hits are broken--every character being able to hit for 99,999 is pretty ridiculous. Adding in quick hit plus auto-haste pushes it over the top. Many enemies even in the monster arena never see a turn or very few. It must be tough to balance everything as a developer but then again, nearly every FF has game-breaking mechanics so I wonder if it's done intentionally. Not sure.

[@missbradicah]

I had Quick Hit equipped for Tidus in my hours and hours of gameplay, back in the day...

[@veeshadow]

@@EmpoweredTravels Well Quick Hit is indeed the Meta of this game. However doesn't mean other options are not viable. It's just they are not practical (i.e Ultima has long animation)... The fact that Penance is not immune against Ultima means he is not really hardest boss in the game that you can ban Quick Hit but abuse Doublecast Ultima/Flare instead to win... The problem is most guides will tell you to grind for stat max first before tackling monster arena and dark aeons but you are not meant to face them rapidly after you stat maxed. Even you can beat easy Dark Aeons by Trio of 9999 +Throwing Gems (no stats needed except Agility). There are some options you can use (beside Zanmato) if your mindset is trying to beat them as soon as you can. The speedrun for Nemesis and Penance do not require max stats and all Celestial Weapons, just enough stats for efficiency for Tidus+Yuna and Zanmato the huge HP ones.

[@Fexghadi]

Doesn't your summoned Shiva's special move (not overdrive) delay the enemy she hits in such a way that she pushes its CTB one tick behind her next move?

[@ShadowSaberBaroxio]

Wait, hold up. Zombie gets CTB damaged by Haste? Could this be used in NSG super challenge runs to delay Braska's Final Aeon?

[@shugyosha7924]

Wow, this is something I never thought I would understand. It was always a complete black box to me. Thanks for making this video! Super fascinating

[@thenerdgamer3044]

you're a credit to the ffx community.

[@joesees1584]

With this information is it now possible to actually complete the sphere grid?

[@TheAuron32]

the other thing with agility is its also a waste of STAT points, you can theoretically reach the end game stats much sooner if you only hit the 170 stat, giving you less of a grind to get to Penance killer stats much sooner.

[@soju69jinro]

I prefer CTB over ATB system.

[@myboatforacar]

People who, like me, are interested in game design could also get a lot out of this video. Don't sell yourself short ;)

[@Rengor1997]

Does the switch command have a tick delay associated with it? I was wondering if you could use a fodder character with first strike to cheat the first turn then use the designated character

[@Karifean]

You can indeed do just that. Character Switch is instant.