10 Awesome Video Game Mechanics The Industry Abandoned

One of the things that Final Fantasy X received a lot of praise for when it came out was the revamped combat system. It was very similar to earlier games in the franchise which used an ATB system, or Active-Time Battle, in which time continued to run while you were making your decisions and the characters were performing their actions. This was a change from what older games used which was simply a turn-by-turn mechanic.

The switch from simple turns to ATB allowed more mechanics to come into play, like boosting a character's speed so they could act more often.

However FFX's new CTB, or Conditional Turn-Based, battle system brought a whole new modicum of strategy and accessibility to the system. No longer was a battle down to sheer mashing of the 'regular attack' option as soon as it popped up.

Players had a window showing the order each character in the battle would act in, and how performing various actions would change the turn order.

Use an item? Your next turn happens sooner. Unleash your ultimate attack with a long charge up? You can see how many times the enemy could potentially attack you in that time.

And then... nobody else used it. Final Fantasy didn't even use it again, switching back to the older ATB style.