[glorioushubris]

Sometimes games don't do this due to genre conventions/player expectation.

In 2006 Square-Enix shipped a simple programmable system for gameplay automation with the gambit system in Final Fantasy XII. It let you put together a hierarchical list of if->then statements for how characters behaved during battle. It essentially let players "equip" a battle strategy the same way they would equip weapons or armor. This seemed like something highly desirable, since Final Fantasy (and JRPGs in general) had lots of repetitive, grind-y encounters where the tactics didn't change from battle to battle.

People hated it. The popular dismissive criticism was, "Who wants to sit and watch a game play itself?" Players were used to picking and timing all their actions by hand during battles. Many Final Fantasy players back then resented the game "taking away" something they expected and wanted in the game. (It didn't; you could turn gambits off at any time and play the old way, but players got mad anyway because the gambit system seemed like how you were "supposed" to play it.)

In the years since there's been a much more positive re-evaluation. As of the 2017 release of the remastered Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, most of the retrospective reviews had come around to "actually, the gambit system is really clever." But the initial response was so strongly negative that we've never seen the like again in a Final Fantasy game.

There are some games where things not being automated is, for many players, the whole point.

[whoknew1122]

The issue isn't with convention or player expectation for Final Fantasy XII. It automated a large part of the game. It made the game less fun. RPGs revolve around combat -- that's the only reason to grind for gear or stat bonuses.

By automating combat Final Fantasy XII basically made a big hole in the very heart of the game.

Contrast that with something like Minecraft where ComputerCraft is very popular. CompterCraft allows you to program robots to do boring, tedious tasks using Lua. It frees up the player to do more exploration or building, which is the heart of Minecraft.

[THENATHE]

Ive always felt opposite of minecraft. I build an iron farm so that I may skip mining not because I dont enjoy mining, but because the part that I want to mine is lower than the common iron levels. To have a robot do all of the mining for me is basically allowing me to play in creative mode. If I wanted to play creative, I would just play creative.

[peruvian]

Even after Zodiac Age (which I liked fine, btw), the majority people still feel that way about XII's combat. In 2006, XII was a very hyped game (the last single player mainline FF was in 2001). In 2017, the people that hated XII didn't buy Zodiac Age, but the people willing to give it a chance or liked it did, so the discourse leaned positive.

I personally find it less engaging and very MMO-like - I'm not an MMO guy so I would not want to see the gambit system come back. I respect it however and am glad they tried something new. Its influences can be seen in later games.

[Mockapapella]

Oh man, once I figured out how to use the gambit system I loved it. Arguably those were my first programs that I wrote (way back in middle school), and taught me how to think through things step by step. Easily my favorite Final Fantasy, maybe my favorite game of all time. Even back when it was just a CD without any updateable content, I would learn something new about it every single time I went back to play it every couple of years. I had so much fun looking into all of the nooks and crannies of that game.

[cercatrova]

> "Who wants to sit and watch a game play itself?"

Programmers do. Everyone else, not so much. For those of us that do though, there are a lot of good games to that effect, like Factorio, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, etc.