I'm curious, I've played Final Fantasy games for a bit and seem to like FF-12
the best so far because of the gameplay. I've never tried out Final Fantasy 11
because it's online and a paid requirement (bad luck) which hurts, but my major
question is... um,

is the new gameplay of FF-12 based off FF-11 due to the almost absolute
free movement, or is it just a plain new twist?

If this is a stupid question to ask, I request the staff to destroy this topic on
contact.

Actually, you're right.

FFXII does indeed borrow it's style of battle from FFXI, however, it is not completely the same. In FFXI, monsters would freely wander the fields in plain sight (as in FFXII). Therefore, when you wanted to attack a monster, you would have to target it (if it didn't already start attacking you - a lot do), and then open the menu and hit 'Attack'.

Your character would then go into what is called 'Auto-Attack Mode'. Literally, this means they are locked onto that monster and will automatically keep hitting the enemy repeatedly until it was dead or until it killed you. You didn't have to keep hitting 'Attack' each time, as your character would keep continuously hitting the enemy.

In FFXI there was no ATB gauge (like was used in FFXII), instead, the attack delay was determined by whatever weapon you happened to be equipped with. Each weapon equippable in FFXI has an attack delay, shown as a three digit number, which determined how quickly each attack occurred.

For example, a sword with a delay of 255 will attack faster than a sword with a delay of 340. Usually, weapons with a high delay often did more damage per hit to counter this, so it became more of a choice between fast attacks or more damage per hit. The only exception to this was bare-handed fighting, which had a default attack delay, and which was also the fastest form of fighting, especially if you were a Monk.

While your character is trading blows with the monster, you could also naturally use magic or Job abilities as well by selecting the relevant choice from the menu and confirming the target. Your character would temporarily cease attacking physically while it readied the attack (magic and some abilities took time to charge up before executing) and would then automatically resume attacking the enemy until it was dead or it killed you instead.

Naturally, if it looked like things were going to take a turn for the worse (such as another monster 'linked' onto the first one), you had to open the menu and select 'Disengage' to stop attacking, which also allowed you to make a run for it and 'zone'. This would also allow other players to jump in and finish the monster off as they cannot attack a monster that is already locked onto someone.

FFXII changed this a little by eliminating base attack delay and opting instead for the old-fashioned ATB gauge to determine the delay between attacks. This made things a little more complicated, although the Gambit system was implemented to balance that out. As well, although it retained the hate system used in FFXI (basically, your character has a hidden 'hate' level that determines the likelihood that a monster will attack you), FFXII improved it by adding an 'enmity gauge' above each monster, that showed you the likelihood it would attack.

Green ones were passive, where as yellow and higher would probably attack you on sight. This was a very good addition that I wished was in FFXI, as unless you have an accurate bestiary printout it became a matter of luck knowing which monsters would attack you and which would leave you alone. ;)

Anyway, I'm sorry if I've droned on. Hopefully this has answered your question. :)

Having never played XI or XII, I thought this was fascinating. Thanks Enkidoh!