Greatjon

The Greatjon Umber is a character in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. My first name is Jon, and when it came time to pick a username, it was one of the first things to come to mind. The sigil of House Umber is a roaring giant, brown-haired, and wearing a skin, with broken silver chains, on flame-red.

I just put 7 in there to recognize that combat in a game is, in some way, trying to represent what would happen in real-life. This applies to all parts of the TB v. RT spectrum. My preference for RTWP, as well as putting conflicting statements into that list comes a lot from part of my outlook on life. I think if there are two opposite sides in an issue, the best solution almost always lies somewhere nearer to the middle than to either end. The rest is in the details, which we've been going back and forth on for some time now. There's always a middle ground, and that's where I'll probably be.

Might as well toss out IWD series, ToEE, Wizardry series, NWN, and so on then if you're going to toss out those. I haven't played IWD or Wizardry. I guess you could make an argument for ToEE being a light on story and characters, not to the extent of the other games I listed though, I think. While NWN OC wasn't that great, the expansions were better, and there are many modules out there. I don't think it belongs with the others. If it'll help you though, by all means, don't throw any of them out.

@ Exitium I agree both are abstractions; never said otherwise. Most of the rest of your comments have already been covered. @ Zantetsuken I never said pauses were realistic, in fact I'm pretty sure I said they're artificial. In the former the basic tenant of the combat system--turns--are unrealistic. RT on the other hand, is at it's base, real-time. Pauses are merely added to allow the player to access greater functionality of the game engine. You could get around the whole escape mechanism problem by not letting players cancel actions they've already begun, and only allow them to queue new ones. I was going to much write more at this point in response to other posts, but as our arguments are heading into their eighth lap, I don't think many new ideas are going to enter the foray. At this point a lot of what is being argued about is semantics, perceptions that aren't going to change, and much quibbling over small and tangential points. I propose a new direction for the discussion. Instead of continuing down the path we're on, reiterating arguments from a few pages ago, how about we try to figure out what we can agree upon? Let's start with the assumption that we're talking about a CRPG. Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Jagged Alliance, Silent Storm and the like all need not apply. Let's also start with the assumption that the game we're talking about is not a sequel, and is original intellectual property, so it does not have any baggage riding in with it. What're the questions we've been trying to answer in the last few hundred posts? What is the place of combat? What requirements should combat fulfill? What should combat do? Here's a start, in mostly random order: 1. Above all else combat should be fun. 2. Combat should be a legitimate way to solve problems, in most cases. 3. Combat should be an equally legitimate way to exercise character skills as any other part of the game. 4. Being a CRPG, combat should not be the focus of the game. 5. Combat should not get in the way of the rest of the game. 6. A player should have to make and execute plans to be successful in combat. 7. Combat should try to simulate real-world combat, but never to the point that Rule 1 is violated. 8. Combat should be challenging. 9. Diverse options should be available in combat. 10. Combat should be reasonably accessible to new players. 11. In most cases combat should be avoidable. I think most of these points can be satisfied by either TB or RTWP if implemented correctly. Some of these points can also be seen as contradictory, I think this does not invalidate either point, but merely indicate that a middle groud between the two has to be found. Comments, changes, additions, retractions?

I think RTWP done correctly can work well also. All three can also work poorly. If well designed and coded well, anything between the extremes can work well. If it isn't better, there isn't a poitn; and why bother making something which could be just as good, when you already have a system that already is good for it? I said "in that respect," not overall. It's about priorities. I've outlined in previous posts why I think RTWP is the best choice when all aspects of the game are taken into consideration. Turns are an integral part of turn-based combat. Turn-based combat, just like any other abstraction of real life, is artificial. Turns are a subset of turn-based combat, turn-based combat is artificial, therefore turns are artificial. This is exactly like my point on realism. Within the system turns are natural and non-artificial. Taken by themselves turns are artificial. Within a fictional world, magic can be realistic. Taken by itself, magic is obviously unrealistic. In both cases, it depends on your perspective.

@ Saint_Proverbius I said: I never said that it could replicate the results in every case, and I wouldn't expect it to, or want it to try to. Back to my voting system analogy: you can take the same input, put it through a different system, and come out with different results. Of course you have to stipulate the rules to fit the system, but that doesn't mean the concept behind the different rules in seperate systems cannot be the same. The way I see it there's two basic ways to handle this. One, just animate one swing, but count all of the hits according to TB rules. This would look a little weird, but it'd work. Two, you could alter the rule so that you can only cleave in the same direction the initial swing went, up to a certain arc length. This would still allow only one swing, and the spirit behind the rule would remain constant, but it is adapted to the system and has a slightly different result. You're comparing entirely different things. The latter is an element of the game world, while the former is an attempt to abstract combat and is en element of the game's combat engine. These are entirely different things, and the meaning of realistic is different in each case. You're comparing apples to oranges to prove your point. One more time, if the results aren't the same, then there's no problem. I said above that you can't model things that exact same way, that's obvious. This would be passed time for you to just admit that having divergent results is inherently a bad thing. @ Zantetsuken As I pointed out, you can make a system so that you don't need reflexes to use pause. Even without auto-pause, a pause relies less on reflexes than pure TB. I'm not totally rejecting TB; I have enjoyed TB games in the past. I just prefer RTWP, implemented in a fashion much closer to TB than to pure RT. In one system the pauses are unavoidable. In the other, they're entirely under the control of the player. That's the basis of my preference, control. No, I'm not. I already address this in my response to Saint. I'm not saying it's better in that respect, I'm saying it can be just as good. A turn isn't an artificial halt of the combat? That's news to me. I addressed the latter part of this statement in an early post. You just contradicted yourself. You said a turn isn't artificial, but here you say it is. I've answered the rest of that parapraph in earlier posts. You keep on instisting that a pause is completely natural if it coincides with a turn, but is completely artificial if it's used in RT. Both are artificial abstractions, both are artificial halts of combat. Stating one is while the other is not, is a contradiction. Which would then not be turn-based. When I said realistic in that, I meant what would be realistic to an inhabitant of the fictional world. To such a person, magic most certainly would be real. Not real to us is not the same as not realistic within the confines of an imaginary world. You can call that credible if you want to. You cannot pause real life; you also cannot hold everything static while you take your turn in real life. Both are artificial.

I think I said before that divergent results do not mean something is necessarily wrong in either system. For a real world example, take voting systems. You can have direct election, weighted election, instant runoff, messed up electoral college, and others. With the same votes, depending on how they're counted, you get different results. Same thing. Arrows going around corners and teleported mages getting hit by swords are issues you have to deal with in real-time, yes. There's no reason you can't just have them miss though, disregarding the hit roll. With the Cleave and Great Cleave feats, the fighter is only taking one swing. All the game engine has to do is animate one swing, and apply damage to whatever targets the rolls indicate. No, I don't. Anything can be defined as being real in a fictional setting. Whether or not it's real in the real world doesn't matter, only the context it's happening in matters. You listed a few divergent results, nothing more than that.

That's why I'm not advocating strictly real-time games. If you don't want reflexes to play a part at all, you can put in a variety of auto-pause options, such as to pause when health is below a certain level, when a character dies, or a target dies, various things to take away the need for superior reflexes. You can even add the option to pause a intervals to simulate turns. You don't have to do anything constantly when the game is paused, you can take your time, that's the point. Your statements here apply equally to TB and RT with pause.

Why do you need a sequence at all? What's wrong with everything happening at the same time? I would have fewer problems, in theory, with a TB system where you give all of your characters orders for the coming turn, then all actions, PC and NPC, are executed at the same time. This would also come up with some weird results though. There would have to be some system for slightly changing orders automatically depending on new input, such as moving to intercept a character in melee, not doing dumb things like walking right into newly cast area effect spells, etc. Syncing actions on screen to what's happening under the hood may be a problem, but a problem arising from trying to fit 15 seconds worth of action into 5 seconds doesn't have to be a problem, if accounted for in the design. As for Haste spells and the like, it should be possible to make the animation go faster, or have an alternate animation with half the frames removed. There are other solutions than nerfing the effect of the spell. The existance of magic in a fictional world isn't unrealistic. That's one of the things fiction allows. It's realistic as long as it's presented consistently within the context of the fictional world. By that reasoning, I suppose you could make up some physical laws to justify a combat system that requires characters in a fictional world to take turns while trying to kill each other. Magic seems more plausible to me though. I would also be in support of a rules system that doesn't allow players to become to ridiculously powerful, that's for a different argument though. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. By the words every option I didn't mean things like being able to simluate sequence or have the same exact outcome in any particular battle. By options I meant the ability to do things like make a plan, such as a surprise attack or flanking maneuver, and execute it; do things like implement feats, spells, and special actions such as tripping, bull rushes, or grappling. I meant the actual actions the characters are taking, rather than how these actions are simulated.

I don't think anyone here is advocating pure real-time as in Diablo or Lionheart for an RPG, at least I'm not. Also, I agree with your second point. Even though I'd probably buy it in either case, I'd be against a new Fallout RPG without TB.

I'd agree that for any particular scenario, no matter how close the underlying combat rules are, you can have different outcomes dependent on the combat system. I don't think the fact that different outcomes are possible indicates that one system is better than the other. I'd also agree that you lose the concept of sequence in real-time. That's kind of the point, you're giving up one type of abstraction for another. I've outlined in previous posts why I'd give up sequence in exchange for real-time. These things are just as possible in RT as in TB. Unless you're saying things like surprise attacks and faster people having an advantage don't take place in real-time environments. Wizard vs. Archer example: If the wizard is actually slow, as he seems not to be in your RT example, he'd be dead before he finished casting the spell. Thief vs. Fight example: To me, this example seems a bit convuluted. Why is it important what round it takes place in in RT? The thief could still get in a surprise attack in RT, and all the other characters would have to take some time to react to that. Animation speed: I really don't see this as a big problem. If designed from the ground up, it shouldn't be one. If the combat engine is trying to simulate something so unrealistic that the animation can't take place in enough time, there's probably something wrong with the rules. D&D is supposed to be turn based, so you end up with some silly things when you try use rules meant for TB in RL. You also end up with some silly things in TB; that's D&D for you. You're supposed to have a DM to stop ridiculous things from happening. The only thing Dungeon Siege proves is it's possible to get a terrible game published. I don't see how it proves anything related to pausing the game, when the game played itself just fine without the player.

@ ShadowPaladin V1.0 I've never played any of the FF games. The only JRPG I can remember playing is Chrono Trigger, and that was a long time ago. I'm really not a fan of the no movement in combat. Two sides just lining up and trading attacks and spells, moving back and forth between the lines, just does too much to break my suspension of disbelief. That's aside from taking away the maneuvering of combat, which I think is important to keep. I guess it's only tangential to this discussion, but the differing design philosophies behind Japanese as opposed to Western RPGs has been the main reason I haven't really looked into them much. I did play and enjoy Kotor, combat included. I had fun with it, but would have liked more tactical options. Perhaps part of the problem was that I played it on Xbox. I think a PC's controls are better suited to controlling combat effectively. I don't remember all that many options being available in Lionheart at all. There wasn't much more you could do other than attack, except to exploit the combat engine to just lure a few enemies away at a time. I quit playing the game after Barcelona because of the terrible combat system and that the game from that point on relied entirely on it. Also, never played Fallout Tactics. And vice versa. I agree, even without the sales taken into account, on merit alone.

@ Zantetsuken: 1) I'll try to make what I'm saying on this point a little bit more clear. When I said RT before, I wasn't referring to Legend of Zelda type RT where the player has direct control over the character's actions. I'm now sorry I brought up Dungeon Siege, as it's not a good of example of how things should be done, just one way they can be done. I when I said RT in this context, I meant more along the lines of NWN without pause. That's a perfectly playable system for some classes, but it would be hard to use all of the feats and other tactical options. It would also be harder to carry out a complex plan of action. The point I have been trying to make is that it would be possible to add all sorts of options into a similar system, of the same breadth and depth that you can find in TB games. My point is that it is possible to do so, and make the game entirely RT, it would just be mostly useless without pause. It is possible to have combat based upon tactical planning and decisions, not on constant interaction and reflexes, in a non-TB environment. 4) You keep trying to take the axioms upon which the combat systems in games like Diablo and Zelda are based upon, and use them to invalidate systems like NWN. It doesn't work like that. The former are based on constant input and reflexes, while the latter is not; many more tactical decisions are present and more options exist for the player to exercise. Also, I do not accept that RT with pause makes correcting mistakes any easier. You still have to make the same exact decisions. If anything it makes the game more of a challenge to identify when the confrontation has changed in such a way as to dictate an alternate course of action. As I said before, this problem never arises in TB because all information which you base your decision on happens before you make the decision, and in most systems, does not change much until after your turn is over. 5) It shouldn't. But in cases in the past, it has. If the player does not want to exercise all of the tactical options available, they shouldn't have to in every encounter. RTWP, if designed well, should, in my opinion, allow for a multitude of tactical options and planning, and, all allow for the player to control the pace of combat in situations were tactics really aren't needed to achieve success. In my opinion, adding a speed slider to TB does not accomplish this. @ JJ86 I would say success in RON is very dependant upon strategic planning. If you do not plan city locations, allocate resources, and fight for strategic locations, such as for more resources, you probably won't do well. If you can micromange your units tactically well, that's an advantage, but it wouldn't be decisive if your strategic planning is deficient. Bringing Civilization and RON into this discussion really has no bearing on combat in RPGs though. Lastly, there are people who do enjoy speed chess or blitz chess or whatever they call it. I guess that's about as close to real-time chess as you can get. Never played much chess myself though.

There's no reason that TB necessarily has an edge when it comes to quantity of enemies. It's just as easy for designers to throw hordes at the player in either case. TB may be easier when it comes to the player dealing with large amount of enemies, but I wouldn't say that's essentially a good thing. There has to be at least some semblance of realism in the system, rather than allowing the player to weave their way through impossible situations on their turn. Carefully avoiding attacks of opportunity and readied actions while their adversaries are frozen. I would say that not only was the quality of Rise of Nations much different than Civilization, it was also much better, with many more options and possibilities. The tile based nature of Civ is very limiting, as is its combat system. Unless you like your battleships getting sunk and your tanks destroyed by spearmen.

@Zantetsuken 1) I think it's a little different when you look at it from the perspective of designing a game. In that case you can define what you want real-time to mean, and it doesn't have to include constant interaction and good reflexes and the roads to success and enjoyment within the system. 3) Perhaps you're assuming too much on the minimal programming effort. Nine times out of ten when I've seen a developer comment on such a suggestion, they disagree. 4) I don't see how this is an advantage. How does making actions proceed automatically, taking away the option to react to additional input, add tactical options or make the game any better? 5) Yes, preferences indeed. Something you haven't commented upon this far, unless my memory is failing, is whether you think one or the other is better suited for RPGs, and what your take on TB stealing the focus of the game is.

@Atreides 1) I don't think that's enough of a reason to choose the basis of the combat system upon, although I don't really think you meant it as one. Just how many times do you want to have to watch the same animations over and over again? 2) That's kind of what I've been trying to say. Perhaps I haven't been communicating my ideas as clearly as I'd like.

@Zantetsuken 1,2) My idea of real-time isn't at its base that everything is happening without stopping; rather, that everything is happening at the same time. From this perspective, constant interaction and good reflexes are not the key concepts behind the system. And I didn't say that Dungeon Siege in an RPG, I just said it has a combat system. 3) Why is it so weird? I was under the impression that the built the NWN engine from the ground up. How is it weird that they would introduce new game design elements? 4) I still think the RT and TB versions of your example were exactly the same. In both RT and TB you have to make tactical decisions. The information that you base this decision on comes at different times depending upon the system. In TB you have all the information before you make the decision. In RT, more information becomes available as the scene unfolds. You still have to make the same decisions. You still have to live with the results of the actions you chose. For the latter part of 4, you would still have to live with the beginning of the first answer, there's no way to change that. You don't need to be able to change things midway like that in TB, because all of the information that you're acting upon took place before you have to make the decision. 5) In my experience, being bored or frustrated by combat has much more often been the cause of my losing suspension of disbelief. I prefer combat to have its place, but not to get in the way. For me, TB fails this test.

I meant exactly what I said. A real-time system can have every option a turn based system can have, but to make use of them, you need to have a pause function. And a real-time system also doesn't need to have constant player input. Just look at Dungeon Siege. Although that's a terrible game, and a terrible combat system, it does show that you don't need constant player input or much input at all in RT. I think it's exactly how they wanted it to be, precisely so you couldn't easily use the pause feature in the way you fear. It's possible to plan just was well in RTWP. It's also possible for encounters to be designed with this in mind. From your example, it seemed like the exact same in both systems. In TB you decided whether or not to move forward or not after the wizard drew his power, in RT, you did the same thing. How is the pause escaping the situation, if in your example, you have the exact same choice made at the exact same time in regard to the wizard's actions? Maybe I misunderstood what you meant, but are you implying RTWP has turns? I was saying real-time with pause is more fluid than turn based with a speed slider, because in turn based, you have to give your characters new orders every turn. Instead of RT with pause systems, where you have the option to just let them continue attacking a target without reiterating the same orders several times.

@pulp I don't think we have to base our discussions solely on past games at all. That's kind of the point of this type of discussion, to debate the merits of different aspects of systems in previous games, and their faults and advantages, and to suggest new features or modifications we'd like to see. I do agree that the level of fun from a particular game is largely dependent on that game's design, rather than whether it's real-time, turn-based, or something in between. @Zantetsuken I don't understand the first statement. How is it impossible for the designers to put the same options into a RT game that they could put into a TB game? Also, I don't see how RT is hectic by nature. That's more a function of game design and how much is happening in an encounter. You can design the same encounter in any system; TB can be just as hectic with enough enemies thrown in. The only difference is that in TB, it would take a lot longer, and proceed much slower. For the first paragraph, my point was it's much harder to walk into a mistake in TB. When you only have to consider the movement of one character at a time, it's easier to avoid mistakes in the first place. A pause would be overly redundant. It's been awhile since I've played Neverwinter Nights, but how I remember it, you weren't able to cancel actions instantly. If you decided to cancel a spell, the character would still go part way through the actions of casting, before being able to start something else, and often would wait a second or two before going into the next action. As for your examples of reacting to something else that's happening, such as a spell being cast, or drinking a protective potion or something. In TB, these things would either happen before or after you have to decided your action. As I said before, RT with pause adds more places for thing to go wrong, but also gives you another tool to deal with them. The animations for a particular character can be exactly the same, and it's possible to make a system where you can give the exact same orders in TB and in RT. The difference is in a RT based system, you have to react to other things happening at the same time your character is moving. If everything else is static during your characters' turns, then it's not a very good approximation of what they'd be doing in real-time. For this, I think it mostly depends on the implementation. I think I mentioned before that in an RPG, I think combat should not be the focus of the game. It should be a legitimate way to solve problems, and to exercise character skills, but there are much more important elements to the game. In most TB games in the past, combat becomes more important to the game, because of it's turn-based nature. You have to give your characters orders every turn and wait for enemies to act, every turn. RT with pause allows you to keep any possible tactical option you could want, all the developer has to do is put it in the game. But it also allows you to go through combat much more quickly and fluidly than turn based, even if there is a speed slider. You would still have to give orders every single turn, and you don't have the ability to queue orders. That's mainly why I would prefer RT with pause, TB makes combat far too important.

There's absolutely no reason you can't have the same amount of options available in RT that you can have in TB. The problem comes in being able to make use of them, hence pause. Although in some past games, RT may have been hectic, and thing may have been cut out to make the game flow better, there's no reason it has to be that way. How does TB have "the advantage of allowing you to see it on a more relaxed frame of observation" if you can pause the game at any time? How can you walk into a mistake in TB when you only have to decide the actions of one character at a time? Other characters can ready actions and such, but it's harder to do. There's also no reason in a future game that a pause feature would mean instant cancellation. You might be able to alter the course of action part way through, but ideally, not cancel it flat-out. This kind of feature isn't really needed in TB, because nothing else is moving while it's your turn. And TB does not show what a character would be doing in real time; in real-time, everything else would be moving, and they'd have to react to that. A RT with pause system both allows the player to fall into more difficulties by having everything happening at once, but has the added flexibility to reissue orders in such a situation. But that doesn't change anything that happens during the player's turn, it doesn't even really change what would happen without the simultaneous turns. It just makes the turns go a bit faster. I have enjoyed games with RT, TB, and varying degrees in the middle in the past. Also, I think that in a good RPG combat should be on the fringe, not the focus of the game. Alas, in most games, even if they don't focus on combat, combat takes up a large portion of time. From my experience with combat in previous games I think RT with pause is the best solution, sharing some of the strengths of both RT and TB

Since Westeros is not an option in the poll, I'll have to settle for North America. From Minnesota, currently residing in Wisconsin.

If it came down to just TB or RT with no in between, I'd pick TB. I don't want the system to depend on player reflexes or skill with a mouse, and I don't want the challenge to come from those aspects of the system. When I say real time with pause, what goes through my head is much closer to a simultaneous turn based system with arbitrary turn length controlled by the player than to a system that's supposedly fast and exciting, relying upon player mouse skills and reflexes, with pause added in. As for assessing strategy. I think it's just as possible to determine how you're doing, whether you're winning or losing, in a real-time system. I just prefer a system where you have to be able to keep track of many things at once, rather than being able to review each individual choice separately as it's happening. Even a simultaneous turn based system would accomplish this to my satisfaction. I don't know what larger escape method there is than a pure TB system where you can react to each enemy in turn, rather than having to plan your entire move ahead, and react as everything is happening at once. And of course there should be some mechanism to prevent instantly changing from one action to another, but that basically breaks down to some predetermined time elapsing for different actions. Turns happening, just in the background, and asynchronously, but simultaneously. Or something like that. Realism. My preference for realism is not for the player to try to make sense of a chaotic maelstrom that's proceeding faster than they can react. And I'll take gameplay and fun over realism every time. I just don't like TB systems where each character moves separately on their own turn. That's the part that seems too artificial for me. I think they both take place outside the combat system. In essence, they're both controlling the pace of combat. The ability to pause and give orders is really just being able to choose how long you want turns to be. It doesn't mean that you can change any order at any time. Once an action is started, there still has to be some kind of cool down period before you start to do something else entirely. It kind of comes to what I said before about simultaneous, asynchronous, variable length turns. I think the best way to accomplish this is through RT with pause.

You basically want a game that plays like a hundred games. Well, I want that too, but I also realize the limitations in todays hardware and probably the limitations in the budgets of developers forever. It would cost a lot of money and take an awful long time to make a game like that. Not to mention how complex it would have to be. But that's what I'd like too, only combined with my last post I realize the chances of one of my dream games coming to fruition is pretty close to nil, but that's kind of the point. There's a big difference between what I want and what I expect.

@pulp I too, actually like the option to micromanage combat. I just don't like being forced to do it. Also, you seem to be focusing on past implementations. There's no reason why more options could not be included in a future game, while also streamlining the interface to avoid the messiness you mentioned. @Zantetsuken There's no reason why an implementation of RTWP could not fulfill these points. I guess that's part of my point. I don't think you should be able to easily evaluate your strategy after each particular move. Everything should be happening at once, and if your plan starts to break down, well, that's what the pause is for. Yes I think combat should at least attempt to mimic reality. In the past, there have been games on both sides that model things fairly unrealistically, that's more a function of the underlying system, rather that just RT vs. TB. Both a speed adjustment for TB and pause for RT are both really solution to the same problem: trying to combine the strengths of both of the systems. I prefer RT with pause, because, even if I'm pausing as or more often than the ends of turns would come up, I'm still controlling the pace directly and can start or stop it at any time.

I've had some more time to consider the question have come up with some more specific than my initial post. I'd like to see an RPG with an immense and immersive world, where the player's character isn't anyone special. No epic quest to save the world, save the kingdom, save the ship, save the princess, save the village, vanquish evil, find your mortality, or whatever else you can think of. No main quest to speak of at all. Rather just many hooks spread throughout the game world that the player can choose to complete, varying in importance and scale, some possibly leading to an ending, some building reputation, allowing interaction between characters, or other outcomes that more talented game designers than I am could come up with. I guess what I've described is somewhat like what massively multiplayer games have strived for, in part. But of what I've played and seen, they focus far too much on combat, loot, and leveling. I want a sandbox where I can take any character I choose, and weave a story that will be different each time I play, yet each time have quality writing and interaction with other characters in the game.