ShadowPaladin V1.0

Depends what your trying to convince me of. I'm in the office today so It's not like I have anything better to do. But by finding out what particular aspects of something are "boring" we might actually find out something interesting. Dont you find it very interesting that the Japanese style TB games sell so well. Where as the more traditional ones, well.. Dont. If that 24,000 figure for Europe is accurate then it is a shock I would have expected SS to do better than that, at least in the 50-60 bracket.

That was an example of an extremely poorly implemented TB game- as in not representative of the style- and it still sold decently. Why ? And which one are you refering to ? The PS2 version or the newer GBA Advance version ? What particular aspects of the game made it boring ?

Why ? Those are not RPG's

I wouldnt go as far as attributing the sales to lack of movement. However lack of movement is a common factor to all those big selling JRPGs and Final Fantasy games. So perhaps there is more to how the dynamic changes when you remove movement than you are perhaps willing to accept ? Probably at least a few. Though that was ancient history as far as gaming goes. People do ignore TB games just because they are TB. Howling1 is one such person. So it shouldnt be too much of stretch for you to appreciate that other people can find TB RPG's equally boring ?

Outside of it's particular market yes I am but I also attribute those same factors to RT games so it's entirely fair. I dont think NWN or BG would have sold as well as they did without that magic D&D logo on the box. I am fully aware that there are people who buy TB games on principle. But likewise there are people who ignore them on principle too. Most people I've had contact with on various message boards (not like its a huge number) say that Silent Storm is amazing. Likewise they say JA2 is amazing. However neither sales record of those games I would consider worth Obsidians time. Not with the overheads in Calif. Of course its Feargus you have to convince not me. The thing with STB games is you have so much time to analyse while your waiting for something to happen it makes spotting bugs incredbly easy. Front Mission 4 might just have the production value to attract some large sustainable numbers (outside of Japan).Though it's techically more small unit strategy than RPG.

Not boring the player to tears waiting for things to move sure cant have hurt.JRPG combat is fast , misses are rare (so you dont get the D&D problem where you spend 10 rounds trying to roll a high enough number to hit) and there are a plethora of skills to fool around with to liven up combat. Dont know havnt looked at D&D books since my teens. Tactics , or Tactics Advance ? Tactics Advance had a good initial sales sweep (much like TOEE) but then disapeared. Pokemon on the other hand. Which has no movement aspect. Well thats still there in the top 10. Thats probably a trend you will find a lot in STB games sales if you looked.

Thats not suprising POR II was in the number 1 spot. Such is the power of D&D. Another reason that sales may have dropped is that it simply reached its market capacity. No one is claiming that TB games dont have a market (at least I would hope not) but there comes a point where everyone who wants the game has it and those who dont are waiting for the price to drop. When you reach that saturation point your initial sales sweep is done. I have no problem with the probability that there are 100,000 ish people out there totally dedicated to TB games. And those are the numbers that make for strong initial sales. But if that is the whole of the market those sales will soon dwindle. Consider that KOTOR on the Xbox sold I think 750,000 over the first couple of weeks. Or even better. Consider that Pokemon red is still in the bloody top 10 and has been ever since it was released. Who the hell is buying Pokemon Red ? Why dosnt everyone who wants it have it by now ? Or perhaps the reason is that other games are actually selling less than people might consider.

Not true. They just have to be from comparable games. JRPGs dont have movement. Movement is the aspect that slows STB games to a crawl. Ergo if that puts you off TB games it wont be a factor in a JRPG. Because STB's and RTWP's both have movement they have far more in common than either has with a JRPG.

Because TB JRPGs have less in common with STB's than STB's have with RT games. Read the post where I outlined the differences between TB,ATB,and STB above. JRPG's dont suffer the issues people have with STB games. Well a valid comparison would be a TB D&D RPG against an RTWP D&D RPG or even an RT D&D RPG as the fact they are all D&D related should offset that factor. This is somewhat true even if it's D&D in a different setting.

Then Jade should prove interesting as Biowares first original property.

QUOTE ( @ --) But theres no sales figure comparison we can make to prove that turn-based games will not sell. BG and NWN sold well b/c of the Forgotten Realms license. TOEE didn't sell well b/c it was in the less popular Greyhawk, and was filled with bugs, and barely had a story. Lionheart didn't sell well because its realtime combat wasnt done well and it was an unknown world. FOs were not a bigger success because they were m You might have a point but the difference in sales are too large to dismiss just like that. Your talking the difference between 100,000's for top selling TB titles (at time of release not 5 years on) to million plus over the course of a few months. It's only when you go to JRPGs like Pokemon , which is TB and dwarfs most games sales and has been in the charts in GAME since the day it was released. Or Final Fantasy (ATB/TB) to see anything like comparable numbers. Did KOTOR sell because it was SW ? It probably helped. However there have been SW games that sank without trace too. Well you could go on , but I doubt you could find comparable sales figures even if you look on consoles where STB games are far more common.

Sales covering costs is relative. Maybe 24,000 would cover costs in Europe but highly unlikely they would in California. Salaries (and hence overheads) are higher, rents are higher, cost of living is higher and so on. Artreides is correct in that TB games will need to find a much more mainstream acceptence level and the only way to do that is to make them more user friendly and not revel in their geekiness.

I doubt he made them up though. Keep in mind the game has been out in Europe a lot longer and traditionally these sorts of games do better in Europe than in the US. JA2 for example I believe sold better in Europe than in the US at the time of release. TOEE doing well compared to what ? TOEE is being carried by the D&D name I think everyone knows that. Compared to NWN, another D&D game it's not doing so great.D&D games have a pretty good record of sales. Before I would except that TB games can sell on their own merits in viable nunbers. I doubt for example Feargus would be jumping for joy if their first title sold 24,000 copies. I would have to see one sell that did not have a recognised high sales property (like D&D) attached to it.

Even if you do that you still have to wait for them to complete the action. Where as in RT they are completing those actions at the same time you are doing other things, unless you tell them otherwise. It's sort of the ultimate limiting factor of TB games. If one person takes 10 seconds to move then 10 people will take 100 seconds in a TB game. In an RT game regardless of the number of people the total time is still 10 seconds. To be honest I found TOEE in some situations to be a horrible mess. For example when my party had reach weapons this would happen.. The screen would lock and a couple of seconds later half of the enemy would have keeled over. Having an auto resolution is not an option in an RPG for me. RPG combat has consequences beyond that one fight. Also in games where auto resolution is a factor there is another strong element of gameplay to replace it. Auto resolution basically admits that TB is flawed fundamentally and the only way around the flaw is to have some form of very unrealistic solution which totally divorces the player from the game. If people think that having AI assist is a bad thing (like BG) then totally placing your fate in the hands of an AI is a 1000 times worse. While you may be correct that you cant get the level of detail in RT (though you can get more in RTWP) that you can in TB. It really dosnt matter. The bottom line is going to be that the sales generated by STB games just isnt worth it. Hybrids that try to include both are even more suspect. I cant think of a single one where both modes worked well. They also add to developement time and hence costs.

Locking the camera and that red bar filling up each turn (remind anyone else of a download?) bored me silly. I mean you cant even have a look around the battle field you just have to stare at the screen till the bar has done it's thing. I read somewhere SS only sold around 24,000 units which was a bit of a shock. Anyone have some different numbers or a link ?

Why do you keep saying this? If you have a full team of six in Tactics, you will never be able to control/alter actions of two or more members at the same time. You'll never get more than 1/6 control over the group at any gaming moment, and it's just silly to claim that 5 out of 6 tics of AI "control" makes perfect use of its combat system. Tactics AI does not crouch, does not switch weapons depending on utility, does not flee behind cover, does not use items, does not switch targets depending on threat level, does not choose between burst and single-shot, etc. etc. There's a big difference between RT/TB modes in games depending on whether one is only controlling a single character or multiple characters. If you played RT Tactics with a single player I could see your point being hypothetically validated by game speed allowing time for actions for that single PC that would adequately mirror TB actions per need. As is, claiming it gives a player the same control of a team in RT as it does TB is just nonsense. But I haven't read the rest of this thread so perhaps earlier points acknowledge this. I sure hope so. Because it did. Actually I had no trouble controlling 4 squad members and the other two being snipers, well besides finding vantage points to shoot from. They didnt need a lot of control.It's simply a case of thinking ahead and where member A will be (who has the MG) when member B C and D arrive. Do you really need to wait for something to cycle through 10 units just so you can give the same shoot him in the head order to a sniper ? I think not. Thats another failing of STB games. Even if your only engaged with 2 out of 10 units you still have to wait for all 10 to move. In the "mop up" phase its a royal pain in the butt. So it's not really about control of individuals, unless you find something fulfilling about clicking the same option each turn it's about control of the situation which I can do in RT and I would imagine most people could do with the addition of pause button. If someone is doing the same action then I dont need to be bothered about it. Anymore than I would want to sit here and press the A key 100 times.. If however that situation changes I want to be able to react to it. And RTWP allows that in spades.

If by real time we are talking about not being bound by periods of enforced activity then ATB/RTWP are the way to go for RPG's especially if you are controlling a party rather than an individual. I dont see any particular reason to bring the limitation of a PnP media into video games. Those limits were there because there was no other way. Which is not the case with with video games. If LlamaGod was correct. Then BG would never have been made. So there is no "rule" that just because it was , it will always be so. Thats the interesting thing about innovation. Everyone is a fan until it innovates in a direction they dont particularly like. Personally I find a couple of things with STB RPG's They are woefully easy (basic math and probability). There are always those fights you know you cant lose but you still have to spend the same ammount of time going through the motions. String enough of those together and it saps your will to even bother going on. In real time even if you get a couple of badly balanced combats they are over fast enough that you dont get that feeling of lethargy. Combat on that level shouldnt be about be about math , anymore than it shouldnt be about how many times you can click a button in 10 seconds. Watching things move when its not your turn. Not particularly entertaining. On the other hand if you know you can intervene at any moment (as you can in RTWP) then you dictate the pace. Lionhearts combat for the record. You could target specific areas, you could change cycle between accurate and fast attacks. The difference being that the thing ran so fast and the target system was buried in the interface that by the time you tried either , the fight would more often than not be over. If you look at something like MechCommander which also runs in real time. You have a much more measured combat pace and the targetting interface is via the numpad which means you dont need multiple icon clicks to find it. It's a case of whoever designed the combat system not understanding the differences between RT and TB and the specific needs of each with interface design and other game elements.

There is Obi Wan , Clone Wars and probably a few others. The Phantom Menace game was pretty similiar. I bet if you had Yoda, Mace Windu, Anakin and Obi Wan as playable characters you could get something going on a DA2 SW version. If nothing else its a good way to exapand your market for future generations. There as so many SW games on so many platforms and in so many genres I doubt you would get much of a backlash , if any.

Speaking for myself. Either there would have to be some sort of incentive. Like free software (thank you 3do). I would have taken on the job of modding the FOBOS forum. But then I love a challenge Otherwise not really interesting in being a "play yard prefect"

Sure if he wants to be a mod then why not. But it's going to seriously cramp his posting style.

Actually when you think about NWN and the IE games RTWP have a lot in common with the FF's ATB system. In both cases time is continuous and in both cases you can interupt the flow of time when it is a characters turn to act. This means the game is under your control rather than you being at the mercy of a series of set turns. The flow of combat is important in RT/RTWP because it needs to be fast enough to flow well but also measured enough to allow the player to notice tactical openings as the battle developes. KOTOR did a beautiful job of cinematic combat even if it was lacking active options (it had far less than NWN). Lionheart is an example of a system that just moves too fast for the options that are available. FOT on the hand worked perfectly even without a pause. The other issue that often gets brought up is. The players abilities. True that RT/RTWP rely on the players abilities to an extent both mental and physical. But no more than an STB game relies on basic mathematics and probabilities. There is no good/bad when it comes to player abilities. If one is valid (which it always will be unless the whole game is AI controlled) then all player abilities must be equally valid. With measured combat and the introduction of a pause. And by having different rates for actions there isnt much that you can do in a TB game that you cant do in a RTWP one. Given the popularity of ATB and RTWP surely the thing to do is to see how these can be improved upon and maybe brought closer to TB games (without losing the RT aspect) rather than a somewhat unrealistic wish that developers cut their potential sales significantly. I think its really telling that FFX was TB and yet X-2 returned to the tried and true ATB system.

But it's not an RPG. Different rules apply. I'm going to stick to RPGs since the original author was refering to TB RPG's not TB games in general.

Or Itchy and Scratchy

Maybe it should be renamed Project Y in your honour

Give DA2 a whirl you never know you might get your wish The Dark Elf trilogy would have made for an interesting story based game. But only prior to the books.