I see that most people are enjoying the new turn-based beta gameplay, and that's good, but I need to offer a suggestion in case there's still time to influence how developers think about this new game option. I tried the new mode briefly, but it felt too much like there were "hard turns", giving all characters exactly one action per grand turn. I think original PoE mechanics would translate much better if turn-based mode used a fluid and perpetual initiative queue. I remember it from Heroes Of Might & Magic 5. Each character would get its turn, but that turn order would fluctuate based on actions happening in battle. Also turn-based, and you'd keep the visual queue, but I think it would feel like a more natural variation of the original speed, recovery, and interrupt mechanics. I didn't find the name for this kind of system here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turns,_rounds_and_time-keeping_systems_in_games#Sub-types ... but you can see it demonstrated here. The 1-minute mark to gets right into the battle sequence. See how the queue flows at the bottom of the screen. Casting things like haste or slow will alter the queue sequence, and you see the queue distance out far past any theoretical "hard turn".
https://youtu.be/axziXt4e1mA?t=60
Anyway. I'm back to playing realtime with pause. It "feels" more like PoE than the hard-turn mode. Play what you like.
