MrBrown

Was there ever non-pirate C64 gamers? <_<

I do agree that it's more realistic and enhances the roleplaying that way, but it's a matter of what kind of game it tries to be, like I mentioned previously. The combat does suffer because of this, and I think there should be some attention put towards that rather than just shrug it off with the roleplaying excuse. This is one place where TB might not be the best choice; FO combat would have been alot faster in RT (though with the range in it's combat, it's not a clear cut choice). Of course, it could have been handled in other design decisions than changing the combat itself, such as lowering the amount of enemies in battles or making the enemy movement faster etc.

To add to the above (and going a bit off-topic), I think one step in making a good Computer RPG is disregarding PnP rules. Which isn't easy, as known settings sell. I don't mean that a developer should forcibly try to avoid taking anything from PnP, but that their first thought shouldn't be "let's make a CRPG version of ruleset A".

What I meant is, IMO, it doesn't work or isn't the best option always, if simply taken after PnP. With changes (the most basic one being adding full party control) TB can work alot better. For example, (IMO again) FO combat was boring because different choices for your character were few and more importantly most of the time in combat was spent watching party NPCs or enemies do their actions. Full party control (differs from PnP) would have made the combat easily alot better on one strike. Adding more options, such as crouching or reactive actions (ie. FOT Overwatch) could have also made it better. 2nd example (still IMO), TOEE suffered from following D&D rules too closely. While a simple Normal-Action/Move-action/Fullround-action works in PnP, CRPGs are just better of with action points or something similar. Likewise, it had alot of options that could have been combined into fewer or completely removed in a CRPG (ie having to choose an action to try to break off from spider web, when there's very few things you can do while webbed in any case).

That almost makes it sound as if TB is old-fashioned. I think it is... alot of turn-based games have (to me) seemed like they were just trying to take the default PnP approach to combat. This doesn't always work well. On the other hand, some RT games seem to just copy their RT combat from previous RT games, and not-surprisingly this doesn't work that well either. Well, I think TB makes for great tactic games (hence my earlier comment that TB needs parties... there's not much tactics with only a single character), but since good tactical combat isn't what every RPG out there is aiming for, not every game is going to have (or needs) TB combat, IMO. I think making a good (TB) combat system is about making the game fit around the combat system, as much as making the combat system fit into the game.

... With full party control. Otherwise there's a huge possibility combat is boring and drawn-out because more time is spent watching computer controlled combatants doing stuff than the player actually playing.

I think what Briosafreak is getting at, besides that IP has no money, is that they haven't been really trustworthy as a publisher previously (ie, Lionheart). I think the ppl Obsidian would probably like to work on some of the licenses IP has (FO?) some day, but I doubt they'd want IP funding it.