It's fun but takes too long.

[Gniel]

I enjoyed trying out the new beta Turned Based (TB) game mode (duh) by starting a Trial of Iron on Veteran difficulty and running an Arquebus based Scout (Ranger/Rogue) Watcher. He mostly carried the party and I was having fun. I've just finished the Digsite quest and talked with Eothis for the first time. So I'm not far, but I've experienced a decent amount of gameplay.

 

A lot of work has been done to make the game mode balanced, which is great. It resulted in the power level of many skills/abilities has being drastically shifted, which is fine. My main issue with the game mode is how long it takes. I generally like scripting my A.I. so that I mostly don't have to intervene much at all. The simultaneous actions keeps things running along quickly. I miss a lot of details relative to TB, but the big things stick out and usually get an automatic pause, except for the fact that my other campaign is currently a Magran's Challenge (no pausing).

 

Comparing TB in Deadfire to other TB RPGs I've played makes me feel like Deadfire isn't balanced for TB on the story to combat ratio. One of my favorite games of all time is Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). Battles can last a while, but they're meant to meant to be more evenly matched in difficulty and there's almost always story progression after every single battle. I think this is similar in other other classic TB RPGs. Most battles feel like direct progress in the game rather than one of about 3-5 battles for story progress. In real time (RT) the smaller battle can last 15 seconds, so it doesn't matter. When that turns into a full minute long battle while rushing thru it, it get really tedious. I feel like the mode would benefit from lower HP values on both sides. It would require more thinking/planning and less cycling thru hero actions waiting for the inevitable conclusion.

 

I'd like to conclude by thanking Obsidian for making this free game mode, especially for making it free. It's great, and I'll probably come back to it sometime after it's been patched and I'm done with the no-pause campaign.

[Sanctuary]

Did you really need to bump your own post by starting an identical thread less than fifteen minutes later?  Regardless, I had a similar suspicion that fights would just drag on unbearably long, especially trash fights that eventually don't really need that much player input when using RTwP and cutsom AIs.

Edited January 26, 2019 by Sanctuary

[Gniel]

Did you really need to bump your own post by starting an identical thread less than fifteen minutes later?  Regardless, I had a similar suspicion that fights would just drag on unbearably long, especially trash fights that eventually don't really need that much player input when using RTwP and cutsom AIs.

The double post was an accident. This was my first post of my account and I didn't read the part where the post was awaiting approval of a moderator so I assumed the post was somehow lost and re-posted.

 

Magran's challenge is the opposite of TB, it's interesting switching between the two.

[darkcharl]

I share your sentiment that one can get a lot more detail out each fight. Indeed, this also prolongs each fight.

 

However, I for one feel like the “price is right”, the compromise is definitely worth the time investment.

 

Due to the more enagaging combat I found myself care a lot more about what my companions are doing, they feel as if they are a more integral part of my strategy. I don’t think getting to this level of detail was possible in the original play mode, even with detailed auto-pause and more advanced (modded) AI scripting.

 

Aside from the current issues with balance (number actions within the turn, dampened impact of dexterity) I feel like this mode is far superior to the quasi real time based, when balanced properly.

 

Perhaps with mentioned issues tuned away and some enhancement made to the base unit of turns (turns could be made more action packed IMHO) it to offset some of your feelings about the prolonged fights.

[Crumbleton]

You can click a title green dot that makes your turn end after you cooler your action. It's sub optimal for micro and what not but it does make easier combats end quicker.

[Imlandris]

You can increase the combat/animation speed to slightly reduce combat duration. In RTwP I used to slown down, now I speed up, at the end I don't have the feeling that combat last longer). I also map the mouse right button to "End turn" so I can almost play with only the mouse and it makes the whole thing faster. I don't use auto-end because sometime I need to move, act and move.

[wih]

A single battle is longer in turn based mode, but I tend to win that battle from the first try now. Previously I had the tendency to die and restart several times. So it is not immediately clear for me which mode is faster overall ...

Edited January 27, 2019 by wih

[Gniel]

I share your sentiment that one can get a lot more detail out each fight. Indeed, this also prolongs each fight.

 

However, I for one feel like the “price is right”, the compromise is definitely worth the time investment.

 

Due to the more enagaging combat I found myself care a lot more about what my companions are doing, they feel as if they are a more integral part of my strategy. I don’t think getting to this level of detail was possible in the original play mode, even with detailed auto-pause and more advanced (modded) AI scripting.

 

Aside from the current issues with balance (number actions within the turn, dampened impact of dexterity) I feel like this mode is far superior to the quasi real time based, when balanced properly.

 

Perhaps with mentioned issues tuned away and some enhancement made to the base unit of turns (turns could be made more action packed IMHO) it to offset some of your feelings about the prolonged fights.

I finished the RTwP Magran challenge on veteran difficulty so I'm going to give TB a try again on PotD. There should be a lot fewer trivial fights, at least until much later in the game.

 

You can click a title green dot that makes your turn end after you cooler your action. It's sub optimal for micro and what not but it does make easier combats end quicker.

I think I prefer "wih"'s solution, binding end turn to a mouse button. The game already was putting my default action speed at 5/5, so it was zipping straight thru enemy turns. My concern though was not with how long a fight took, but how many fights there were between quest progression, especially trash mob fights. A good fight feels great, for example the middle of the dig-site before you free the animancers. I'm planning on having at least a couple of simple right clickers in my party so I can run thru right clicking trash mobs down quickly once it comes to that.

 

You can increase the combat/animation speed to slightly reduce combat duration. In RTwP I used to slown down, now I speed up, at the end I don't have the feeling that combat last longer). I also map the mouse right button to "End turn" so I can almost play with only the mouse and it makes the whole thing faster. I don't use auto-end because sometime I need to move, act and move.

Thanks for the tip, I'm going to give it a try! Between your tip and increasing the difficulty to PotD I think I'll enjoy another shot a full run in TB. It'll be first try at PotD though...

 

A single battle is longer in turn based mode, but I tend to win that battle from the first try now. Previously I had the tendency to die and restart several times. So it is not immediately clear for me which mode is faster overall ...

Good point. I noticed I was restarting a good amount of fights in my Eothis challenge because I was playing against the clock. Fewer reloads does make for a faster total game experience.

[Levie87]

I've noticed that the AI sometimes sits for an extended amount of time thinking about their turn. It feels like a bug as often times the AI decides to do nothing at all after making me sit and wait. I noticed this especially on boarding fights but also when fighting a drake.

 

Otherwise I enjoy the pace. I think there are good tips shared in here to help time effeciency overall too.

[Steezbucket]

Just wanted to say that I played through port Maje, and agree that the turn based takes too long for me to enjoy.   

 

I think this is a very ambitious addition, and hope that obsidian can refine this mode!

[Sombrero]

Am I the only one who have a grudge with the accuracy and dodge system in the turn based system ? I wasn't a big fan for the real time but I get where it's coming from and all, ok sure. But in turn based you can end up missing a lot of actions and it just feels wrong. Having some specific actions that are fairly "chance" based is a healthy thing but having almost every action you perform being based on a % of chance when you get only to act once per turn per character becomes a bit critical and can make fights last much longer than they would otherwise.

 

I'm not the best at min-maxxing I just know it, but still, I've played the first cave tutorial section with Watcher and Edér a few times in turn base (trying out some builds ideas for my Watcher and the system at the same time) and a solid 60% of actions were missed on either side of the battlefield. It really makes the fight longer.

 

Also nobody mentions it but there's a bit of time wasted regarding animations and end of turns, it is not a lot but when you multiply by the number of turns and characters on the battlefield it really quickly adds up.

[darkcharl]

@sombrero that is a very good point, the misses indeed feel a lot more noticeable in TBM, especially for single attacks.

[jrocket]

Another issue I've noticed is that many of the enemies, at least on Veteran difficulty, are hp sponges. I'm sitting here filling this guy with pistol bullet and he won't die. How many shots can a guy take? If everyone had something like 25% less health, it would go lot of faster. Or maybe it's because I'm grazing half the time... yeah this mode needs a flat +5-10 or so to accuracy.

[SChin]

Hey everyone!

 

Thank you for all the feeback on the pace of combat in TBM.  I'll let the team know about this thread so they can consider everything.  If you've got anything else to say about it, please continue to do so as I'll be linking this thread in the report so they can see all this awesome feedback easily.

 

Thanks again everyone!

[ABearIsHere]

Given this thread is already under the attention of the devs, I was wondering if part of the problem with combat pacing in Turn-based isn't due to the amount of misses? Even with a relatively generous Graze-to-Crit range with basic attack resolution, misses still feel very prominent and feel very unsatisfying in turn-based. There simply is a lot more stress and focus put on every single attack and spell.

I don't know what the best solution to this is, and what is even possible behind the scenes. Adding a flat Accuracy bonus in Turn-based Mode is probably not the best solution because it would make Crits more likely too, but perhaps the Miss range could be narrowed? Also health pools should probably be smaller in Turn-based too, just so that encounters end more quickly. I don't know, I'm sure the system designers and developers can think of better solutions than me, given my only experience with game development has been toying around with Twine, but hopefully the pacing problems of the current implementation of Turn-Based Mode are at least ameliorated before it gets out of Beta.

[Wormerine]

Given this thread is already under the attention of the devs, I was wondering if part of the problem with combat pacing in Turn-based isn't due to the amount of misses? Even with a relatively generous Graze-to-Crit range with basic attack resolution, misses still feel very prominent and feel very unsatisfying in turn-based. There simply is a lot more stress and focus put on every single attack and spell.

I don't see misses to occur that often. The thing is: PoE combat is about rolls, hits and misses. The difficulty of encounters is figuring out how to best avoid damage and how to effectively disable enemies. Analysing stats is gameplay. Not that I would oppose an RPG designed differently - things like Invisible Inc. or Into the Breach make for excellent turn based games while providing reliable results. But entire system of PoE would be broken if hits were guaranteed - make attacks more likely to hit, and the main aspect of decision making is gone.

 

However, I do think that fights can go one forever if one lands in the spot of fighting with wrong equipement or just makes wrong decisions. Just yesterday, I was making my way through the Old city and on my first attempt on the "ambush" encounter I found it a slog. I also lost. For a second attempt I switched my equippemend and things went much more smoothly - in terms of success and in how many hits enemies would die. 

 

EDIT: I feel maybe a bit of HP could be cut from both my party and enemies. It might not work as I would hope, but Pallegina herself is able to talk turns worth of damage. Similarly some of the boss fights (fought grub yesterday) comes down to waiting for HP to end. It is an issue the RTwP suffered from as well, but its much more noticable when player confirms each attack manually. 

Edited February 1, 2019 by Wormerine

[Gniel]

Am I the only one who have a grudge with the accuracy and dodge system in the turn based system ? I wasn't a big fan for the real time but I get where it's coming from and all, ok sure. But in turn based you can end up missing a lot of actions and it just feels wrong. Having some specific actions that are fairly "chance" based is a healthy thing but having almost every action you perform being based on a % of chance when you get only to act once per turn per character becomes a bit critical and can make fights last much longer than they would otherwise.

I tend to max perception for all characters that do anything offensive, plus I also like to use active skills with bonus accuracy, so I think I miss a lot less than others. TB really highlights how much missing costs you in combat. Also, at the beginning of the game you have much fewer abilities to mitigate misses.

[mostundesired]

I agree that misses do slow down combat considerably, but hesitated to mention it because how much of that is due to low level jank? In the base game I always noticed when I missed which rather irked me, but I could live with it because when I did hit, it felt worth the time invested. And then in mid to late game, I would hit consistently because of weapons, level, etc. If it evens out in turnbased that same way, then it's more early game that needs some tweaking than every single fight (at least in regards to missing/hitting). A certain % miss to graze modifier, maybe?

[hansbricks12]

I think increasing all damage caused by a flat amount might work. Reducing health would require rebalancing healing, and increasing accuracy has problems with crit as well.

 

It also has the side-effect of making initiative more valuable as a stat. If battles were shorter with both players and enemies being more vulnerable, then being 1-turn ahead of the enemy would also be much more powerful. Dumping dex would be much more dangerous if the enemy could K.O. your guys right from the start.

[Gumboots]

Having now reached level 20 with a geared up team on PotD everything feels very good in my opinion, most things die quite quickly and i wouldn't want it to be any easier, however i do agree that the pacing is a bit slow earlier on, i just hope any potential changes won't make the upper levels too trivial.

[Onji24]

I for one think the speed of the turns is perfectly fine, but still nice to know how other people feel about it.

[Mungrul]

I for one think the speed of the turns is perfectly fine, but still nice to know how other people feel about it.

 

Me too, but I haven't played the game in RTwP mode. I bought it specifically because they added turn-based, and am loving every fight. I'm at level 17 now and still not tired of the combat.

I have criticisms, but speed isn't one of them.