The Problem With Turn-Based: Not in POE

[Aotrs Commander]

I played DO:S 1 and 2 recently (and more or less back-to-back) both enhanced versions. Combined, they gave me a good 260 hours*, so there's that. (But maybe a bit too much of that was faffing around with gear and crafting and stuff and selling stuff...)

D:OS 2 actully let me have an Undead character (and had it not been for early plot spoilers, he would have been the main), which is a massive point in it's favour. I thought that their TBS combat was pretty much about the best handled I've played personally, credit to them.

One thing I've noticed, now that i've finally started on Deadfire in anger is that in the RTwP, I have a tendancy to let Eder and Maia alone more-or-less entirely, and only do some micromanagement of Xoti and Aloth for spells, and mostly just concentrate on me and my cipher. I think there is something to be said for the fact that the AD&D RTwP where there was only really spellcasters to manage meant that I wasn't REALLY managing my whole party the way I rather though I was. I also tend to brute-force more in RTwP, whereas in TBS, I tend to us more strategy. (Notable as far back as FFX vrs all the other FF...)

 

So, swings and roundabouts. I might pay more attention to the other characters in TBS mode, but I probably would be having quite as much fun spamming Ascendant and then going Amplified Wave and Mind Blades on everything as much....

 

(Not tried Kingmkaer yet - backed it, so it's been sitting around, waiting for bugs and stuff. I'm patient. (I must be, I backed Starcitizen/Squadron 42...) I waited a year for PoE2 to get everything sorted (after my early abort because the character reputations were borked and I felt that was, like, half the point...!), so I can wait util they do their enhanced edition.

Especially since it might be the last new one for a while again, since after the compatively rush, we seem to not have any more on the horizon. Please DO enlighten me if I'm wrong, it'd be nice to have something to look forward to aside from expansions to Paradox games and Total Warhammer...!)

 

 

 

*At some point, I must play PS:T enhanced edition, it'll be interesting to see how many hours it actually takes to play, logged for the first time ever... Witcher 3 hold the record at 215 hours and unlike D:OS, I hadn't quite reached the point of "I've about had enough now."

[daven]

I played persona 5 over 80 hours and haven't finished it yet.

[Boeroer]

Uh... what's wrong with you?

 

And what is Persona 5? 

[Wormerine]

10 hours ago, Aotrs Commander said:

One thing I've noticed, now that i've finally started on Deadfire in anger is that in the RTwP, I have a tendancy to let Eder and Maia alone more-or-less entirely, and only do some micromanagement of Xoti and Aloth for spells, and mostly just concentrate on me and my cipher. I think there is something to be said for the fact that the AD&D RTwP where there was only really spellcasters to manage meant that I wasn't REALLY managing my whole party the way I rather though I was. I also tend to brute-force more in RTwP, whereas in TBS, I tend to us more strategy.

I felt that removing party size to 5, did help me to manage individual characters to the fullest (in PoE1 they tend to be on auto, especially that with limited resources use of skills is discouraged). 

I do tend to brute force my way through Deadfire encounters in real-time, if I play too much of it. I feel it is more of a problem of difficulty then real-time combat. It is quicker (or feels quicker?) to leave things on auto, and have your party slowly maul their way through enemies, rather then try to figure out which defence is the weakest, properly debuff enemies and effectively take them out. 

A benefit of turn-based combat is that playing ineffectively really feels crap, as you have to watch ineffective swings hit one by one, and it is quicker to properly tackle enemies, as there is no “fast forward” option. The downside is, that some o the fights can really really drag. Finally going through Beast of Winter, and some enemies can take a long time to kill (some fights were lengthy even in real time). 

I think it would work in games favour if they found a way to punish inappropriate play. Problem with those kind of games is that everything can be beat with inflated stats, so as you level up killing enemies gets easier, and players engagement with systems decreases (at least in my case).

i thought an accomplishment of Witcher3 system was that even if you were overpowered, game would punish your u for playing badly - enemies would block you attacks, your attacks wouldn’t hit etc. (Although, I felt the leveling system of W3 hurt the game more then helped it). Naturally, it is quite a different game, but underlying philosophy applies. If avoiding enemies attacks, and figuring their attack pattern becomes optional the combat becomes less satisfying, not more.

i wonder if it would be prudent to design a party cRPG were new levels would add complexity to combat and unlock new tools to the player, but not make characters simply statistically better. 

[Aotrs Commander]

56 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

 The downside is, that some o the fights can really really drag. Finally going through Beast of Winter, and some enemies can take a long time to kill (some fights were lengthy even in real time). 

And therein lies the issue of TBS verses RTwP. TBS, because of its very nature of being deliberate, naturally encourages better tactics BECAUSE you have the time to think about it (even though the "wP" bit exists, TBS naturally makes you consider each action more. But do TBS wrong, and that makes everything tedius drag, especially if its no an interesting fight - which is why I quickly fell out of favour with the JRPG Tactical RPG subgenre. (Stuff like FF avoids that, because you eliminate all the movement that is what tends to take all the time... But you have also then eliminated that tactical aspect.) Too much uninteresting grinding you could just rush through (like you could in, say, FF).

 

RTwP gets around that issue, but also inherently encourages less engagement, because you have the OPTION to just go "ah, frack it, let the AI/autoattacks handle it" either on an individual character basis or for the whole party. (And because everything happens simultaneously, you kind of have to, unless you are individually managing everything with frequent auto-pauses - I found that drove me insane after the first couple of combat of pause-pause-pause-pause and you might as well have been playig TBs at that point.)

 

Tides of Numera went TBS and they were so focussed on not having grind-y fights and every fight a boss fight they almost forgot to put any fights in, and I think that did hurt the game a bit in the long run, since it made it so short.

 

D:OS, and 2 especially, seemed to me to get that balance RIGHT, in that the fights (to me, anyway) never felt tediously grindy like that. I think it was a combination of plentiful "spells" for everyone, plus the plenthora of movement abilities (to take away all the "and this turn, I just round around") and stuff like the surfaces, capped with the fights always seemed to be well-made - by which I mean, good old combined-arms, of the sort I personally use when I write my own quests. (Compare a lot of fights in BG or even PS:T where it was "a mob of these dudes.") I think it made me more of a convert to TBS than I've ever been previously, because - to me at least - it showed me what it could be when you got it right.

 

So. Yeah. It's kind of a hard thing to tackle, since there's not happy medium (RTwP essentially IS the happiest medium between TBS and full-on RTS). RTwP arguably is the better simulation (for verisimilitude), but at the cost of you basically ceding a fair bit of control.

 

When I eventually play PoE2 again*, I'll almost certainly play it on TBS, just to see what it feels like. (I might even ramp the difficulty up a bit, since I'll actually be thinking and might use stuff like Empower or items that I normally just don't; actually, I think I use them less in PoE2 than I did in PoE1 for some reason...)

 

 

* Which will be a good while after this run - I have found that there is zero point me playing the same game twice in a row, the second-playthrough never gets finished, got to leave it some time to fallow! Only played PoE 1 the once, (Actually, games which I play more than once are quite honoured, in the dizzy heights of PS:T and the like. I've not even pklayed BG2 all the way through more than one-and-a-half times...)

[Sven_]

Bringing up RTS is a good idea, because I don't think the wave of nu-RTwP games (or rather ist developers) understand RTS as much as Bioware did back in the day (and the compromises needed to make it "work"). Bioware held regular Office tournaments of Warcraft 2, whilst the Folks at Obsidian Play or Owlcat Play tabletop at their Offices (Owlcat are doing right now reportedly in preparation to their Kingmaker Sequel, good game btw). In other words, Bioware back then understood the Format they tried to adapt to, whilst the newer wave of developers try to cram stuff into a Format that they perceived was Baldur's Gate. That's what at times it feels like anyway -- and to me it also seems apparent how various System Designers at Obsidian prefer TB combat from the go.

There's lots of Combat I like, but at its worst and busy it's really the worst of both Worlds. I couldn't see any of these games becoming a spectator Sport as Starcraft / Warcraft has become (not that they try to, but this affects the Players playing as well). Because depending on the complexity of the Encounter, it is really hard to tell what is going on; and on a strategy Level, for the Player get a feel of what shifted the tides of battle. Mechanically, it's sometimes just too much. The more frustrating Thing then is that the games encourage you to dig deeper into a mechanical Level -- but if you do, say by following the Combat log, it becomes a total slog. F'r instance, on Kingmaker when battling the Staglord (quite a Grand in scope Encounter), I buffed my Party with various spells, and also potions (amongst others Blur -- granting a 20% Chance of the Opponent missing).  There was so much going on during the battle that I had to traverse through pages and pages of battle log AFTER the Combat to get somewhat of a feel of how often this had actually happened. (Just because the potion Gifts a 20% Chance, doesn't mean that every fifth Opposition attack went "missing" during that Combat -- random Chance, Regression to the mean and all that, which apparently even testers of These Things don't understand).  

Add in the (true to the source material) various conditions and additionally hidden checks that could trigger Attacks Of Opportunity / free attacks which can multiply later on, and which Bioware never implemented from 2nd Edition AD&D, and there you go. (Which btw, are also fairly "Abstract" mechanics of Encounter resolution, whilst real-time goes with a more natural flow of Combat). I personally happen to think that Bioware didn't for reason, but yeah. Likewise, compared to an RTS like Warcraft 2/3, which in comparison can be a bit more rock, paper scissory as you face the same Units over and over which also have a specific type of use, "modern" RPGs Systems multiply not only each "Units" abilities, but also add more of those that aren't even visualized. Combat Resolution is a fairly more complex affair in General, as the Units in an RTS you maybe can upgrade a Little, but only this far, and that's that. Reducing Party sizes (Tyranny / Deadfire) as well as slowing down Combat or changing encounter design only works around the limitations rather than adressing them. Everything is still going to happen simultaneously. 

Maybe it's my personal bias due to some of my playing experience with the newer games (I had replayed BG 1 and IWD just a while ago), but I think the demand/complaining About RtWP weren't as big if the devs understood the strengths and weakness of going real-time a tad better. To put it like this Player does: "We'll just Keep spamming everything we got" indeed. (Which on Deadfire you can do anyway without worrying an Inch, as ressource or rather spell/ability Management is barely existent).
 

This is an interesting podcast from apparently non-harcore Infinity Engine Players, btw.

https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/12093-episode-436-to-infinity-engine-and-beyond/

Edited May 27, 2019 by Sven_

[ManifestedISO]

sorry to semi-necro, but, I just started a turn-based run as someone who is not at all conflicted about this style of gameplay having zero merit, and yet ...

 

combat hits like always, only in a different flavor, as if someone turned my favorite bourbon into gin -- a new challenge that so far is practically fun, rather than the chugging regression we expected

 

still in Port Maje with barely a party, so future full encounters might change my mind about Initiative, but, if true that Relentless Storm lasts even longer in turn-based, the glee may be never ending

[BrokenMask]

I love TB while I only tolerate Real time with pause, so I'm actually liking the combat on my second playthrough with my imported Watcher(I played first time back at release with preset history watcher because I wanted to wait until all patches and dlcs and magran's trials were done before doing my first watcher playthrough with berath's boons and such)

[Dezus]

I have just started POE 2 with two runs of POE1 close to being under my belt, and I am excited but 2 does seem a little bit different.  I hope that the turn-based addition doesnt negatively effect the real-time/pause gameplay.  The two game modes should have similar content, but be mutually exclusive in terms of gameplay, systems, and mechanics.

[Boeroer]

Turn Based mode was introduced with one of the latest patches of the lifecycle. It didn't influence the "RTwP experience" in the slightest.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Boeroer

[Keenan Sullivan]

I was a backer for the original... Never played thru it because RTwP is absolutely terrible. I did NOT back Deadfire... I've played it thru 6 times because of turn based combat... 

 

You're not correct... Opinions don't matter in the end. RPGs with party management are simply much more manageable and full filling if you get to actually manage the party. Can't really do that at all without turn based... Jrpgs are turn based for a reason. 

 

Seeing a game that looks amazing but finding out it's only RTwP makes my heart sink because the game will be terrible. 

People are so turned off by turn based combat because your attention spans are atrocious... Chill the Eff out and enjoy a game for the real reason it was made. 

Get your tactical ability up. Quit being lazy and get smart. Stop making AI do your job...

 

PoE 1 is a terrible game because of the combat but amazing because of the story ... Too bad I'll never know. 

 

PoE 2 is an amazing game because of the combat but lacked what PoE supposedly had in story... Too bad I'll never know... 

The only reason I don't regret backing #1 is cuz I got #2...

 

RTwP is a terrible gameplay feature for people who are probably terrible at games, attention span and have an extra chromosome somewhere they don't need. 

 

:FIN:

[xzar_monty]

19 minutes ago, Keenan Sullivan said:

RTwP is a terrible gameplay feature for people who are probably terrible at games, attention span and have an extra chromosome somewhere they don't need.

You start speaking of your own opinion as if it's fact and then you insult people who happen to think otherwise. Demonstrating such bad manners in your first post on these forums is quite an achievement, but not in any positive sense. This, in fact, suggests that unless you are very, very young, your only intention is to troll...

[Wormerine]

On 10/13/2019 at 6:14 AM, Boeroer said:

Turn Based mode was introduced with one of the latest patches of the lifecycle. It didn't influence the "RTwP experience" in the slightest.

Well, aside from (as far as I know) unresolved bugs it introduced to RTwP gameplay.

 

2 hours ago, Keenan Sullivan said:

RPGs with party management are simply much more manageable and full filling if you get to actually manage the party. Can't really do that at all without turn based... Jrpgs are turn based for a reason. 

Correction: you can’t manage your party, and don’t have enough attention span to play the tactical side of a game in a RTwP setting. I don’t mean it as an offence. It’s just has higher skill floor to be enjoyed - as on top the tactical gameplay you have to deal with time management, even if it’s as simple as pressing pause at he right moment. I do think that Turn-based makes games like that more approachable, and it seems that even as flawed as turn based implementation was in PoE2, it did bring new audience to the title. 

Edited October 18, 2021 by Wormerine

[Boeroer]

I don't care much whether a game is RTwP or Turn Based. Both works well for me as long as it's implemented well enough. As long as the game is fun and entertaining it's all okay.

I prefer PoE and Deadfire in RTwP mode - but I slightly lean towards Turn Based generally.

Why would you look down on people who prefer the one over the other? Or even worse: insult them for their taste? 

You prefer merlot over riesling? You barbarian! 

You like mac and cheese? Culinary vandal!

You prefer RTwP? You must have too many chromosomes! 

Really? That's your assessment of the situation where it's about personal taste? Wow...

It's sarcastically funny how some gamers steer away from divisive stuff like color of skin, religion, social status etc. but then show the same old zealous behavior as emotionally underdeveloped five year old crusaders when figuratively splitting each other's skulls over playstation vs. xbox, windows vs. linux, RTwP vs. TB and so on. 

 

[xzar_monty]

33 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

It's sarcastically funny how some gamers steer away from divisive stuff like color of skin, religion, social status etc. but then show the same old zealous behavior as emotionally underdeveloped five year old crusaders when figuratively splitting each other's skulls over playstation vs. xbox, windows vs. linux, RTwP vs. TB and so on. 

Sometimes even being unaware of the difference between facts and opinions. Here's a fact: you can play Deadfire both in RtwP and TB mode. Here are two opinions: TB sucks. RtwP is awesome.

And as we have just seen, the difference between these categories can be too much to process.

 

[Keenan Sullivan]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Well, aside from (as far as I know) unresolved bugs it introduced to RTwP gameplay.

 

Correction: you can’t manage your party, and don’t have enough attention span to play the tactical side of a game in a RTwP setting. I don’t mean it as an offence. It’s just has higher skill floor to be enjoyed - as on top the tactical gameplay you have to deal with time management, even if it’s as simple as pressing pause at he right moment. I do think that Turn-based makes games like that more approachable, and it seems that even as flawed as turn based implementation was in PoE2, it did bring new audience to the title. 

You assume I can't handle it and I'm sorry but quite on the contrary, I'm rather good at RTwP... I just despise it because it's not a higher skill level... 

 

It's like a game mode that was introduced to gaming for friendless gamers that wanted to pretend they were playing a game online. TB is a far superior game mode for us friendless gamers that hate online gaming. Lol 

[Keenan Sullivan]

5 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

You start speaking of your own opinion as if it's fact and then you insult people who happen to think otherwise. Demonstrating such bad manners in your first post on these forums is quite an achievement, but not in any positive sense. This, in fact, suggests that unless you are very, very young, your only intention is to troll...

I absolutely despise trolls. I'm also not very young. None of you have said anything worth responding to until now. 

 

My opinion, is formulated in an opinion type way but my stance on the subject matter is based on facts .. 

 

Chess vs checkers... 

TB is definitely chess... High skill level required to play well and you have to use your brain and strategize while thinking ahead.

 

RTwP is checkers... Same **** different game with quick little pauses between action. 

 

It's not an opinion, the most successful militaries all over the world would, past/present/future would never rely on training their most elite warriors via a "battle simulation" that was basically run by A.I. script because that's not true A.I. 

 

Artificial intelligence would write it's own script there bud... 

A.I. also can't tell you what the human factor in it would do... Humans have a situational awareness and will always eventually move outside the box to accomplish a goal. 

Computers and A.I. (especially in a video game) will only be able to stay within the box it's was created to be within, for many years to come still. They may be awesome and amazing machines and programs that are stunningly advanced, efficient and full of knowledge but the thing that remains true is the fact that humans are smarter, always have been and hopefully always will be... 

If it were even a debate, remember they didn't create us, it's the other way around. 

So programs and hardware lacks the human variable and the closest you can get to that is with a TB game that mimicks chess basically. 

Thats where these turn based tactics and TB RPGs stand apart from scripted inside the box "A I." 

 

Military elite soldiers would be trained on TB over RTwP because of the RNG factor... Plus the turns will slow everything down and allow for the human brain to focus and learn the ins and outs of strategy. TB is a skill level way more in depth than RTwP so please don't try to get all internet quippy and witty and tell me how my "Opinion" isn't valid while saying I need to respect opinions and learn the difference between facts or that I'm a troll... My bad youngin, but you're the closed minded troll and you're not being a progressive thinker by literally contradicting your reply by even posting it in the first place.  

 

Open your mind to that a bit before insulting me head on. 

 

I literally wrote a general reply based on how I see this TB vs RTwP debate due to factual reasoning derived from personal experience (military, history major, video game player for probably longer than you've been alive) and you decided to come at me with all your mighty rhetoric and some sort of captain save a hoe vibe... In this case the hoe is RTwP...

I'll go ahead and show myself out cuz I have zero interest in talking to someone from generation participation trophy about this anymore. 

 

Jesus Christ

[Boeroer]

So... you thought that making your entrance into a forum by posting presumptuous and insulting hot takes about a game mode would yield frantic applause?

You might not be young anymore, but you're definitely not mature. 

 

[Wormerine]

25 minutes ago, Keenan Sullivan said:

Chess vs checkers... 

TB is definitely chess... High skill level required to play well and you have to use your brain and strategize while thinking ahead.

RTwP is checkers... Same **** different game with quick little pauses between action. 

What are you raving about?

Both chess and checkers are turn based... I get that you are claiming that somehow turn based games automatically have more depth - but both RTwP and TB modes use the same system, have very similar depth and complexity. Really the only thing that changes is player bias, depending if you prefer TB or RTwP pace.

I am also not sure what military training has to do with a story driven fantasy RPG. Most (some?) of us don't expect games to teach us how to kill people, especially that I can't cast fireballs in real life. Playing a tactics/strategy game is not exactly meant to be a military excercise, I don't think. I would feel guilty about playing them, otherwise. 

[xzar_monty]

Well, if this person really did leave the forum as they indicated, that was some visit. Start with insults, receive criticism, get angry and even more insulting, leave. Boy o' boy.

[Helz]

43 minutes ago, Keenan Sullivan said:

Military elite soldiers would be trained on TB over RTwP

I doubt they'd waste much time doing either.

 

RTwP is a hybrid of RTS and TB, and you can play as turn-based as you like (pause more). Party AI is optional. It ranges from great to off. I play RTwP with party AI off. I have more fun that way, but good custom scripts still impress me.

[Obsidianware]

I thought I preferred RTwP - until I played Pillars lol.

I think I still prefer it, just not in Pillars for one main reason; I can't see what the hell is going on.

It works in KOTOR, Dragon Age Origins and FFXII because those are 3D games, I can clearly switch between characters, pan the camera around - I'm never lost in the action.

In Pillars it's like a bunch of ants are bunched up and I can't see anything. Often I'll click on a character's protrait and I still can't find them on the screen. 

However I do find that in the early game when I'm controlling only two characters in Pillars, I love RTwP, as soon as you get to 4-5 though, with 6-8 enemies, that's when it becomes a mess.

Turn based clears it all up, I can see everything, every action is deliberate, I feel like I'm more in control.

Not to mention other issues like characters running or attacking when you don't want them to in RTwP, unless you temporarily turn off their AI. 

[Boeroer]

It seems this whole "checkers vs. chess and TB has more depth and also soldiers train with TB instead of RTwP" bit was just there to emphasize how strategically/tactically or even mentally gifted OP is - compared to those moronic RTwP players who just drool on their pause keys to introduce some depths to their dull combat experience.

Unfortunately hefty minmaxing was involved to achieve this kind of mastermind. Getting "self perceived intellect" up to 20 required lowering "social competence" to -5.  

[kanisatha]

On 10/18/2021 at 10:40 AM, Wormerine said:

I am also not sure what military training has to do with a story driven fantasy RPG. Most (some?) of us don't expect games to teach us how to kill people, especially that I can't cast fireballs in real life. Playing a tactics/strategy game is not exactly meant to be a military excercise, I don't think. I would feel guilty about playing them, otherwise. 

Yeah actual combat is, if anything, RT (no pause). As such, RTwP comes waaaay closer than TB. And this is a big part of why I find TB combat immersion-breaking for me: that one actor gets to go while all the other actors just sit there unable to do anything and just take getting wailed on. I'm just picturing the Taliban or the Nazis just sitting there patiently waiting their turn to kill you.

[NotDumbEnough]

IMO turn-based games tend to give a lot more importance to alpha-striking (that is, killing or disabling the enemy before they get to move). You see this in Darkest Dungeon, new XCOM, DOS, etc. RTWP is a bit more balanced in this regard. On the other hand, I find that RTWP seems to encourage devs to just wing the encounter design, since if something is too easy you can just fast forward through it, but if it's turn-based you have to play through it regardless. Both PoE games have a lot of trash fights (especially the first game, with tons of unnecessary fights on the way to Caed Nua), whereas it's clear that DOS2 put a lot more thought into encounter design, including when and where enemies spawn into the fight, as well as exposition after the fight is over.