Suggestion: Make a pure turn-based combat RPG

[Revolver]

Maybe it's a difference between what level we were playing at- the last module I played was HotU, so there were obviously more attacks at high levels- I mean, I'd queue up continuous called shots, and they would go by so fast I couldn't even see if it was the arm or the leg. I agree though that the floating text would work better than the scrolling window- but I prefer that in Fallout, the floating text was used for combat taunts and the window was used for feedback. Sure, it can be done in real-time, but not was well, and from past history, most developers don't spend the time to do it as a result.

[Volourn]

"NWN, for instance, has 2 feedback windows, one for comnbat happenings; and the other for dialogue."

 

That should be enough to quench your worries, and since you can pause; you can check it out easily if need be.

[Revolver]

"NWN, for instance, has 2 feedback windows, one for comnbat happenings; and the other for dialogue."

 

That should be enough to quench your worries, and since you can pause; you can check it out easily if need be.

That really wasn't my concern- I realize NWN has 2 feedback windows. But neither is very convenient for the purposes of having interesting combat feedback messages, which NWN does not have for that reason. All NWN has is combat rolls and announcements of special attacks. That is a far cry from the example I posted above. I did mention: "Unless you want to pause and scroll all the way up to see the messages, its not going to work to well- and even then, its not the same as the instant gratification of seeing the message right after the attack and having time to read it. "

[Volourn]

You wouldn't have to pause; just a quick glance at the dialogue window should suffice. As for floating messages; it's not really need due to the fact nWN has two widnows which most other games don't have and the floating text covers.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

@Greatjon:

 

1)

I think it's a little different when you look at it from the perspective of designing a game. In that case you can define what you want real-time to mean, and it doesn't have to include constant interaction and good reflexes and the roads to success and enjoyment within the system.

We can't change what RT means, and how it should work. When I say constant interaction, I'm talking of player-defined moves and attacks in real time. They're a necessity. There's no point in bringing up Dungeon Siege again as the example in how it was done, as it was a failure; if RT combat isn't dynamic and if it isn't challenging you, or making you actually participate, then it won't grip the player, and he will have a very weak role when it comes to deciding and acting in combat. If the level of interaction for combat isn't constant, part of the involvement and interest you have is removed - whats the point, after all, of playing a game that plays itself in many events? And if you're not involved in its working, or if you're not involved in it for large segments, then you're not playing, or you're playing less and less. Its that simple. Try to translate the concept of DS into an FPS. You aim a weapon at an enemy, fire (click), and your character keeps attacking it until its dead, not needing your input. That simply isn't acceptable. Same goes for player reflexes. If you aren't acting as quick as possible (and I'm going with the obvious rule of it needing to be as simple and clean as possible), by use of hotkeys and/or mouse, then you won't survive for long at incoming enemies. Again, translate your idea into an FPS. It would be ridiculous to try and implement such a feature (pausing to aim then clicking to attack, and unpausing), in a system that is meant to have player reflexes and interaction as its concept.

 

Now before you tell me again you consider RTWP the same as RT, it isn't; and if you were using RT to refer to RTWP again, well, bummer, as I typed for nothing. If you want to add pause to it, again, its your call, but its no longer RT because the concept is undone.

 

3)

Perhaps you're assuming too much on the minimal programming effort. Nine times out of ten when I've seen a developer comment on such a suggestion, they disagree.

 

Or perhaps not.

 

4)

I don't see how this is an advantage. How does making actions proceed automatically, taking away the option to react to additional input, add tactical options or make the game any better?

I didn't said that not being able to do it was more tactical, or better. Merely that having that function makes it very easy to correct mistakes, if not preventing them altogether (not forgetting the former challenge of RT which is now gone). It simply makes it exploitable in terms of error correcting or preventing.

 

5)

Yes, preferences indeed. Something you haven't commented upon this far, unless my memory is failing, is whether you think one or the other is better suited for RPGs, and what your take on TB stealing the focus of the game is.

 

TB steals the focus of the game? News to me. Why should it?

 

And I think I said back there I considered TB to be the best. Or I may have said i prefered it, but in any case, yes, I prefer it for CRPGs.

 

@G3N13:

 

What I meant was that you can't do the amount of actions/decisions in RT without Pause that is necessary for fluent gameplaying hence giving unfair advantage to (usually lacking) AI especially with huge masses of controllable troops (most RTS are just isometric FPS ).

 

A pause solves the problem but then the problem is the quality of AI and the implementation of eg. D&D turnbased ruleset to a realtime environment which will never satisfy the HC fans.

But that is not a problem; that is the whole point of RT, presenting action-based gameplay which doesn't revolve around planning. I think the problem here is that people are saying that RT doesn't need to be hectic, and can present other ways (in this case, a pause feature) to allow for more strategic gameplay. But that is not the essence of RT. It never was. If it had been, then RTWP would have been invented earlier, and the RT we know would probably not even exist.

 

As for D&D implementation, was this even an issue here?

 

TB OTOH eliminates much of the human error making the combat too pre-calculable

 

No. Human error is anything but eliminated in TB, as your decisions are the primary drive behind it. You fail or succeed because of what you decide, after all.

 

and sometimes allows the use of TB-cheese eg. start combat, move out of cover, shoot, return to cover.

 

That isn't "cheese", its an abstraction of what would happen in RT. After all, after you spend your turn in TB moving out of cover, shooting and returning to cover, your enemies will take their next turn reaching you. The same would happen in RT, only, of course, in real time. You can do the exact same in RT.

[JJ86]

I would say that not only was the quality of Rise of Nations much different than Civilization, it was also much better, with many more options and possibilities. The tile based nature of Civ is very limiting, as is its combat system. Unless you like your battleships getting sunk and your tanks destroyed by spearmen.

Comparing innovations in design is different than comparing actual combat systems, lets stay on track here. The combat in RON was much more dependent on the speed of your reaction and not on strategic planning. The whole point of a strategy game is "strategy". Chess loses its appeal and ceases to be fun if played real-time.

[Spook]

I'm adding my support to the TB side.

 

Any auto fire that don't risk hitting a friend in melee with your oponent is stupid, and autofire in RT is therefore either stupid or dangerous if you control a team and don

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Once more to the breach dear friends.. Once more..

 

Where to begin..

 

Firstly I think you need to break down the defintion of what TB is.

 

JRPG style - TB but with no tactical movement. (TB)

Final Fantasy style - Active Turn Based (except for X) (ATB)

Strategic TB - Has a movement component. (STB)

 

The three styles are as different as RT and STB so lumping them all together dosnt work. It's a gross oversimplification.

 

For those who are not familiar with the styles they are as follows.

 

TB - No movement. The sides line up and combat is conducted via a series of menus. The actual game mechanic can vary considerably. From Breath of Fires very traditional skills format. To Legaia Sagas combo attacks (each direction key making up a part of a combo beat um up style).

 

ATB - Same as TB but the game dosnt wait for turns. A clock ticks away in the background and everything moves in real time. Opening a menu can pause the game (or not , its in the option menu) for you to input your moves. If you do nothing , then you end up very dead.

 

STB - This is the one most people here would be familiar with. And it traces back to RPG's roots in wargaming.

Movement is carried out over some sort of grid or via a series of movement overlays. Each character moves in turn, then waits for everyone else on the field to complete it's turn. Then it starts over.

 

When it comes to sales, which are what is important to those who are making the game. What works for one wont work for another. So using FF (which has wracked up in the region of 60 million sales) to support an arguement for an STB game selling well, is a fallacy.

Likewise without the SquareEnix moniker , other JRPG's dont do anywhere near as well outside of Japan.

STB sales are mediocre at best. That TOEE owes most of its sales to the D&D logo really cant be disputed.

 

To my knowledge no one outside of Japan has tried to emulate the JRPG or FF game style. But those solve at a stroke most of the things that make TB games irksome.

 

No STB has ever come close to the success of Biowares RTWP (real time with pause) formula , or Diablo's real time formula. So unless you can make one on the cheap, or you have money to burn then making them is generally not a viable option unless you can get some big name property like D&D which will carry the game.

[JJ86]

No STB has ever come close to the success of Biowares RTWP (real time with pause) formula , or Diablo's real time formula. So unless you can make one on the cheap, or you have money to burn then making them is generally not a viable option unless you can get some big name property like D&D which will carry the game.

You have heard of Civilization? Its a game by Sid Meier. Very popular, etc, etc.

[Greatjon]

@ Zantetsuken:

 

1) I'll try to make what I'm saying on this point a little bit more clear. When I said RT before, I wasn't referring to Legend of Zelda type RT where the player has direct control over the character's actions. I'm now sorry I brought up Dungeon Siege, as it's not a good of example of how things should be done, just one way they can be done.

 

I when I said RT in this context, I meant more along the lines of NWN without pause. That's a perfectly playable system for some classes, but it would be hard to use all of the feats and other tactical options. It would also be harder to carry out a complex plan of action. The point I have been trying to make is that it would be possible to add all sorts of options into a similar system, of the same breadth and depth that you can find in TB games. My point is that it is possible to do so, and make the game entirely RT, it would just be mostly useless without pause. It is possible to have combat based upon tactical planning and decisions, not on constant interaction and reflexes, in a non-TB environment.

 

4) You keep trying to take the axioms upon which the combat systems in games like Diablo and Zelda are based upon, and use them to invalidate systems like NWN. It doesn't work like that. The former are based on constant input and reflexes, while the latter is not; many more tactical decisions are present and more options exist for the player to exercise.

 

Also, I do not accept that RT with pause makes correcting mistakes any easier. You still have to make the same exact decisions. If anything it makes the game more of a challenge to identify when the confrontation has changed in such a way as to dictate an alternate course of action. As I said before, this problem never arises in TB because all information which you base your decision on happens before you make the decision, and in most systems, does not change much until after your turn is over.

 

 

5)

TB steals the focus of the game? News to me. Why should it?

It shouldn't. But in cases in the past, it has. If the player does not want to exercise all of the tactical options available, they shouldn't have to in every encounter. RTWP, if designed well, should, in my opinion, allow for a multitude of tactical options and planning, and, all allow for the player to control the pace of combat in situations were tactics really aren't needed to achieve success. In my opinion, adding a speed slider to TB does not accomplish this.

 

@ JJ86

 

Comparing innovations in design is different than comparing actual combat systems, lets stay on track here. The combat in RON was much more dependent on the speed of your reaction and not on strategic planning. The whole point of a strategy game is "strategy". Chess loses its appeal and ceases to be fun if played real-time.

I would say success in RON is very dependant upon strategic planning. If you do not plan city locations, allocate resources, and fight for strategic locations, such as for more resources, you probably won't do well.

 

If you can micromange your units tactically well, that's an advantage, but it wouldn't be decisive if your strategic planning is deficient.

 

Bringing Civilization and RON into this discussion really has no bearing on combat in RPGs though.

 

Lastly, there are people who do enjoy speed chess or blitz chess or whatever they call it. I guess that's about as close to real-time chess as you can get. Never played much chess myself though.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

You have heard of Civilization? Its a game by Sid Meier. Very popular, etc, etc.

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.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I when I said RT in this context, I meant more along the lines of NWN without pause. That's a perfectly playable system for some classes, but it would be hard to use all of the feats and other tactical options. It would also be harder to carry out a complex plan of action. The point I have been trying to make is that it would be possible to add all sorts of options into a similar system, of the same breadth and depth that you can find in TB games. My point is that it is possible[\I] to do so, and make the game entirely RT, it would just be mostly useless without pause. It is possible to have combat based upon tactical planning and decisions, not on constant interaction and reflexes, in a non-TB environment.

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.

[Greatjon]

@ ShadowPaladin V1.0

 

I've never played any of the FF games. The only JRPG I can remember playing is Chrono Trigger, and that was a long time ago. I'm really not a fan of the no movement in combat. Two sides just lining up and trading attacks and spells, moving back and forth between the lines, just does too much to break my suspension of disbelief. That's aside from taking away the maneuvering of combat, which I think is important to keep. I guess it's only tangential to this discussion, but the differing design philosophies behind Japanese as opposed to Western RPGs has been the main reason I haven't really looked into them much.

 

I did play and enjoy Kotor, combat included. I had fun with it, but would have liked more tactical options. Perhaps part of the problem was that I played it on Xbox. I think a PC's controls are better suited to controlling combat effectively.

 

I don't remember all that many options being available in Lionheart at all. There wasn't much more you could do other than attack, except to exploit the combat engine to just lure a few enemies away at a time. I quit playing the game after Barcelona because of the terrible combat system and that the game from that point on relied entirely on it. Also, never played Fallout Tactics.

 

 

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.

And vice versa.

 

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 agree, even without the sales taken into account, on merit alone.

[Saint_Proverbius]

I meant exactly what I said.

[LlamaGod]

I like how the only 'RPG' that Real Time worked in was Diablo 2. Then you remember Diablo 2 is an action RPG. IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING AN ACTION RPG, JUST DONT DO REAL TIME.

 

Why cant you people just be simple?

 

PRO-TIP: If your doing a game off an established system that is Turn-Based, STAY TURN BASED (D&D,Fallout, etc.)

[Greatjon]

I'd agree that for any particular scenario, no matter how close the underlying combat rules are, you can have different outcomes dependent on the combat system. I don't think the fact that different outcomes are possible indicates that one system is better than the other.

 

I'd also agree that you lose the concept of sequence in real-time. That's kind of the point, you're giving up one type of abstraction for another. I've outlined in previous posts why I'd give up sequence in exchange for real-time.

 

That means you can't do all those fun things like simulate surprise with an attack order, give advantages to weaker but more dexterous or reflex oriented characters, and so on.

These things are just as possible in RT as in TB. Unless you're saying things like surprise attacks and faster people having an advantage don't take place in real-time environments.

 

Wizard vs. Archer example:

If the wizard is actually slow, as he seems not to be in your RT example, he'd be dead before he finished casting the spell.

 

Thief vs. Fight example:

To me, this example seems a bit convuluted. Why is it important what round it takes place in in RT? The thief could still get in a surprise attack in RT, and all the other characters would have to take some time to react to that.

 

Animation speed:

I really don't see this as a big problem. If designed from the ground up, it shouldn't be one. If the combat engine is trying to simulate something so unrealistic that the animation can't take place in enough time, there's probably something wrong with the rules. D&D is supposed to be turn based, so you end up with some silly things when you try use rules meant for TB in RL. You also end up with some silly things in TB; that's D&D for you. You're supposed to have a DM to stop ridiculous things from happening.

 

All Dungeon Siege really proves is the lack of interactivity in real time with pause.

The only thing Dungeon Siege proves is it's possible to get a terrible game published. I don't see how it proves anything related to pausing the game, when the game played itself just fine without the player.

[Greatjon]

I like how the only 'RPG' that Real Time worked in was Diablo 2. Then you remember Diablo 2 is an action RPG. IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING AN ACTION RPG, JUST DONT DO REAL TIME.

 

Why cant you people just be simple?

 

PRO-TIP: If your doing a game off an established system that is Turn-Based, STAY TURN BASED (D&D,Fallout, etc.)

I don't think anyone here is advocating pure real-time as in Diablo or Lionheart for an RPG, at least I'm not.

 

Also, I agree with your second point. Even though I'd probably buy it in either case, I'd be against a new Fallout RPG without TB.

[Saint_Proverbius]

If the wizard is actually slow, as he seems not to be in your RT example, he'd be dead before he finished casting the spell.

 

Okay, I assumed that you would would divine from my example of the Archer vs. Wizard that we're talking about a case where the two enemies are not standing right next to one another and that there would be travel time of the projectiles. I should have been more clear.

 

Anyway, even if you use a marginal delay within the round to simulate a "sequence", everything is still in real time(pause is irrelevent in this case since while paused, everything stops and vice versa). While the arrow travels, the wizard will cast.

 

I really don't see this as a big problem. If designed from the ground up, it shouldn't be one.

Okay... Animation speed is ALWAYS a problem in real time, and it's NEVER a problem in turn based. No matter how you design a real time game, you've got to sync everything up with the animation system. That's just the way it is.

 

If the combat engine is trying to simulate something so unrealistic that the animation can't take place in enough time, there's probably something wrong with the rules.

 

You know that most CRPGs have magic systems, right? So, what's the point of bringing up how realistic the combat is? Even the ones that don't still allow the protagonist to become something pretty powerful typically beyond the realistic like being able to fire your gun a half a dozen times compared to the standard enemy or some such.

 

Regardless, this misses the point. The point is that turn based can do this kind of thing effortlessly, but real time can't - EVEN WITH A PAUSE.

 

Your point was that real time with pause can do everything turn based can do. It can't. Let me remind you of what you said:

 

I meant exactly what I said.  A real-time system can have every option a turn based system can have, but to make use of them, you need to have a pause function.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

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.

[Hell Kitty]

I want real-time for my first person single character RPGs, and turn-based for my isometric party based RPGs.

 

Oh, and when I refer to TB, I'm talking about STB. I want combat like Silent Storm, oh baby...

 

I have yet to see an RPG (that isn't an action RPG) do combat that I actually find interesting.

[Deadeye Dragoon]

FOT on the hand worked perfectly even without a pause.

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.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

FOT on the hand worked perfectly even without a pause.

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.

[Spook]

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.

.

KotOR did not have true automatic weapons, which in itself is strange since it is a futuristc game, and any use of autofire when your team mates is in melee with opponent is not very realistic (unless you realy hate the fellow team mate in melee that is ).

 

Kotor did give a good use of singe shot fire though, that I admit. Another thing that had been better in KotOR with the TB would have been some bloody control so that you team mates, that was not under direct control, did not run of to set of another spawnpoint on starforge (hated that). When it did not matter where and when none directly controlled character moved during combat the RT worked fine, but that removed most of any tactical decisions from the game.

 

FOT did not work pefectly RT, which was because there was autofire in the game and you had to control an entire team.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Oh, and when I refer to TB, I'm talking about STB. I want combat like Silent Storm, oh baby...

 

I have yet to see an RPG (that isn't an action RPG) do combat that I actually find interesting.

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 ?

[Iolo]

And why in a turn based option SP couldn't you also have characters doing their actions until you say to stop? I think the original Pool of Radiance had that. You had to press space bar or Q maybe once their automatic turn began to break in. Designers could go beyond this and also implement a queue for turn based actions so that in the next few rounds the character does that behavior until you tell them not to. You'd still have the option of interrupting the attack to do what you want to do instead.

 

The difference of course is that each character or NPC acts upon its own initiative so it's still turn based. However, you could also implement what TOEE did where the enemies will move synchronously at the same time to do their attacks if it is feasible. This would reduce the wait time of your example of waiting for all 10 of the enemy characters to complete their turn.

 

Regarding easy fights that you know you can't win, why can't a Turn Based game have an auto resolve function that resolves the combat using default behavior based on scripts and at the end of the combat you see the results like what happened to your characters. You would only use that option when you knew the fight would be easy. And if the fights are too easy, then that's a factor of poor design for those monsters.

 

Regarding D&D being turn based versus real time in a CRPG, each and every D&D developer comes up with their own bastardized rules with an approximation of the correct rules, ignore the rule entirely or create something entirely new. NWN especially suffered from this as did BG series. At least when implemented in a turn based game there is a stronger likelihood for the rules to be implemented properly since the original rule set is turn based. Maybe WotC should come up with a CRPG real time rule set for D&D so that there was one standard that all of those RT D&D CRPGs could use.

 

Behind the scenes in these games like BG and NWN and even KOTOR, there are still rounds. Your character makes a certain number of attacks per round. You can queue up actions in NWN and KOTOR that get done on the following rounds. The difference is you can break in at any time and change what you had queued up but the action that you queued for that round can't be interrupted once it had begun, just like a real turn based game. There is also less granularity of choice in real time versus turn based in choosing your actions. Not to mention the real time aspects makes certain tactical choices not available in a real time game. For choice of tactics, a turn based game is the way to go and you can always improve how it is designed to reduce player wait. There is no reason that turn based combat can't have evolved beyond the original Pool of Radiance. Real time combat will always be faster but it's at the expense of choice and depending on the game the trade off isn't worth it.