No True Turn-Based?

[Christopholis]

Are the designers firmly in the pause-based camp? If so, can they add "stop after each creature goes" option, rather than the usual "upon damage" and "upon critical hit" type triggers.

[Ffordesoon]

That was in the original IE games, more or less, so I see no reason not to have it here.

[rjshae]

It sounds like combat will be continual action rather than turns made at regular intervals, so it is unclear to me where they would insert a pause. Perhaps at the end of specific actions? Maybe you can queue up actions and insert a 'pause' action at the end?

[Gfted1]

I hope there is a toggle to turn the AI off. I don't want NPC's charging into battle because I didn't notice they were idle for 2 seconds.

[Christopholis]

The older games had this type of pausing, and it is even one of the selling points on this games "remember when" advert. Those old games didn't have "pause after each creature's turn" though they offered a dozen or so autopause options. It would be no harder than entering any other autopause trigger. I hope this is in there, and they let my choppy play just be my business. If you can autopause on crit and such, I would think this would be doable.

[Tamerlane]

I don't know about the specifics, but...

 

 

 

Like the Infinity Engine games, Project Eternity will support auto-pause features that allow players to establish conditions under which the game will automatically pause (e.g., if a party member becomes unconscious).  It will also feature a slow combat toggle that can be used with or in lieu of the pause feature.  In slow combat, players can manage the flow of combat without needing to halt the game entirely.

 

If nothing else, it's looking like Pillars of Eternity will have a ****load of toggles for all sorts of things - UI elements, difficulty settings, and yeah, there are probably be a ton of different pause conditions.

 

That said, there are no actual rounds in PoE, so that might be hard.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Tamerlane

[Christopholis]

I guess a combo of slow play and turning on all triggers related to taking actions will be close enough. Thanks for the info everyone.

[Jarrakul]

Perhaps an "auto-pause after ability completes" option would be useful for the turn-based fans? Since we can't have an "auto-pause on end of turn," without having turns.

[Lephys]

Yeah, it might just be stuff like "once every member of the party has performed their current action," or "action queue is empty," or "someone drops below 50% health." *shrug*

 

I'm sure there'll be an array of options that allow you to have it auto-pause anywhere from just occasionally when crazy stuff happens to every half-second, practically.

[sesobebo]

personally, i'm more interested in seeing how the slow-down thingie will look in action (and i hope there'll be a choice between on/off toggle and while-key-down).

[Jernaugh]

Would it maybe be possible to allow the player to script autopauses? So, say, something like combining triggers to get conditional triggers? An example based on Baldur's Gate mechanics:

 

I want an autopause when somebody's weapon breaks, but not when it is unusable because it is out of ammo, but the next quiver slot still has arrows. But there is no "weapon broken" autopause flag. So I set the autopause conditions:

"Weapon Unusable" AND NOT "Ranged weapon equipped".

 

Would it be possible to allow the player to write limited autopause scripts ingame?

[Infinitron]

Pausing all the time like that isn't actually fun. And it's not going to turn a whole bunch of actions occuring simultaneously into actions occuring one after the other in sequence (ie, turn-based).

 

I expect the slow down option to be pretty popular.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Infinitron

[anameforobsidian]

They would probably have to go out of game for that.  As scripts become more complex, the number of players that can use them but can't mod the game becomes smaller.  Also, putting a built in system that would let players script could lead to some really hackish problems.

[AGX-17]

Are the designers firmly in the pause-based camp? If so, can they add "stop after each creature goes" option, rather than the usual "upon damage" and "upon critical hit" type triggers.

You're a liiiiittle late to the party, aintcha? We already drank the booze, the awkward spooning is bound to make a weird atmosphere for you.

[teknoman2]

even in the IE games, the only autopause i used was for enemy spoted (so i would not run into someone when i was not looking), trap spoted (same reason) and spell cast (so i can set the next action without having to keep track of the spell casters manually)

these are the same i will be using here probably

[Gyges]

Just played replayed a patched and modded NWN2, was it the d&d based combat system that made it feel so sluggish?

[rjshae]

Just played replayed a patched and modded NWN2, was it the d&d based combat system that made it feel so sluggish?

 

Low level combat in D&D can feel that way. Early BG combat seemed like long intervals spent waiting for something to hit.

[Lephys]

 

Just played replayed a patched and modded NWN2, was it the d&d based combat system that made it feel so sluggish?

 

Low level combat in D&D can feel that way. Early BG combat seemed like long intervals spent waiting for something to hit.

 

One of the many reasons I somewhat despise round-based combat (in a cRPG -- in PnP, it's perfectly applicable). Even more so because the actions and the movement are completely out of sync. You can jog around for 3 whole seconds and re-position, but that fireball you targeted 2 seconds ago is going to hit where you targeted it 2 seconds ago. It's a little weird. It's like turn-based combat, with real-time movement. Almost... *shrug*. Some kind of round cooldown/metronome indicator would've been really nice. "Oh, actions are about to occur? Better select/target all my abilities NOW, instead of 2.5 seconds ago."