Would PioE have been better with turn-based combat?

[Concordance]

I am aware that Pillars of Eternity is a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate (which was Real-Time-With-Pause), and that many people hold strong personal preference for TB or RTWP, with most of Obsidian's and Black Isle's games being the latter. This thread is not about about that.

 

The topic I'd like to discuss is the technical advantages of TB combat for games with fairly complex combat mechanics made on a comparatively low budget (kickstarter). 

 

(TLDR at the bottom)

 

Throughout this post, I'll be comparing PioE and Divinity: Original Sin for the following reasons:

 

1) Both are critically acclaimed Kickstarted party-based RPGs with relatively modest budgets, funded at roughly the same time and released within a year of each other.

2) Both have non-trivial combat mechanics and a heavy focus on combat.

3) I've done completionist playthroughs of both games within the last year so they are still fresh in memory.

 

Based on my experience with the two games, I think PioE would have worked better with turn-based combat, and here is why:

 

1) It's hard to argue that poor pathfinding is a huge problem with PioE, with enemies often lining up behind each other even in open spaces. It is difficult to implement pathfinding that reliably finds a way around obstacles and environmental hazards. It's even more difficult to make it quick and cheap enough to perform for dozens of characters at the same time. Games with 5-10x PioE's budget routinely struggle with this and/or resort to cheating (disabling clipping, teleporting characters, etc).

 

Having Turn-Based combat makes it easier to implement accurate pathfinding. You only need to run the algorithm for exactly one character at any time, no matter the size of the encounter. As a result of having far more resources and time to work with, the pathfinding algorithm can be written to not just draw a line from A to B, but also to account for other variables on the way (avoid engagement, detected traps, environmental hazards, etc).

 

I have rarely seen enemies fail to find their way around a battlefield in DivOS, even though its environments are much more geometrically complex than PioE.

 

2) Poor (or non-existent) AI is also a big, if not the biggest problem with PioE's encounters. Enemies beeline for the closest and/or weakest character and engage him for the entirety of the fight. They are easily tricked, tend to ignore environmental hazards and make single-minded decisions - nonsensical behaviour like squishy enemy casters running into your frontline to cast a spell at your backline are a routine occurrence.

 

Turn-based combat makes it easier to script "better" AI for the same reason it allows better pathfinding - the AI scripts need to run for only one enemy at any given time. As a result, each individual enemy can take his time to determine the best course of action - decide to take a disengagement hit to slaughter a nearby squishie, move out of a Wall of Fire, reposition to attack from a side or behind, and so on.  

 

As a result of being given ample time to "think", in DivOS enemies often make sound tactical decisions on the fly: high-health enemies deciding to swallow an Attack of Opportunity to pick a better target; enemies repositioning for better firing/spellcasting lines and moving out of your range before the turn ends; swarmer enemies splitting across several targets to inflict Flanked on all of them; the list goes on. Beating AI enemies that show some semblance of intelligence is so much more satisfying than outsmarting dumb targets that only dwarf you in numbers and stats.

 

3) PioE has to resort to arbitrary and severely contrived solutions for problems that TB games avoid naturally through game mechanics. Here are a few examples:

 

I) PioE arbitrarily forbids some abilities to be used outside of combat and allows others. This is an ugly band-aid, but necessary to avoid excessive pre-buffing.

 

DivOS gets around this by giving buffs that normally last several turns very short durations in real time - every second of the buff outside combat may be several turns inside combat. The game is consistent in its seconds-to-turns conversion across the board, so pre-buffing is balanced by the natural casting and recovery animations taking away from the active buffs' durations.

 

II) PioE's hard engagement system and player movement penalties feel like band-aid solutions to restrict the player's movement. Coupled with unpredictable pathfinding, breakneck combat speed and restrictive nature of most environments, most encounters allow you to maneuver very little, if at all.

 

In a TB game,  only one character moves at any time, so you have full control over the pathfinding and engagement. You can carefully maneuver around enemy engagement zones and control exactly where your character ends his turn, allowing for a much greater mobility and wider range of tactical opportunities. Since movement costs action points, you cannot recklessly run for the enemy backline, lest you want to end your turn surrounded by enemies.

 

---

 

All of the above combined gives designers more freedom in designing abilities and encounters. DivOS can get away with open-field encounters with big enemy counts, with friendly fire on all projectiles, with abilities that create large obstacles and block attacks, with small-scale encounters against intelligent enemies and much more - all because Turn-Based combat allows both the player and AI enough time to evaluate the encounter and plan intelligent moves.

 

While Obsidian is obviously going to stick with RTWP for the expansion and sequels, I think PioE would have worked better with Turn-Based combat, and I hope they consider returning to Turn-Based in future RPGs. What do you think?

 

TLDR: Turn-based combat makes it easier to implement accurate pathfinding and "smart" AI on a small budget. Weak pathfinding and AI severely constricts ability and encounter design. I think PioE would have been a better game if it were turn-based.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Concordance

[Idleray]

Yea, I don't mind turn-base combat at all and judging from D:OS's financial success it can definitely work.

 

The bugs in the combat of POE gives the impression of a really weak and wonky implmentation that will take some time to patch up. It also seems to have taken up a lot of resources to fix.

[Shevek]

Umm, all RTwP games would be better as TB games. Imagine the ToEE combat gameplay in this or BG2 or whatever. it would be majestic.

[MunoValente]

If it was turn based the make up the encounters would have have to changed dramatically.  A mob fight against xaurips or wolves would be dreadfully boring turn based.  I think this goes along with the exploration component of the game, they want to have maps full of enemies while you explore, but for the fights to be over quickly against weaker enemies so you can contribute to explore more.    I think in Wasteland 2 for example most the turn based fights hurt the pace of the game and made exploring certain areas really tedious.  So while the combat may have been better turn based the game overall might not have been.

[Shevek]

Naw, they have a system here with plenty abilities that synergize well with each other. So, you use one set of abilities to lower a defense and another set to exploit that (in addition to a great flanking system). More time spent creating an enemy AI that exploits this and less time on real time pathfinding would certainly make encounters interesting. In addition, with overwatch/cover/etc and similar tb systems, this thing would not be boring in TB. 

Edited May 16, 2015 by Shevek

[Tigranes]

I love turn-based, but:

 

-The difference between POE ban on prebuffing on DOS' solution is negligible. Your feelings might be a little less hurt if you were outraged by a hard restriction, but in practice you're not really going to prebuff on DOS.

 

-Turn-based may make it 'easier' to script good enemy AI, but that's not really what we've seen in these games. DOS has nonexistent AI. Indeed, this is perhaps the biggest problem about the game, where there is huge pleasure in doing all sorts of wacky things to them, but after a while you realise they are lemmings letting you do it, too.

 

Again, it's strange: I love TB and would love a TB game from Obsidian. But nothing specific you've said actually shows any supremacy of TB. You sorely exaggerate the AI of DOS (which again is gormless), the pathfinding problems of POE (which are extant but not debilitating), and the difference in prebuffing (basically none).

 

If Obsidian does a TB POE spinoff I'd love to see things like more environmental interaction, abilities and mechanics that creatively make use of the turn system / initiative, more complex mechanics that can be handled in turn-based pace, and so on.

[majestic]

Umm, all RTwP games would be better as TB games. Imagine the ToEE combat gameplay in this or BG2 or whatever. it would be majestic.

 

The thought of taking BG2's encounters and putting them in a turn based game without concurrent combat rounds (which IE games basically are) is frightening. Enemy mage group just won the initiative roll? Yeah sorry, eat two or three Horrid Wiltings, not to mention the thought of Kangaxx winning initiative. Now that would be glorious.

 

 

Naw, they have a system here with plenty abilities that synergize well with each other. So, you use one set of abilities to lower a defense and another set to exploit that (in addition to a great flanking system). More time spent creating an enemy AI that exploits this and less time on real time pathfinding would certainly make encounters interesting. In addition, with overwatch/cover/etc and similar tb systems, this thing would not be boring in TB. 

 

Some parts of the system would lend itself rather well to TB implementation, like engagement. The game would need a complete encounter design overhaul if it went turn based though, the current encounters are sometimes cumbersome enough with concurrent actions. Granted, one could argue that PoE needs an encounter design overhaul anyway, but that's not really point of this discussion. Yet.

Edited May 16, 2015 by majestic

[Shevek]

Naw, its less about encounter design overhaul and more about enemy ai overhaul. As for Horrid Wilting or whatever, well, TB works well enough for actual pen and paper play and even for ToEE and the Gold Box games which were all based on DnD (or the tons of other TB cRPGs based on other rulesets, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Star Trail, etc etc), so, people managed to survive when they lost initiative.

 

RTwP has always been a clusterf__k. This is known and understood. The strength of any given implementation is how much it reduces the said clusterf__k to manageable levels. PoE succeeds but, like all RTwP games, the clusterf__k would be pretty much eliminated by going TB.

[anameforobsidian]

My answer in general to the question of RtwP vs. Turn-based is that neither are better systems, because they encourage different fairly types of gameplay. Simultaneous resolution is a complete and total gamechanger, and the only game to offer turn-based play with simultaneous resolution that I've played is Frozen Synapse (and sequels).

 

Note:  I edited your post to reduce size.  I only included the parts I'm responding to, but I carefully considered what you said in all cases and tried not to cherry pick.

 

Throughout this post, I'll be comparing PioE and Divinity: Original Sin for the following reasons:   

This argument is significantly flawed from here on out.  Comparing PE to D:OS will not answer the question of whether turn-based PE would be better than rtwp PE.  It will answer the question of whether PE is better than D:OS.  You could do the same comparisons with PE and Dead State and quite possibly reach different conclusions.

 

1) It's hard to argue that poor pathfinding is a huge problem with PioE, with enemies often lining up behind each other even in open spaces. It is difficult to implement pathfinding that reliably finds a way around obstacles and environmental hazards. 

RTS manage acceptable pathfinding all the time.  Planetary Annihilation used better pathfinding on a more modest budget.  Harder does not mean impossible, and therefore turnbased is not inherently better.

 

2) Poor (or non-existent) AI is also a big, if not the biggest problem with PioE's encounters. Enemies beeline for the closest and/or weakest character and engage him for the entirety of the fight. They are easily tricked, tend to ignore environmental hazards and make single-minded decisions - nonsensical behaviour like squishy enemy casters running into your frontline to cast a spell at your backline are a routine occurrence.

Given that there are specific classes of enemies that do not do this in PE, notably Fampyrs, that seems less a problem endemic to RTWP and more a problem with PE.

 

 

3) PioE has to resort to arbitrary and severely contrived solutions for problems that TB games avoid naturally through game mechanics. Here are a few examples:

 

I) PioE arbitrarily forbids some abilities to be used outside of combat and allows others. 

Arbitrarily separating combat and non-combat is what TB does, unless all the gameplay is separated into turns.  D:OS allowing players to use combat mechanics outside of combat makes it relatively abnormal among TB games.

 

II) PioE's hard engagement system and player movement penalties feel like band-aid solutions to restrict the player's movement. 

Feel is subjective.  I find real time with pause games allow much more maneuver because you're not limited to artificial movement constraints.  Also, the mobility shown in a fight is entirely dependent on which classes are in your party.  Rogues especially allow hyper mobile fights, but I consistently find myself moving everyone except fighters.  Heck, in solo mode I use the barbarians rush ability to retreat more than engage.

 

In a TB game,  only one character moves at any time, so you have full control over the pathfinding and engagement. You can carefully maneuver around enemy engagement zones and control exactly where your character ends his turn, allowing for a much greater mobility and wider range of tactical opportunities. 

This is not true for all turn-based games.  Moving Dragons in King's Bounty creates many movement problems.  Complete control over engagement isn't necessarily a worthy design goal; a large part of tactictal gameplay is responding intelligently to an enemy's actions.  Turn-based combat artificially limits enemy response, and can sometimes create ridiculously circuitous optimal movement patterns because of this.

 

Since movement costs action points, you cannot recklessly run for the enemy backline, lest you want to end your turn surrounded by enemies.

Action points are an abstraction for opportunity cost and opportunity costs are already present in PE, especially in the form of time. And recklessly running for the enemy back line is punished in PE.  Quite severely.

 

All of the above combined gives designers more freedom in designing abilities and encounters. DivOS can get away with open-field encounters with big enemy counts, with friendly fire on all projectiles, with abilities that create large obstacles and block attacks, with small-scale encounters against intelligent enemies and much more - all because Turn-Based combat allows both the player and AI enough time to evaluate the encounter and plan intelligent moves.

These were technical limitations of Obsidian / Unity.  BGI had the bandit camp fight where you were fighting something like 60 enemies at the same time, with friendly fire on.

 

Note, my response was not on the merits of one system vs. the other because they each have arguable merits.  However, the argument that PE would have been better with turn-Based combat is really too subjective to be effectively argued.

Edited May 16, 2015 by anameforobsidian

[Shevek]

Of course, just about 99% of all discussions on the interwebs is subjective.

[Nonek]

You know to say that turn based is routinely said to be boring compared to real time with pause, i've got to say that on average i've personally been far more bored while playing the latter. Now this may just be down to poor encounter design and a glut of such, but far too often i've tapped the space bar, sighed and muttered, "Yay more combat!"

[Nakia]

No is what I think.  It is actually in my opinion close to turn based with its pause.   For me it is the best of both systems.  

[majestic]

Naw, its less about encounter design overhaul and more about enemy ai overhaul. As for Horrid Wilting or whatever, well, TB works well enough for actual pen and paper play and even for ToEE and the Gold Box games which were all based on DnD (or the tons of other TB cRPGs based on other rulesets, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Star Trail, etc etc), so, people managed to survive when they lost initiative.

 

Turn based games have their encounters tuned to be doable and DMs don't routinely design encounters to wipe the group. Well, unless you're the developers of Age of Decadence or your name is Gygax, in which case you would do exactly that, but the point still stands: If you simply would impose TB combat on BG2's cheeseball encounters you would end up with a game that is either unplayable, boring, or in some cases both.

 

The same applies to PoE's encounter design, which is arguably not up to par with other RtwP games anyway.

 

So, well, my answer to the question posed by this thread still is: No, not without a complete overhaul of the encounter design, and even then you'd have a chance it would turn out to be like Wasteland 2, a game which I liked but where the TB combat was a massive drag instead of interesting once you finished the first area or two.

Edited May 16, 2015 by majestic

[VahnXIII]

I personally enjoy the combat system in PoE/BG/IWD/etc. As mentioned above, this is a subjective matter. Some players enjoy beating their enemies turn by turn more like a board game. Other players enjoy the suspense and reactiveness (word? idk) of a hybrid system that implements turn based and real time elements. 

 

I enjoy both combat systems, but prefer the type that is already in PoE. I would've played the game regardless, but I'm glad for real time combat with the pause option.

[Shevek]

 

Naw, its less about encounter design overhaul and more about enemy ai overhaul. As for Horrid Wilting or whatever, well, TB works well enough for actual pen and paper play and even for ToEE and the Gold Box games which were all based on DnD (or the tons of other TB cRPGs based on other rulesets, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Star Trail, etc etc), so, people managed to survive when they lost initiative.

 

Turn based games have their encounters tuned to be doable and DMs don't routinely design encounters to wipe the group. Well, unless you're the developers of Age of Decadence or your name is Gygax, in which case you would do exactly that, but the point still stands: If you simply would impose TB combat on BG2's cheeseball encounters you would end up with a game that is either unplayable, boring, or in some cases both.

 

The same applies to PoE's encounter design, which is arguably not up to par with other RtwP games anyway.

 

So, well, my answer to your question still is: No, not without a complete overhaul of the encounter design, and even then you'd have a chance it would turn out to be like Wasteland 2, a game which I liked but where the TB combat was a massive drag instead of interesting once you finished the first area or two.

 

I didnt ask a question. The game would be better TB. Its fine with RTwP and I dont mind it. But you wouldnt need to fiddle with a bunch of crap to get it to work.

[majestic]

I didnt ask a question. The game would be better TB. Its fine with RTwP and I dont mind it. But you wouldnt need to fiddle with a bunch of crap to get it to work.

 

 

Woops. My bad, for some reason I mistook you for the original poster. Edited the post. ^^

[BullFrogOnNet]

I personally enjoy the combat system in PoE/BG/IWD/etc. As mentioned above, this is a subjective matter. Some players enjoy beating their enemies turn by turn more like a board game. Other players enjoy the suspense and reactiveness (word? idk) of a hybrid system that implements turn based and real time elements. 

 

I enjoy both combat systems, but prefer the type that is already in PoE. I would've played the game regardless, but I'm glad for real time combat with the pause option.

Yes I think this system is much better for the simple point that most have pointed out already. It is the fact that you put in your commands and everything happens at once. So I would be in support of a TB system that allowed you to put in your commands for each character then have everyone move at the same time. Otherwise you end up with a game that you can always place that fireball on the enemy before they move out of the way of it or something like that. It would just make an AOE spell casting party so OP to get through the game to be boring in my opinion.

[juanval]

I like PoE combat. During betatesting time, I readed lots of critics about combat and I feared it would be terrible. When PoE was released I was happy to see the nice mechanics of PoE combat. I think Obsidian has created a good combat system.

 

For me the problem is balance. Combats of the main plot are in general very easy, and it's rare to find a challenging battle in the game.

 

With some polish in combat and better balance, we'll see great battles in next expansions and sequiels.

[Althernai]

I agree with Tigranes in that it is not at all obvious how turn based would help either the pathfinding or the AI. As to whether PoE would have been better... it's kind of a moot point given that the entire premise of their proposal was a return to the Infinity Engine games. They would need to drastically redesign the encounter structure -- at the very least, the frequency of encounters would need to be significantly reduced.

 

In principle, I'm fine with both turn based and real time with pause games, but in practice, I find that TB games which I want to replay are rarer than their RTwP counterparts despite outnumbering the latter simply because TB games have a built-in latency to combat which remains regardless of character power or player skill. I haven't played D:OS yet, but, for example, Wasteland 2 is a game that invites multiple playthroughs which I just can't get into simply because I dread plowing through all of the combat again. I think I've managed to replay Shadowrun: Dragonfall, but that's basically it in the past few years.

 

If you are interested in a turn based successor to the Infinity Engine games, there is Torment: Tides of Numenera which is supposed to come out later this year (assuming they don't delay it further). When they announced that it will be turn based, they also said that they will try to keep the number of encounters down so it might be good. We'll see.

[Shevek]

All the devs have to show for Numenera thus far is some rather hazy examples of dialogue trees. The Numenera system is a rules light system meant to make table top play fluid. That is not necessarily the best fit for a computer game whose only DM is the computer. These two things make me skeptical. I backed it but I have little faith it wont be a wonky text adventure to be honest.

 

Frankly, I hope Obsidian does a TB game. Its obvious they want to do it since at their last PAX appearance each one of them stated they want to do a TB game. And, the absolute best fantasy tb combat I have experienced is Tim Cain's own ToEE.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Shevek

[Grinch]

 

Umm, all RTwP games would be better as TB games. Imagine the ToEE combat gameplay in this or BG2 or whatever. it would be majestic.

 

The thought of taking BG2's encounters and putting them in a turn based game without concurrent combat rounds (which IE games basically are) is frightening. Enemy mage group just won the initiative roll? Yeah sorry, eat two or three Horrid Wiltings, not to mention the thought of Kangaxx winning initiative. Now that would be glorious.

 

You can do just that. BG2 can be played in a turn based style by pausing after every round. To me it makes it a more tactical game as having good initiative really means something then. NWN2 lets you do the same thing. It's a lot of pausing but you can turn of the AI and control every character that way. I think turn based in PoE would be a great way to play.

 

Out of curiosity, how long is a combat round in PoE? The reason I'm asking is because I thought about setting the combat timer to pause after every combat round. It would make it more turn based and  since the NPCs don't have any AI they would be easier to control.

[Grinch]

I agree with Tigranes in that it is not at all obvious how turn based would help either the pathfinding or the AI. As to whether PoE would have been better... it's kind of a moot point given that the entire premise of their proposal was a return to the Infinity Engine games. They would need to drastically redesign the encounter structure -- at the very least, the frequency of encounters would need to be significantly reduced.

 

In principle, I'm fine with both turn based and real time with pause games, but in practice, I find that TB games which I want to replay are rarer than their RTwP counterparts despite outnumbering the latter simply because TB games have a built-in latency to combat which remains regardless of character power or player skill. I haven't played D:OS yet, but, for example, Wasteland 2 is a game that invites multiple playthroughs which I just can't get into simply because I dread plowing through all of the combat again. I think I've managed to replay Shadowrun: Dragonfall, but that's basically it in the past few years.

 

If you are interested in a turn based successor to the Infinity Engine games, there is Torment: Tides of Numenera which is supposed to come out later this year (assuming they don't delay it further). When they announced that it will be turn based, they also said that they will try to keep the number of encounters down so it might be good. We'll see.

Not sure turn based would help pathfinding but it might actually help the AI. If all combatants have to make an initiative check those with higher initiative are going to go first. If works quite well in BG2 by turning of NPC AI and pausing after every combat round. Works well in ToEE and NWN2 too. Turns are taken depending on initiative so a high initiative wizard is going to get a fireball off before anything can get out of the way or take it's turn. Seems a lot more tactical compared to real time too.

[anameforobsidian]

Out of curiosity, how long is a combat round in PoE? The reason I'm asking is because I thought about setting the combat timer to pause after every combat round. It would make it more turn based and  since the NPCs don't have any AI they would be easier to control.

 

 

It's truly a roundless system.  Actions begin as soon as cooldown ends, and stats modify action speeds.  If you run a party with two characters with the same class and different dex, you can notice the difference.

Edited May 16, 2015 by anameforobsidian

[MunoValente]

The after action auto-pause is the closest thing this game has to turn based and it's something I always have on.  For my wizard or priest where I'm regularly inputting commands it lets me do it paused every time without pausing manually, but with my fighter, chanter or paladin I just sort of let do their thing most of time, instead of being forced to tell them to do their basic fight commands most rounds.

[Varana]

My answer to the original question: No.

 

Turn-based and Real time (with pause or not) have a very different feel to them.

 

In TB, every fight interrupts whatever you were doing (probably walking around), and creates a special situation separated from the rest of the game, often with different abilities for your party members, and possibly even with changes to the interface. The game is noticeably divided into a fighting part and a non-fighting part.

Due to the necessity to set up combat mode, switch to a different time scale, and handle every character separately, it usually takes a lot of time.

 

In RtwP, combat is more integrated into the general gameplay. You go from exploring to combat more organically, and it's usually faster. The price to pay is a certain loss of control - if you're not essentially turning it into TB with lots of pauses, you won't be able to micromanage all of your party at the same level.

 

Ideally, TB games should concentrate on fewer but more elaborate set-piece battles, while RtwP can get away with a certain amount of trash mobs. It is possible to have trash mobs in a TB game (Wizardry 8, RIP), but it's usually a bad idea. In RtwP, lots of weak enemies can create the frantic atmosphere of being zerg rushed, and it generally manages to capture some of what's good about RTS combat, while enabling almost the same level of control as TB games.

 

RtwP is, by nature, a compromise, and as such, it doesn't excel in a specific area as the more specialised systems, but it adds another aspect to the experience that the "pure" form is lacking.

So if you're a fan of the chess-like turn-based combat, the game might have been better with it. If you're a fan of hectic real time combat, the necessity to pause will be tedious to you.

RtwP's strength is to unite both - while the combat might have been better (in whichever direction you're leaning), it is good enough to be fun.