Would PioE have been better with turn-based combat?

[petrivanzyl]

I agree with most of what OP says...

 

...but only because D:OS is such an awesome game.

 

Let's have good games with TB and good games with RTwP

[Luckmann]

Probably.

 

Not because I prefer turn-based gameplay, but because it is obvious that the developers do. PoE should've been developed by someone that actually enjoys and sees the merits in RTwP/RTS/RTT gameplay, who'd take it as an opportunity to create a system that plays on the strengths of that form of gameplay. Not someone that has repeatedly voiced a very concrete desire to make (a) turn-based game(s).

 

Mind you, I'm not saying that PoE is bad, just that it could've been much better, had it either been a turn-based game, or been developed by someone that genuinely wanted and appreciated real-time gameplay.

 

 

 

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.

 

That's not the same thing. Even if you pause every round or turn, all gameplay still happens concurrently.

 

Also, PoE does not have combat rounds in the same way at all. There is no such thing as a turn or round during which everyone has a given amount of actions.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Luckmann

[Shevek]

It doesnt matter if the developer of DotA or whatever made PoE, it would still be a clusterf__k in combat. OE did a great job on this game but RTwP must still be designed within the framework of that system in the same way they did a fine job with Fallout New Vegas but its combat was certainly hampered by the first person perspective.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Shevek

[majestic]

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.

 

 

It's been posted before, but no. In "true" turn based games that do not have concurrent action like the RtwP Infinity & Aurora Engine (well not counting The Witcher, obviously) games your characters cannot move while the enemy is making their turn. You might be able to dogde or otherwise block attacks, make saving throws and whatnot, but you cannot move or otherwise take action to prevent impending doom.

 

It is possible with the Haste buff or the Boots of Speed to outrun AoE spell projectiles (Fireball, Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting and others) in all the IE games. Simultaneous movement lets you run out of the enemy's range and makes them follow you after engagement. It lets you heal your characters while the enemies pelt them with everything they got. It lets you quaff potions at the same time the enemy is trying to target you.

 

The hit point to possible damage per round ratio is so skewed in favor of damage in Baldur's Gate 2 that without concurrent rounds the combat experience would end up being horribly frustrating and/or boring. Especially when you instantly fail the game the moment your main character goes down because that intelligence draining illithid you could easily outrun with concurrent action has a lucky roll streak and you die. Game over, reload.

 

Could it work? Possibly, I mean it is possible to create a nigh-invulnerable juggernaut of doom within the game rules and unmodded combat it somewhat easy with a few choice exceptions. Metagaming on the other hand would just go from being a bonus for power gamers to necessity and it would suck the fun out of the entire experience for a lot of people.

 

Otherwise Age of Decadence would have a lot more sales. That game really is designed to kill you in every way imaginable and making a successful combat oriented character is an art in itself, and a point of endless reloads to boot because combat difficulty has been tuned so it is hard for metagaming munchkins that know the ins and outs of the system to succeed. It's really awesome (also it has non-combat alternatives for pretty much everything, even if it might simply be to not do a sidequest) and I never regretted investing the 20 bucks the unfinished version costs but it will always be a niche product. Extremely niche, at that.

[Shevek]

Thats ridiculous. Plenty of TB games have existed that to not devolve into the crap you describe. Many of these have used 2e adnd, just like BG2. Stop being silly.

[majestic]

Thats ridiculous. Plenty of TB games have existed that to not devolve into the crap you describe. Many of these have used 2e adnd, just like BG2. Stop being silly.

 

Geez. Of course it could work, (A)D&D is a turn based game after all, so any turn based implementation of the rules can and would of course work. Which is entirely not the point, so whatever.

[Shevek]

Sure it is. It would work just fine. It would be fun. Just play ToEE. The encounter design in that game was taken from an incredibly early 1e dnd module, haphazardly adjusted for 3e and it worked just fine because tb gameplay just makes games better. FO1 and 2 didnt have inspired, meticulous crafted encounters. Hell, it had random encounters and yet it worked and never turned into the clusterf_k that RTwP turns into in just about every RTwP game. 

 

Concurrent rounds, etc, just doesnt matter. Any RTwP game is better in TB. It would not require a masterful rework of encounters or any such nonsense.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Shevek

[Althernai]

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.

I'd be surprised if it was a text adventure -- combat was not the high point of PS:T, but it was still a part of it. We'll see. 

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.

I'd be fine with a TB Obsidian game as long as it is not related to PoE. The system they've developed for PoE needs more work, but I'd rather they work on improving it rather than start again with something new.

And, the absolute best fantasy tb combat I have experienced is Tim Cain's own ToEE.

Really? It's been at least a decade since I played this, but I'm pretty sure it was quite buggy and generally mediocre. My best memory of combat in ToEE is of an amusing bug which made a Moondog summoned by one of my characters into a Moongod: the critter was completely impossible to kill and the spell duration never expired. I think the game also had some weird ideas like charging money for each casting of some spells (including, IIRC, Identify, which made the latter worthless since it cost more or less the same as going to a shop). If ToEE is the best TB game you've played, then I'm a bit puzzled about why you are so strongly in favor of TB games -- it's not terrible, but it's significantly worse than, say, PoE and it's not even in the same league as Baldur's Gate 2.

[Shevek]

Buggy and mediocre? Yes, perhaps. It was not the total package that PoE or BG2 are. However, did you notice that I was refering to the combat? Did you see me tout its identify spell or any other such nonsense? Nope.

[Darkpriest]

I prefer TB combat. I like RT but i leave it to RTS and MOBA games.

 

In TB you can work on various synergies, positioning on map and not even to mention aesthetics and animations (spells and melee combat)

 

I really likenwhat the new Xcom did to the TB combat and i loved it. If that kindn of TB could be implemented in POE i'd love it.

[Luj1]

Would PoE have been better with turn-based combat?

 

 

no. problem is low overall volume of content. combat isn't a disaster, but its weird as hell

Edited May 17, 2015 by Luj1

[Drath]

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.

 

Agreed. Despite D&D having seen a few new revisions and editions since then to 5e, Temple of Elemental Evil's 3.5e still remains one of the best/ most accurate CRPG implementations of D&D so far. Would be awesome to see Obsidian do a TB game with Tim Cain as one of the leads.

[Tuckey]

I feel like the system employed doesn't make best use of real-time with pause dynamism. By that I mean movement, positioning and possibilities in combat for how you approach encounters. i.e being unable to employ some abilities out of combat or use stealth skills in any interesting way. Couple that to unimaginative encounter design and you have an okay combat system but not good in terms of fun possibilities. Obsidian has been way to influenced by wow mechanics and it shows with its focus on damage dealers and buffs/debuffs.

 

I like restrictions in what you can do versus creatures and classes. That fosters creativity for the player not openness and being able to do anything. I don't get that from Pillars i.e blind a spirit, knock-down a gelatinous cube. There should be some in-game sense to this stuff. There are class restrictions in terms of some abilities but not of the fun kind. i.e Rogue traps are largely useless bar a few good ones and not applied consistently. The traps you trigger damage you much more than they do when used on an enemy. Plus you can only use one at a time. Why not reward a player for there ingenuity in employing different trap types? Gimping traps to largely useless shows that there are deeper structural problems with the rules system.

[Althernai]

Buggy and mediocre? Yes, perhaps. It was not the total package that PoE or BG2 are. However, did you notice that I was refering to the combat? Did you see me tout its identify spell or any other such nonsense? Nope.

Yes, I understood you -- I was just trying to remember stuff that ToEE did that was unique. There wasn't anything special about the combat; I looked up some reviews and they are consistent with what I remember. It was fairly standard, low-level, turn-based D&D -- serviceable, but not remarkable for anything except the amusing bugs. There's nothing there that would make it a paragon of fantasy combat.

[Shevek]

Naw, combat was great. It implemented overwatch, charging, etc plus it had cool additions like monsters acting simultaneously if they had the same initiative. But, heh, if all you want to base your opinion on is mainstream reviews, go ahead.

[scrotiemcb]

To even put turn-based and RTwP in the same genre feels like an error to me. From a gameplay perspective, Pillars has more in common with ARPGs like Diablo 2 and Path of Exile than it does with Divinity: OS. There are differences, "with pause" does matter, I'm just saying you don't genre by lore, you genre by gameplay.

 

Hopefully this helps highlight just how poor gameplay in Pillars really is. Story is the only sane reason to keep slogging through.

 

Turn-based is a completely different animal. A huge element of such games is strategizing strong defense for beginnings and ends of turns, while it is okay to be vulnerable mid-turn. This is why feats like Spring Attack and Shot on the Run are so powerful in D&D, but it is a core part of what players are always trying to do, creating footsies battles among combatants (you know, enemy is 50 feet away, both you and enemy have 30 movement, so you only advance 10), from the very beginning. Everything is radically different because of the very nature of condensed, mostly uninterruptable turns.

[Nakia]

For me the story is very important if all I wanted was to fight my way through a game I would be playing Skyrim or some other similar game.

 

My very first cRPG was Betrayal at Krondor which was turn based.  Since it was my first cRPG I wasn't critical and just loved the whole experience.  Arcanum gave you the between using turn based or real time.  I choose turn based simply because I could control things more.

 

It has taken me time to get back into playing a strategic based game which PoE is but now that I am used to it again I am enjoying it as much as I enjoyed IWD II fighting.  

 

What people like and want in a game is going to vary.  That is why there are so many different types of games and why I backed Obsidian.  I wanted what I hoped OE would give me and they delivered.  I think or at least hope that they will only improve their games as Bioware in my opinion did with the BG games.

 

We can argue about what makes a good game for ever but what it boils down to is what  do you like.  If I have fun playing the game it is a good game...for me.  I am having fun playing PoE so it is a good game for me.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Nakia