Survey for the Future Part 2

[JerekKruger]

I totally get why someone would want this - horse for courses - but what really bugged me was Torment was sold as a spiritual successor to Planescape and the Infinity Engine. It was in t he pitch. Then as soon as they were funded they were like 'Lol, it's turn-based! Not like Infinity at all!' 

 

I'm worried that PoE, which has built its brand upon the legacy of the Infinity Engine, doesn't do a 180 in the hopes of joining the ranks of the turned-based indie darlings that are seeing a revival now. That's their thing, they're good at it, but RtwP is PoE's thing. 

 

 

I wouldn't worry overly. To my mind TToN was selling itself on the legacy of Torment i.e. very weird world and much more story and dialogue driven than most CRPGs. The combat of Torment wasn't really it's big selling point so I can understand them feeling that it was okay to move away from it.

 

Meanwhile, PoE was sold much more directly as a successor to the BG and IWD series, with PotD difficulty being compared to HoW difficulty in IWD2. It's clear to me that they are more obviously tied to the gameplay style of old infinity engine games so are less likely to switch to turn based gameplay.

[eimatshya]

Meh. I've never played a game with RTwP combat in which I actually enjoyed the combat (unless you count something like the Mass Effect games). To me it's just an awkward middle ground between turn-based and real-time. Personally, I prefer turn-based for squad-based, tactical games and real-time for games in which you control a single character. So for a Pathfinder game, I'd want something like ToEE's combat, which was turn-based and carefully ported the tabletop rules to the PC.

 

That said, there are very few RPGs with fun combat (which is unfortunate since it tends to be most of the game), so I'm used to having to slog up a mountain of boring battles in every game. I play RPGs for the opportunity to interact with the story, rather than passively wait for it to be over so I can get back to the gameplay. I like being able to shape how my character responds to the situations he or she encounters.

[kanisatha]

Yeah the saving grace for TToN going turn-based is that combat situations are supposed to be few and far-between and usually resolvable in non-combat ways. That's why I am sticking with that game and still looking forward to it.

 

The difference between a preferance of RTwP and TB, as I see it, is that people who prefer TB can still get a reasonable simulation of that from an RTwP game that allows for auto-pause at the end of each turn, whereas for people who prefer RTwP a TB game just simply sucks with no way around it. Based on the numerous glowing testimonials about ToEE I would love to be able to play that game. However I have checked out ToEE's gameplay on several Youtube videos, and I find it's TB system so incredibly tedious and aggravating to me that I just can't bring myself to play that game which is rather unfortunate.

[Sedrefilos]

The good thing with t-b and rtwp systems is that they are both good systems if they're designed with care and there are enough people to support games using them. And as much as I prefer rtwp over t-b in party based rpgs, I'm willing to play all the t-b ones too.

[PangaeaACDC]

Another advantage with real-time with pause over turnbased, is that with RTwP you can run away from combat. In TB, at least the games I've played with it, you get stuck in combat mode, which won't end until you or the enemies are dead. Hopefully it will be different in Numenera.

 

As long as the game itself is good, I'll be able to overlook the disadvantage of it being turn-based, so here's hoping the story, setting, characters and so on are excellently done. Expectations are very high, and I hope the game won't turn into a dud.

[Karkarov]

Another advantage with real-time with pause over turnbased, is that with RTwP you can run away from combat. In TB, at least the games I've played with it, you get stuck in combat mode, which won't end until you or the enemies are dead. Hopefully it will be different in Numenera.

 

As long as the game itself is good, I'll be able to overlook the disadvantage of it being turn-based, so here's hoping the story, setting, characters and so on are excellently done. Expectations are very high, and I hope the game won't turn into a dud.

Most decent turn based games have "escape" abilities, or rules where if you get a certain distance from the enemy the encounter ends. 

 

It all comes down to what you want out of combat for your game.  If you want combat to be fast, player skill based, only one character being controlled, and heavy on "action"?  You need a real time system.  If you want your combat to be complex, offer a large variety of abilities, maybe control more than one character, all without being purely about "tactics"?  Maybe real time with pause is a good idea.  If your goal is to make combat the most tactical, complex, multi unit, and strategy/planning oriented thing it can be?  You will need it to be turn based.

 

The problem most RPG's have is they don't think about it like that, and instead they simply say... run a retarded poll letting the players decide.  Or just pick what they are most familiar with.  When combat in a game just plain sucks it means the designers didn't properly plan what combat would or should be in their game. It isn't the combat systems fault, it is the fault of bad development choices.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Karkarov

[floredon]

just wanted to post that I also answered that my preference is turn based. I played Wasteland 2 and really really enjoyed the combat. Turn based in an isometric RPG with a party just makes sense. If you are controlling a single character real time works, but with more than one character it becomes a micromanagement chore.

[JerekKruger]

How is there any more micromanagement in real time with pause than in turn based? You're still controlling the same number of characters, and you can pause the game at any time to issue orders calmly. There's nothing whatsoever forcing you to manically issue orders in real time, that's the whole point of the with pause feature.

[Fenixp]

There's less micromanagement because there's less to react to. Situation on the battlefield doesn't ever change during your turn in turn-based games. Which is one of the reasons for why they feel so sterile to me.

[JerekKruger]

I'd never thought of it like that, but I think that's probably a big part of why I prefer RTwP as well. I guess there is more micromanagement, but I don't really see the issue since you can always pause and take as much time as you want over it. If you find fights are taking too long, then you can always drop the difficulty down. I am fairly certain fights never take too long on Story Mode.

[Nonek]

Turn based, far better.

[Suen]

Real-time, and the pause should be optional, not mandatory.

[floredon]

I prefer how combat encounters are designed in turn based games. in RTWP so many times it's just, "here's a blob of enemies, kill them"

[Karkarov]

There's less micromanagement because there's less to react to. Situation on the battlefield doesn't ever change during your turn in turn-based games. Which is one of the reasons for why they feel so sterile to me.

Turn Based is definitely more micromanagement because you are required to control every single action your characters take.  There is no AI, you must do it all yourself, you don't have a choice.  Regardless of how much control you could have in real time with pause there is still typically some AI most of the time, you aren't required to issue every single action, and you don't have to control every detail of movement either.

 

If the combat in your turn based game feels sterile, lacks a feeling of situational awareness or an evolving battlefield... well... I hate to be a broken record but...  Don't confuse the "system" being at fault when it's really "bad design choices".  Wasteland 2 had crap combat for example in my opinion, because the turn based system felt tacked on, not like the combat was turn based because it needed to be.  The fights were boring, there was no evolving battle, and you had to have little to no situational deployment or tactics.  It was just a case of them doing what they knew, not doing what was best for the actual game. 

 

While I am at it people worried about Numenera having poor combat have tons of good reason to be worried.  Like I said, if they really had a clue about what they wanted combat to be in the game they wouldn't have chosen it's core design based on a backer poll.  Design by comity is almost always a mistake.

 

 

 

[Kanes_Inferno]

I did this earlier today, thanks for giving us the opportunity to provide feedback.

[Abel]

Done. Though i think it would have been nice to tell us who this partner is. It took me a while, so i would like, at least, to know for whom i spent this hour.

[PangaeaACDC]

If the combat in your turn based game feels sterile, lacks a feeling of situational awareness or an evolving battlefield... well... I hate to be a broken record but...  Don't confuse the "system" being at fault when it's really "bad design choices".  Wasteland 2 had crap combat for example in my opinion, because the turn based system felt tacked on, not like the combat was turn based because it needed to be.  The fights were boring, there was no evolving battle, and you had to have little to no situational deployment or tactics.  It was just a case of them doing what they knew, not doing what was best for the actual game. 

 

While I am at it people worried about Numenera having poor combat have tons of good reason to be worried.  Like I said, if they really had a clue about what they wanted combat to be in the game they wouldn't have chosen it's core design based on a backer poll.  Design by comity is almost always a mistake.

 

 

Agree with your post, and particularly this part, because I thought the same before coming to your post. It was my experience with Wasteland 2 as well. I did enjoy the game, but combat was very samey-samey, and I didn't see the need for it to be turn-based. There were only a few combats in the entire game that were a bit chaotic, but the great majority was swift sailing -- it simply took much longer because it was turn based.

 

This is why I'm worried about Numenera being turn-based as well. It could be a heavy stone hung around its neck. And for a game intended not to have great amounts of combat, and many ways to get out of it, it doesn't make much sense to me to have it turn based.

 

Hopefully it will turn (!) out good, but I am concerned they will fail to live up to the admittedly very high expectations.

[eimatshya]

So, what I like about most turn-based games is that when you tell a character to do something, they do it immediately. In almost every RTwP game, when you tell someone to do something, they stand around for a while, and then they maybe do it. This requires you to focus on the character for several seconds to find out if the action has the desired effect and to make sure that the character actually does what you've said. Meanwhile, other things are happening that you aren't able to focus on while you wait for your order to be carried out. In some games it is possible to pause periodically and read through the combat log for the last several seconds to see what has happened, but that is a lot of information to sift through and doing so regularly makes the fight even slower than in a turn-based system.

 

The problem of responsiveness is especially true with movement and positioning. In turn-based games, when you tell characters to move somewhere, you can be fairly confident they will do so provided the destination is within range and they don't die along the way. In a RTwP game, you run into all kinds of pathfinding problems. Characters can't figure out how to get where you've told them to go so they wander around getting drawn into unnecessary engagements and failing to reach their intended position (I've been having this problem with Tyranny).