Cowboy Moment
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 4,407
RTwP is a fine combat system in my opinion, just not very well suited for fantasy RPGs. Games where it works well tend to be slower-paced, with the player making a smaller amount of macro-level decisions rather than babysitting each character individually. The issue with combat in IE games is that it's literally an RTS combat system with pause tacked on, involving engagements with small amounts of units. So it's essentially a whole game of those Starcraft missions where you only have a small squad of units and no base. Thing is, the challenge of those missions comes from actually controlling your guys in real time. So then you add more options to the system in order to have the player actually make some meaningful decisions, and end up with a Frankenstein of a combat system that's neither here nor there.
I also think that people who actually like IE games for the combat mechanics (as opposed to enemy and encounter design, huge variety of spells, and so on) simply dislike thinking ahead and being punished for making mistakes. In Total War games, if you send a unit fuck knows where with the intention of flanking the enemy, and realize halfway through that it's a bad idea, you can't just instantly turn it around, shit takes time just like it would in reality, and you suffer the consequences of making a bad decision. And if the unit you want to pull back has already engaged the enemy, you're fucked. This is something that doesn't really exist in IE games, if your dude is in a bad spot, you order him to GTFO and he does so promptly. During the Torment combat vote, you could read all sorts of pro-RTwP arguments about how it lets you "adjust your tactics whenever you want to" - which I translate to "I don't want to think about what I'm doing and suffer any consequences of my mistakes".
I also think that people who actually like IE games for the combat mechanics (as opposed to enemy and encounter design, huge variety of spells, and so on) simply dislike thinking ahead and being punished for making mistakes. In Total War games, if you send a unit fuck knows where with the intention of flanking the enemy, and realize halfway through that it's a bad idea, you can't just instantly turn it around, shit takes time just like it would in reality, and you suffer the consequences of making a bad decision. And if the unit you want to pull back has already engaged the enemy, you're fucked. This is something that doesn't really exist in IE games, if your dude is in a bad spot, you order him to GTFO and he does so promptly. During the Torment combat vote, you could read all sorts of pro-RTwP arguments about how it lets you "adjust your tactics whenever you want to" - which I translate to "I don't want to think about what I'm doing and suffer any consequences of my mistakes".
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