Turn based combat is considered better... Why?

[DraQ]

To be honest, I never liked FPP cRPGs. I like the whole tabletop miniature game/boardgame emulation thing that is going on in games like Fallout.
Otherwise than that, I find the genre pretty pointless. I'd rather play a proper FPS than a FPP RPG.

I've always liked FPP.

The devs of old FPP crawlers were right when they first noticed the potential to create the illusion of being there offered by cRPGs. To create something truly awesome one must understand the strengths and weaknesses of his medium of choice and act accordingly.

cRPGs are not tabletop wargames, nor PnP RPGs, nor storytelling sessions. cRPG focusing on telling a predefined (even if branching) story will ultimately fall short of its potential even if it's truly a great and memorable experience. Same with cRPG using abstract, simplified mechanics in order to emulate PnP or tabletop experience.

Now imagine a game like FPS, except that you can just as well sneak, persuade, pick locks, pick pockets, avoid enemies using difficult to reach paths and so on. Imagine that your ability to do any of those is regulated by your character, for example building a crappy marksman will result in you being unable to hit your targets with any degree of certainty and that it will be presented in convincing manner - finding it difficult to keep sights aligned, fumbling with reloads, jerking your firearm while pulling the trigger, lack of recoil control etc.
Sneaking badly will result in making a lot of accidental noises which get noticed by enemies.
Failing in melee will result in clumsy blows easily blocked or avoided by enemies, inability to block effectively yourself and ease of getting thrown off-balance and so on.
Having low perception will result in some stuff in the world simply not displaying.
Etc.

A game where your character responds to direct input and generally fits you like a glove, except he replaces your senses and abilities with his.

To me this would be the ultimate cRPG.

And before anyone starts their "lolimmersundeclinenextgentard!!1" derp mantra, no this isn't the direction the industry is going in. The industry *loves* simple, abstract mechanics. It sticks all kinds of spectacular shit on top of this mechanics in order to pretend that the games it makes are realistic and interesting, but there is little connection between presentation and mechanics.

In current batch of "cRPGs" the character doesn't fit you like a glove. In those games you have incredibly simple and abstract mechanics covered up with cinematic animations, which results in stuff like character getting slashed across the throat and shrugging it off because he still has abstract HPs left. Besides, in those games you hardly have a character left - just a small clump of bonuses and shit that make you able to decrement abstract integers swarming you faster, resulting in more impressive cinematic animations.

Proper cRPG mechanics doesn't enable character to do better stuff according to skills picked by the player, proper cRPG mechanics is a mechanics of failure - it prevents character from doing stuff he doesn't have stats for with any degree of effectiveness.
</rant>

 

[octavius]

RTwP is... I don't really understand RTwP. Mostly, just why? Engine limitations? Dynamic combat (derp)? It's twitch factor spacebar edition. Utterly pointless.

Simultanous actions instead of moving in turn. It feels more "realistic", but the downside is of course lack of control and raging at stupid path finding.

Personally I enjoy both true turn based (Gold Box and Age of Wonder - Shadow Magic being my favourites), phased or abstract turn based (as in Bard's Tale, Wizardry and early Might and Magics), RTwP (IE games) and real time as long as I only control one character.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I'd settle for games just being better at this point

when we have that we can restart quibbling over the niceties like whether a certain game is an rpg or if a game is truly better because it's not turn-based

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

To be honest, I never liked FPP cRPGs. I like the whole tabletop miniature game/boardgame emulation thing that is going on in games like Fallout.
Otherwise than that, I find the genre pretty pointless. I'd rather play a proper FPS than a FPP RPG.

I've always liked FPP.

The devs of old FPP crawlers were right when they first noticed the potential to create the illusion of being there offered by cRPGs. To create something truly awesome one must understand the strengths and weaknesses of his medium of choice and act accordingly.

cRPGs are not tabletop wargames, nor PnP RPGs, nor storytelling sessions. cRPG focusing on telling a predefined (even if branching) story will ultimately fall short of its potential even if it's truly a great and memorable experience. Same with cRPG using abstract, simplified mechanics in order to emulate PnP or tabletop experience.

Now imagine a game like FPS, except that you can just as well sneak, persuade, pick locks, pick pockets, avoid enemies using difficult to reach paths and so on. Imagine that your ability to do any of those is regulated by your character, for example building a crappy marksman will result in you being unable to hit your targets with any degree of certainty and that it will be presented in convincing manner - finding it difficult to keep sights aligned, fumbling with reloads, jerking your firearm while pulling the trigger, lack of recoil control etc.
Sneaking badly will result in making a lot of accidental noises which get noticed by enemies.
Failing in melee will result in clumsy blows easily blocked or avoided by enemies, inability to block effectively yourself and ease of getting thrown off-balance and so on.
Having low perception will result in some stuff in the world simply not displaying.
Etc.

So, basically, you mean a simulationist FPS?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Control.

In a real time with pause system it becomes painful to micromanage a squad of 6+ guys, so you are forced to make tradeoffs between efficiency and enjoyment.

Imagine trying to squeeze maximum efficiency out of a squad of 6 spellcasters in BG2. It would require constant pausing, breaking time up into 5 second chunks, making battles painful and time consuming.

So you compromise your control. You design certain characters to fight passively, so you can just lasso, click and auto pathfind. You limit how much manual maneuvering you do. You never split your party, because it's impossible to watch two fights at once.

In a turn based system you don't have to fight the interface like this. It is effortless to control all your units with maximum efficiency.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I am recent convert from the FPS ARPG to TB combat system ( still dislike over the head action RPG INCLUDING Diablo FOR THEIR GAMEPLAY). I must say that TBs has the better representation of ROLE in the Role play.

 

[Roguey]

I want to smack all the jerks who voted for "character skill over player skill." Turn-based combat should involve a ton of player skill, just not your reflexes. Otherwise you're playing the "put points in things and watch it play itself" game which can also happen just as easily with real time (pause or no) RPGs.

 

[JarlFrank]

I want to smack all the jerks who voted for "character skill over player skill." Turn-based combat should involve a ton of player skill, just not your reflexes. Otherwise you're playing the "put points in things and watch it play itself" game which can also happen just as easily with real time (pause or no) RPGs.

This. I don't give a fuck about "bawww it's RPG so player skill shouldn't count". Fuck you all. Yeah, RPG gameplay is mostly about giving your characters certain skills so they're good at certain tasks, but it still requires player skill to defeat enemies in, say, JA2. I don't manually aim my gun, but I make tactical decisions, and there's a difference between making shit decisions and making good decisions.

And I can pull of awesome flanking maneuvers in turn based games even if my whole party has 1 INT.

 

[DraQ]

So, basically, you mean a simulationist FPS?

If and only if PS:T qualifies as H&S.

Possibly even less so - is FPS where you can go pacific route using diplomacy or stealth and where your ability to use certain paths and approaches, even what you can see and hear fully determined by character build still an FPS?

At least PS:T and your typical H&S also share stats and combat system apart from perspective and RT.

Control.

In a real time with pause system it becomes painful to micromanage a squad of 6+ guys, so you are forced to make tradeoffs between efficiency and enjoyment.

Imagine trying to squeeze maximum efficiency out of a squad of 6 spellcasters in BG2. It would require constant pausing, breaking time up into 5 second chunks, making battles painful and time consuming.

So you compromise your control. You design certain characters to fight passively, so you can just lasso, click and auto pathfind. You limit how much manual maneuvering you do. You never split your party, because it's impossible to watch two fights at once.

In a turn based system you don't have to fight the interface like this. It is effortless to control all your units with maximum efficiency.

This.

Party based + RT = clusterfuck.

I want to smack all the jerks who voted for "character skill over player skill." Turn-based combat should involve a ton of player skill, just not your reflexes. Otherwise you're playing the "put points in things and watch it play itself" game which can also happen just as easily with real time (pause or no) RPGs.

This. I don't give a fuck about "bawww it's RPG so player skill shouldn't count". Fuck you all. Yeah, RPG gameplay is mostly about giving your characters certain skills so they're good at certain tasks, but it still requires player skill to defeat enemies in, say, JA2. I don't manually aim my gun, but I make tactical decisions, and there's a difference between making shit decisions and making good decisions.

And I can pull of awesome flanking maneuvers in turn based games even if my whole party has 1 INT.

Also this.
Game means player skill and SHOULD mean player skill, because otherwise it's a screensaver or incrementation-based wank simulator.

As long as character skill is indispensable game is an RPG, period.

I have both twitch skills and tactical skills so I'm not butthurt about game demanding any combination of them. In fact I would kill for a game that would require particular builds to be played tactically (in exchange losing requirements for 1337 twitch skillz), since leadership is also a skillset.

If an RPG presented me with a choice to build a dumb, but fast and strong warrior I would have to outtwitch enemies with (maybe with one or two disorganized followers), and weaker, but a more intelligent and charismatic combatant that could command his party effectively and crush the enemy with superior tactics you, as a player, would have to devise, I'd cum all over myself.

 

[Mastermind]

So you compromise your control. You design certain characters to fight passively, so you can just lasso, click and auto pathfind. You limit how much manual maneuvering you do. You never split your party, because it's impossible to watch two fights at once.

I never had any of these issues. Maybe if RTwP is too much for the average codexer to handle they should stick to turn based d&d (itself a shitty system) where you can drool your way through just about anything.

 

[Zomg]

This. I don't give a fuck about "bawww it's RPG so player skill shouldn't count".

People that still say this over the years are using a private definition of "skill" that means control or execution or somatic skill. They don't want a 1 int character to automatically do retarded things, they just don't know how to use their player skill on words so you can understand what they fuck they're talking about.

Anyway, so even the "player skills" meme is really referring to what Porkamorka is talking about, meaning that turn based completely removes somatic skill from the game. I like RTw/P 7.62mm style but Infinity/NWN style RTw/P is completely intended to keep you from getting quite as bored mowing down atactical trash combats for hours as you were playing Gold Box.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

You can chill and sip a beer during a turn based game.

Real time has a higher cap for player skill but that's pretty irrelevant in single player games.

 

[sser]

The larger the game gets in scope of control the more suited it is for turn-based.

 

[PorkaMorka]

So you compromise your control. You design certain characters to fight passively, so you can just lasso, click and auto pathfind. You limit how much manual maneuvering you do. You never split your party, because it's impossible to watch two fights at once.

I never had any of these issues. Maybe if RTwP is too much for the average codexer to handle they should stick to turn based d&d (itself a shitty system) where you can drool your way through just about anything.

I appreciate your attempt to be edgy, but it's not about difficulty, it's about effort/tedium. It's about having to fight the interface to control your squad.

It's not hard to hit spacebar every few seconds or set it to auto pause after every spell. But it is incredibly tedious to fight a battle which is pausing literally every few seconds.

Especially as characters tend to finish their actions at slightly different times, so you if you're maximizing efficiency you won't be issuing a full set of actions to your characters then watching the results.Instead you'll be pausing, issuing 1-2 orders, pausing, issuing 1-2 orders, repeat every few seconds.

This gets even worse when you're scrolling back and forth to monitor two battles at once because you've split your forces.

Since the games aren't usually that difficult, most people will limit how much micromanagement they bother doing to in order to avoid dragging things out to this degree.

By contrast, full micromanagement in turn based is effortless.

 

[The_Pope]

I don't really think it's better, but if a game comes out with turn based combat I consider it a plus because it's so rare nowadays that even a thoroughly derivative TB game will feel unique.

 

[DraQ]

The larger the game gets in scope of control the more suited it is for turn-based.

It's scope AND depth as well as importance of individual 'units'.

RTS and RTWG games normally have very broad scope of control, but little depth of control and great number of expendable units, so RT works perfectly well in them.

Party based RPGs have lesser scope, but party members are at least temporarily irreplaceable and have a lot of control depth.

In general, the more time spent per unit (for whatever reason) and the more units to control, the worse the game works in RT.

 

[sser]

Oh I was just thinking in terms of RPGs.

But for strategy game I think the rule ultimately still applies, but the parameters are clearly different. Company of Heroes, for instance, would be considered small in scope when compared to Combat Mission which would be small in scope compared to something like West Front.

Of course there are aberrations backwards and forward, for both genres too. For strategy games, though, I actually believe games become more realistic the slower you make the gameplay. Not only because of how commands tend to work in the military, but also because games seem to have a really hard time translating real-life "time" to a real-time strategy game, that is "real-time" is more like "real-time (as we define time for the context of this game)", if that makes any sense at all. Only when you get to some fantasy or sci-fi elements, like Homeworld or Sins of a Solar Empire, do things seem more natural only because they have shed the realism of tank treads, boots, jeeps etc. for the fantastical where time really doesn't have much value.

/babbletalk

 

[Captain Shrek]

Just ramp up the fucking difficulty level and everything is okay with TB RPG. Its because we are fed with NWN2 level difficulty (Example!) we are bound to think that TB/RB RPGs are easy. And by difficulty I mean tactical difficulty and not 10000 HP and 50 AC.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

So, basically, you mean a simulationist FPS?

If and only if PS:T qualifies as H&S.

Possibly even less so - is FPS where you can go pacific route using diplomacy or stealth and where your ability to use certain paths and approaches, even what you can see and hear fully determined by character build still an FPS?

At least PS:T and your typical H&S also share stats and combat system apart from perspective and RT.

Control.

In a real time with pause system it becomes painful to micromanage a squad of 6+ guys, so you are forced to make tradeoffs between efficiency and enjoyment.

Imagine trying to squeeze maximum efficiency out of a squad of 6 spellcasters in BG2. It would require constant pausing, breaking time up into 5 second chunks, making battles painful and time consuming.

So you compromise your control. You design certain characters to fight passively, so you can just lasso, click and auto pathfind. You limit how much manual maneuvering you do. You never split your party, because it's impossible to watch two fights at once.

In a turn based system you don't have to fight the interface like this. It is effortless to control all your units with maximum efficiency.

This.

Party based + RT = clusterfuck.

I want to smack all the jerks who voted for "character skill over player skill." Turn-based combat should involve a ton of player skill, just not your reflexes. Otherwise you're playing the "put points in things and watch it play itself" game which can also happen just as easily with real time (pause or no) RPGs.

This. I don't give a fuck about "bawww it's RPG so player skill shouldn't count". Fuck you all. Yeah, RPG gameplay is mostly about giving your characters certain skills so they're good at certain tasks, but it still requires player skill to defeat enemies in, say, JA2. I don't manually aim my gun, but I make tactical decisions, and there's a difference between making shit decisions and making good decisions.

And I can pull of awesome flanking maneuvers in turn based games even if my whole party has 1 INT.

Also this.
Game means player skill and SHOULD mean player skill, because otherwise it's a screensaver or incrementation-based wank simulator.

As long as character skill is indispensable game is an RPG, period.

I have both twitch skills and tactical skills so I'm not butthurt about game demanding any combination of them. In fact I would kill for a game that would require particular builds to be played tactically (in exchange losing requirements for 1337 twitch skillz), since leadership is also a skillset.

If an RPG presented me with a choice to build a dumb, but fast and strong warrior I would have to outtwitch enemies with (maybe with one or two disorganized followers), and weaker, but a more intelligent and charismatic combatant that could command his party effectively and crush the enemy with superior tactics you, as a player, would have to devise, I'd cum all over myself.

Could someone finally kill the dumb but fast and strong warrior cliché?

Oh I was just thinking in terms of RPGs.

But for strategy game I think the rule ultimately still applies, but the parameters are clearly different. Company of Heroes, for instance, would be considered small in scope when compared to Combat Mission which would be small in scope compared to something like West Front.

Of course there are aberrations backwards and forward, for both genres too. For strategy games, though, I actually believe games become more realistic the slower you make the gameplay. Not only because of how commands tend to work in the military, but also because games seem to have a really hard time translating real-life "time" to a real-time strategy game, that is "real-time" is more like "real-time (as we define time for the context of this game)", if that makes any sense at all. Only when you get to some fantasy or sci-fi elements, like Homeworld or Sins of a Solar Empire, do things seem more natural only because they have shed the realism of tank treads, boots, jeeps etc. for the fantastical where time really doesn't have much value.

/babbletalk

Turn-based strategy/operational games quickly degenerate into clickfests if you increase depth of presentation. I'll take Armored Brigade over Steel Panthers for commanding anything bigger than a reinforced platoon precisely because I don't have to click click click click click click click click click click click through the game. The same with operational games and Airborne Assault/Command Ops.

 

[mondblut]

TB is fun, RT is annoying. Like any other reasons are needed.

 

[DraQ]

Could someone finally kill the dumb but fast and strong warrior cliché?

Sure. Just avoid making a minmaxed retard, and you gain benefits of tactics, possibly unlock some extra combat techniques, at the cost of less extreme speed and hitting power.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

^^^^

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#combatExpertise

delicious tactical options

 

[DraQ]

^^^^

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#combatExpertise

delicious tactical options

I was thinking of something more along the lines of going "wat." when trying to order followers to do any advanced stuff, like formations, flanking or ambushes with a retarded PC.

With extra techniques like the D&D feats you linked to further augment an intelligent warrior.

 

[Achilles]

I'd like to say that real-time combat is better but it isn't, so it isn't.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Neither is inherently better than the other. TB can have shitty mechanics, as can RT. In the same vein, there can be great TB, and there can be great RT.