Interview inXile's Torment successor officially announced on RPS, will use Monte Cook's Numenera setting

I don't get these complaints about long-winded turn-based. Is your sole experience Final Fantasy VII, with Sephiroth attack cutscenes of him destroying the universe or something?

 

That's just theory though, the practical reality is that no isometric RPG's with RTwP combat have ever had good combat that was manageable in a non-stressful way that didn't reward the reflexes of the player over the brain of the player. I can't even remember the amount of fights in IWD I had when I just thought "fuck it" and let my party fight by itself like an RTS because I couldn't be bothered continually pausing.

It's not fun.

 

But you said yourself there is some inherent degree of dependence on reflexes. Depending on reflexes = dumbing down, "all other things being equal". It may only be a minor dumbing down, and no doubt you can still make a very tactical system with RTwP just as you can make a very simple system with TB, but if we're talking about the general rather than the precise, then how is saying it inherently depends on reflexes different from saying it's inherently dumbed down?

Depending on how you define dumbed down, of course.

 

jrpg faggotry aside, the combat was great IMO.

 

True.

Oh? Why is simultaneous action an advantage? Your examples are where the RTwP is good should have blown your argument straight away. They are all different genres.

Simultaneous action is good for genres which are shallow in terms of actual active abilities but good for positioning i.e. strategic COMPUTER games and also only the combat parts of such games. RT is only good if the player does not have to control a lot of characters with a lot of abilities at the same time. Otherwise the hassle that was NWN2 occurs.

IE games being RTwP was NOT optimal for them btw. Stop using stupid associations. IE games did many things right, RTwP only came between these good things and your fun. The rules used to create the combat system were taken from a TB game which made a lot of them awkward in a RT setting. Which is why IE also had ROUNDS. PE won't have that. Games like PE are Lionheart, Diablo, Divinity etc, not IE games.

 

That doesn't make sense. Simultaneous versus sequential action is different, it's not more complex, it doesn't *just* add options, unless you'd like to argue that chess where players have to move their pieces simultaneously is "more complex". In realtime, I can control any of my characters at any time and do things simultaneously, but I can't "switch back" to sequential action and tactical pre-calculating moves, I am now restricted by simultaneous movement, not to mention that is asynchronous depending on what kind of commands I give. It adds something and takes something away, changing the nature of the battle and requiring a different approach. That's the tradeoff. Adding in reflexes comes on top of that tradeoff, and that's where it dumbs down.

Besides, it's not like you can't design phasebased systems where action is essentially simultaneous but planning happens in turn stages. The distinction isn't that absolute.

And yeah, as Captain Shrek said, I don't mind RT or RTwP but if I have full party control the reality is TB is inherently superior in level of control and the chaotic nature of management. That doesn't mean it's not a matter of preference, but designers do have to keep that tradeoff in mind when designing, and if your goal is tactical, precise combat and a good level of individual character control, there's just no way you can go with RTwP. Though Eternity's attempt at it will be interesting to watch.

Nothing wrong with liking RTwP, like away, but argue for it on its own strengths. It seems a bit silly to try to defend it on the basis of what TB does best, because each system has unique strengths and weaknesses, and trying to judge one by a different one's standards is a rather counter-productive moving of the goalposts. Let TB do what TB does best, and RTwP can do what RTwP does best.

 

Yeah, that's what adventure games lack.

 

Yes, because what you're describing doesn't mesh with reality. You seem to think that things moving simultaneously is inherently more complex than things moving sequentially, but this is simply not true in a gaming environment. It mght be if human brains could process information at much higher speeds, but they can not. The whole basis of the tradeoff you're presenting is false. RTwP doesn't just add options and complexity, it replaces one notion with another, hence why "that is the trade-off": the tradeoff is for tactical sequential thinking for tactical simultaneous thinking. The need for reflexes comes on top of that tradeoff and creates the "dumbing down", it's not part of it.

Except it's not designed to be phase-based from the ground up, which makes good reads of how actions are performed asynchronously (unless all actions take one turn) difficult and messy. It's that messiness and struggling against mechanics rather than having mechanics on my side against the opponent than made Infinity Engine so unplayable to me.

RTwP at the end of the day stems from "best of both worlds" thinking, and like all "best of both worlds" design, it tends to actually give us the worst of both worlds. With a proper focus on the core mechanics of RTwP and combat no doubt the system could be vastly improved, but it's not generally implemented like that, because RPG designers don't have that much time/energy to spend on combat itself.

Yeah. Didn't like it. I know I'm supposed to like it, but I didn't. It felt more random than tactical to me. Tradeoff of sequential versus simultaneous.

Who is invalidating anything? I said it's an option, it's just a part of the decision-making process for designers, and if they lean heavily to providing a tactical experience, TB quickly comes to the fore. Not just because it allows "easier controls", which you easily pass over but which actually means "more precise control" AKA "better tactical opportunities", but because it's better, not for AI, but for players, thanks to the reflex factor and the more precise level of information/more precise control. RTwP is always an option if you think the balance works better for your game, particularly if combat needs to be faster and more immediate, but as a designer you can't just ignore that tradeoff and pretend RTwP is somehow TB's equal when it comes to tactical notions in party-based RPGs.

 

Aren't you arguing that the Torment successor should be RTwP? Numenera is a turn-based ruleset.

 

All P&P is inherently turn-based. That is not a relevant point.

 

Yeah, but Numenera isn't being adapted to PC as Infinity Engine adapted p&p to PC: Baldur's Gate stuck as close as it could to the rules and was built as a TB game with RTwP running on top of it. RTwP is currently the leading option for Numenera and if they do decide to go with it they're not strictly bound by the p&p rulebase to make a TB system running underneath, they can tweak the rules while using the same principles to have it run properly as a RTwP system. Build it from the ground up, more or less, like Eternity is doing.

 

Thanks for the update

 

Weird that the staff member of a site dedicated to old school and uncompromising RPGs doesn't even really like turn based

 

Infinitron is a representative of the New Shit direction of the Codex. Innovatively adapting to exciting new opportunities and reinventing oneself in bold new ways. A "re-imagining" of the original, if you will.

 

Someone needs to incline obsolete chess by making gameplay simultaneous and real-time. Stop to have a think about where you're moving that pawn? Too slow bro, the opponent just nabbed your bishop and put you in check-mate. Guess you should have had your finger on the pause button.

 

The weird thing is . . . I want to play this realtime chess.

 

But the player isn't in control of more things. Your options are limited to commands for characters. In real-time you have to take account of enemies moving as you do (as in phasebased), in turnbased you have to think about enemies moving after you. You don't have the option to hide while the enemy moves in turnbased, but that doesn't decrease your possibility space, it just means you have to think about this at another stage of combat. You seem to feel that not being able to do anything for a while inherently reduces complexity, but that doesn't really work for me, because all it does is shift when your opportunities for input exist, not how much input you have, that remains that same. That requires a different level of thinking, not a less complex one. You are confusing opportunity with possibility, but they're different things, a matter of "when" versus "how much".

Beside, it's not like your "do anything any time" rule actually exists for RTwP. If my character is in the middle of an action, he still has to finish it before he can obey my next command.

This appears to be the entire crux of your philosophy, since you repeated it a few times. I don't see it, I think you're confusing being different with being more complex and completely ignoring the limitations of the human brain, hence I don't think any of your conclusions drawn on this basis are correct.

Limitations of humans are so important. Run by computers, I don't doubt you could fashion RT systems as complex as TB systems. Run by humans, we simply can not give the same level of reasoned tactical input in things happening simultaneously as we can in things happening sequentially. That's why all "intellectual" games (in real life) are turn-based. That's why RTwP feels so messy. Sequential design, meanwhile, isn't inherently less tactical, it's just inherently less realistic, for those interested in that tradeoff.

Not specific implementations, the very reason it exist. It started as a best of both worlds philosophy. If you are hoping it becomes more some day, fine, but it hasn't yet. If it had, you'd have been able to cite an RPG as a positive example, but very tellingly you were only able to cite strategy games.

You're not exactly making a great case for RTwP being respect as is, right now.

Ugh. It's "good enough" in the same way Fallout combat is "good enough", as in I can bear it, but I don't exactly play the game for it (at least Fallout had its peripheral combat frills). I'd certainly hope Eternity and WL2 do better.

Doomed I tells you. Doooomed!
Making it RTwP because of potential backers is no different than making a game RT because it sells better. We're in Kickstarter to avoid that horseshit, not to run with it.

 

Infinity Engine combat would have been great if not for RTwP. How many times a character died because my attention was elsewhere and something sneaked up and took out my squishy mage in about three seconds while I was managing elsewhere.

I dislike RTwP in my RPGs for the same reason I dislike QTE's in my RPGs. The player's reflexes should be utterly irrelevant to whether you win or lose a fight. Reflexes are an integral part of RTwP no matter how you fine-tune it.

Let's consider a situation: An ogre is charging across the screen at your wizard who is out of mana and quaffing a potion. Your warrior is currently happily swinging away at the last puny goblin, which will soon die but isn't really much of a threat.

The turn-based situation is obvious: You pull your warrior back to intercept the ogre (whose movement points only allow it to get halfway to the wizard) and move the wizard safely away from the ogre (but still close enough to throw a lightning bolt if needed)

But in RTwP: The ogre closes the gap to your wizard who happily stands still quaffing his potion and twiddling his thumbs while the player's attention is on the warrior. The wizard gets one-shotted by the ogre's club and as the player you only realise when the message 'Thorviald the Wizard takes 184 damage and dies' sounds.

A situation that would be simple for anyone with a brain to avert in turn-based (move the wizard back, get the warrior to ignore the goblin and deal with the ogre) becomes stupidly lethal in RTwP because the player's attention and management can not be fully be in two places at once.