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Why is RTwP so popular in modern RPGs?

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
That's at least a valid criticism, even if I disagree with it. But to me RTwP just seems like you're watching the game play itself. Reminds me of the early Tom Clancy R6 games where the original idea was to plot out the routes to take, then hit "play" and watch the SWAT team just play itself.

Regardless, I was more wondering on why this mechanic persists in RPGs.
You seem to be under the bizarre impression that a game needs to achieve mechanical perfection in order to become popular. Some of the most popular games ever made allow you to pause to go to inventory and drink an unlimited amount of health potions with impunity. Some of them have an inbuilt god mode (VATS in Fallout 3). RTwP isn't really inherently 'broken' or 'flawed' in any way, all things considered.
 

Mustawd

Guest
No I'm not under that impression. But I would expect some kind of mechanics optimization throughout the years. I mean design decisions have to be made right? When these devs are planning the game, the issue if making it real time, FPS, isometric, RTwP, TB, etc has to come up.

Do they just go, "TB is boring, but RT is too arcadey. Let's make it RTwP to try and make it tactical but less boring"? Do they say, "hey BG did, so we should do it too"?

I mean, let's face it, whether or not it works, it really is a goofy mechanic. And the fact that you can play DA2 and DA3 without pausing makes it even less relevant.
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 16, 2015
Messages
1,399
What a strange post to be making in an age when 90% of Kickstarter RPGs are turn-based and RTwP seems to be an endangered species compared to full-blown real-time action in the AAA space.
Wish I could brofist this.

PoE was the only RTwP game last year and the only major RTwP release in a while. In DA:I some skills only really work in first-person RT so I refuse to accept that shit as an RTwP game. Period. SCL is trash (and would still be trash if it were TB). And right now there's nothing, zero, zilcho, bupkis on the horizon. And TB fanboys, seeing the state of events, come here all smug and ask why RTwP is so fucking popular...

I rate the OP 8/10. Obvious troll is obvious of course, but I'm still totally triggered.
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
No I'm not under that impression. But I would expect some kind of mechanics optimization throughout the years. I mean design decisions have to be made right? When these devs are planning the game, the issue if making it real time, FPS, isometric, RTwP, TB, etc has to come up.

Do they just go, "TB is boring, but RT is too arcadey. Let's make it RTwP to try and make it tactical but less boring"? Do they say, "hey BG did, so we should do it too"?

I mean, let's face it, whether or not it works, it really is a goofy mechanic.
What's goofy about it? It shares many similarities with the RTS, but instead of macro (controlling lots of units) the focus is on micro (a small party with multiple abilities), which is why (presumably) there is a pause functionality.

Do they say, "hey BG did, so we should do it too"?
As I pointed out before, all of the games you listed except for two of them were games made either by Bioware or games made on Bioware's engine. In this case it simply is about one developer sticking to a proven (?) formula, and said developer being one of the few remaining major RPG developers. Do you also question why Bethesda makes first-person sandboxes?

Anyway, it seems likely the DA series will switch to full-on action in the next game.
 
Last edited:

Mustawd

Guest
Wish I could brofist this.

PoE was the only RTwP game last year and the only major RTwP release in a while. In DA:I some skills only really work in first-person RT so I refuse to accept that shit as an RTwP game. Period. SCL is trash (and would still be trash if it were TB). And right now there's nothing, zero, zilcho, bupkis on the horizon. And TB fanboys, seeing the state of events, come here all smug and ask why RTwP is so fucking popular...

I rate the OP 8/10. Obvious troll is obvious of course, but I'm still totally triggered.


To be fair I was referring to modern RPGs not necessarily current ones only. And yes, we now have more TB games. This not a TB > RTwP thread, it's a Why was RTwP around for so long? Part of it was I was watching SCL, and asked myself why even include the pause? Same questions asked by about DA:I.

Athelas makes some good points, which is basically "If it aint broke do't fix it" kind of design mentality from Bioware. And then you have some others that include it for nostalgia purposes, (SCL and BG, SITS and Darklands, DA series and ).

However, I'm sure some of it also was the fact that the industry considered TB too slow. And real time with a party is difficult without a pause.
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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Feb 16, 2015
Messages
1,399
I was watching SCL, and asked myself why even include the pause?
Do yourself a favor and watch/play something with a sane combat system, like Aarklash: Legacy. It's simplistic but (on max difficulty) quite unforgiving. Fights aren't hard to figure out but if you make a mistake in your positioning or skill rotation, you're usually boned. Pause makes it possible to execute your battle plan.

The question you should be asking is why RTwP hasn't evolved in so many years. Why do combat systems like the one in Aarklash flash for a moment and disappear into oblivion without leaving a trace? But this is easy to answer: because the majority of modern VG developers doesn't have a damn clue.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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To answer the OP, there two reasons you would make your game RTwP:
1. You get to call yourself a "spiritual successor" of something or another, although this scam has gotten too old by now in order to work again, or at least I hope it has. I'm pretty sure that SCL will be the last game we'll see in the "spiritual successor"-genre, because it will suck too bad and because the people whose money you can milk by calling your game a "spiritual successor" have largely been burned too many times or have died off.

2. When your game has a pause button you can automatically boast a longer time needed to complete the campaign. :lol:
 

svvvs

Educated
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Because it passes atention span check for all those ADD infested generation of gamers and that is majority these days.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
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May 29, 2010
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35,660
It's the complete opposite of fast and chaotic.

You're the only person who's ever said this.

And the fact that you can play DA2 and DA3 without pausing makes it even less relevant.

Arguably one can play any rtwp game without pausing. So don't if you don't want to. It's there for people who want combat to be somewhat automated but without having to deal with the constant demand of having to make quick decisions.
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
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Feb 16, 2015
Messages
1,399
Then let's try to strike a killing blow for all of mankind and slay the RTwP beast!
Thanks for illustrating the difference between RTwP fans and TB fans so concisely.

The former are mostly neutral or positive towards TB games because they understand that different people have different tastes and there's nothing wrong with it. The latter are, very unfortunately, a bunch of insecure kids (or adults with insecure kid mindset which is for all practical purposes the same thing) on an endless pointless crusade to convert everyone to their one true faith.

It's the most one-sided Internet holy war I've ever seen.
 

pippin

Guest
There are people who won't buy games if they have turn based mechanics, because they think it's some sort of relic of the past, when games weren't advanced enough to process real time action.
In fact, while it wasn't entirely specific, games being real time was an important marketing point even in the 90s. By the late 90s it was somewhat assumed that turn based games were for *those* guys. This is weird because there are many jrpgs which have turn based combat, or at least a variation of turn based combat, but people are ok with those because they see them as "strategy" games.

RtwP is an accesible way to fool gamerz into playing tb games, because they will still pause and micromanage every x seconds/minutes, almost as if they were playing a turn based game. Yet they still hate those.
 
Unwanted
Douchebag! Shitposter
Joined
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Messages
3,059
because they think it's some sort of relic of the past, when games weren't advanced enough to process real time action.

No. No one thinks that. This is a codexian meme that you mindlessly spew without even knowing where it came from.

People don't like TB because it's boring to them. It's. That. Simple.
 

pippin

Guest
No. No one thinks that. This is a codexian meme that you mindlessly spew without even knowing where it came from.

I've seen people disliking TB for that very reason with my own eyes. And in the internet as well. They think it's boring because it's outdated. As I said, it's nothing new.
 

prodigydancer

Arcane
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Messages
1,399
they will still pause and micromanage every x seconds/minutes, almost as if they were playing a turn based game.
This "almost" may become quite a stretch, depending on which implementation of TB we're talking about. Crap like "you have one move action and one attack per turn" is nowhere close to the freedom of RTwP micro.
 
Unwanted
Douchebag! Shitposter
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Jan 19, 2014
Messages
3,059
I knew a fag would come up with that. Even though it doesn't contradict in any way what I just said. A few fringe journalist and corporate spokesperson who quickly retracted this occasional argument do not speak for the majority. Does it have anything to do with the CoD audience, No. Does the CoD audience ever read an IGN article older than 2008? They don't even read them.
 
Unwanted
Douchebag! Shitposter
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
3,059
TB isn't mainstream because it occupies a niche that is filled by board games for the socially active casual consumer. The average consumer plays video games by far and wide because he wants to see epic shit happening on the screen at a pace non reproducible outside of electronic systems.

Here is why turn based RPGs were abandoned for a while.

[People who play RPGs are] “depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games.”

– Hiroshi Yamauchi in a 1999 interview

With the advent of internet, hipsters organized, formed communities and indicated that this niche among other ones could still be exploited. As a limited niche. Which is essentially what the big kickstarters were about, the exception of divinity which tries to carve it's own casual audience using TB as a mean to a specific end.
 

Tabs

Novice
Joined
Sep 20, 2015
Messages
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Upstate
RTwP also gives the player a sense of god-like agency. They can pause the game and think while the sucker AI just sits there waiting for the hammer to fall. On the flip side, TB games have the player sit there while stuff happens to them and they can't immediately react.
 

Telengard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
1,621
Location
The end of every place
Just go to the source.
I dunno if its just me but does anyone else hate turn-based games? I mean the story lines are always good and the graphics are usually good too. but the idea of allowing myself to get hit during battle when it would have been so easy to avoid it had i gotten the chance makes me so angry. and then theres waiting to get hit, watching all the players on the field get hit one by one is nerve wracking...and choosing defence all the tyme gets anyone nowhere slowly. sometymes i find myself getting a turn-based game just to see if it will change my mind. but none of them do. after one battle i remember its a turn-based game and its only going to get worse...
Some of the most popular RPGs released this generation aren't even turn based, and they include: Bioshock, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Borderlands, Dragon Age: Origin, Fallout 3, etc. The only major turn based RPGs released or is being released only include Lost Odyssey and FF13. Turn based is rapidly becoming a relic and the demand for them isn't as high as they were back in the Playstation 1 era.
I for one am glad that the turn-based/ATB system died after FF10. Turn based gets boring after an hour of gameplay. ARPGs are the future so FFans better get used to it.
Would you be bothered if they quit making turn-based RPGs?
Personally i wouldn't mind if all RPGs used real time battle.
*
No.

Dated gameplay mechanics should be thrown out the window.
*
Not at all. Old school, turn based rpg's like Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Trigger were cool but I prefer real time combat.
*
I used to like turn-based/ATB mechanics (FF, Bauldur's Gate, etc.), but now - in games - it just feels outdated. The gameplay just feels extremely stale when compared to games like Tales of Graces f or Xenoblade: Chronicles.
I'm bored now. You can find more yourself.
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
I don't care what the combat system is as long as the gameplay is fun. Personally I enjoy the combat in IE games - it's fast and visceral but still has enough of its roots in D&D to feel right, but conversely the awful camera in DA3 and WoW-like rules system doesn't combine well with the quasi RTwP gameplay.

There have been some awful turn-based CRPGs too (POR2 I'm looking at you) where endless waves of trash mobs moving slowly across the screen destroy any semblance of fun. Even TOEE which was a great adaptation of the D&D ruleset was let down by lazy encounter-design whereby the slavish devotion to replicating the original D&D module resulted in the player fighting waves of bugbears for a lot of the game.
 

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