Fucking RTwP in Project Eternity? HOW DOES IT WORK? TB vs RTwP

[Vault Dweller]

Guess RTwP is better than Turn Based combat.

What are the differences, mechanic wise, between RTwP and turn-based? Care to enlighten me?

Surely, you see the difference between a gameplay pause and sequential combat?

RTwP is real time that sucks. The pause is an honest admission that fast-paced, party vs party, real-time combat is too chaotic to be controlled on the fly and that AI is too retarded to be relied on, and thus you have to pause this interactive movie to issue some basic orders and show AI how it's done.

Sequential combat is a lot more complex and a turn, yours or the enemy's, isn't a pause - it's a window to plan, respond to what the enemy's up to, execute strategies, and most importantly, ensure that your party members will survive the enemy's turn. In fact, planning for the enemy's turn is what makes TB so interesting. Any idiot can pick some targets to attack during his turn, but making sure that all your men survive the enemy's turns turn and the battle (like in XCOM, for example) is the real challenge.

 

[Excidium]

Only problem with TB is that when you add animations every battle becomes very time-consuming as you wait for NPC #12 to run up to his target, swing his sword and miss.

 

[Duckard]

Only problem with TB is that when you add animations every battle becomes very time-consuming as you wait for NPC #12 to run up to his target, swing his sword and miss.

Makes me wonder if an RPG with very slow paced TB combat wouldn't work if combat was uncommon. Obviously it wouldn't appeal to people who need the combat to be super fast, but if you have 1 combat encounter that takes 30 minutes, or 10 encounters that take 3 minutes each the total amount of time is still the same. Space would need to be filled with other stuff, though, or it could be too much walking.

 

[Gozma]

If TB animations are so bloated that they are taking more than a quarter second or so to complete they are the result of shitty decisions. Good turnbased should be far faster than Rtw/P and much denser with decisions per second. Compare how much faster you can get through a similar combat in Gold Box than IE. I actually like the idea of a low-combat RPG with Rtw/P along the Brigade E5/7.62mm long, slow, overplanned combat model - it's too much shit to bother with honestly speaking for a continuous combat game, but if combat were about as rare as Fallout 1 (and a lot of the "combat" in FO is more "violence" like short range gameplay-free executions) you could do interesting things.

 

[octavius]

If TB animations are so bloated that they are taking more than a quarter second or so to complete they are the result of shitty decisions. Good turnbased should be far faster than Rtw/P and much denser with decisions per second. Compare how much faster you can get through a similar combat in Gold Box than IE.

Huh? There are more decisions to made in an average IE battle than in a Gold Box battle, since there are more options. Hell, in the IE games you can even decide to avoid many trash mobs, especially in BG 1.
As for speed I guess the Gold Box games are generally a bit quicker, excactly because you have fewer options.
But for large battle the Gold Box games are defintely slower when you have to wait for 50 orcs to do their turn, while in the IE games they would all act at the same time.

 

[Grimlorn]

One of the things I don't like about RTwP is that you can move in real time. So when your character gets hurt you just move him out of the melee range of the mob and the mob can't stop it. You can heal the character or have him keep running around while your party continues to attack the mob. It's kind of cheap, but that's really the only problem with it I have.

Played DA2 the camera was awful with that third person view. I appreciated the isometric view a lot more after playing that shit. You have to be able to see what's going on around you when you're controlling a party.

 

[Gozma]

Huh? There are more decisions to made in an average IE battle than in a Gold Box battle, since there are more options.

I'm not even sure that's true for all the ten other GBs than pool of radiance, but anyway I specifically said "a similar combat". Like a low level party vs. a bunch of svartz in BG compared to a fight with the same number of orcs in a GB. It will take about 5-10 seconds in a GB and about 30 seconds or more in BG. This is not me trying to make you think the game you like sucks, it's just a statement of fact. God knows the GB game would certainly make it up by doing the same fight 6 more times, although BG is also not shy about piling on the garbage fights.

 

[trais]

Guess RTwP is better than Turn Based combat.

What are the differences, mechanic wise, between RTwP and turn-based? Care to enlighten me?

I don't know what you mean by "mechanic wise", but overall, the main difference between TB and RTwP is that TB can be made fun for both simple (Fallout) and complex (D&D, JA2) combat systems, while RTwP is always a huge clusterfuck whenever you go into more more complex.

Sure, RTwP works ok in games like KotOR, where combat basically goes like this:
1) (auto)pause at the beginning
2) queue all party members' force powers/special attacks on one enemy
3) unpause and watch him die
4) pause again and queue force powers/special attacks on another enemy
5) repeat steps 3 and 4 until all enemies are dead; use consumables when necessary.
In this case, basically only tactical option you really have is which enemy to target first, but it allows you clear trash mobs quickly and cut through the padding without wasting too much time.

In more complex systems RTwP gets really frustrating: let's take NWN2's D&D implementation as an example. I replayed NWN2 OC recently and I lost count how many times I raged because my rogue got chunked by attacks of opportunity, when the enemy he was backstabbing decided to switch his target from fighter to wizard. Good decision on AI's part tbh, but when he started to move to get close to his new, squishier target, my rogue was automatically following him and the result was usually one big AoO fuckfest.
Of course, it is preventable if you manage to hit spacebar fast enough and change rogue's target, but when you spend half of the combat babysitting your party and stopping them from making retarded shit that gets your party wiped, then you can't help but wish that you could play it in TB and give every order yourself.

 

[Excidium]

That has more to do with NWN2 combat being shit than with RTwP being a clusterfuck.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Is there a game that has RTwP that works well?

 

[I_am_Ian]

God fucking damn it. If RTwP is as described by trais with constant micromanaging and babysitting then how does one enjoy combat without frantic twitching?

 

[Infinitron]

The problem with the RTwP critics is that all of their arguments are theoretical.

None of them can explain to me why, in practice, I had both fun and a tactical challenge when playing RTwP games.

None of them can explain to me why I should hate it.

RTwP is real time that sucks. The pause is an honest admission that fast-paced, party vs party, real-time combat is too chaotic to be controlled on the fly and that AI is too retarded to be relied on, and thus you have to pause this interactive movie to issue some basic orders and show AI how it's done.

Vault Dweller, what's your opinion of Frozen Synapse-style phase-based combat?

 

[Infinitron]

The problem with the RTwP critics is that all their arguments are theoretical. None of them can explain to me why I had fun when playing RTwP games. None of them can explain to me why I should hate it.

Sorry to contradict you but I have a question: Did you like the combat because it was RTwP or because it was with lots of options and encounter design was good? Or did you like the overall game which is of course more than the sum of its parts and you are automatically assassinating this feel-good with the combat?

As I've said before, I don't think combat should be liked or disliked because of TB or RTwP. I assign a neutral value to this classification. As long as it provides a challenge and it "works", I like it.

Now, in theory, a turn-based system should allow more challenging and interesting combats due to being far more predictable, somewhat easier to control, and (I assume) being easier to create and design. Though we can see that in practice that hasn't always been the case...

 

[Gozma]

If you had tactical fun with IE games or DA or NWN 1/2 I can only imagine it was in managing the spell stack, like casting breach then X then X on enemy mages in BG (I can't remember actually) or using MMORPG mezzes in DA. The spatial tactics are a complete mess - like you can't tell exactly how many characters you need to stand abreast to block a bottleneck on the ambiguous jpeg backgrounds etc. So why even implement full spatial considerations when they're so sloppy and pathfindy? There are plenty of games that manage spatial stuff abstractly like blobbers.

 

[Infinitron]

Further thoughts on the benefits of RTwP, copy-pasted from CDS, slightly edited:

20:25 - Infinitron: okay, here are my thoughts on rtwp currently
20:26 - Infinitron: rtwp is good for trash mobs. this is a fact. you do not want to enter into turn-based stasis for each trash mob fight
20:26 - Infinitron: so your opinion of rtwp entirely depends on what you think of trash mobs

20:27 - Infinitron: there are trash mobs (BG xvart genocide), and there are TOO MANY trash mobs (Dragon Age)
20:28 - Infinitron: I think that trash mob fights were an important part of baldur's gate "low level romp" atmosphere. it wouldn't be the same game without them
20:28 - Infinitron: they weren't roadblocks in your path like in DA:O, they weren't mandatory
20:28 - Infinitron: but they were still important

 

[Infinitron]

Not important just examples of bad design. victims of the idea that Epic means lot of bloodshed.

It does not. Challenging combat that lasts long(er) and is fun is perfectly viable. It is just typically not well implemented. I am actually hoping that guys at Aterdux manage it. Play discord times to see what I mean.

Sure, or JA2, but somehow that stuff never finds its way into a straight RPG. We'll see.

 

[canakin]

Further thoughts on the benefits of RTwP, copy-pasted from CDS, slightly edited:

20:25 - Infinitron: okay, here are my thoughts on rtwp currently
20:26 - Infinitron: rtwp is good for trash mobs. this is a fact. you do not want to enter into turn-based stasis for each trash mob fight
20:26 - Infinitron: so your opinion of rtwp entirely depends on what you think of trash mobs

20:27 - Infinitron: there are trash mobs (BG xvart genocide), and there are TOO MANY trash mobs (Dragon Age)
20:28 - Infinitron: I think that trash mob fights were an important part of baldur's gate "low level romp" atmosphere. it wouldn't be the same game without them
20:28 - Infinitron: they weren't roadblocks in your path like in DA:O, they weren't mandatory
20:28 - Infinitron: but they were still important

You have a point with trash mobs being annoying in turn based games, but they could make it better by designing the game to make trash mob encounters both optional and quicker like in Fallout where you didn't have to grind, but if you wanted to grind anyway you could travel around Mariposa Base and hunt fairly small groups of Super Mutants and their pets without wasting too much time in one encounter. Fallout Tactics also had a cool option of allowing you to switch between turn based and continuous turn based anytime you want, that also could work with trash mobs here.

 

[Gozma]

Another thing to mention is that in the late '90s in the origins of Rtw/P RPGs there was a big fad that all the elements of a game should be in one point of view and one basic UI. I forget what they called it but it even had a game journalist fad term like the later "immersive" and that type of thing. So games like a Betrayal at Krondor that had combat take place in a different universe from movement became unfashionable. But looking back that was obviously just an odd quirk of designs that there is no reason to propagate either method for all time.

 

[Infinitron]

Another thing to mention is that in the late '90s in the origins of Rtw/P RPGs there was a big fad that all the elements of a game should be in one point of view and one basic UI. I forget what they called it but it even had a game journalist fad term like the later "immersive" and that type of thing. So games like a Betrayal at Krondor that had combat take place in a different universe from movement became unfashionable. But looking back that was obviously just an odd quirk of designs that there is no reason to propagate either method for all time.

Yes. I always thought of it as game UIs imitating Windows OS UIs.

But then consolization came and ended that. Gotta give them those big menus with big fonts.

 

[Mrowak]

That has more to do with NWN2 combat being shit than with RTwP being a clusterfuck.

Not really. Trais is correct. RTwP definitely does not work for fully controlled party members especially if there are more than one (other than PC).

How does it not work?

It only worked for NWN because you did not have to control them.

It worked? But the combat in NWN1 was shit - even if you transplanted it into TB.

In NNW2 the combat is hardly shit as much as it is RTwP (which is shit all by itself).

Is it fault of RTwP, or poor encounter design?

If you played IWD1/2 you'd see the exact same problem. Now combat is the same there except with lesser options than NWN2.

What problem? That the combat is shit? In what regard is the combat in IWD1/2 the same as in NWN2?

There is an excellent reason why RTwP fails miserably: The AI. If the AI in these games is not adaptive to changing situations like trais mentioned, your orders will be followed to the letter for a situation you did not assign them to. It might seem that you can improve the AI to solve this, right? You can't unless you decide to cripple the enemy. If you do not only improve the Party AI for heroes, the enemy will always break your strategy because the computer control is instantaneous while you are "real time with pause". See the problem?

And once again - what does AI have to do with RTwP combat? It's not inherently bound to it. Get BG2, install SCS2 AI mod and watch what happens. And the queue issue? Well, isn't it like legacy of turn based games - the game plays in turns so the turn must end before you can queue another order. Get rid of turns - problem solved.

 

[almondblight]

Is there a game that has RTwP that works well?

Hearts of Iron 3, the newer Combat Missions, and Freedom Force.

 

[Mrowak]

Shouldn't you be arguing with black cat or something?

Cannot into argumentation much?

 

[Volrath]

If you had tactical fun with IE games or DA or NWN 1/2 I can only imagine it was in managing the spell stack, like casting breach then X then X on enemy mages in BG (I can't remember actually) or using MMORPG mezzes in DA. The spatial tactics are a complete mess - like you can't tell exactly how many characters you need to stand abreast to block a bottleneck on the ambiguous jpeg backgrounds etc. So why even implement full spatial considerations when they're so sloppy and pathfindy? There are plenty of games that manage spatial stuff abstractly like blobbers.

I had fun with BG2 because of the encounter design. What good is a fantastic designed turn based combat system like in ToEE when all you do all day is fight bugbears?

 

[General Maxson]

If you had tactical fun with IE games or DA or NWN 1/2 I can only imagine it was in managing the spell stack, like casting breach then X then X on enemy mages in BG (I can't remember actually) or using MMORPG mezzes in DA. The spatial tactics are a complete mess - like you can't tell exactly how many characters you need to stand abreast to block a bottleneck on the ambiguous jpeg backgrounds etc. So why even implement full spatial considerations when they're so sloppy and pathfindy? There are plenty of games that manage spatial stuff abstractly like blobbers.

I had fun with BG2 because of the encounter design. What good is a fantastic designed turn based combat system like in ToEE when all you do all day is fight bugbears?

That's true enough.

But a great turn based combat WITH great encounter design (hopefully W2 :D )?

 

[Infinitron]

I'm thinking:

Could it be that one reason that RTwP RPGs have tended to have better encounters than TB ones is because the former are quicker and easier to test, and therefore iterate upon and improve?