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

[Vault Dweller]

Is dodging a fireball or grenade unrealistic or bad?

Yes. Both unrealistic and bad.
.

Why? I think if a granade lands next to me, I would ran away.

How far?

 

[Sputnik]

Actual combat is about reactions not planning 3 steps ahead.

Does this have anything to do with RPG combat? In my book RPG combat success should be dependent about character, not player, reactions.

 

[Johannes]

Actual combat is about reactions not planning 3 steps ahead.

Does this have anything to do with RPG combat? In my book RPG combat success should be dependent about character, not player, reactions.

You give them an order, run away or whatever, then they do it the best they can. Dependant on stats, of course. Acceleration, top speed, turning speed, can all be stat-dependent and modified by things like fatigue.
If you want you can also add a stat that gives a delay how fast a character responds to orders (or a stat that reduces this delay rather), but that can easily end up just annoying, lag usually isn't fun.


Reminds me of that sports games = more RPGy than RPGs discussion on the popamole board btw.

Is dodging a fireball or grenade unrealistic or bad?

Yes. Both unrealistic and bad.
.

Why? I think if a granade lands next to me, I would ran away.

How far?

As far as you can, obviously. How far the game will let you, which doesn't have to be much necessarily.



And as far as whether combat is about planning, reacting, or whatever... Regardless of the system used, planning is done before the battle's initiated. Then you go and execute that plan, but must also change it midway as a reaction to whatever unprecented happens in the battle. If you're only thinking one turn at a time, planning for the enemy turn, that's not so much planning as reacting to the situation last turn brought you.

I found it funny how this is supposed to support TB, because that's exactly the reason why I consider it inferior to RT. Actual combat is about reactions not planning 3 steps ahead.

Decent combat is about tactics & strategies. Both require planning.

That sentence is really not saying anything at all. Even the shittiest combat is about tactics, the term does not take any stance on the complexity of the actions taken. "My tactical plan for this battle was to use Fast Attack repeatedly until one of us died".
Strategy on the other hand isn't about single battles but your overall plan of how to get through the game, but yeah this should affect the way you play your individual battles.

 

[Juggie]

Does this have anything to do with RPG combat? In my book RPG combat success should be dependent about character, not player, reactions.

Decent combat is about tactics & strategies. Both require planning.

So uhm, this means you should have no input during the combat and only watch how your chars duke it out with the enemy? That's a good design around here? For me good combat is trying to stick to a plan while adapting to the situation at hand. Planning out the whole battle ahead and watching it play out is not so great, that's why I prefer higher granularity of time frames, allowing me to adjust my tactics at any given time.

Yes. Both unrealistic and bad.

Ok, so when my dudes in JA2 watch a grenade land at their feet and explode doing nothing it's the most realistic thing EVAR?

JA2 with community patch is my favorite game of all time, but sequential actions make some situations extremely unrealistic. RT inherently fixes these problems because the actions are (almost) parallel.

 

[Mrowak]

I found it funny how this is supposed to support TB, because that's exactly the reason why I consider it inferior to RT. Actual combat is about reactions not planning 3 steps ahead.

Decent combat is about tactics & strategies. Both require planning.

Agreed, but how does it remove RTwP out of the picture?

Is dodging a fireball or grenade unrealistic or bad?

Yes. Both unrealistic and bad.

Well, one could argue that succeeding at a saving throw and taking no damage when hit by huge Fireball centered on you is unrealistic like hell and pretty bad. This mechanics is used predominantly in TB.

My point is, we could just go on with such simplistic conjectures till kingdom come, and we will still be missing the essential part:

What precludes RTwP from being as much fun as TB when we assume that proper, fitting mechanics are in place for either system?

 

[Sputnik]

Does this have anything to do with RPG combat? In my book RPG combat success should be dependent about character, not player, reactions.

Decent combat is about tactics & strategies. Both require planning.

So uhm, this means you should have no input during the combat and only watch how your chars duke it out with the enemy?

But hey, isn't that how the games with RTwP combat play out? Even if you want to give input during the combat it easily becomes a test of reactions (and I don't want my RPG to be reaction tests, I have popamole arpgs for that).

Maybe I phrased my response badly, but what I meant was that the decisive reaction ability stat that should count in RPG combat is the reaction ability of the character (instead of that of the player's). So yes, you certainly should have input during the combat, and turn based combat allows you to respond to combat actions at the exact time you want to, without reliance on the players ability to pause the game at exactly the right moment.

 

[Johannes]

Are you impaired somehow when you cannot even pause a game when you wish to?

 

[Juggie]

But hey, isn't that how the games with RTwP combat play out? Even if you want to give input during the combat it easily becomes a test of reactions (and I don't want my RPG to be reaction tests, I have popamole arpgs for that).

Maybe I phrased my response badly, but what I meant was that the decisive reaction ability stat that should count in RPG combat is the reaction ability of the character (instead of that of the player's). So yes, you certainly should have input during the combat, and turn based combat allows you to respond to combat actions at the exact time you want to, without reliance on the players ability to pause the game at exactly the right moment.

Well the decisive ability of the character either relies on AI and doesn't allow you to perform arbitrary action as reaction to an arbitrary event or inserts a mini turn for the reacting player to do some shit. You need to set up predefined events that trigger reactions and then either set up predefined reaction or let the player play an interrupt phase. What about reactions to reactions, etc.? These are just quick fixes to a problem that comes with sequential actions and don't work that well.

Proper RTwP allows you to queue commands and adjust them literally anytime, it allows you to change the game speed so that you can precisely time actions and respond to different situations or just fast forward through boring parts. Is that unrealistic? To some degree, but commanding (babysitting) more than one character already is. If you're playing some telepathic entity with bird's eye view of the whole location you might as well slow time and use the telepathy at any given moment.

Also having stats for stuff that is more UI-related is overdoing it. It's like arguing that you shouldn't be able to choose responses in a dialogue, because the character you play should pick them based on his stats.

 

[Castanova]

I found it funny how this is supposed to support TB, because that's exactly the reason why I consider it inferior to RT. Actual combat is about reactions not planning 3 steps ahead.

Decent combat is about tactics & strategies. Both require planning.

I'm not sure I follow your turn-based vs. RTwP example (the running toward a building one). If I understand correctly, you're saying that the player gets punished in the turn-based version because his guy is a sitting duck when the enemy opens the door and gets to start firing (and that this is a good thing). But wouldn't most highly-regarded turn-based combat systems include some kind of interrupt system?

Even in the RTwP version, a good implementation would give the guy inside the building an advantage (because he has cover). I'm not sure the guy who is running toward the building deserves to be defenseless, though.

 

[Sputnik]

Are you impaired somehow when you cannot even pause a game when you wish to?

Ever played the infinity engine games with maximum number of characters in the party? When babysitting eight characters it isn't always about the ability to pause the game when you wish to, but about the ability to notice when the game needs to be paused in order to respond to something happening in the battlefield with all the characters running around the screen.

 

[Mrowak]

Are you impaired somehow when you cannot even pause a game when you wish to?

Ever played the infinity engine games with maximum number of characters in the party? When babysitting eight characters it isn't always about the ability to pause the game when you wish to, but about the ability to notice when the game needs to be paused in order to respond to something happening in the battlefield with all the characters running around the screen.

Is this really such a great problem?

 

[CappenVarra]

Well, if you manage to babysit 8 characters in a game capped at 6-man parties, I guess you're having at least some sort of a problem...

 

[Captain Shrek]

You wanna see unrealistic?

Hmm. That build has a good AI. The enemy AI is crippled though thus showing that the combat is not balanced in reality.

 

[Livonya]

Are you impaired somehow when you cannot even pause a game when you wish to?

Ever played the infinity engine games with maximum number of characters in the party? When babysitting eight characters it isn't always about the ability to pause the game when you wish to, but about the ability to notice when the game needs to be paused in order to respond to something happening in the battlefield with all the characters running around the screen.

Is this really such a great problem?

Yes, it actually was/is.

The problem with the Infinity game combat engine was that there wasn't an easy way to tell when an action was completed. I was often interrupting myself because I couldn't tell when a spell was completed or an action was totally completed.

Arguably, that was a problem with the Infinity Game Engine and not with RTwP in general.

I ended up writing scripts to run my characters that were several hundred lines long for each character (my mage script was probably over 500 lines long). I wrote them in such a way that the script would pause after certain actions were finished, depending on the action. I could input different commands to change the way the scripts would pause that way I could adjust for each combat.

I spent months on my scripts as I found this was the only way to feel that I was actually in control of my characters. It was impossible for me to actually control them in Real Time using pause, so I wrote these scripts to help me manage them.

RTwP works just fine for a single character, or perhaps 2 characters, but once you have multiple characters that can be all over the place it isn't exactly easy to tell what the fuck is going on.

I will admit, I enjoyed writing these scripts, and I would be okay with RTwP if all games had a robust script writing language like BG2. However, I don't think we will ever see a RTwP game that has a complex scripting language like BG2. The complexity of their scripting language was a fluke, and I have never seen anything like it since (other than when opening a game for modding purposes - remember that scripting was part of the game in BG2 and not something that was added by modders).

Anyway, I find it pretty damn hard to know when to hit "pause" when I am trying to simultaneously control 5 to 8 characters at the same time.

 

[Juggie]

Infinity engine uses one of the worse implementations of RTwP. I prefer systems similar to the one used in the Total War games. When commanding more than 4 units (characters) it's often better to just slow down the game speed instead of constant pausing. Also when you just move around the map or mop up the opponents fast forward is useful option. Another important feature is command queue and timer showing how long it will take to complete the actions (or at least estimation) so that you can plan ahead and set up simultaneous actions.

BTW one big problem of RTwP is that it's unsuitable for any form of multiplayer. I played through BGT with a friend of mine and it was major PITA. We had to drop the difficulty because it was annoying to pause all the time and without the pausing it was hard to play optimally since the game was designed around pausing often (default party AI is crap). On the other hand TB is not very suitable for PvP either, but it works well in coop if done right.

 

[Johannes]

You wanna see unrealistic?

Hmm. That build has a good AI. The enemy AI is crippled though thus showing that the combat is not balanced in reality.

I blame jews for that one though

 

[J1M]

You wanna see unrealistic?

[medYs[/media]

Hmm. That build has a good AI. The enemy AI is crippled though thus showing that the combat is not balanced in reality.

Meh.
He rolled a 21.

The enemy was already dead on his feat from a gunshot. That's why he dropped the grenade instead of throwing it. There was no reason to charge him.

 

[Infinitron]

Thoughts on why RTwP is problematic for some players:

In TB combat, you're only playing one "game" - deciding which orders to give to your characters.

In contrast, RTwP has you playing two "games" at once. First, which orders to give to your characters, as in TB. Second, deciding when to pause the game in order to give them said orders.

These two games each require a rather different core competency to play well. Some people know how to juggle them together, make them fit, and derive enjoyment from succeeding at that. For others, the two games seem to work at cross-purposes and are immensely frustrating.

 

[Infinitron]

An interesting consequence of the dual nature of RTwP systems is that the two aforementioned "games" end up affecting each other, feeding into one another.

Skilled players will strive to give orders to their characters such that future pauses are minimized, or at least rendered more predictable. In other words, they'll play the first game in such a way that makes the second game easier. That, combined with the natural desire to minimize pause time in general, encourages players to play better, creating dependable winning combat strategies.

This is a layer of metagame which is non-existent in turn-based combat, where the best the player can hope for is to shave a few turns off of total combat length by being very aggressive.

 

[wormix]

Did anyone ever play the "Improved Anvil" mod for BG2?
Some of the fights were hard (and cheesy) enough that you had to pause every few seconds, and at that point a game may as well be turn/phase/whatever-based.

But for vanilla, I found the combat fun, and although it may not be as challenging as it could be as a turn based game, it's an RPG. You essentially get to choose your difficulty from your party makeup.

 

[Livonya]

Thoughts on why RTwP is problematic for some players:

In TB combat, you're only playing one "game" - deciding which orders to give to your characters.

In contrast, RTwP has you playing two "games" at once. First, which orders to give to your characters, as in TB. Second, deciding when to pause the game in order to give them said orders.

These two games each require a rather different core competency to play well. Some people know how to juggle them together, make them fit, and derive enjoyment from succeeding at that. For others, the two games seem to work at cross-purposes and are immensely frustrating.

Yeah, nice try. The reason I don't like RTwP has nothing to do with my competency, and I don't think anyone else is saying that RTwP is too difficult.

I can play these games with no problem. Give me a break. Nice straw man argument. "Oh, you don't like RTwP? You must not be competent enough to play the game. If you were then you would see what a great system RTwP is..." Yeah, right.

RTwP is NOT difficult. It just isn't satisfying. The Infinity engine and NWN/NWN2 combat rules were designed for turn based. The game designers tried to force the turn based rule system into a real time system in order to appeal to action gamers. So it never worked quite right. You have skills and abilities that were designed for a turn bases system being awkwardly forced into a real time system.

At no point did they create a difficult and challenging game. They just made an awkward and tedious blend of two interesting ways of approaching combat.

Turn based has a flow. You take an action, you see an outcome, repeat. There is a rhythm to the game play. The animations and spell effects are designed in a way that makes sense with turn based play. And you get a feel for your individual character's abilities and contributions to the party.

There is a also a rhythm to a real time action game. Adding pause to a real time action game is disjointed and destroys that rhythm. The pacing of the game and everything about it is designed for real time action. These games work best without pausing and are designed for squad level battles where you don't have to micro manage every single action.

I would prefer Real Time with NO pause.

The pause doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. It just causes abrupt stops that look mindless.

In my opinion a lot of the really cool feats in DnD are wasted in a RTwP atmosphere because the player doesn't really get a sense of them happening... they go by too fast and become meaningless. This doesn't mean that they go by too fast for the player to use them, but that the player doesn't get that much enjoyment from their use.

For instance having a skill that allows you to avoid Attacks of Opportunity works quite differently in real time and turn based. In turn based you move through an enemy space and you see your character avoiding the AOO, but in real time it happens much faster and the player gets far less satisfaction from that skill. The skill moves from being a main attraction to being a background event.

Skills and Feats don't matter all that much in the Total War games or in the King Arthur games, what is more important is your overall tactics and strategy; though the spells in King Arthur are pretty damn powerful, but they are cool downs and don't happen all that often so you can do them in real time without pausing.

Also, cool spell combinations are less meaningful because the set up time is kind of bothersome in RTwP and most of the time isn't worth the bother, whereas in a turn based system the effort is exactly the same.

I prefer turn based for party based games because I get a deeper satisfaction of each party member's contribution to the battle.

I prefer real time for squad based games because the individual soldiers aren't as important as the overall tactical plan, and I don't need to see them use their cool abilities.

The problem I see with RTwP is that the skills, stats, equipment, and feats that the player can choose in a RPG are wasted on the combat system. There is simply no point in having all of these cool skills, stats, abilities, equipment, and feats.

Every time I play an RPG that has a RTwP combat engine I end up not caring about the skills, stats, abilities, equipment, and feats because I don't really see a meaningful effect. Tactics end up mattering more than these things. So most of the time I just end up using one or two tactics and a tiny handful of spells and just ignore all the other stuff.

But in a Turn Based game I tend to use a wider palette of skills and abilities and spells.

I find the RTwP combat to be a cluster fuck, not because it is hard, but because it just makes all of the cool rules and what not pointless.

I would rather play in real time or in turn based mode.

Just my opinion.

 

[Livonya]

A little more...

The thing that is so satisfying about a party based RPG is building your unique group of characters, and then watching that vision unfold as you develop their skills/abilities/gear.

With turn based you get to watch each character so you get a really up close feeling for this.

But in real time you don't get the same satisfaction. When enemies die you don't always know what skill was used to kill them, or even which character got the deathblow.

Real time works best in RPGs for single character settings because you can focus on one character.

But when you have 4 or 5 or more characters in your party then real time dilutes your ability to monitor them as individuals.

It is a different experience. It doesn't have anything to do with the difficulty. I just want to see my character use the skills and abilities that I gave them. I feel I get a better sense of my agency over them in a turn based setting.

Perhaps Project Eternity will work better than NWN2 or the infinity game engine games because as I understand it you only control your own character, and not the whole party.

If the combat is closer to an aRPG then it could work just fine.

 

[Cynic]

A little more...

The thing that is so satisfying about a party based RPG is building your unique group of characters, and then watching that vision unfold as you develop their skills/abilities/gear.

With turn based you get to watch each character so you get a really up close feeling for this.

But in real time you don't get the same satisfaction. When enemies die you don't always know what skill was used to kill them, or even which character got the deathblow.

Real time works best in RPGs for single character settings because you can focus on one character.

But when you have 4 or 5 or more characters in your party then real time dilutes your ability to monitor them as individuals.

It is a different experience. It doesn't have anything to do with the difficulty. I just want to see my character use the skills and abilities that I gave them. I feel I get a better sense of my agency over them in a turn based setting.

Perhaps Project Eternity will work better than NWN2 or the infinity game engine games because as I understand it you only control your own character, and not the whole party.

If the combat is closer to an aRPG then it could work just fine.

This is fucking right on the money.

 

[Volrath]

A little more...

The thing that is so satisfying about a party based RPG is building your unique group of characters, and then watching that vision unfold as you develop their skills/abilities/gear.

With turn based you get to watch each character so you get a really up close feeling for this.

But in real time you don't get the same satisfaction. When enemies die you don't always know what skill was used to kill them, or even which character got the deathblow.

Real time works best in RPGs for single character settings because you can focus on one character.

But when you have 4 or 5 or more characters in your party then real time dilutes your ability to monitor them as individuals.

It is a different experience. It doesn't have anything to do with the difficulty. I just want to see my character use the skills and abilities that I gave them. I feel I get a better sense of my agency over them in a turn based setting.

Perhaps Project Eternity will work better than NWN2 or the infinity game engine games because as I understand it you only control your own character, and not the whole party.

If the combat is closer to an aRPG then it could work just fine.

Reading is teh hard.

 

[Cynic]

Reading is teh hard.

Reading a battle log is no where near as much impact as seeing your character strike the killing blow. It's just not the same.