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

[Captain Shrek]

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?

Why not a make a thread? This is a great topic to discuss again. I really mean it. In my opinion with the masturbation for PE in full swing this would make the usual wooers of TB games think a bit harder.

 

[Jaesun]

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?

Why not a make a thread? This is a great topic to discuss again. I really mean it. In my opinion with the masturbation for PE in full swing this would make the usual wooers of TB games think a bit harder.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...urn-based-the-magnificent-seven-argument.192/

 

[Captain Shrek]

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?

Why not a make a thread? This is a great topic to discuss again. I really mean it. In my opinion with the masturbation for PE in full swing this would make the usual wooers of TB games think a bit harder.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...urn-based-the-magnificent-seven-argument.192/

 

[Jaesun]

Captain Shrek Feel free to make a new topic on this in this forum.

 

[tuluse]

Is there a game that has RTwP that works well?

Any single player RTS, Total War series specifically.

 

[octavius]

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.

I haven't played NWN2 but assuming your rogue was invisible or stealthed is sounds retarded than enemies should get attacks of opportinity against him. But having attacks of opportinity sounds like an incline from the IE games, altthough it sounds like it requires even more babysitting.

 

[I_am_Ian]

I guess I should have specified, is there a RPG with RTwP that works well?

I always assumed RTwP was just another part of the decline. Turn based combat not able to hold the diminishing attention spans of the modern gamer and all that.

 

[pakoito]

I guess I should have specified, is there a RPG with RTwP that works well?

I always assumed RTwP was just another part of the decline. Turn based combat not able to hold the diminishing attention spans of the modern gamer and all that.

Somebody said Frozen Synapse. Somewhere in my moleskine there's a couple of ideas I had about the same system. The biggest issue here is ranges, FS works with distances and lines of sight. When you're dealing with swords and maces it's just not the same.

Shortest answer: not yet.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess I should have specified, is there a RPG with RTwP that works well?

I always assumed RTwP was just another part of the decline. Turn based combat not able to hold the diminishing attention spans of the modern gamer and all that.

Well, look at this way:

There are people on this forum who will tell you that DOOM was a decline because it brought hordes of low-brow action fans into gaming. And that's definitely true.

But does that mean DOOM was a bad game?

Somebody said Frozen Synapse.

That's not an RPG, nor is it RTwP.

 

[octavius]

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

The only old school CRPGs that I can think of that had both great turn based combat and great encounter design was some of the Gold Box games, but they had less options and stupid, non-scriptable, non-moddable AI, so on the balance I think the IE games have an edge.

 

[pakoito]

I guess I should have specified, is there a RPG with RTwP that works well?

I always assumed RTwP was just another part of the decline. Turn based combat not able to hold the diminishing attention spans of the modern gamer and all that.

Well, look at this way:

There are people on this forum who will tell you that DOOM was a decline because it brought hordes of low-brow action fans into gaming. And that's definitely true.

But does that mean DOOM was a bad game?

Somebody said Frozen Synapse.

That's not an RPG, nor is it RTwP.

It's PTwR, the principle is the same: action queuing and waiting for outcome. Correction time in FS is 10 seconds, in RTwP it's instantaneous.

 

[trais]

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

Can you explain that? Because the way I understand it, is that it's shit because it's a clusterfuck, and it's a clusterfuck because it's RTwP.

Under the hood it's mostly D&D and D&D per se is quite fun, with lots of options and clever ways to utilize your party skills, spells and abilities. But RTwP implementation brought in crapload of annoyances you don't find in proper TB D&D combat. I already gave you one example with AoO and how RT fucks it up. It also borks some other seemingly unrelated things, like Quickened Spells metamagic. And so on, and so on.
Overall, is NWN2 unplayable because it's RTwP? No, it still can be enjoyed for what it is. But is it better because of it? Again, my answer no - it would be much better game if it would stay closer to its D&D roots and had TB combat.

 

[Roguey]

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

Phase based combat system that defaults to "perform last action" or general AI behavior like "attack nearest" whenever you don't issue an order to a companion would be a superior way of dealing with this. Fuck having to pause every 2-4 seconds.

Oh and I should add that autopause options in the IE games are worthless to me because every character has their own round.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey Yeah, autopause options are generally retarded. They were only good for helping you notice things you wouldn't have noticed quickly enough otherwise.

I don't mind the pausing. I think there's something satisfying about having to maintain order in that chaotic little battlefield. An order here, a spell there, watch your guys kick ass. Good stuff.

 

[Jaesun]

Feel free to make that RTwP thread Infinitron in this forum if you want.

 

[Infinitron]

Feel free to make that RTwP thread Infinitron in this forum if you want.

I could, but I'd need you to move all the posts here to there anyway. We'd need the context of those posts to keep generating a discussion.

 

[Jaesun]

Allrighty.

 

[SCO]

xvart village wasn't a trash mob last time i played ... but that was because all of my party were lv 1-2 F/M/C.
Misc charm animal was really useful instead of a side diversion.

 

[Nigro]

man Ive played a lot of Total war shogun 2 lately, and its Rtwp, and its awesome, and they told us that they would implement formations and some neat options going with it, I think we are going to see definitely some

 

[Telengard]

If some company ever decides to put a fully competent party AI into a game, their game will immediately stop being a game, since the game will no longer require any input from the gamer. Since the AI would be making competent decisions, the gamer could turn it on and let the computer competently fight all the battles for him, without his ever lifting a finger.

The company can, of course, restrict certain abilities from AI use, reserving certain powers to human implementation only, but then the AI is no longer fully competent, and it becomes less competent with every single thing it doesn't have access to, since it cannot then ever make the "best decision" in all given situations.

In the end, the AIs will never go beyond being functional. Unless some company decides that people don't actually want to have to influence the battles anymore. Like maybe Bioware.

*

With RTwP, and given a functional AI (but not a competent one), the game input needed from the player is: watch the overall proceedings of the battle and periodically adjust the decisions of the AI to more competent ones. That makes the critical moments of the battle - the moments that decide whether or not you will succeed - first and foremost based on whether you twitched at the right time. If you do, then you get to properly adjust the party tactics, which moves you towards success.

Effectively, RTwP posits that every character in the game is stupid (no matter the character's statted Intelligence), and they remain so until they are touched by the inspiring hand of the gamer-god. After that brief moment of inspiration, though, the characters immediately go back to being stupid.

In turn-based, every character is only as stupid as the gamer chooses to make them, since all of a character's abilities are available to you at all times, during both unimportant rounds and critical ones, whether or not you are good at twitching. Which of the game types a person likes better is then generally based on how twitchy they are.

So, turn-based is purely about the gamer's mind. While RTwP is about the gamer's mind, his twitchability, and how much of the gameplay the developers choose to have handled by the AI (instead of having the gamer, you know, actually play it).

And so it will remain, since the RTwP AI can't be advanced too much more than it already is without the AI taking over the gameplay completely.

 

[Black]

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.

That can easily be solved by making enemies move at the same time during their turn, with the ability to "replay" their turn individually to see who went where in case of problems. ToEE already had multiple enemies moving, but not attacking, at once.

And VD started a minor shitstorm and went back into hiding, giggling to himself.

 

[octavius]

Telengard, when talking about AI we are usually talking about the AI of the enemies. A smart AI, that can use all the tricks the player uses (except saving and loading, of course) makes for a more challenging game.
When it comes to your own characters, it's the pathfinding (or lack of it) that is more important.
The AI of your own characters is only important if you want to make the computer play the game for you, in which case the whole RTwP vs Turn Based discussion is moot, since the computer is calling the shots, not the player.

 

[tuluse]

Effectively, RTwP posits that every character in the game is stupid (no matter the character's statted Intelligence), and they remain so until they are touched by the inspiring hand of the gamer-god. After that brief moment of inspiration, though, the characters immediately go back to being stupid.

In turn-based, every character is only as stupid as the gamer chooses to make them, since all of a character's abilities are available to you at all times, during both unimportant rounds and critical ones, whether or not you are good at twitching. Which of the game types a person likes better is then generally based on how twitchy they are.

So, turn-based is purely about the gamer's mind. While RTwP is about the gamer's mind, his twitchability, and how much of the gameplay the developers choose to have handled by the AI (instead of having the gamer, you know, actually play it).

And so it will remain, since the RTwP AI can't be advanced too much more than it already is without the AI taking over the gameplay completely.

Unless you can queue actions in RTwP , in which case companions can stay smart.

Also, I never found RTwP particularly twitchy, and I think the fact that the enemy can do things simultaneous to the player could theoretically add tactical depth. Now, no RPG has yet to do this, but all kinds of RTS games have.

 

[Infinitron]

I never found it particularly twitchy either. Never understood those complaints. Believe it or not, something can be both real-time and slow-paced and methodical.

For example, hordes of real twitch gamers complained about DA:O's "slow" combat.

 

[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?

Anthony Davis
As our resident professional game developer, I wonder what you have to say about this theory of mine.