Interview Interview with David Gaider

[galsiah]

Turn based is about making decisions, real time with pause is about telling your guys what to do, then watching a screensaver.

I guess that's true. TB certainly seems more strategic. Perhaps my preference for the real time version with XCOM was due to the missions being quicker that way. The objective was accomplished more quickly, so I could get back to planning an overall strategy.
It all sounds rather munchkinesque now that I come to say it.

Possibly it came down to the TB version of apocalypse getting boring at times. In UFO, tracking down the last floater could sometimes be a painful experience. In apocalypse, the maps were significantly larger, and the last enemy no more ready to commit suicide. Perhaps things just took too long??
I forget whether you could switch from turn based to real time during a mission - could you? If you could then my "Oh the pain of tracking the last guy down." argument doesn't work.

All this would be no argument against TB, of course - just against TB in large maps with hiding enemies. [searching every last cupboard in a ship in TFTD was no picnic either as I recall]. Large maps are too often seen as an obvious advantage. UFO would have been a worse game had the maps been four times the size.

 

[Mefi]

Don't think you could switch mid-mission. You chose at the start IIRC. Turn-based was horrible in Apocalypse. Would have been better to have real-time until an alien was spotted or you came under attack (as in ToEE for example).

 

[Section8]

Having said that, I was one of the "XCOM real time with pausing?? How terrible!" people, who ended up never playing turn based - so perhaps I'm just wrong again.
On this issue, is RTwP really the enemy? I always played XCOM Apocalypse on RTwP, and enjoyed it.

I played Apocalypse in real time, because it was the lesser of two evils. It obviously afforded less control, from memory playing out like a slower paced Syndicate. But turn based was worse, because the scale and dimension of the environments didn't effectively integrate with the degree of player movement and APs per turn. I played it as recently as a month ago, and it wasn't uncommon for me to spend between 5 and 10 turns just to find a single alien. And when I did, my personnel were usually scattered all across the map, canvasing the area, so there was never really any potential for squad based tactics.

Now the real question - were the maps so expansive to accomodate real time combat, or was the real time combat added to rectify the problem?

Apocalypse had a lot of failed potential, but at least it wasn't Interceptor or Enforcer.

Having said that, I have fonder memories of the original UFO missions - there always seemed more strategy involved.

Definitely agree. You only have to look at Chess to realise that even the simplest of rules and gameplay spaces can facilitate an incredible degree of strategy. And looking at the bigger missions in Terror From The Deep, such as colonies and artifact sites, you can see that in fact, broader scale can be a hindrance, since it increases the chances a player will be spending more time on tasks that involve no strategic planning, like room-by-room, level-by-level searches for one cowering alien that's unlikely to pose a threat or challenge anyway.

 

[franc kaos]

Turn based is about making decisions, real time with pause is about telling your guys what to do, then watching a screensaver.

Uh oh, gonna have to disagree with you - and possibly the hive mind here, <puts on his dragon armour>. I found turn based to be actually counterproductive to smooth game play (okay, tedious):
Party Member 1: Move two squares and hit enemy with sword
PM2: Move diagonal 2 and shoot arrow
PM3: Move away from the fight and rest 1 turn
PM4: Heal PM3

Watch screensaver for 1 round, and monster pounds on your gang.

PM1: Hit enemy with sword
PM2: Shoot arrow at enemy
PM3: Hit enemy with Hammer
PM4: Blast fireball at enemy... (etc etc etc. The reason I couldn't get into Buck Rogers was just the amount of fighting that went like this ad neauseum - kill group of spiders just outside spaceship, enter building and fight waves of other creature 2 mins later).

Compare that to pause based combat where you give your orders and they're carried out for you round after round. Any problems (aside from those options that automatically pause the battle such as PM hurt or out of arrows), and you hit space to change your orders.

I can't remember what Ultima 6 / 7 did, I'm guessing TB, but as the story easily equalled, if not overshadowed, the fighting, it didn't seem too bad (tho' those gargoyles gave me a run for my money).

 

[kingcomrade]

"Smooth" gameplay isn't as good as gameplay where you have to make decisions in an informed fashion. Hell, I feel more in control playing RTS games than pause/real time RPGs.

 

[Section8]

Let's step back and look at what you've said...

Watch screensaver for 1 round, and monster pounds on your gang.

Compare that to pause based combat where you give your orders and they're carried out for you round after round. Any problems (aside from those options that automatically pause the battle such as PM hurt or out of arrows), and you hit space to change your orders.

You're basically advocating "Watch screensaver for entire combat" over something that's actually interactive, and hence has a need to be counterproductive to "smooth."

Why is smooth interesting? Smooth is watching a NASCAR race without crashes. I don't want smooth, I want dramatic.

Why even play games? Movies are much more smooth. They move from point A to point B without any interruptions.

 

[EEVIAC]

Watch screensaver for 1 round, and monster pounds on your gang.

Individual sequence based on initiative makes turn-based much more dramatic, as well as more fun and strategic to boot. Once you have characters moving based on initiative, (or readying actions so they can act in sequence,) triggering AoO's and the like, TB combat goes all over the place like a mad woman's piss. Without initiative you just get a whole squad bumfucking one character. You also get more downtime where you're watching the action rather than participating, which isn't a whole lot of fun.

 

[Jaesun]

I can't remember what Ultima 6 / 7 did, I'm guessing TB, but as the story easily equalled, if not overshadowed, the fighting, it didn't seem too bad (tho' those gargoyles gave me a run for my money).

Ultima 7 was Real Time with no pause. I *believe* 6 was Turn Based.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

You are correct, Ultima 7 the first Ultima to be real time (at least on the computer) and Ultima 6 was the last turn-based ultima (discounting spinoffs).

 

[Azarkon]

Perhaps not a progression in terms of time, but a progression in theoretical terms.

But what are your theoretical basis for measuring progression? It's true that a class based system will almost certainly give you less choices of character in the overall sense, but the benefit is that each choice can in turn be more developed - be more "unique," so to speak, and it's easier to balance between them (in the sense of not all ending up a min/maxed build).

In some sense, class-based systems can actually encourage diversity *more* than skill-based systems. If the skills are not carefully balanced, for instance, we end up with the "cookie cutter" syndrome where everyone plays the same character - in which case you'd have been better off with a few different, but balanced classes after all. Course, this isn't a problem for games where you're not worried about character power differences, but even then you have relative game difficulty to worry about (how do you prevent players from gimping themselves because they didn't know what to expect in the end-game, for instance?)

In the end, we must judge these systems by their practical, rather than theoretical, implications. A class-based system allows you to discretize the players, thus giving you an easier time in designing and balancing the game while offering them unique, pre-packaged characters that your testers guarantee are fun to play. A skill-based system, on the other hand, has no way of accurately predicting the builds players will do, thus depriving you of both development foreknowledge and the ability to make sure that each player has a good time (as opposed to, say, throwing away the game in disgust after trying two inefficient character builds).

I think we should simply admit that there's a reason why human beings like categories - it's how we think, how we organized billions of unique objects into groups. This epistomological need in turn gives rise to both the act of classification (an offspring of which are the class-based systems) and the rebellion against that classification (due to the inherent variations in all the objecst we classify). IMO, neither stands as a monopolistic symbol of how CRPGs *should* be.

 

[galsiah]

Perhaps not a progression in terms of time, but a progression in theoretical terms.

But what are your theoretical basis for measuring progression?

I'm mostly thinking in idealised terms - i.e. that my perfect system would be skill based. Mainly because I see character versatility as being a large part of what RPGs are about. I'd rather not pick one out of ten defined roles - I like to choose my own role.

It's true that a skill based system will almost certainly take longer to do well. The balancing will be harder, and it'll be more difficult to make certain that all players enjoy the game. It's probably more easy to produce a bad design for a skill based system than a class system, in which case you might encourage all players to play the same character types. So long as you design things reasonably well, this shouldn't be an issue - for single player games at least. Multiplayer / MMORPGs are different matters of course.

In the end, we must judge these systems by their practical, rather than theoretical, implications. A class-based system allows you to discretize the players, thus giving you an easier time in designing and balancing the game while offering them unique, pre-packaged characters that your testers guarantee are fun to play. A skill-based system, on the other hand, has no way of accurately predicting the builds players will do, thus depriving you of both development foreknowledge and the ability to make sure that each player has a good time (as opposed to, say, throwing away the game in disgust after trying two inefficient character builds).

Sure - it's easier to make a class system, just as it's easier to make an adventure game. Both allow much more development foreknowledge and require less testing. If you're developing a game these things need to be considered. It's not that hard to test a skill based system though - it's only necessary to test a decent sample of character builds to be sure that the game is balanced / enjoyable.

Personally I dislike the notion of my character having to be in one of a few categories. If "I'm an elf fighter" is a good description of my character, he doesn't feel much of an individual. With classes the game can provide more information and background, but again I see this as a move toward an adventure type game. In an adventure game it is possible to provide much more depth and specifics on the player character, because there is only one (or a few - but all completely determined). Telling one linear, compelling story is also easier in an adventure game - and I enjoy such games.

However, in an RPG, I want to construct my own character, and play the game in my own way - not to feel I'm having the same experience as every player who chose class X. Of course I also want the game not to have been designed and balanced by idiots - the most important being design: a badly designed skill based system might well be a balancing / testing nightmare; a well designed one should not be. In particular, the class/skill system should obviously be designed in parallel with the gameplay: every character build needs to be playable and enjoyable, with gameplay to suit it. If there are character builds without such gameplay, things need rethinking. A lot of this doesn't need much testing (the basics anyway) - e.g. if your game is a hack and slash dungeon crawl, then don't provide a load of diplomacy skills that'll hardly ever be used.

I'm not saying that this is the way developers should develop RPGs to make more money and please more players. I'm saying that this is the way developers should develop RPGs to please me. I see skill based systems as progress because they do better (when done well) at the quality I most value in an RPG character building system: versatility.

I don't see much that can be achieved through a class system that can't be through a skill system - since a skill system is in some sense a generalisation of a class system. Classes can be added to a skill system easily enough by adding a few pre-defined character builds, as was done in Morrowind [not done well though, of course]. Such predefined builds can have as much description, backstory and uniqueness as you choose to give them.

 

[Balor]

@ galsiah
Heh, you sound exactly like what I, myself, would say (well, with less grammar errors, I think - English is not my first language).
No wonder we did similar mods for Morrowind .

About TB vs RT vs RTwP:
While I agree that TB gives you more control of the situation - properly done RTwP is much faster, and allow much greater realism - and, therefore, greater variety and 'OMG! He did WHAT?!' moments... and tradeoff, as I think, is very little. It may indeed get clunky and a bit slow when you control a lot of characters, and fight against a lot of enemies... but same goes for TB, isn't it? Otherwise, you'll have to go full-RT, and NOBODY is capable of controlling multiple characters in full RT, expecially when it comes to split-second decisions and complex choices.
Again, everybody should try Brigade E5. Yea, it's a low-budges Ja2-inspired game, yet it's fun and it's system is very good in what it must allow:
Controlability, complexity and realism. Yes, not everybody loves realism and complexity - but there are such people (I among them), and we are extatic at that attempt.

 

[franc kaos]

You are correct, Ultima 7 the first Ultima to be real time (at least on the computer) and Ultima 6 was the last turn-based ultima (discounting spinoffs).

That would definitely explain my preference then. U6 was my first RPG, one which I didn't finish, but it gave me a taste for which U7 sealed - I finshed parts 1 & 2, and the expansion packs.

 

[AlanC9]

You also get more downtime where you're watching the action rather than participating, which isn't a whole lot of fun.

Wait a second. Watching the round in an RT/Pause game is hardly passive. You had better be paying close attention to what's happening as a result of those orders you just issued -- if you want to win.

OK, you don't have to pay attention during a routine combat. But routine combats are even worse in TB; interactivity just means playing out the same stale maneuvers, or doing dumb things to try to keep the battle interesting.

 

[Section8]

Wait a second. Watching the round in an RT/Pause game is hardly passive. You had better be paying close attention to what's happening as a result of those orders you just issued -- if you want to win.

The same can be said of Turn Based combat, except turn based combat actually lets you see what's happening without any constraint. In RT, it's impossible to watch the results unless all actions are confined within a small active space on the game screen, and even then it can be difficult to adequately account for simultaneous actions.

Let's say I have one character in melee combat with two foes. They both hit him simultaneously, one for 2 damage, the other for 10. If I lack an adequate means of distinguishing between the two, then my threat assessment goes out the window.

Or what about a character that is under attack somewhere beyond my limited field of view?

OK, you don't have to pay attention during a routine combat. But routine combats are even worse in TB; interactivity just means playing out the same stale maneuvers, or doing dumb things to try to keep the battle interesting.

And the solution? Don't have routine combat. If the combat is boring in TB, it's still boring in RT, it's just mercifully quicker, but I fail to see how that is a positive reflection on the game.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

All I want to say is I like both real-time and turn-based games. It's just the last decent turn-based game I played was X-Com. Why am I playing a game that I have to set up a DOS machine for when I could be playing a better looking game with similar combat on my XP machine?

Oh that's right. Nobody makes turn-based games anymore. Except for Silent Storm but they really fucked that up with thse stupidly invulnerable panzerkliens. I mean Christ, it would've been really cool if you could actually kill the fuckers with a handful of rockets but nooo... So rather than ditching them and having highly manouverable men, you have to use all the panzerkleins your own men have and move 3 steps every turn. I'm a fan of turn-based but not painful turn-based.

 

[Claw]

OK, you don't have to pay attention during a routine combat. But routine combats are even worse in TB; interactivity just means playing out the same stale maneuvers, or doing dumb things to try to keep the battle interesting.

If the manouvers are stale, and the "things" are dumb, the obvious problem isn't that combat is turnbased, but that your options are only stale manouvers and dumb things. Duh.
Apparently realtime combat is the "let it be over quick" solution for bad gameplay.

 

[Slylandro]

Hey David you said you might reply to the rest of the questions!! What's taking so long??

 

[Volourn]

"Turn based is about making decisions, real time with pause is about telling your guys what to do,"

You are an idiot. That's the same thing. Dumbass.

 

[kingcomrade]

then watching a screensaver.

Way to miss a third of the sentence, genius.

 

[aweigh]

A RTwP system automatically curtails any strategy from the battles, and also forces the developer to reduce the size of the player's party. NWN and KOTOR seemed much more managable during combat because of the reduced party size, and the lack of options. The most you had to do for any encounter was set up the Que so that one of your NPC's Buffed, the other Healed and you attacked. Since it went down at the same time, it was mostly impossible to keep an eye on everything going on and you simply had to trust nothing random happened. These types of battles become something of a one-arm bandit machine, where you fill up your little Que and simply watch a screen-saver, as kingcomrade said, hoping you hit the jackpot (i.e. none of the enemies did something that disrupted your Que). This of course can be mildly enjoyable, but as we all know it requires that the enemies be extra retarded in order for you not to have to pause the game every second.

Turn-based combat is the complete opposite. The fact that you're supposed to take your time with each individual decision means that the developers are free to use a large party size, to increase your range of combat options, to make enemies do more things. It can allow for things like terrain and height to factor into the confrontation, walls and buildings for cover and of course, the beloved aimed attacks. None of this would be possible in a RTwP scenario.

 

[Volourn]

"Way to miss a third of the sentence, genius."

Useless spamming third of the sentence that add snothing but gargabe just to try to confuse the readers. I hit the actual important part. The facts; not silly opinions.

 

[kingcomrade]

So you are admitting that I only mean what you say I mean if you cut off that part of the sentence? Great reasoning strategy, genius.

 

[Drain]

A RTwP system automatically curtails any strategy from the battles, and also forces the developer to reduce the size of the player's party. NWN and KOTOR seemed much more managable during combat because of the reduced party size, and the lack of options. The most you had to do for any encounter was set up the Que so that one of your NPC's Buffed, the other Healed and you attacked. Since it went down at the same time, it was mostly impossible to keep an eye on everything going on and you simply had to trust nothing random happened. These types of battles become something of a one-arm bandit machine, where you fill up your little Que and simply watch a screen-saver, as kingcomrade said, hoping you hit the jackpot (i.e. none of the enemies did something that disrupted your Que). This of course can be mildly enjoyable, but as we all know it requires that the enemies be extra retarded in order for you not to have to pause the game every second.

Turn-based combat is the complete opposite. The fact that you're supposed to take your time with each individual decision means that the developers are free to use a large party size, to increase your range of combat options, to make enemies do more things. It can allow for things like terrain and height to factor into the confrontation, walls and buildings for cover and of course, the beloved aimed attacks. None of this would be possible in a RTwP scenario.

Were we playing the same game? Come on, it's not that hard to watch after a party of 6- and hit space to give orders. What you said would be true for large parties, 10+, but they would be inadequate in an RPG anyway. Although RTwP requires spending some time to hit the space(a fraction of a second), it still allows you to weigh your options and plan accordingly. And I don't buy the argument that TB makes enemies do more things. It depends on implementation more than on anything else. It is also possible to implement terrain, height, walls and buildings for cover and aimed attacks in RTwP, if slightly more awkwardly than in TB.

 

[Volourn]

" genius. "

Thanks. :D