It's official Turn Based beat RTwP in the CRPG wars.

[Sreggin Etah I]

There have been good games with RTwP combat

but are they good because of the RTwP combat?

 

[luj1]

There have been good games with RTwP combat

but are they good because of the RTwP combat?

No but it didn't matter

 

[octavius]

Resetera's opinion.

Anyone brave enough to stand by their "RTwP good" opinion now?

Sure. What's the problem?

 

[octavius]

There have been good games with RTwP combat

but are they good because of the RTwP combat?

The IE games were superior to the Gold Box games. But it was due to having much more options in combat, and the enemies actually having some AI. TB vs RTwP was of less importance.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

The IE games were superior to the Gold Box games. But it was due to having much more options in combat, and the enemies actually having some AI. TB vs RTwP was just a minor influence.

I don't know about Gold Box but i'm not a fan of IE combat, especially BG2, IWD and IWD2, less so BG1, not exactly due to RTwP but because the combat is too much pre-buff spam oriented, there's like dozens of buffs you can stack in those games, for example, in IWD you have Emotion, Mirror Image, Courage, Hope, Bless, Chant, Strenght, Stoneskin, Haste, Blur, Luck, Magic Weapons and shit tons of others buffs and passive spells, this shit is just ridiculous! you can trivialize any difficult encounter by just pre buffing your party with them, that's why the game never got harder for me until the final boss that dispell the party buffs.

One time in late game IWD, in the Aquatic Museum, i stacked so many buffs the game started to lag, my party was insane, i was one shotting everything, the salamanders all exploding, not every 'tactical' to say the least.

BG2 had some hard encounters even with pre-buff, like the Dragons, but most encounters are trivialized as well. BG1 had less buffs and spells are more scarce.

I'm just not a fan of buffing oriented combat, especially when you can pre-buff all battles, if it was a turn based game with transition, where buffing is a tactical decision during battle, i would've been less annoyed.

 

[octavius]

Most games can be abused with meta gaming. Unless you do some scouting and know there is a hard fight ahead, why would you buff with short time buffs in the first place?

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

it's not a meta gaming problem, the problem is that they remove any resemblance of tactical gameplay, since you party become gods if you stack them, at least with spells like Fireball, Cats Grace, Summons and such.. there's a tactical decision to be made in battle.

 

[Kruyurk]

TB is more suited to gamey stuff like dices, grid placement, games where everything is abstracted through simple math.

RtwP could be amazing with an ambitious physics-based system. Something like Exanima, where instead of directly controlling one character, you would indirectly control mutliple characters (or even both directly controlling one and giving orders to his companions).

But with the recent success of BG3 the big budget games will remain of the gamey type, with top-tier graphics but gameplay ideas stuck on a tabletop.
cRPGs lost the imagination and freedom aspect of tabletop, but keep its restrictions in their core systems.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Most games can be abused with meta gaming. Unless you do some scouting and know there is a hard fight ahead, why would you buff with short time buffs in the first place?

Okay i'll try to say this in another way, there's a difference between:

i died to a tough encounter, let me approach the battle in a different way: spells, positioning, weapons...

to

i died to a tough encounter, now i will pre-buff my party with dozens of spells to trivialize this fight.

90% of the time IE games are in the latter. The entire point of games with tactical combat should be that your decisions in battle matter more than stats, otherwise it's a glorified blobber or Diablo clone. Buffs are just stats increase not really tactical gameplay unless you're forced to use it in battle, say let me waste this turn buffing my character to pay off later.

 

[Nortar]

I find threads like these amusing. An RPG should be good because it overcomes the medium it uses to describe its combat sequences.

For example, if you like TB, and an RPG is good despite being RTwP, then maybe that should say something.

Good point.
As they say: true love is never "because", it's always "despite".
I like infinite engine classics despite them being RTwP.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Most games can be abused with meta gaming. Unless you do some scouting and know there is a hard fight ahead, why would you buff with short time buffs in the first place?

Okay i'll try to say this in another way, there's a difference between:

i died to a tough encounter, let me approach the battle in a different way: spells, positioning, weapons...

to

i died to a tough encounter, now i will pre-buff my party with dozens of spells to trivialize this fight.

90% of the time IE games are in the latter. The entire point of games with tactical combat should be that your decisions in battle matter more than stats, otherwise it's a glorified blobber or Diablo clone. Buffs are just stats increase not really tactical gameplay unless you're forced to use it in battle, say let me waste this turn buffing my character to pay off later.

Buff orgies are a problem on its own. Imagine switching BG2 to turn based, you'd still have to buff the shit out of everyone. It is not an inherent aspect of rtwp that is solved by switching to tb.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Buff orgies are a problem on its own. Imagine switching BG2 to turn based, you'd still have to buff the shit out of everyone. It is not an inherent aspect of rtwp that is solved by switching to tb.

Agree but the point is that tactically speaking every action should have its upsides and downsides, the downside of buffs is that they're not directly offensive spells and like every other spell there's a waiting time to cast it and a casting time. However if the game allow you to pre-buff before a battle, there is no downside to it, as such there's no tactical decision to be made at all, buffing just becomes busywork, not a interesting mechanic. This ties to another problem: no battle is long enough in the IE games so that buff times matter or they just last too long and there's not enough enemies that dispell buffs, in IWD only the final boss(which was the hardest encounter by far in my experience).

It's not a exclusive RTwP problem, it's a problem in all games that allow pre-buff, but at least in turn based buff times matter more(in my experience) and some games don't allow pre-buff, so buffing become a tactical decision in battle. There's also resource management mechanics to counter it, but this is more related to blobbers and others games, there's no resource management in IE games.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Buff orgies

 

[GaelicVigil]

Baldur's Gate 3 uses RTwP. The game pauses automatically after every action. Baldur's Gate 1&2 had the same feature as well, the difference was that you could disable it

BG1&2 > BG3.

 

[The_Mask]

Baldur's Gate 3 uses RTwP. The game pauses automatically after every action. Baldur's Gate 1&2 had the same feature as well, the difference was that you could disable it

BG1&2 > BG3.

I gotta say this is one of more interesting takes I've seen on why the originals are better. Chapeau.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Most games can be abused with meta gaming. Unless you do some scouting and know there is a hard fight ahead, why would you buff with short time buffs in the first place?

Okay i'll try to say this in another way, there's a difference between:

i died to a tough encounter, let me approach the battle in a different way: spells, positioning, weapons...

to

i died to a tough encounter, now i will pre-buff my party with dozens of spells to trivialize this fight.

90% of the time IE games are in the latter. The entire point of games with tactical combat should be that your decisions in battle matter more than stats, otherwise it's a glorified blobber or Diablo clone. Buffs are just stats increase not really tactical gameplay unless you're forced to use it in battle, say let me waste this turn buffing my character to pay off later.

The proper solution to pre-buffing would be to have AI cast dispels more often. It would still be worth to pre-buff, but it would be less strong

 

[scytheavatar]

Most games can be abused with meta gaming. Unless you do some scouting and know there is a hard fight ahead, why would you buff with short time buffs in the first place?

Okay i'll try to say this in another way, there's a difference between:

i died to a tough encounter, let me approach the battle in a different way: spells, positioning, weapons...

to

i died to a tough encounter, now i will pre-buff my party with dozens of spells to trivialize this fight.

90% of the time IE games are in the latter. The entire point of games with tactical combat should be that your decisions in battle matter more than stats, otherwise it's a glorified blobber or Diablo clone. Buffs are just stats increase not really tactical gameplay unless you're forced to use it in battle, say let me waste this turn buffing my character to pay off later.

The proper solution to pre-buffing would be to have AI cast dispels more often. It would still be worth to pre-buff, but it would be less strong

The problem is that dispels are difficult to balance, if it is too strong it would kill the point of casting buffs in the first place. If it is too weak and has a high chance of failing then casting it would be a gigantic cost and not worth it.

 

[Cryomancer]

balance

Balance is overrated. Immersion and gameplay > Balance.

Balance should be used to make something more fun, not the core pillar of a game. Otherwise you end up with D&D 4e and Pillars. Games extremely boring. That said, for a pure gameplay standpoint, debuffs can make interesting as PC's needs to position and be smart in how to deal against unities skilled in debuffing otherwise, losing extremely valuable buffs.

 

[scytheavatar]

balance

Balance is overrated. Immersion and gameplay > Balance.

Balance should be used to make something more fun, not the core pillar of a game. Otherwise you end up with D&D 4e and Pillars. Games extremely boring. That said, for a pure gameplay standpoint, debuffs can make interesting as PC's needs to position and be smart in how to deal against unities skilled in debuffing otherwise, losing extremely valuable buffs.

That's the main problem, it's simply not fun to see the buffs you cast being taken away. Dispel is by nature an anti-fun mechanic.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I clicked one of those youtube videos detailing a human interest story of some poor sap with a horrific deformity.

Now the algorithm has decided I need to see more human horror shows-- burn victims, tumor lads who can barely lift their heads or extremities, flesh-eating bacteria, etc. The powers that be are serving me up more horrifying imagery than that time I tried to look up a funny Chris Farley sketch but landed on his death pics instead.

Having said that-- a realization I made was that if I ever end up losing several limbs or both my hands due to some horrible accident I could probably still manage to play turn-based RPGs with even just nubs. With something like a hitbox you could probably play a turn-based rpg or JRPG pretty easily in fact. I guess that's one point in favor of turn-based.

 

[Camel]

However if the game allow you to pre-buff before a battle, there is no downside to it, as such there's no tactical decision to be made at all, buffing just becomes busywork, not a interesting mechanic.

Sawyer removed pre-buffing before battles in PoE and it was a retarded decision.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Sawyer removed pre-buffing before battle in PoE and it was a retarded decision.

seems like it was a good decision to me. You can't pre-buff to automatically win battles now i assume, "i have to think oh the horror!" IE players are popamole.

 

[0sacred]

Sawyer removed pre-buffing before battle in PoE and it was a retarded decision.

seems like it was a good decision to me. You can't pre-buff to automatically win battles i now assume, "i have to think oh the horror!" IE players are popamole.

except you eat 30 dishes pre-combat in PoE for buffing, gg faggot

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

except you eat 30 dishes pre-combat in PoE for buffing, gg faggot

Then it was badly implemented, does not make IE pre-buffing orgy good. "eat 30 dishes pre-combat buffing" sounds just like IE games to me.

 

[0sacred]

pre-buff bad mmkay

I wanted to cut you some slack as the IE games were very generous with pre-buffs at higher levels, but actually, having pre-buffs out the ass is a good thing, so you can't cast them all before the first ones expire, so you have to choose a bit.

And prepping before combat is a must, simulation wise.