Editorial Matt Chat: Baldur's Gate

[Jasede]

I think you mean PS:T.

 

[DraQ]

PS:T has western plot.

 

[MMXI]

And that's why you should neither attempt to make TES TB, nor Wizardry RT.

No. That's exactly why you should make TES TB and leave Wizardry TB.

And I would call both stances what they are - irreversible dumbfuckery.


TB is better for highly abstract games like Go or Chess. TB is also clearly and unambiguously superior if you're controlling an entire party because human players and computer HIDs are shit for dealing with six simultaneous inputs. As for decision making, it's only actually interesting because you're bound by time in some manner (though not necessarily game time) - otherwise it would just boil down to exhausting the tree of possibilities and choosing the most favourable branch.

RT, otoh, has the advantage of high temporal resolution and not introducing, nor having to work around artefacts of discretized time. Even if you go simultaneous phase based and get rid of discretized time from mechanical perspective, you still have limited control due to discretized time from input perspective.

So both modes have advantages and both modes have flaws. If you don't notice ones or the others for one or both of the modes, then you're a retard.

If you claim that flaws of one of them are advantages and vice versa, then you're terminally brain damaged.

No. You're again effectively saying that TB is better for TB games and RT is better for RT games. What sort of argument is that?

I can't imagine TB Witcher.

I can, and it'd be a vast improvement.

So where did all those LoLs, EoBs and Wizardries go? Because from what I've seen they had their heads nomonomed by BG and Diablo, though admitting that the latter is the source of decline pains me as it's really enjoyable mindless clicker.

Lands of Lore and Wizardry both had entries released after Baldur's Gate. Eye of the Beholder killed itself. Also, one can claim first person blob crawlers died with Fallout rather than Baldur's Gate.

Except there was a huge gap between Morrowind and Daggerfall, and during this time Bethesda almost croaked, got bought and had its founders kicked out. You CAN'T argue that Daggerfall spawned a lot of clones, therefore you can't argue that it declined (or inclined) the genre.

The gap doesn't even matter. It ultimately led to Fallout 3 and Oblivion, however much you hate those two games.

Oblivion declined the genre by being wildly popular derp game (also the problem with BG1).
Morrowind can be credited for starting the decline but that's because it helped Bethseda build a consoletard target rather than through any flaws of its own.

Baldur's Gate is far less derpy than any TES game. Plus, didn't you mention that you like Diablo, the derpiest of all games?

 

[DraQ]

No. You're again effectively saying that TB is better for TB games and RT is better for RT games.

Can't you at least construct well-crafted strawmen? I'm saying that RT is better for single character games, and that TB is better for party games. For example, BG was RT, but would be much better as TB, same with PS:T. Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

I can't imagine TB Witcher.

I can, and it'd be a vast improvement.

I performed essential repairs on this quote, kind sir.

Lands of Lore and Wizardry both had entries released after Baldur's Gate.

At which point they croaked. It's like claiming that a guy wasn't killed by the bullet because he lingered two days after being shot.

Also, one can claim first person blob crawlers died with Fallout rather than Baldur's Gate.

So, Fallout spawned massive number of TB iso sequels and imitators? Cool, I'd happily play some more Fallout-likes.

The gap doesn't even matter.

You dumb? Of course it matters. That bethesda didn't die was in no way Daggerfall's doing, and if it died, I wouldn't expect anyone to try and pick up idea that killed the last company that tried to implement it some years ago.

Baldur's Gate is far less derpy than any TES game.

Plus, didn't you mention that you like Diablo, the derpiest of all games?

I don't expect Diablo to be non-derp for the same reason I don't expect my UT to be non-derp. Diablo wasn't an RPG, and quite a few cRPG fans in Poland would happily blacken your eyes back when it was released if you said it was.

So, to sum it up:
Glasses up and let's hope your brain damage is not irreversible.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

No. You're again effectively saying that TB is better for TB games and RT is better for RT games.

Can't you at least construct well-crafted strawmen? I'm saying that RT is better for single character games, and that TB is better for party games. For example, BG was RT, but would be much better as TB, same with PS:T. Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

It wouldn't. How would you read hit descriptions in RT? How would you choose attack mode and body part to target in RT?

 

[MMXI]

Can't you at least construct well-crafted strawmen? I'm saying that RT is better for single character games, and that TB is better for party games. For example, BG was RT, but would be much better as TB, same with PS:T. Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

I don't buy that at all. First person single character turn-based combat could be very nearly as deep as turn-based "blob" combat. What's the primary difference anyway? Enemies being able to target different characters in your party can be translated to summons, illusions and locational damage (body parts). The battles can even keep the same number of enemies you fight in typical blob crawlers. You don't need to scale fights down to one vs one. You can include some sort of speed based turn ordering to give your character multiple turns to make up for it. In effect you can translate a turn-based blob crawler into a single character one by merging all the characters into one more complex character.

I'd play it.

I performed essential repairs on this quote, kind sir.

Not my fault you lack an imagination.

At which point they croaked. It's like claiming that a guy wasn't killed by the bullet because he lingered two days after being shot.

Or they "croaked" many years before Baldur's Gate.

So, Fallout spawned massive number of TB iso sequels and imitators? Cool, I'd happily play some more Fallout-likes.

But why would you want games to mimic Fallout's isometric turn-based single character combat when...

Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

You dumb? Of course it matters. That bethesda didn't die was in no way Daggerfall's doing, and if it died, I wouldn't expect anyone to try and pick up idea that killed the last company that tried to implement it some years ago.

If, if, if, if, if and if. They didn't die and both Fallout 3 and Oblivion were released. Why can't you accept that?

I don't expect Diablo to be non-derp for the same reason I don't expect my UT to be non-derp. Diablo wasn't an RPG, and quite a few cRPG fans in Poland would happily blacken your eyes back when it was released if you said it was.

So your expectations make it alright? I expected Baldur's Gate to be derpy derpy forgotten realms faggotry and I got it.

I replied to your character intelligence post in some thread in GRPG by the way.

 

[tehRPness]

I love that ADHD vs. AD&D players comment.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I love that ADHD vs. AD&D players comment.

What do you mean?

 

[DraQ]

Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

It wouldn't. How would you read hit descriptions in RT?

That's actually... a fair point.

I guess you could display them in text window normally as they would occur, but you'd generally need to review combat log to read them properly.

How would you choose attack mode and body part to target in RT?

Eh, it's not that hard. Aiming at body parts can be handled by RT FPP interface without any dedicated mechanics, switchable attack modes are commonplace in FPS games and the idea behind FO's aiming was to have precision shots take more time (represented by APs) which can be achieved in a number of ways for precision shots - from sighting-in mode, to DX-like contracting reticle (except with minimum spread more affected by skill). Aiming precision was always just a way to implement firing-cone mechanics (from both weapon and shooter inaccuracy) without having to calculate firing cone itself - requirement not present in natively 3D game. Animation could be added to 'explain' lack of accuracy to the player, critical failures would work as usual. Bursts have their extra time cost built in, since you need to allow weapon to fire multiple rounds.

OTOH retarded shit like reloading over five times faster than firing would be fixed right away during testing, grenade lobbing would be implemented much more gracefully with subtler, yet more effective reliance on character skill and you wouldn't have to wait for half the hub to move if you botched your necklace acquisition attempt. It also wouldn't allow popping out of cover, shooting once, popping back in with remaining APs actions of the original.

It wouldn't be *the* same game (mostly because it would require player manual skill in addition to the old skillset), but you could make word-for-word, location-for-location, and mostly mechanics-for-mechanics translation of the original, working smoothly as the result.

You can't do the same thing with Wizardry 8 to the RT, or TES to TB as the former would become an insufferable clusterfuck, and the latter would lose much of finer details regarding exploration and exploitation of complex 3D environment during combat. Translating BG (or PST) to TB, OTOH, would also change the game, but it would massively improve it instead of breaking it.

I don't buy that at all. First person single character turn-based combat could be very nearly as deep as turn-based "blob" combat. What's the primary difference anyway? Enemies being able to target different characters in your party can be translated to summons, illusions and locational damage (body parts). The battles can even keep the same number of enemies you fight in typical blob crawlers. You don't need to scale fights down to one vs one. You can include some sort of speed based turn ordering to give your character multiple turns to make up for it. In effect you can translate a turn-based blob crawler into a single character one by merging all the characters into one more complex character.

The difference is that single character has two arms and two legs which if don't get bogged down in the details such as deciding how to walk, can be sufficiently mapped to continuous commands issued by a single person using a single set of single keyboard and single mouse. Party, OTOH, requires multiplexing in form of cycling between characters all the time and this has to be implemented using some sort of discrete-time system.

If the game is nice, like Wizardry 8, it'll provide nice, and automated one in form of turns or phases. If it isn't, player will have to make one on his own by mashing space like a retard and enjoying party AI - not designed to make use of the extra time given by frequent pause, nor allowed to act in clearly defined sequence forcing it to update pathing on the fly - trip over its own shoelaces.

You mentioned summons, but Conjuration is but one of 27 skills in Morrowind so there are many characters that won't summon a single creature through the entire game. You could add hirelings, but unlike summons, flesh-and-blood followers are not stored in hammerspace when not in use, so they'd more of a hindrance then help if using different skillset than the player (and complementary companion is always more useful than the one doubling your skills), since they would likely not be able to levitate if player chose to explore, say, Forgotten Vaults of A-something, or not able to sneak sufficiently well when player chose to. There is a reason why party-based games tend to gravitate towards combat, as combat is one of the few areas where abilities of a thief, a wizard a cleric and a warrior can overlap. If you made a party-based RPG focused around harnessing arcane powers to traverse otherwordly planes and trafick with lovercraftian beings, then your fighters and thieves, not versed in the ways of harnessing energies necessary to do this kind of stuff, nor the lore on the planes' denizens would feel excluded. Similarly, in an adventure centered around skulking around well guarded castle to steal the McGuffin of Awesome, a warrior will only get in the way, as his combat abilities won't help him in 100vs1 scenario, unless we inflate them beyond the borders of pure absurd (like many RPGs like to do) - but then it would default to slaughterfest - again.
That's not saying 'no' to companions, that only means that designing such a game around party mechanics would limit the design by prohibiting the parts where this particular kind of game is the strongest.

And I'm not saying that puzzles or various other non-combat challenges requiring varied party have no place in strictly party based game either, but notice how such challenges, once solved never stop the characters ill equipped for solving them from progressing. That's a design limitation. Justified if you want a party based game, but uncalled for when you attempt to improve a single character one, and single character, as I've already mentioned, has two arms, two legs and can be controlled in RT with even more precision and finesse than in TB, because in RT you can update your commands continuously, while in TB you have to wait.

If we ever get something I call asynchronous, simultaneous phase based (which essentially means 'a game that triggers order issuing phase whenever it detects change in situation calling for player input, rather than just change in battle's state' - in other words an actually smart autopause), along with an AI that can be entrusted with complex tasks like performing manoeuvres in cluttered and complicated 3D environment (since the only way to implement precise movement is direct control and direct control cannot be phase based), the non-cosmetic advantages of RT will disappear - along with all possible mechanical, environment/encounter design and control distinctions, making it possible to switch fluidly between both modes and ending the rivalry anyway.

I performed essential repairs on this quote, kind sir.

Not my fault you lack an imagination.

Not my fault that you're unable to see how the game with combat largely built around choreography wouldn't suffer from being chopped into bite-sized chunks.

At which point they croaked. It's like claiming that a guy wasn't killed by the bullet because he lingered two days after being shot.

Or they "croaked" many years before Baldur's Gate.

Even if, BG supposedly 'resurrected' the genre by letting BW almost monopolize it. Leaving little room for resurrection of FPP crawlers.

So, Fallout spawned massive number of TB iso sequels and imitators? Cool, I'd happily play some more Fallout-likes.

But why would you want games to mimic Fallout's isometric turn-based single character combat when...

Fallout, OTOH, would translate into RT fairly nicely if someone more qualified than bethesda handled the translation.

Because, like I said, not implementing RT where it would have worked better doesn't hurt the game nearly as much as failing to implement TB where it excels. TB has an edge here. Plus I enjoyed combat descriptions, as well as the well implemented C&C. I'd definitely play more Fallout-likes.

Also, you have said that maybe it's fallout that killed them - there are two ways to kill a genre, you can either make something different, but vastly successful, claiming its former customers, or make something from this genre and bomb massively enough to scare off would-be investors and developers. Games don't kill genres via spooky action at a distance and Fallout was defnitely not an old-school dungeon crawler.

...
So, are you going to show me some Fallout likes or not?

You dumb? Of course it matters. That bethesda didn't die was in no way Daggerfall's doing, and if it died, I wouldn't expect anyone to try and pick up idea that killed the last company that tried to implement it some years ago.

If, if, if, if, if and if. They didn't die and both Fallout 3 and Oblivion were released. Why can't you accept that?

Because you're not making sense, duh.

Daggerfall didn't spawn clones, nor lower the expectations. Similarly Morrowind, it wouldn't be bad thing if a deluge of open sandboxes appeared after it (yet it didn't). Oblivion, OTOH exploited brand new platform to leave massive imprint on the feeble minds of the consoletards that RPG means a MESOLARPS with shitty FPS elements and that it's awesome. Just like BG, years before, exploited relative vacuum by introducing masses to the notion that an RPG is wonky RTS-lite set in excruciatingly generic fantasyland. And that it's awesome.

I don't expect Diablo to be non-derp for the same reason I don't expect my UT to be non-derp. Diablo wasn't an RPG, and quite a few cRPG fans in Poland would happily blacken your eyes back when it was released if you said it was.

So your expectations make it alright? I expected Baldur's Gate to be derpy derpy forgotten realms faggotry and I got it.

No, genre makes it allright. It's hard to expect political backstabing and lots of well crafted C&C when the game is about descending into a randomized labyrinth, killing lots of monsters, taking their stuff, then killing the foozle with it.
Diablo has about as much depth as the concept permits (roughly the amount presented by a single Daggerfall dungeon when examined in isolation, minus 3D part) and since it has a lot of atmosphere plus the loot and killing tickled me the right way I consider it quite awesome. The only bad thing about Diablo is association with RPGs, weak as it may be - cue loot- and blood-thirsty retards coming from all direction expecting grind.

BG, OTOH, doesn't have a fraction of depth the concept permits, doesn't really have much atmosphere (the narrator helps here a bit, but not nearly enough), the combat is atrocious, plot is rail-based without even cursory attempts at justifying not letting me into Cloakwood before The Right Time(TM), and pretty much everything sucks.

I replied to your character intelligence post in some thread in GRPG by the way.

Will reply. Shortly.

TL;DR part is in bold.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

OTOH retarded shit like reloading over five times faster than firing would be fixed right away during testing, grenade lobbing would be implemented much more gracefully with subtler, yet more effective reliance on character skill and you wouldn't have to wait for half the hub to move if you botched your necklace acquisition attempt. It also wouldn't allow popping out of cover, shooting once, popping back in with remaining APs actions of the original.

It has nothing to do with RT/TB - better grenade mechanics, reload costs, reaction shots were in TB tactical combat games since 80s.
Seriously, what the fuck? Are you going to tell me that you haven't played Laser Squad, X-Com and JA2 .

 

[DraQ]

OTOH retarded shit like reloading over five times faster than firing would be fixed right away during testing, grenade lobbing would be implemented much more gracefully with subtler, yet more effective reliance on character skill and you wouldn't have to wait for half the hub to move if you botched your necklace acquisition attempt. It also wouldn't allow popping out of cover, shooting once, popping back in with remaining APs actions of the original.

It has nothing to do with RT/TB - better grenade mechanics, reload costs, reaction shots were in TB tactical combat games since 80s.

I'm not saying they are not possible in TB. I'm saying they weren't in Fallout AND that the faults regarding those elements would be much more evident in RT forcing their fixing.

Fallout's TB combat, though enjoyable, wasn't actually good. Replacing TB combat with RT combat would necessitate ironing out the flaws I mentioned no matter what was the reason for their presence in game.

TB doesn't preclude elimination of this kind of retarded shit if the devs are willing and able to do that.
RT FPP, OTOH, will eliminate it even if they aren't, either by providing much more obvious solution (grenades, reaction shots) or by making the flaw much more glaring (retardedly fast reloads).

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I guess you haven't played Fallout Craptics, then.

 

[DraQ]

I guess you haven't played Fallout Craptics, then.

Failout Craptics was TB and RT, with both mechanics not exactly overlapping. It wasn't FPP either.

Besides, RT is obviously ill-suited for guiding a party, as the main benefit of RT - continuous input - is gone when controlling more than one character individually. Duh.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I guess you haven't played Fallout Craptics, then.

Failout Craptics was TB and RT, with both mechanics not exactly overlapping. It wasn't FPP either.

They didn't make throwing grenades more graceful and didn't make reloading longer, though.

 

[MMXI]

You mentioned summons, but Conjuration is but one of 27 skills in Morrowind so there are many characters that won't summon a single creature through the entire game. You could add hirelings, but unlike summons, flesh-and-blood followers are not stored in hammerspace when not in use, so they'd more of a hindrance then help if using different skillset than the player (and complementary companion is always more useful than the one doubling your skills), since they would likely not be able to levitate if player chose to explore, say, Forgotten Vaults of A-something, or not able to sneak sufficiently well when player chose to. There is a reason why party-based games tend to gravitate towards combat, as combat is one of the few areas where abilities of a thief, a wizard a cleric and a warrior can overlap. If you made a party-based RPG focused around harnessing arcane powers to traverse otherwordly planes and trafick with lovercraftian beings, then your fighters and thieves, not versed in the ways of harnessing energies necessary to do this kind of stuff, nor the lore on the planes' denizens would feel excluded. Similarly, in an adventure centered around skulking around well guarded castle to steal the McGuffin of Awesome, a warrior will only get in the way, as his combat abilities won't help him in 100vs1 scenario, unless we inflate them beyond the borders of pure absurd (like many RPGs like to do) - but then it would default to slaughterfest - again.
That's not saying 'no' to companions, that only means that designing such a game around party mechanics would limit the design by prohibiting the parts where this particular kind of game is the strongest.

But... but... but I never mentioned companions for that reason. I did, however, mention illusions (like mirror images and simulacrum from D&D) and summoning. These things can move with you like in a blob game, not separate from you. Like an icon on the screen or something. They don't even have to be fully controllable like the player's character. They could be controlled purely by AI in which you can set behaviours for. It'll still effectively feel like a single character game because you'll be able to do things specific to your character such as stealthing through an area or climbing up a tree. This is in contrast to proper blob crawlers where you are bogged down by controlling the movement of all 6 or so characters at the same time, thus relying on measures such as skill averages.

What I'm getting at is that I acknowledge that the game would suck if your character was the sole singular target. If an enemy can only hit your character or miss your character then that severely reduces tactical depth from the defensive side of things. However, if you could summon monsters and create illusions while setting both behaviours and a formation for them, then this along with locational damage, locational protection and directional protection (such as from shields) could make for a very in depth tactical system while giving you the freedom of movement outside of combat as it relates to the protagonist and the protagonist only.

You enter combat against 3 powerful Daedra. You immediately create two mirror images, putting them in front of your character in the formation. You then summon a ranged attacking monster, a fragile one, putting it to the rear of the formation and setting it to an aggressive behaviour. You switch to a polearm and attack the central Daedra over the top of your mirror images. After a short period of time the mirror images are destroyed, along with the central Daedra, and you switch to a sword and shield for extra defence. Your ranged attacking summon cripples the Daedra on your shield side, making it near worthless offensively. As a result you switch your sword and shield around to provide better defence on the side with the healthy Daedra. As you deflect blows from the Daedra on your shield side, the crippled Daedra on your sword side manages to damage your arm, causing you to drop your sword. With your shield remaining, you shield bash the healthy Daedra to stun it and cast a heal spell on your damaged arm, hoping to not get interrupted by the crippled Daedra. You succeed, pick up your sword and destroy the crippled Daedra before returning focus to the stunned Daedra, taking it down with the combined efforts of shield bashing and fire from the ranged summon.

And that's without the use of any real combat abilities and spells. Throw in buffs, resistances, ranged enemy attackers, environmental factors, enemy mages, sneak attacks/backstabs, area of effect spells and debuffs and you could have a highly tactical system to play with.

If we ever get something I call asynchronous, simultaneous phase based (which essentially means 'a game that triggers order issuing phase whenever it detects change in situation calling for player input, rather than just change in battle's state' - in other words an actually smart autopause), along with an AI that can be entrusted with complex tasks like performing manoeuvres in cluttered and complicated 3D environment (since the only way to implement precise movement is direct control and direct control cannot be phase based), the non-cosmetic advantages of RT will disappear - along with all possible mechanical, environment/encounter design and control distinctions, making it possible to switch fluidly between both modes and ending the rivalry anyway.

Funny you should mention that, because this is something I've always wanted to play around with. You see, I greatly dislike the separation of combat, dialogue and world movement. I think all elements of an RPG should be put together into one all encompassing system in order to prevent certain elements from ending up in mini-game territory. I don't like the idea of moving around a world in real-time, only for the game to switch to a turn-based mode for combat with its own unique rules and systems in place, because this restricts the simultaneous use of combat and non-combat features as well as prevents you from using the world itself to avoid or aid you in combat.

I've always liked the old Ultima system whereby every time you make a move, everyone in the world makes a move. If you move 10 squares then everyone else will move 10 squares. If you don't move at all then no on else moves. It's turn-based but in a way that everyone performs their turn at the same time (but with ordering due to its grid-based nature). Implementing an RPG in this way with today's technology would make the world seem like it's realistically moving in real-time as your character moves about, only for everything to pause when your character is paused. If your character isn't performing an action then no one else is. Of course, if you want to let time pass while your character stands still then there should be an option to do so, reverting back automatically (effectively an auto-pause) when something important happens that you may need to react to (like an enemy sighting). That way the entire game becomes phase-based, with the length of each phase being the same as the length of time required to complete the given action. If you tell your character to move 10 metres forward then everyone else in the game world will carry on doing what they are doing for that same duration. What that will do is unify combat and regular game world traversal.

The only issue I have with implementing this is the inclusion of a party. If you fully control multiple characters without relying on AI to take care of them, how can it work with this system of movement? I suppose it would be easy with RTS style group actions, but issuing different commands to each character would be incompatible. Time would resume straight after you've issued a command to your first character. Of course, one solution would be to implement a command stage where you give out commands to each character. Upon giving a command to each character the game would play out until one of your characters has finished their action, allowing you to issue new commands. However, this would only be useful for combat situations and would be an absolute nightmare for regular non-combat game world traversal. It'll make the game as painful as Ultima IV's dungeon rooms. If used only for combat then this would fail to unify combat and non-combat gameplay in a way that I would like.

Not my fault that you're unable to see how the game with combat largely built around choreography wouldn't suffer from being chopped into bite-sized chunks.

But it wouldn't be based around choreography if it was turn-based. Bonus!

Even if, BG supposedly 'resurrected' the genre by letting BW almost monopolize it. Leaving little room for resurrection of FPP crawlers.

So you've now resorted to blaming BioWare for not accommodating the resurrection of a long dead sub-genre? Why not blame whatever killed the sub-genre instead?

Because, like I said, not implementing RT where it would have worked better doesn't hurt the game nearly as much as failing to implement TB where it excels. TB has an edge here. Plus I enjoyed combat descriptions, as well as the well implemented C&C. I'd definitely play more Fallout-likes.

But I don't care if you'd play more Fallout-likes. I'd play both more Fallout-likes and more Baldur's Gate-likes.

Also, you have said that maybe it's fallout that killed them - there are two ways to kill a genre, you can either make something different, but vastly successful, claiming its former customers, or make something from this genre and bomb massively enough to scare off would-be investors and developers. Games don't kill genres via spooky action at a distance and Fallout was defnitely not an old-school dungeon crawler.

And, in the long term, the former is exactly what Fallout must have done. It may not have sold nearly as well as Baldur's Gate but it changed the genre by reducing combat focus and including lots of C&C. Dungeon crawlers were combat focused with minimal C&C. In comparison to Fallout, dungeon crawlers were severely outdated. In comparison to Baldur's Gate, though? Baldur's Gate was still heavily combat focused and had fuck all C&C. It was basically an isometric dungeon crawler anyway. And we all know you can't blame it for being the first real-time dungeon crawler, because it wasn't.

So, are you going to show me some Fallout likes or not?

How can I when there weren't any outside of Arcanum? However, there is a reason why no mainstream gamer talks about pre-Fallout RPGs today. I've said it in another thread that Fallout was the start of the new-school of RPGs, which Baldur's Gate was very much a part of. Fallout and/or Fallout 2 are almost always in top 100 lists on shitty gaming sites. Same with Baldur's Gate. Pre-Fallout RPGs? No chance.

Because you're not making sense, duh.

Daggerfall didn't spawn clones, nor lower the expectations. Similarly Morrowind, it wouldn't be bad thing if a deluge of open sandboxes appeared after it (yet it didn't). Oblivion, OTOH exploited brand new platform to leave massive imprint on the feeble minds of the consoletards that RPG means a MESOLARPS with shitty FPS elements and that it's awesome. Just like BG, years before, exploited relative vacuum by introducing masses to the notion that an RPG is wonky RTS-lite set in excruciatingly generic fantasyland. And that it's awesome.

You keep talking about what Baldur's Gate caused yet you can't see that Daggerfall directly caused Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They are all real-time single character continuous movement open world action RPGs made by the same bloody developer. Baldur's Gate merely influenced Baldur's Gate II. The likes of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale may have used its engine, but they had different focuses. And everything that Baldur's Gate II introduced to the Baldur's Gate formula is the cause of BioWare's decline, not Baldur's Gate itself. The link between Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age II is far, far weaker than the link between Daggerfall and Oblivion.

No, genre makes it allright. It's hard to expect political backstabing and lots of well crafted C&C when the game is about descending into a randomized labyrinth, killing lots of monsters, taking their stuff, then killing the foozle with it.
Diablo has about as much depth as the concept permits (roughly the amount presented by a single Daggerfall dungeon when examined in isolation, minus 3D part) and since it has a lot of atmosphere plus the loot and killing tickled me the right way I consider it quite awesome. The only bad thing about Diablo is association with RPGs, weak as it may be - cue loot- and blood-thirsty retards coming from all direction expecting grind.

BG, OTOH, doesn't have a fraction of depth the concept permits, doesn't really have much atmosphere (the narrator helps here a bit, but not nearly enough), the combat is atrocious, plot is rail-based without even cursory attempts at justifying not letting me into Cloakwood before The Right Time(TM), and pretty much everything sucks.

Are you serious? I don't know about you but I don't expect political backstabbing and lots of well crafted C&C in my RPGs. It's like you've never played a pre-Fallout RPG before if you think that's what games in this genre should contain. Baldur's Gate is a romp through a generic fantasy land full of combat making use of the AD&D rules. It would have been infinitely better if it was turn-based, but there was absolutely no way I went in expecting political backstabbing (which there was, actually) and plenty of C&C (which there wasn't).

"The concept" seems to be what you want in CRPGs. Therefore an RPG you hate would never fit your concept. Does Baldur's Gate fit my concept? It does, actually. More so that any TES game, that's for sure.

 

[Gord]

You keep talking about what Baldur's Gate caused yet you can't see that Daggerfall directly caused Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They are all real-time single character continuous movement open world action RPGs made by the same bloody developer. Baldur's Gate merely influenced Baldur's Gate II. The likes of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale may have used its engine, but they had different focuses. And everything that Baldur's Gate II introduced to the Baldur's Gate formula is the cause of BioWare's decline, not Baldur's Gate itself. The link between Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age II is far, far weaker than the link between Daggerfall and Oblivion.

If you distinguish between PS:T and the BGs you can as well differentiate between TES-games and FO3 on the one side and FONV on the other. FONV is using the same engine, but was both done by a different developer and has a different focus (story/quest-driven with stronger emphasis on stats as opposed to FO3).

Are you serious? I don't know about you but I don't expect political backstabbing and lots of well crafted C&C in my RPGs. It's like you've never played a pre-Fallout RPG before if you think that's what games in this genre should contain. Baldur's Gate is a romp through a generic fantasy land full of combat making use of the AD&D rules. It would have been infinitely better if it was turn-based, but there was absolutely no way I went in expecting political backstabbing (which there was, actually) and plenty of C&C (which there wasn't).

I tend to agree with you here, C&C is always nice to have, but rarely a feature of classical RPGs. However I don't think "infinitely better" is neccessarily right. Better? Maybe somewhat, or maybe not, but certainly pretty different. BG as it is is catered around RTwP. While I like classical TB, RTwP is still somethig I can definitely live with.

"The concept" seems to be what you want in CRPGs. Therefore an RPG you hate would never fit your concept. Does Baldur's Gate fit my concept? It does, actually. More so that any TES game, that's for sure.

This is quite true, I think.

 

[DraQ]

I guess you haven't played Fallout Craptics, then.

Failout Craptics was TB and RT, with both mechanics not exactly overlapping. It wasn't FPP either.

They didn't make throwing grenades more graceful and didn't make reloading longer, though.

Hello?
Last time I checked Fall-on-Turd wasn't RT FPP.

It's almost like in this joke about them giving out cars at Red Square, except this is the Codex, not Radio Erwań.

But... but... but I never mentioned companions for that reason. I did, however, mention illusions (like mirror images and simulacrum from D&D) and summoning. These things can move with you like in a blob game, not separate from you. Like an icon on the screen or something. They don't even have to be fully controllable like the player's character. They could be controlled purely by AI in which you can set behaviours for. It'll still effectively feel like a single character game because you'll be able to do things specific to your character such as stealthing through an area or climbing up a tree.

But there's the problem - if you're controlling a single character, you don't have to cycle, which means RT will work better. Single character usually performs actions sequentially (even when dual wielding ), party works in parallel or at least makes the players PoV jump between characters.
No matter how complex you will make your single character combat, if it needs turns it just means you have a bad interface, since all the actions are performed by a character with two legs and two arms.

And yeah, mirror images would be a nifty addition to TES spell system.

What I'm getting at is that I acknowledge that the game would suck if your character was the sole singular target. If an enemy can only hit your character or miss your character then that severely reduces tactical depth from the defensive side of things. However, if you could summon monsters and create illusions while setting both behaviours and a formation for them, then this along with locational damage, locational protection and directional protection (such as from shields) could make for a very in depth tactical system while giving you the freedom of movement outside of combat as it relates to the protagonist and the protagonist only.

You enter combat against 3 powerful Daedra. You immediately create two mirror images, putting them in front of your character in the formation. You then summon a ranged attacking monster, a fragile one, putting it to the rear of the formation and setting it to an aggressive behaviour. You switch to a polearm and attack the central Daedra over the top of your mirror images. After a short period of time the mirror images are destroyed, along with the central Daedra, and you switch to a sword and shield for extra defence. Your ranged attacking summon cripples the Daedra on your shield side, making it near worthless offensively. As a result you switch your sword and shield around to provide better defence on the side with the healthy Daedra. As you deflect blows from the Daedra on your shield side, the crippled Daedra on your sword side manages to damage your arm, causing you to drop your sword. With your shield remaining, you shield bash the healthy Daedra to stun it and cast a heal spell on your damaged arm, hoping to not get interrupted by the crippled Daedra. You succeed, pick up your sword and destroy the crippled Daedra before returning focus to the stunned Daedra, taking it down with the combined efforts of shield bashing and fire from the ranged summon.

You see, the problem is that everything during this sequence barring possibly formation management can work flawlessly in RT. Switching hands? Daggerfall had a key for it. If we accept probably the only thing Skyrim is going to do right (left and right hand slots having their separate keys and being able to house pretty much anything), make the actions depend both on context and on how is the button clicked in conjunction with that, all that's left is legwork and hotkeys which means that player will be able to issue any command they want without taking hands off the primary controls. And that means no TB.

as for the summons they can be spawned relatively to the player based on their type, or have their relative location adjusted in spellmaker, they can be targetted like projectile spells or, if everything else fails, player can either hide behind their backs or step in front of them in split second using standard move commands. Neither of those methods necessitates change of mode, which would also affect players who built dumb barbarians and can't benefit from it, cause they have no formation to manage.

(Additionally, I've always thought that mirror images were just images - visually indistinguishable, but physically intangible, which would make them excellent distraction and decoys, as long as they shifted positions with original, but really bad blockers to put in stationary formation, because they would be identified with first weapon poke, and without shifting, the enemy would have no problem discriminating.)

And that's without the use of any real combat abilities and spells. Throw in buffs, resistances, ranged enemy attackers, environmental factors, enemy mages, sneak attacks/backstabs, area of effect spells and debuffs and you could have a highly tactical system to play with.

Indeed, but also one that is perfectly natural to control in RT.

Funny you should mention that, because this is something I've always wanted to play around with. You see, I greatly dislike the separation of combat, dialogue and world movement. I think all elements of an RPG should be put together into one all encompassing system in order to prevent certain elements from ending up in mini-game territory. I don't like the idea of moving around a world in real-time, only for the game to switch to a turn-based mode for combat with its own unique rules and systems in place, because this restricts the simultaneous use of combat and non-combat features as well as prevents you from using the world itself to avoid or aid you in combat.

I've always liked the old Ultima system whereby every time you make a move, everyone in the world makes a move. If you move 10 squares then everyone else will move 10 squares. If you don't move at all then no on else moves. It's turn-based but in a way that everyone performs their turn at the same time (but with ordering due to its grid-based nature). Implementing an RPG in this way with today's technology would make the world seem like it's realistically moving in real-time as your character moves about, only for everything to pause when your character is paused. If your character isn't performing an action then no one else is. Of course, if you want to let time pass while your character stands still then there should be an option to do so, reverting back automatically (effectively an auto-pause) when something important happens that you may need to react to (like an enemy sighting). That way the entire game becomes phase-based, with the length of each phase being the same as the length of time required to complete the given action. If you tell your character to move 10 metres forward then everyone else in the game world will carry on doing what they are doing for that same duration. What that will do is unify combat and regular game world traversal.

The only issue I have with implementing this is the inclusion of a party. If you fully control multiple characters without relying on AI to take care of them, how can it work with this system of movement? I suppose it would be easy with RTS style group actions, but issuing different commands to each character would be incompatible. Time would resume straight after you've issued a command to your first character. Of course, one solution would be to implement a command stage where you give out commands to each character. Upon giving a command to each character the game would play out until one of your characters has finished their action, allowing you to issue new commands. However, this would only be useful for combat situations and would be an absolute nightmare for regular non-combat game world traversal. It'll make the game as painful as Ultima IV's dungeon rooms. If used only for combat then this would fail to unify combat and non-combat gameplay in a way that I would like.

So this is sort of deadman switch implicit autopause.

It might work, provided an extra NOP button, but it would be, as you have noticed, worthless for party gameplay.

I thought of something that would allow issuing commands in typical phase-based mode, but the phases would be asynchronous, and the game would enter order phase for given character as soon as either the character finished current task, or situation changed necessitating new orders.

Not my fault that you're unable to see how the game with combat largely built around choreography wouldn't suffer from being chopped into bite-sized chunks.

But it wouldn't be based around choreography if it was turn-based. Bonus!

It would be different game then. For all the tactics the game could be improved with, dynamic presentation of combat is an integral part of Witcher. It's one of the few games where "TB = slow" actually has some ground.

Even if, BG supposedly 'resurrected' the genre by letting BW almost monopolize it. Leaving little room for resurrection of FPP crawlers.

So you've now resorted to blaming BioWare for not accommodating the resurrection of a long dead sub-genre? Why not blame whatever killed the sub-genre instead?

Except BG also lowered the bar - hallmark of the decline.

Because, like I said, not implementing RT where it would have worked better doesn't hurt the game nearly as much as failing to implement TB where it excels. TB has an edge here. Plus I enjoyed combat descriptions, as well as the well implemented C&C. I'd definitely play more Fallout-likes.

But I don't care if you'd play more Fallout-likes. I'd play both more Fallout-likes and more Baldur's Gate-likes.

So are there more Fallout-likes out there or not?

Also, you have said that maybe it's fallout that killed them - there are two ways to kill a genre, you can either make something different, but vastly successful, claiming its former customers, or make something from this genre and bomb massively enough to scare off would-be investors and developers. Games don't kill genres via spooky action at a distance and Fallout was defnitely not an old-school dungeon crawler.

And, in the long term, the former is exactly what Fallout must have done. It may not have sold nearly as well as Baldur's Gate but it changed the genre by reducing combat focus and including lots of C&C. Dungeon crawlers were combat focused with minimal C&C. In comparison to Fallout, dungeon crawlers were severely outdated. In comparison to Baldur's Gate, though? Baldur's Gate was still heavily combat focused and had fuck all C&C. It was basically an isometric dungeon crawler anyway. And we all know you can't blame it for being the first real-time dungeon crawler, because it wasn't.

Except there were no Fallout likes, but BW pretty much monopolized the genre apart from simplistic H&S.
It wasn't raising the bar that killed dungeon crawlers, if it didn't stop BG from succeeding, so nope, not Fallout.

So, are you going to show me some Fallout likes or not?

How can I when there weren't any outside of Arcanum?

Precisely.

However, there is a reason why no mainstream gamer talks about pre-Fallout RPGs today. I've said it in another thread that Fallout was the start of the new-school of RPGs, which Baldur's Gate was very much a part of. Fallout and/or Fallout 2 are almost always in top 100 lists on shitty gaming sites. Same with Baldur's Gate. Pre-Fallout RPGs? No chance.

Horrors of DOS?

Because you're not making sense, duh.

Daggerfall didn't spawn clones, nor lower the expectations. Similarly Morrowind, it wouldn't be bad thing if a deluge of open sandboxes appeared after it (yet it didn't). Oblivion, OTOH exploited brand new platform to leave massive imprint on the feeble minds of the consoletards that RPG means a MESOLARPS with shitty FPS elements and that it's awesome. Just like BG, years before, exploited relative vacuum by introducing masses to the notion that an RPG is wonky RTS-lite set in excruciatingly generic fantasyland. And that it's awesome.

You keep talking about what Baldur's Gate caused yet you can't see that Daggerfall directly caused Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They are all real-time single character continuous movement open world action RPGs made by the same bloody developer.

So. What.

It doesn't matter what caused what - this way we can probably blame Ultima VII for the decline as well:

Ultima VII is still my favorite game. It's hard not to look at Oblivion and see the Ultima influence.

At the very least we can blame the Big Bang.


No, what matters is not as much the causal chain of titles as you interpret it, but the moment in which it ceased going towards the better or at least constant quality games. Both BG and oblivious were such moments. If TES series continued to spawn titles as good as Daggerfall and Morrowind, we wouldn't be having this conversation as I'd be too busy wanking myself to death. The problem is that oblivion turned the series around and went full retard. RT and FPP are characteristics of the series but they tell nothing of the quality of the game, because they form good interface for this subgenre.

And everything that Baldur's Gate II introduced to the Baldur's Gate formula is the cause of BioWare's decline, not Baldur's Gate itself.

Except everything BGII introduced made it less of a terminally boring cheesefest across meadow #267 and forests 700# through #856 than its prequel was. BG didn't decline that much, since it started out as banal shit boring company, producing banal shit boring games. If anything, BG II is the odd game in their development history since it's at least somewhat interesting to play.

No, genre makes it allright. It's hard to expect political backstabing and lots of well crafted C&C when the game is about descending into a randomized labyrinth, killing lots of monsters, taking their stuff, then killing the foozle with it.
Diablo has about as much depth as the concept permits (roughly the amount presented by a single Daggerfall dungeon when examined in isolation, minus 3D part) and since it has a lot of atmosphere plus the loot and killing tickled me the right way I consider it quite awesome. The only bad thing about Diablo is association with RPGs, weak as it may be - cue loot- and blood-thirsty retards coming from all direction expecting grind.

BG, OTOH, doesn't have a fraction of depth the concept permits, doesn't really have much atmosphere (the narrator helps here a bit, but not nearly enough), the combat is atrocious, plot is rail-based without even cursory attempts at justifying not letting me into Cloakwood before The Right Time(TM), and pretty much everything sucks.

Are you serious? I don't know about you but I don't expect political backstabbing and lots of well crafted C&C in my RPGs. It's like you've never played a pre-Fallout RPG before if you think that's what games in this genre should contain. Baldur's Gate is a romp through a generic fantasy land full of combat making use of the AD&D rules. It would have been infinitely better if it was turn-based, but there was absolutely no way I went in expecting political backstabbing (which there was, actually) and plenty of C&C (which there wasn't).

"The concept" seems to be what you want in CRPGs. Therefore an RPG you hate would never fit your concept. Does Baldur's Gate fit my concept? It does, actually. More so that any TES game, that's for sure.

What I want in my games is them being good. A game is good not when it has no bad features, but when one or more of its features are good enough to make you endure the bad ones because the game is just too awesome to drop.

So, I could talk about scale, background mechanics, classmaker and politics in Daggerfall, I could talk about lore, exploration, atmosphere and art direction in Morrowind, I could talk about combat, party banter, sense of adventure and quirkiness in Wizardry 8, I could talk about dialogue, characters, plot and atmosphere in PS:T, but I would have no idea what to talk about when it comes to BG - what good is BG for anyway? I'd expect combat, since you mentioned it being combat-centric D&D emulator (and I agree with that claim), but no - herding mentally impaired cat-lemming hybrids with your cursor is *DEFINITELY* not an example of even moderately entertaining combat.

As for the backstabbing, it starts in BG about the moment you revisit Candlekeep - in other words, very late in game. If the game needs four or something chapters to merely warm up its engine, you're doing something wrong.

 

[commie]

DraQ wrote:
Not my fault that you're unable to see how the game with combat largely built around choreography wouldn't suffer from being chopped into bite-sized chunks.

But it wouldn't be based around choreography if it was turn-based. Bonus!

It would be different game then. For all the tactics the game could be improved with, dynamic presentation of combat is an integral part of Witcher. It's one of the few games where "TB = slow" actually has some ground.

I could imagine a Party TB Witcher game in Sapkowski's universe, with TOEE style mechanics, but as something apart from THE Witcher which we have now which is a dynamic ARPG with for the most part, a single hero.

Why does everything have to be an either/or? Can we not have all these things? I don't want to go back to a world where everything is just grid-based, blob crawling and nothing else as that would just be a similar problem to what we have now, only in reverse. We wouldn't have had Morrowind's, Gothic's, Witcher's. There's room enough for several types of RPG for every IP if the will was there to make them.

 

[CorpseZeb]

So... in short:

BG's biggest fault not being Daggerfall (or another “X” for that matter) direct us to land of apples, oranges and taste('less).

Ps. One should at least finish both BG, to find more stuff to talk about. Someone apparently doesn’t.

Ps2. Combat centric was IWD, not BG.

 

[DraQ]

So... in short:

BG's biggest fault not being Daggerfall

Nope. Not being good. BG fails to provide good combat (as AI is bad and the enemies tend to be lesser challenge than party AI and interface), fails to provide good exploration (as wiping the black off the map and clicking on every fallen pinecone in hopes it might turn out to be a hidden ring is not good exploration), fails to provide good lore (blahblahgenericdndswordcoastblah), fails to provide reasonably entertaining story (at least until Candlekeep 2.0), fails to provide non-combat gameplay, and utterly fails to provide C&C.

What does BG succeed at?

Ps. One should at least finish both BG, to find more stuff to talk about. Someone apparently doesn’t.

Yeah, I have a save in progress somewhere and intend to finish it solely with the intention of porting to BG2, which I only played for rather short time before deciding that it might be worthy to endure the prequel for it.

 

[CorpseZeb]

What does BG succeed at?

*sigh*

I'm afraid we talking about taste here. Not sure, what will be "not a taste", though.

I can agree about absence of C&C, you have some degree of freedom in the game though (for example, you can kill Minsc - one of main character - that one with space hamster). But for the rest of your opinions, I just can reverse them. Combat was enough enjoyable and controllable – you must prepare your team for incoming battles (spell memorization and such, thanks to AD&D rules), you must think strategically during battles, you must properly recognize enemies powers to act accordingly and so on. Story in BG1 was very cliché, that's true, but somewhat improved in BG2 mainly by courtesy of secondary quests and characters. Dunno where you see lack of lore, in towns full of temples and taverns stuffed with typical Forgotten Realms filling.

I don't like BG1 very much - was to simple, to easy, to short - but for me, BG2 was another story, natural progression from Pole of Radiance series, from Eye of Beholder series – where I just clicked in.

 

[MMXI]

But there's the problem - if you're controlling a single character, you don't have to cycle, which means RT will work better. Single character usually performs actions sequentially (even when dual wielding ), party works in parallel or at least makes the players PoV jump between characters.
No matter how complex you will make your single character combat, if it needs turns it just means you have a bad interface, since all the actions are performed by a character with two legs and two arms.

You see, the problem is that everything during this sequence barring possibly formation management can work flawlessly in RT. Switching hands? Daggerfall had a key for it. If we accept probably the only thing Skyrim is going to do right (left and right hand slots having their separate keys and being able to house pretty much anything), make the actions depend both on context and on how is the button clicked in conjunction with that, all that's left is legwork and hotkeys which means that player will be able to issue any command they want without taking hands off the primary controls. And that means no TB.

as for the summons they can be spawned relatively to the player based on their type, or have their relative location adjusted in spellmaker, they can be targetted like projectile spells or, if everything else fails, player can either hide behind their backs or step in front of them in split second using standard move commands. Neither of those methods necessitates change of mode, which would also affect players who built dumb barbarians and can't benefit from it, cause they have no formation to manage.

(Additionally, I've always thought that mirror images were just images - visually indistinguishable, but physically intangible, which would make them excellent distraction and decoys, as long as they shifted positions with original, but really bad blockers to put in stationary formation, because they would be identified with first weapon poke, and without shifting, the enemy would have no problem discriminating.)

I just can't agree with this. It's really not just a case of how many characters you are controlling, because characters are merely devices used in a game, devices that can be replaced with something else. If you made Daggerfall turn-based it would suck because the game does not accommodate a sufficient level of tactical depth to make it worthwhile. Similarly, if you took a tactical system similar to what I proposed and made it real-time, you'd have to change the game's balance of difficulty in order to take into account that the player cannot make the same level of tactical decisions in real-time. You don't tend to switch between 10 different spells per battle in a real-time game because the real-time nature makes it difficult to assess the benefits of more than 10 spells in a given situation within a small frame of time. And 10 is being really generous. You usually rely on 3 or 4. In other words, there is a point to making it turn-based. It's basically the same difference between Wizardry and later Might & Magic games, but with both being party based.

So this is sort of deadman switch implicit autopause.

It might work, provided an extra NOP button, but it would be, as you have noticed, worthless for party gameplay.

I thought of something that would allow issuing commands in typical phase-based mode, but the phases would be asynchronous, and the game would enter order phase for given character as soon as either the character finished current task, or situation changed necessitating new orders.

Well, I'd like to achieve the following:

1) Consistency of control and interface between combat and non-combat gameplay.
2) The ability to control multiple characters at the same time.
3) Presentationally pleasing (fluid and simultaneous movement) outside of combat (and, due to #1, inside of combat too).
4) Tactical and character skill driven inside of combat (and, due to #1, outside of combat too).

So to break it down, the game cannot use asynchronous turns like in, say, Fallout or even X-COM because, due to #1, it would have to play the same outside of combat too, and due to #3 it wouldn't be presentationally pleasing outside of combat as it would be far too cumbersome to move your characters around a town in such a way. Therefore, to satisfy #3, turns would need to be synchronous, meaning that all characters, both your characters and every single moving object in the entire game world, would need to move at the same time as each other. Then, to satisfy #1, this would also have to apply to combat too, with your characters moving with your enemies.

Then there are two remaining issues left, #2 and #4. In reality, due to how I've constructed the game engine, content formats and content creation tools, I would want each character to move from grid space to grid space. Graphically, characters can move smoothly across squares, but ultimately a character is in one grid square or another at any one time for the purposes of game simulation (to hit calculations and ground/environmental factors). The reason for this from a gameplay perspective is that I want the player to be able to accurately work out how the game mechanics can be applied to a given situation. I want them to be able to calculate the result of actions without having to guess/estimate the position of each character at a pixel level. Similarly, I don't want the players to have to make sure every single pixel of their character is covered in shadow. However, the passage of time is at odds with this. If time isn't discretized it makes it difficult for the player to assess situations on a temporal level. The player would have to guess/estimate when a character would reach a certain grid square as time would be on a continuous scale. If one character could reach a particular square in 4.20572 seconds, another could reach it in 5.184243 seconds. Completely useless figures in terms of tactical calculations for the player. However, the discretization of time could be at odds with #3, though I believe that I can make it work on an animation level. Consider #4 solved for now.

Issue #2 is the one that is trickiest to solve. You are in combat. You tell character 1 to walk forwards 20 metres. You tell character 2 to walk backwards 10 metres. When do they actually start their actions? You can either make them start their actions individually, immediately after giving them orders. The issue with that is the game becomes real-time when just one of your characters is undertaking in action. Another way is to only "resume time" once each character has been given an order. Including a NOP command, as you mentioned, would solve the issue of not wanting to give a particular character an order. However, if you give every single character a NOP command, would time just carry on in real-time until you press a pause/issue orders button or until the game auto-pauses for you? That'll make it a real-time with pause system, in a way. And how would this tie in with #1 and #3, namely outside of combat? I want non-combat gameplay to be smooth, slick, quick and easy to control. Would this allow that?

I should make a thread in the Workshop.

It would be different game then. For all the tactics the game could be improved with, dynamic presentation of combat is an integral part of Witcher. It's one of the few games where "TB = slow" actually has some ground.

Well, it's all in the animation, that's for sure. But weren't you the one going on about how you can synchronise animations to an underlying RPG system? Your example was dodge animations upon statistical misses. You could make the combat in The Witcher just as presentable to modern audiences while making it turn-based.

Except BG also lowered the bar - hallmark of the decline.

It lowered the bar in what? Aren't you the guy who loves Diablo and Daggerfall? Compared to those games Baldur's Gate didn't lower the bar at all.

Except there were no Fallout likes, but BW pretty much monopolized the genre apart from simplistic H&S.
It wasn't raising the bar that killed dungeon crawlers, if it didn't stop BG from succeeding, so nope, not Fallout.

Monopolised the genre? Isn't that what Bethesda has done too?

So. What.

It doesn't matter what caused what - this way we can probably blame Ultima VII for the decline as well:

Ultima VII is still my favorite game. It's hard not to look at Oblivion and see the Ultima influence.

At the very least we can blame the Big Bang.

Of course Ultima VII helped decline the genre. Just look at its combat and how lacking in importance statistics are. I love the game, but it did a lot of shitty things for the genre in the long run.

No, what matters is not as much the causal chain of titles as you interpret it, but the moment in which it ceased going towards the better or at least constant quality games. Both BG and oblivious were such moments. If TES series continued to spawn titles as good as Daggerfall and Morrowind, we wouldn't be having this conversation as I'd be too busy wanking myself to death. The problem is that oblivion turned the series around and went full retard. RT and FPP are characteristics of the series but they tell nothing of the quality of the game, because they form good interface for this subgenre.

So basically you are saying that Baldur's Gate is as worthy as part of the decline as Oblivion just because you think it went against the positive direction games were heading in at the time? Because for starters Baldur's Gate has better combat than Fallout, Daggerfall and Diablo. It re-inclined the genre in terms of combat purely by being an AD&D game, even though it was far away from matching the heights of the Gold Box games. Similarly, Fallout declined the genre due to its terrible combat, god awful AI and single character control. Subjective? Of course it is.

Except everything BGII introduced made it less of a terminally boring cheesefest across meadow #267 and forests 700# through #856 than its prequel was. BG didn't decline that much, since it started out as banal shit boring company, producing banal shit boring games. If anything, BG II is the odd game in their development history since it's at least somewhat interesting to play.

This is hilarious coming from a Daggerfall fanboy (which I am too, indecently).

What I want in my games is them being good. A game is good not when it has no bad features, but when one or more of its features are good enough to make you endure the bad ones because the game is just too awesome to drop.

So, I could talk about scale, background mechanics, classmaker and politics in Daggerfall, I could talk about lore, exploration, atmosphere and art direction in Morrowind, I could talk about combat, party banter, sense of adventure and quirkiness in Wizardry 8, I could talk about dialogue, characters, plot and atmosphere in PS:T, but I would have no idea what to talk about when it comes to BG - what good is BG for anyway? I'd expect combat, since you mentioned it being combat-centric D&D emulator (and I agree with that claim), but no - herding mentally impaired cat-lemming hybrids with your cursor is *DEFINITELY* not an example of even moderately entertaining combat.

See, this is where it goes into completely subjective territory. You say that Wizardry 8 has a fantastic sense of adventure. It does, relatively, but that's also one of the stand out elements of the Baldur's Gate games. You say that this is about features that are good enough to make you endure bad ones, in that case the combat is enough to redeem the endless filler dialogue in Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate II? Less so because it had far more filler dialogue and worthless companion banter. They also both contained some very fine encounters. Far better than the encounters in the Icewind Dales and Temple of Elemental Evil, generally. Probably matching the best of the Gold Box games in terms of encounters, actually.

Also, why is it about stand out features? I couldn't give a fuck about Planescape: Torment's stand out features if they weren't quite as dominant. If Planescape: Torment had, say, double the amount of combat that it does, I'd probably dislike the game on the whole as even though the story and characters are fantastic, I don't care as much about them in RPGs as most others seem to. On the other hand, even though you hate Baldur's Gate's combat while I find it perfectly acceptable, I'm far more fussy about the quality of combat than most others. So basically, even though Planescape: Torment has some stand out features, I wouldn't necessarily find the game more fun than a game with no stand out features but with better combat. In other words, a balanced game may be more enjoyable than one that leans heavily on a side that I don't much care about.

 

[DraQ]

What does BG succeed at?

*sigh*

I'm afraid we talking about taste here. Not sure, what will be "not a taste", though.

I can agree about absence of C&C, you have some degree of freedom in the game though (for example, you can kill Minsc - one of main character - that one with space hamster).

I treat ability to kill any character that isn't pivotal to the story as given, along with this character staying dead.

But for the rest of your opinions, I just can reverse them. Combat was enough enjoyable and controllable – you must prepare your team for incoming battles (spell memorization and such, thanks to AD&D rules), you must think strategically during battles, you must properly recognize enemies powers to act accordingly and so on.

I liked preparation, but jesus fucking christ. Thinking strategically was possible, but party characters were notoriously unreliable when it came to going from A to B, and most of the strategy boiled down to disrupting casters before they raped the party.

Story in BG1 was very cliché, that's true, but somewhat improved in BG2 mainly by courtesy of secondary quests and characters. Dunno where you see lack of lore, in towns full of temples and taverns stuffed with typical Forgotten Realms filling.

Except FR and Sword coast in particular is sort of kitchen sink. Not really interesting lore.

And story pretty much started somewhere towards the end, or at least half of the game. Following paper trail and killing progressively harder mooks wasn't particularly thrilling. And while characters had sort of personality, it's undermined rather severely by the fact that Wiz8 characters have just as much despite being just voiceset slapped randomly on a portrait, rather than actual designed characters.

Narration was a nice touch and would probably succeed at making the game mildly entertaining sort of thing wher you can lean back with beer in hand and follow rather simple and straightforward story, was it not for the fact, that the gameplay wasn't conductive to playing with beer in hand as you needed at least one hand on space at all times, so that you could react quickly to stuff like enemy caster starting waving hands around.

I just can't agree with this. It's really not just a case of how many characters you are controlling, because characters are merely devices used in a game, devices that can be replaced with something else.

The problem is that characters are very specific devices with pretty clearly defined meaning that is extraneous to the mechanics. In particular a character won't be doing a lot of stuff simultaneously, unlike a party of characters. Increasing depth for a single character doesn't mean making this character execute multiple simultaneous actions, it means increasing selection of possible actions (explicitly or implicitly - by providing mechanical/environmental opportunities) and increasing the frequency at which actions are taken - possibly by breaking actions up into sub-actions (when multiple combinations of same set of sub-actions are valid), and the latter goes directly against TB as TB imposes minimum interval between decisions and needs to balance precision against speed when choosing the length of a single turn.
With single character it's essentially a lose-lose situation.

If you made Daggerfall turn-based it would suck because the game does not accommodate a sufficient level of tactical depth to make it worthwhile. Similarly, if you took a tactical system similar to what I proposed and made it real-time, you'd have to change the game's balance of difficulty in order to take into account that the player cannot make the same level of tactical decisions in real-time.

I'd merely have to refine interface so that player can implement decisions in real time. Tactical thinking can be very fast after some training and preparation can involve not just physical resources but sufficiently flexible attack plans on part of the player.

You don't tend to switch between 10 different spells per battle in a real-time game because the real-time nature makes it difficult to assess the benefits of more than 10 spells in a given situation within a small frame of time. And 10 is being really generous. You usually rely on 3 or 4.

Not really generous. 10 is about the number of weapons in FPSes of old, so instant switching between 10 weapons, spells or other attack/action modes is pretty much what you should take for granted in an RT game. In Morrowind (let's ignore tha fact that it's an easy game, for a second), when playing as dedicated caster, I tend to keep 9 *clusters* of spells prepared for immediate use, each comprising of several spells and accessed by a hotkey and quick sequence of 'next/previous' strokes - it doesn't take more than a second or two, so I can do this about as fast as trained professional can prepare a backup weapon, which should pretty be pretty much the upper bound of practical reaction time expected from a mundane character. Characters operating in enchanced time (either through magic or cybernetics) can have their bullet time or whatever adjusting perception of time to non-augmented player.

So no, 10 isn't generous. >60 is.

The problem which TB solves isn't depth, it's parallelism (and sometimes shitty interface).

Well, I'd like to achieve the following:

1) Consistency of control and interface between combat and non-combat gameplay.

Consistency of mechanics is also important and is a problem in traditional (non-SPB) TB.

2) The ability to control multiple characters at the same time.

Typically the purpose of TB.

So to break it down, the game cannot use asynchronous turns like in, say, Fallout or even X-COM because, due to #1, it would have to play the same outside of combat too, and due to #3 it wouldn't be presentationally pleasing outside of combat as it would be far too cumbersome to move your characters around a town in such a way. Therefore, to satisfy #3, turns would need to be synchronous, meaning that all characters, both your characters and every single moving object in the entire game world, would need to move at the same time as each other.

Uh, we seem to use synchronicity differently. You seem to apply it to to what I refer to as simultaneity, I use it as applied to decision phase (so that characters can have their decision phases independently, whenever they need a decision, rather than at predefined intervals, except unlike RTWP, software and software only handles it's triggering in combat or other switch-intensive activities (though player should feel free to trigger the first, synchronous phase manually in a manner similar to triggering combat in Wiz8). Characters could be ordered to wait for specific characters or events to re-synchronise their asynchronous decision phases as well.

Then there are two remaining issues left, #2 and #4. In reality, due to how I've constructed the game engine, content formats and content creation tools, I would want each character to move from grid space to grid space.

Why tiles? Unlike TB, which is very helpful due to human limitations, TB seems to be entirely an artefact of technological limits.

The reason for this from a gameplay perspective is that I want the player to be able to accurately work out how the game mechanics can be applied to a given situation. I want them to be able to calculate the result of actions without having to guess/estimate the position of each character at a pixel level.

Isn't that quite a strawman? If anything, discretized positions are needlessly limiting to the player and I'd consider positioning limitations imposed by the tiles to be much more annoying and troublesome than minor inaccuracies.

Similarly, I don't want the players to have to make sure every single pixel of their character is covered in shadow.

This is one of the reasons you have hud for. How well the character is shadowed can be relayed to player using HUD, though I actually appreciated using in-world model as indicator for that in Deus Ex.

However, the passage of time is at odds with this. If time isn't discretized it makes it difficult for the player to assess situations on a temporal level.

Why treat the player as handicapped I don't know what?
An average FPS player can find intercept of projected enemy trajectory and trajectory of his missile in about half a second it takes him to aim and fire. RPGs are slower and more deliberate games, especially when phase or turn based. If player doesn't have basic feeling of time and space in game by the time he has grasped fundamentals of tactics, then he should probably see a neurologist because chances are something is nomming his brain stem.

Issue #2 is the one that is trickiest to solve. You are in combat. You tell character 1 to walk forwards 20 metres. You tell character 2 to walk backwards 10 metres. When do they actually start their actions? You can either make them start their actions individually, immediately after giving them orders. The issue with that is the game becomes real-time when just one of your characters is undertaking in action. Another way is to only "resume time" once each character has been given an order. Including a NOP command, as you mentioned, would solve the issue of not wanting to give a particular character an order. However, if you give every single character a NOP command, would time just carry on in real-time until you press a pause/issue orders button or until the game auto-pauses for you?

Well, you need a way to idle with all characters. In general it would be nice to free player from having to mash pause button and use built-in methods of triggering orders phase, except the idea I'm toying with would trigger it based on situation, rather than time. It would also be nice to limit ability to give orders outside of orders phase to avoid frantic RTWP-style clicking. It seems counterintuitive to make game better and more enjoyable by limiting player input, but the idea is that the game would provide interrupt whenever input might be desirable, and, for example, Wizardry 8 wouldn't work nearly as well if you could give orders at any time. Some sort of maximum "turn" length might be implemented as failsafe.

I should make a thread in the Workshop.

Yes, you should.

It would be different game then. For all the tactics the game could be improved with, dynamic presentation of combat is an integral part of Witcher. It's one of the few games where "TB = slow" actually has some ground.

Well, it's all in the animation, that's for sure. But weren't you the one going on about how you can synchronise animations to an underlying RPG system? Your example was dodge animations upon statistical misses. You could make the combat in The Witcher just as presentable to modern audiences while making it turn-based.

I think that stops introduced by turns would rob it of fluidity.

And synchronizing animations to system doesn't seem like rocket science, I'd actually like something like collision and physical engine to be incorporated into actual combat calculations instead of just being eyecandy.

Except BG also lowered the bar - hallmark of the decline.

It lowered the bar in what? Aren't you the guy who loves Diablo and Daggerfall? Compared to those games Baldur's Gate didn't lower the bar at all.

Compared to Diablo no (and it isn't RPG anyway), but compared to Daggerfall? Are you kidding? In what way did BG not lower the bar apart from having nice narrator and somewhat discernible characters?

Except there were no Fallout likes, but BW pretty much monopolized the genre apart from simplistic H&S.
It wasn't raising the bar that killed dungeon crawlers, if it didn't stop BG from succeeding, so nope, not Fallout.

Monopolised the genre? Isn't that what Bethesda has done too?

Recently? Yeah. And Skyrim is going to suck.

No, what matters is not as much the causal chain of titles as you interpret it, but the moment in which it ceased going towards the better or at least constant quality games. Both BG and oblivious were such moments. If TES series continued to spawn titles as good as Daggerfall and Morrowind, we wouldn't be having this conversation as I'd be too busy wanking myself to death. The problem is that oblivion turned the series around and went full retard. RT and FPP are characteristics of the series but they tell nothing of the quality of the game, because they form good interface for this subgenre.

So basically you are saying that Baldur's Gate is as worthy as part of the decline as Oblivion just because you think it went against the positive direction games were heading in at the time? Because for starters Baldur's Gate has better combat than Fallout, Daggerfall and Diablo.

No, sorry. Combat where your main enemy is retarded party pathfinding defaults to terribad. Terribad combat cannot be considered good.

Except everything BGII introduced made it less of a terminally boring cheesefest across meadow #267 and forests 700# through #856 than its prequel was. BG didn't decline that much, since it started out as banal shit boring company, producing banal shit boring games. If anything, BG II is the odd game in their development history since it's at least somewhat interesting to play.

This is hilarious coming from a Daggerfall fanboy (which I am too, indecently).

Again - 'W' key.

See, this is where it goes into completely subjective territory. You say that Wizardry 8 has a fantastic sense of adventure. It does, relatively, but that's also one of the stand out elements of the Baldur's Gate games.

Except Wizardry 8 also has really nice combat and this nice kind of thrill caused by the fact you know you will be surprised. In Wizardry 8 you're surprised in rather campy sort of way, but you're surprised nevertheless - you can't predict Trynton or Bluff or Rapax territories from starting monastery. Even the wilderness areas are distinct enough to be interesting. The BG, OTOH is in 99% repetitive, same-y, generic wilderness that can't be skipped - unlike vast stretches of Daggerfalls generated terrain.

You say that this is about features that are good enough to make you endure bad ones, in that case the combat is enough to redeem the endless filler dialogue in Baldur's Gate.

Rather it's enough to ragequit and uninstall, and I'm not talking about difficulty here, which is rather easy unless you try some crazy shit.

Also, why is it about stand out features?

Because games, by default are not worth playing unless they provide good reason to play them. "I guess combat is inoffensive, interface is semi decent and both characters and gameworld are sort of okay" doesn't really give me an incentive to play the damn game.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yeah, I have a save in progress somewhere and intend to finish it solely with the intention of porting to BG2, which I only played for rather short time before deciding that it might be worthy to endure the prequel for it.

What's the point, though? BG2 will cancel all your C&C from BG1 anyway, especially the party choices and will even cancel all your party causalities from BG1.

I just can't agree with this. It's really not just a case of how many characters you are controlling, because characters are merely devices used in a game, devices that can be replaced with something else.

The problem is that characters are very specific devices with pretty clearly defined meaning that is extraneous to the mechanics. In particular a character won't be doing a lot of stuff simultaneously, unlike a party of characters. Increasing depth for a single character doesn't mean making this character execute multiple simultaneous actions, it means increasing selection of possible actions (explicitly or implicitly - by providing mechanical/environmental opportunities) and increasing the frequency at which actions are taken - possibly by breaking actions up into sub-actions (when multiple combinations of same set of sub-actions are valid), and the latter goes directly against TB as TB imposes minimum interval between decisions and needs to balance precision against speed when choosing the length of a single turn.
With single character it's essentially a lose-lose situation.

How about 1 second turns like in GURPS: Fallout, then? In that case you can even have multi-turn aiming and multi-turn casting.

 

[CorpseZeb]

… lotsa text here... so I'm only with small nitpick...

I liked preparation, but jesus fucking christ. Thinking strategically was possible, but party characters were notoriously unreliable when it came to going from A to B, and most of the strategy boiled down to disrupting casters before they raped the party.

Yes... but only if you insist using stupid AI pathfinding during battles... what's wrong with manual control. And I'm sorry, but finding weakest link in the enemy chain is a standard strategy everywhere, no matter BG, X-Com or JA (wizards in any fantasy game - can and do - inflict serious pain in the ass, I don't think there's any other choice of action than kill mothermuffins fast).

Ps. Story and character wise - I was talking more about BG2.