Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Codex arguing that apples are objectively better than oranges again, eh?

Fuck you, oranges suck. In fact all citrus sucks. Can you make an orange pie? No. Q.E.D.

You can make key lime and lemon meringue pies though.

Plus, scurvy.

I think its pretty obvious that RTwO life is superior generally. But you'll still want to switch into apple mode now and then, such as when you're surrounded by doctors.

 

[Jasede]

Citrus fruits give me cold sores.
I hate citrus.

 

[Cynic]

I've never played a RTwP game and paused constantly to "simulate turn based combat". That sounds retarded. The only draw that RTwP has over TB is the feeling of action, of pressure because maybe things will get out of hand before you know it. Once you take that away, just make the fucking game turn based and be done with it. I'm struggling to see how slow motion is going to keep that tension alive in combat.

Comparisons to RTS games are kind of bad. RTS games have huge slowing variables which these games don't have - distance and resource management. They aren't artificially layered on top of the existing mechanics, they are part and parcel of the mechanics.

 

[Infinitron]

I've never played a RTwP game and paused constantly to "simulate turn based combat". That sounds retarded. The only draw that RTwP has over TB is the feeling of action, of pressure because maybe things will get out of hand before you know it. Once you take that away, just make the fucking game turn based and be done with it. I'm struggling to see how slow motion is going to keep that tension alive in combat.

RTwP games don't feel like action games at all. The reason they give you tools like pausing and slow motion is in order to be as non-action like as possible.

The principle behind real time action games is that the more characters that are on screen at once, the more on screen action there is at once, there more player skill (reflexes, hand eye coordination) is required.

Slow-paced non-action real-time games (which includes RTwP RPGs, the more realistic RTSes and RTTs and also things like Paradox games or the X-COM Geoscape) do not operate under this principle.

Comparisons to RTS games are kind of bad. RTS games have huge slowing variables which these games don't have - distance and resource management. They aren't artificially layered on top of the existing mechanics, they are part and parcel of the mechanics.

You keep saying this without providing any relevant proof. "But...but...RTSes aren't RPGS!!!"

Dude, take a hectic battle in BG2, and imagine a Myth or Total War-style slowdown system implemented on top of that? Isn't that better? You seriously believe it's not better?

 

[Cynic]

Well I don't know if it's better that's the whole point of this discussion. I am skeptical of it being better because I believe that slow motion undermines the only reason to make a party based RPG RTwP to begin with.

I never said the games were like action games, but RTwP does make combat seem alive and move faster than a TB game. It gives it more of an action like feel. They mix die rolls and stats with player reactivity and reflexes.

And I'm sorry to say this, but the proof that you ask for is in the very paragraph you quoted. It's a system design difference that makes the games inherently different. I'm not sure if you program at all, but when designing any kind of system, everything has to connect with everything else, it's like building a house, the blueprint moulds how the structure comes to life. RTS games have a layer of time embedded into them via distance and resource management. This is why they can have moments of contemplation/planning and moments of frantic action without the need for a pause. Slow motion works in this context because you have a very large map to oversee and lots of shit going on all over the place which is hidden from your view. You need time to move the camera around and find what the hell is going on in a totally different area.

RPGs like the IE games do not have this layer of design built into the system. As soon as you enter an encounter, it's on, and you don't need to focus your attention anywhere else until it's done. This is why a pause is necessary in a real time context, so you can see what is going on and plan what happens next, BUT, once you unpause, everything is hectic again. That's the draw, that's the tension in the system, that is the excitement.

Slow motion has the ability to remove that draw, and that's what I'm skeptical about.

 

[Infinitron]

RPGs like the IE games do not have this layer of design built into the system. As soon as you enter an encounter, it's on, and you don't need to focus your attention anywhere else until it's done. This is why a pause is necessary in a real time context, so you can see what is going on and plan what happens next, BUT, once you unpause, everything is hectic again.

Don't you see that you're contradicting yourself? If you don't need to focus your attention anywhere else, then you don't need the pause either! Pausing is just a specific case of using the slow motion controls - ie, setting the speed to 0x.

And if things are "hectic", then your attention must be divided, isn't it? What does it matter if it's off-screen or not? It doesn't matter if you're concerned with your mage getting off his next spell on time or with your units two screens away. Either way, your attention is divided.

That said...

That's the draw, that's the tension in the system, that is the excitement.

Slow motion has the ability to remove that draw, and that's what I'm skeptical about.

If you've played one of these games with slow motion then you should know that it doesn't remove the excitement. It can take weeks, not seconds, to learn whether you've won a lottery or what grade you've received on an exam, but those things are still exciting.

The idea is that you enable slow motion only when lots of things are happening on screen at once, effectively modulating the time flow so that the "# events per second" remains constant. You wouldn't slow down combat if there was just a single kobold on screen, because the situation doesn't warrant it.

So, it's not like there are less things happening when you enable slow motion.

 

[Liston]

Well I don't know if it's better that's the whole point of this discussion. I am skeptical of it being better because I believe that slow motion undermines the only reason to make a party based RPG RTwP to begin with.

I disagree. One of the main differences between RTwP and TB is that in TB all actions are executed sequentially while in RTwP (if we only consider the model that Obsidian is using ie no pseudo rounds) all actions are executed in parallel which introduces different tactical challenges. The reason for using RTwP instead of using RT is that it diminishes importance of hand-eye coordination and quick reactions and makes emphases on tactical decisions made during combat while still retaining unique properties of RT. I think that slow motion perfectly fits with that reasoning. Basically every argument that you are using against slow motion can be used against pause in the same manner.

 

[Cynic]

We shall see bros, we shall see. I hope it works well, I'm skeptical, that's all.

 

[Athelas]

The Japanese are responsible for the greatest turn-based battle system ever made (mute audio to avoid shitty voice acting):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrK1MZoVVGg

 

[Roguey]

Relevant to slow-motion talk: One of J-Saw's favorite games, Battleheart.

Real-time, party-based, slow enough so that a pause isn't necessary.

As I recall, you wanted a Dark Souls-style respawning for every area and that's not happening.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64297-character-rollaholic-mea-culpa/page-3#entry1368426

No. I actually suggested the possibility of SOME monsters respawning on rest not all. All would be stupid and wouldn't work for this kind of game or make sense for the setting. The mechanic in of itself was what I was talking about; something that penalises resting and turns it into a kind of risk.

Revisionism http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page-30#entry1220626
You altered your suggestion after he shot it down but he never said he wasn't going to use respawning creatures in areas where it would be appropriate. It's not a universal fix though.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Well I don't know if it's better that's the whole point of this discussion. I am skeptical of it being better because I believe that slow motion undermines the only reason to make a party based RPG RTwP to begin with.

I never said the games were like action games, but RTwP does make combat seem alive and move faster than a TB game. It gives it more of an action like feel. They mix die rolls and stats with player reactivity and reflexes.

And I'm sorry to say this, but the proof that you ask for is in the very paragraph you quoted. It's a system design difference that makes the games inherently different. I'm not sure if you program at all, but when designing any kind of system, everything has to connect with everything else, it's like building a house, the blueprint moulds how the structure comes to life. RTS games have a layer of time embedded into them via distance and resource management. This is why they can have moments of contemplation/planning and moments of frantic action without the need for a pause. Slow motion works in this context because you have a very large map to oversee and lots of shit going on all over the place which is hidden from your view. You need time to move the camera around and find what the hell is going on in a totally different area.

RPGs like the IE games do not have this layer of design built into the system. As soon as you enter an encounter, it's on, and you don't need to focus your attention anywhere else until it's done. This is why a pause is necessary in a real time context, so you can see what is going on and plan what happens next, BUT, once you unpause, everything is hectic again. That's the draw, that's the tension in the system, that is the excitement.

Slow motion has the ability to remove that draw, and that's what I'm skeptical about.

So if I understand this correctly, your argument is that:

RTS games have distinct strategy and action phases while IE style games place strategy and action in the same phase. Therefore, pause allows you to insert a moment of strategic contemplation into the action phase while still leaving the action phase intact. Slow motion would simply replace the action phase with a slightly more reactive strategy phase.

I think this makes sense, but only if the player slows the game down to a speed below the speed that challenges them. For me, the most frequent reason for using pause isn't for formulating the strategy (although I do use it for that). I use pause primarily b/c the information I need to digest as I execute that strategy is coming in too fast for my feeble mind to handle. Slow motion at the right speed would bring that rate down to one which is hectic enough where I will miss some things, but not so hectic that I am unable to understand what is going on at a basic level without pausing and reading the log.

 

[Rake]

Dude, take a hectic battle in BG2, and imagine a Myth or Total War-style slowdown system implemented on top of that? Isn't that better? You seriously believe it's not better?

I'm not so sure it will be an improvement. It may be, but i never found IE combat "hectic", in fact the combat speed and pacing were perfect for me.(and i outright hate action combat in all its forms) And if someone paused every n seconds in order to have a poor man's TB he was playing it wrong.
So i'm not so sure what exactly the slow mo will offer. Less pauses? Yes but why? Why would someone want to pause less? In IE most of the pausing was for UI matters like choosing a spell, and after a while each pause wasn't bigger that 2-3 sec. It didin't disrupt the flow of combat as much as you making it sound.(given the fact that while paused you looked more on the UI/portraits than the battlefield itself i would say it didn't disrupted the flow at all)

 

[Cynic]

So if I understand this correctly, your argument is that:

RTS games have distinct strategy and action phases while IE style games place strategy and action in the same phase. Therefore, pause allows you to insert a moment of strategic contemplation into the action phase while still leaving the action phase intact. Slow motion would simply replace the action phase with a slightly more reactive strategy phase.

I think this makes sense, but only if the player slows the game down to a speed below the speed that challenges them. For me, the most frequent reason for using pause isn't for formulating the strategy (although I do use it for that). I use pause primarily b/c the information I need to digest as I execute that strategy is coming in too fast for my feeble mind to handle. Slow motion at the right speed would bring that rate down to one which is hectic enough where I will miss some things, but not so hectic that I am unable to understand what is going on at a basic level without pausing and reading the log.

This is right. But the question remains, why bother with combat so slow that it defeats the purpose of not making it TB in the first place?

There is an easy answer to that problem, who can guess what it is?

 

[Roguey]

Because I want all actions to happen simultaneously while I issue orders as needed.

 

[Liston]

So i'm not so sure what exactly the slow mo will offer. Less pauses? Yes but why? Why would someone want to pause less?

I think that you are approaching it from the wrong angle, slow motion offers more pauses in short period of time without the tedium. It is useful for coordination of a lot of actions that require small execution time and can't be queued, for example plotting a path around a moving hazard (AoO) or making sure that two spells/abilities hit at the similar time (making sure that your rouge jumps back just before fireball hits). In IE games there mostly wasn't a need for that but PE uses a different combat system and I think that it can introduce some interesting tactics.

 

[Cynic]

AoO and real time is really retarded. In BG when you tried to run away the AI would basically always follow you, so what's going to happen? They keep following and you keep triggering AoOs? Or just suddenly they aren't going to follow?

 

[Liston]

AoO and real time is really retarded. In BG when you tried to run away the AI would basically always follow you, so what's going to happen? They keep following and you keep triggering AoOs? Or just suddenly they aren't going to follow?

You make sure that you disable/slow/distract the target before you try to run.

 

[Infinitron]

AoO and real time is really retarded. In BG when you tried to run away the AI would basically always follow you, so what's going to happen? They keep following and you keep triggering AoOs? Or just suddenly they aren't going to follow?

Most likely melee engagement won't work if the "engager" is currently moving. Probably he'll need to be planted in place for some minimum amount of time before it kicks in. So no "chase engaging".

 

[Rake]

In IE games there mostly wasn't a need for that but PE uses a different combat system and I think that it can introduce some interesting tactics.

But that way slo-mo becomes semi-mandatory, not just an option.

 

[Roguey]

Most likely melee engagement won't work if the "engager" is currently moving. Probably he'll need to be planted in place for some minimum amount of time before it kicks in. So no "chase engaging".

Uh huh.
http://spring.me/JESawyer/q/490017401727895562

We have a basic implementation but it needs to be crisper/more immediate, essentially as soon as the attacker gets within range and stops to attack. Responsiveness in movement (including stopping) and all actions is really important to the feel of the game so we're going to continue tuning that a lot.

 

[Liston]

Most likely melee engagement won't work if the "engager" is currently moving. Probably he'll need to be planted in place for some minimum amount of time before it kicks in. So no "chase engaging".

IIRC engagements work while moving and as soon as your character enters the engagement he will stop and require further input to continue moving to avoid accidental engagement attacks. I don't see it as a problem, in the chase scenario every class have disengagement ability that immediately puts some distance between you and the attacker so further engagements will only happen if you are slower or stop running for some reason.

 

[Liston]

But that way slo-mo becomes semi-mandatory, not just an option.

Well I hope so. At least it's mandatory if you want to use some tactics, it doesn't mean that those tactics are mandatory. The only alternative that I see is that slow motion is easy mode and we all know how optional "I win" buttons are fun.

 

[coffeetable]

IIRC engagements work while moving and as soon as your character enters the engagement he will stop and require further input to continue moving to avoid accidental engagement attacks. I don't see it as a problem, in the chase scenario every class have disengagement ability that immediately puts some distance between you and the attacker so further engagements will only happen if you are slower or stop running for some reason.

I seem to remember something about each character having a number of opponents they can engage, and each engagement is triggered by proximity. This allows fighters (with a high engagement count limit) to block chokepoints. If an opponent tries to leave after having engaged you, you get a free attack.

 

[Infinitron]

IIRC engagements work while moving and as soon as your character enters the engagement he will stop and require further input to continue moving to avoid accidental engagement attacks. I don't see it as a problem, in the chase scenario every class have disengagement ability that immediately puts some distance between you and the attacker so further engagements will only happen if you are slower or stop running for some reason.

I seem to remember something about each character having a number of opponents they can engage, and each engagement is triggered by proximity. This allows fighters (with a high engagement count limit) to block chokepoints. If an opponent tries to leave after having engaged you, you get a free attack.

I didn't say that

 

[Space Satan]