several-talking-corpses asked: Just how different is designing and balancing for real time with pause combat versus turn based combat? In many games it seems to boil down to an aesthetic difference. This is somewhat of a given for any D&D based CRPGs sense D&D itself is round based, and the only exception I can think of in semi-traditional WRPGs is Dragon Age: Origins which utilizes MMO style "Move out of this telegraphed attack's range or bad things will happen to you," and "Get out of the fire," type-stuff. Where does POE?
Unfortunately, the only turn-based combat I have experience designing for is tabletop, but there are a huge number of issues for real-time party-based games. Pathing is easily the biggest, and most frustrating, obstacle. Out of combat pathing concerns are not the same as the issues that come up during a fight. Timing, hit reactions, interrupts, cancels, and how those all take priority are also big, big issues that don’t exist in turn-based games and cause a lot of problems in real-time.
GUI elements/visual cues are also much trickier in a real-time party-based game. Many things can happen concurrently and the player has a lot to keep track of. There’s a fine line between not giving enough information and giving too much.
In a turn-based game, individual characters’ actions (including pathing) can be isolated and treated as stand-alone events with only prepped reactions getting into the mix.
