real time X real time with pause X turn based combat

[Mojo]

Just wondering what's the general opinion on these. Examples of rpg combat done right and wrong in these frames, and why is one is better or more entertaining than the other.

I used to think there was nothing better than tun-based combat, but real time with pause has been growing on me lately. It can make things more dynamic.

 

[Khor1255]

One of the things about Jagged Alliance 2 I liked the most is the way time is handled. It is real time until there is an encounter then it switches to turn based. Gives you all the control of turn based without having to spend all day maneuvering around using action points.
Real time with a pause is o.k. but a lot of the ones I played really only give you control over one player during turn based. I imagine there are better systems than that now but I can't imagine anything better than the way Ja2 handles it.

 

[Wilco]

I think IE's real time w/ pause engine was excellent, handled large battles with multiple npcs very well and was exciting as well as chaotic like a battle should be. Was quite tactical too, at least more tactical than Fallout's 'right between the eyes' approach. JA2 and ToEE both had excellent turn-based combat engines, extremely tactical and realistic (in JA2).

I think Arcanum is both turn-based and real time done wrong, real-time was way too fast plus no party control and turn based was unbalanced (fighters would have too many attacks while gunslingers would get maybe two).

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Pure real time was done best in Gothic 2 and Mount and Blade. They're a little hard to get used to, but they're very well done and realistic.

Mass Effect and Oblivion don't get many Codex Cool Points (TM) around here, but both do real-time combat very nicely.

The worst examples of pure real time I can think of are Gothic 3 and Morrowind. Gothic 3 had pointless large scale battles where you fought 1 enemy at a time, and Morrowind had no blocking feature, which is criminal in pure real time.

 

[oscar]

Does KotoR count? Was quite a good system if maybe a bit harder for blaster users.

 

[Mareus]

Pure real time was done best in Gothic 2 and Mount and Blade. They're a little hard to get used to, but they're very well done and realistic.

Mass Effect and Oblivion don't get many Codex Cool Points (TM) around here, but both do real-time combat very nicely.

The worst examples of pure real time I can think of are Gothic 3 and Morrowind. Gothic 3 had pointless large scale battles where you fought 1 enemy at a time, and Morrowind had no blocking feature, which is criminal in pure real time.

Yes, but Morrowind was never player based, but skill based which is the whole point of RPGs. Gothic combat realistic? LOL! If you mean by dying quickly then yes, but combat was very clunky and anything but realistic. A movie is worth thousand words so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Wmbwe8SyU&NR=1
Assuming you don't want to exploit week AI, the fights look like this at best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Wmbwe8SyU&NR=1
Not very realistic if you ask me.

As for TB vs RTwP vs RT I can only say we need all, but unfortunately we only get RT or RTwP, while completely forgetting how TB can be fun in completely different way.

 

[OSK]

It's all about the turn-based, baby!

 

[xuerebx]

Doesn't matter if it's turn based, real time with pause, or real time. I'll play a game any way it is as long as it's fun. I do want a game series to use the same gameplay though, so I wished Fallout 3 was turn based just because the series is turn based. The same way I wouldn't want the next TES game being turn based, as the rest of the series is in real time.

The only reason why I would like some more turn based games like AoD is shaping up to be is because it has been some time since I played a newer turn based game.

Turn based is not better than real time or real time with pause, anyone who wholeheartedly believes that 'turn based is the best, end of story' and tries to bring the argument forward as fact is naive.

 

[oscar]

I thought he was Cleve for a couple of seconds

 

[Helton]

Those aren't vectors so you can't find the cross-product.

 

[elander_]

I used to think there was nothing better than tun-based combat, but real time with pause has been growing on me lately. It can make things more dynamic.

If you are talking about something like Baldurs Gate with auto-pause options then theres an option that turns combat into a phase-based combat system, that is, everyone acts at the same time (no control over the order into each one acts) and the game pauses every turn. In DnD each turn lasts for a precise amount of seconds and every action is described in turns so it's easier to plan your fights. I don't think phase-based is superior to turn-based but it's the most elegant pause system i know besides TB.

Morrowind had no blocking feature, which is criminal in pure real time.

Morrowind had a blocking feature. It even had a blocking skill. It had about 2 times more skills than Oblivion.

 

[JarlFrank]

Morrowind had no blocking feature, which is criminal in pure real time.

Morrowind had a blocking feature. It even had a blocking skill. It had about 2 times more skills than Oblivion.

I think he wanted to say that Morrowind had no active blocking.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Real time with pause all the way.

Real time, because that's how life works, and pause, because it prevents it turning into a APM shitfest.

 

[dragonfk]

Morrowind had no blocking feature, which is criminal in pure real time.

Morrowind had a blocking feature. It even had a blocking skill. It had about 2 times more skills than Oblivion.

I think he wanted to say that Morrowind had no active blocking.

It had. It was one of the features of Morrowind Enhanced.

 

[RainSong]

why is one is better or more entertaining than the other.

the answer to all of your questions is...

 

[sportforredneck]

Tentacle rape.

 

[Xor]

I'm glad I didn't read this thread at work.

 

[ixg]

phase-based

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Why is the pink octopus happy? They're normal tentacles.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Turn based: JA2 is good. Fallout is bad, possibly I'd go so far as to say terrible. But you don't have to go full on JA2 complexity to make it fun, even older SNES strategy rpgs or incubation or odium/gorky17 provided superior turn based battles to Fallout. It's fine to simplify and abstract, chess after all is abstract as hell. But make sure to keep the combat tactical as there is nothing more tedious than easy and/or mindless turn based combat, unless it's super easy AND has lots of repetitive and slow animations.

Phase Based: Alfa Antiterror or Combat Mission. I can't really name a bad one, although they're all still very clunky. Not much has been done with this yet, but it has a lot of potential.

Real time with pause: Brigade E5 or 7.62... NOT stupid AP based systems like BG. If you want to be real time then use the advantages of real time... the fact that you can measure actions down to the second... far superior than down to the AP. Also need to offer a lot of control like BE5, otherwise you can end up using very limited (lasso and attack) tactics like in those UFO games, or in X-com 3 where you just prone outside the UFO and wait for the aliens to charge your MGs.

The worst though is KOTOR2, where you don't need to use any tactical thought at all, and your AI companions can pretty much mow down everything, the pause is just there to make it as easy as a game can possibly be, you never need to pause and consider tactics.

Any of the above 3 systems is pretty good, but real time with pause limits your ability to control larger squads or squads split over several screens with full precision and lots of micro. And there is just too much temptation for developers to do a shitty job with it.

real time without pause: no comment, this is lame if you're controlling more than one guy

It really depends what you want to do, I think phased based or real time with pause is more ideal for modeling suppression and cover fire for example. But turn based works nicely, especially with a square grid to provide a more relaxed tactical atmosphere in a medieval style game. If the door is two squares wide you can just park two guys there, and you don't have to worry about fireball friendly fire as you can take your time to aim it, etc. It was a classic formula for a reason.

One thing a lot of turn based games do wrong though is animations. They just make us watch too much animation, too often, too slowly. I liked how in the gold box games your units slid into place instead of slowly walking, and spell/attack animations were short. Turn based combat can be fast paced.

 

[Fenril]

Depends on the game formula and genre, I would risk saying both could be just as good depending on how good is the designer and how well its implemented.

Yet for me for a party based RPG pure turn based for combat is where its at. Of course Turn Based combat can only truly shine if there are a good deal of meaningful options, thats the whole point of full pause turns, plotting your actions calmly from a good list of available options.

 

[The_scorpion]

real time with no pause. that's how fights are in real life, fast paced and they are over before you know it.

aka: it's more realistic.

that's probably the most frequent, yet the most fail comment on this issue

real-time action like in a computer game is WAY different from what happens in real life. In real life, an army of 10 000 men, or, take whatever number, can take 10 000 decisions simultanously. The player, who is controlling multiple chars, can only take one decision at a time, while the computer can take tons of decisions in little time.

This HUGE difference between realitiy and real-time combat in computers is what requires real time singleplayer gameplay to be either incredibly dumb or incredibly annoying, lacking the tactical deptht you'd want.

In the respect of decision taking, turn based combat is usually, if you have multiple characters or units controlled by just one human player, MORE realistic than real time combat
because 5 units can take 5 decisions without 200 enemy decisions interfering. not just 1 or 5 after each other during what time the AI could take 10000 decisions but is dumbed down to only do 20 of them.
It's only turnbased combat that allows for the decision making aspect to be modelled that way, plus it can add elements that reality lacks, which makes it less trivial than a real fight

One could argue that real-time with (smart) pause would theoretically represent realistic decision and action/ reaction taking, but the point there is, once we hit pause often enough, we're basicly back at turnbased. During pause it is your turn, during action it's the enemy's. Plus, the "smart" thing is often an issue, as well as to keep the action fluid.

RTW smart P could possibly become equally good for tactical games as TB is, but i guess it is difficult to implement it in such a quality.

obviously, the above is limited to a type of game that has become rather uncommon these days, where everything is either FPS, RTS or maybe Hack'n slash/ jump'n run

 

[DraQ]

In the respect of decision taking, turn based combat is usually, if you have multiple characters or units controlled by just one human player, MORE realistic than real time combat

That's why I only prefer RT (slightly) in games where you only control single character/unit/whatever. For party-based TB is the better choice.

plus it can add elements that reality lacks

:dismay:

One could argue that real-time with (smart) pause would theoretically represent realistic decision and action/ reaction taking

I, for one, would. It's hard to implement properly though.

once we hit pause often enough, we're basicly back at turnbased.

Not exactly. This kind of game would be asynchronous and simulate real action very well, while TB always posesses certain, quite unnatural, rhytm. Apart from truly abstract games, this kind of mechanics would be quite capable of making TB genuinely obsolete.

 

[mondblut]

Realtime might have been ok in times of Pong and Space Invaders, but is genuinely obsolete in the XXI century.

(Did it ever occur to you that some people might actually *enjoy* TB as it stands? Not because it "allows for better tactics than RT" or "is more realistic when you control 10 persons simultaneously" or whatever other shitty excuse of the "it sure sucks man, but the alternatives are even worse" kind, but because it is FUN?)

 

[BethesdaLove]

- you have control over more than 3 people: turnbased
- you contol 1 person: real-time
- both: rtwp