RTwP is an abomination and harbinger of decline

[turkishronin]

Look at this interview by people who made Baldurs Gate
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games

BioWare planned for Baldur’s Gate to be a blend of old and new. “It was kind of this examination of the old Gold Box games in terms of their depth and their adherence to the [D&D] rules,” Oster says, referring to a series of D&D RPGs produced by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “But then bringing that forward into an almost real-time-strategy-style interface.”

Earlier RPGs, including the Ultima games, had been difficult to control, making it complicated for players to select multiple members of their parties and tell them what to do. But Blizzard Entertainment had released Warcraft and Warcraft II in 1994 and 1995, respectively, and those two titles, along with Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series, headlined a mid-’90s RTS boom based on mouse-first management rather than keyboard commands. BioWare borrowed that mouse-aided design, transplanting a new interface into an old genre where it was sorely needed. “Basically, you swipe the interface from a real-time-strategy game and plug it into a role-playing game,” Greig says. “That solved the party mechanics.”

It didn’t address a second problem: Mixing real-time management of up to five party members with the complexity of the D&D rule set made the action chaotic. “It became pretty obvious pretty quick that there was no way you were gonna be able to play the depths of D&D in real time without ever pausing the game,” Oster says. “That’s when we came up with the ‘pause and play’ plan.” That addition enabled players to stop in the middle of the game, queue up commands to their party, and then restart the real-time action. Although Baldur’s Gate didn’t invent this “active pause” approach, it did help popularize it.

It's little different from modern RPGs jumping on Open World trend because of GTA or FPS due to Call of Duty.
If BG didn't attempt to attach itself to WoW and C&C there wouldn't even be a BG2

 

[Nifft Batuff]

BG was decline. Everyone knows that.

 

[Funposter]

Darklands is RTWP

 

[Vic]

proper RPGs today are turn based or give the option to play in TB like D:OS and Pathfinder and I'm guessing BG3 has a turn based mode?

 

[octavius]

The IE games still have better combat than most CRPGs, including the turn based Gold Box games.

 

[smaug]

The IE games still have better combat than most CRPGs, including the turn based Gold Box games.

Only if they’re modded. Vanilla IE games are barely above gold box and most other combat heavy CRPGS. An important detail most BG apologists leave out.

 

[gurugeorge]

Look at this interview by people who made Baldurs Gate
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games

BioWare planned for Baldur’s Gate to be a blend of old and new. “It was kind of this examination of the old Gold Box games in terms of their depth and their adherence to the [D&D] rules,” Oster says, referring to a series of D&D RPGs produced by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “But then bringing that forward into an almost real-time-strategy-style interface.”

Earlier RPGs, including the Ultima games, had been difficult to control, making it complicated for players to select multiple members of their parties and tell them what to do. But Blizzard Entertainment had released Warcraft and Warcraft II in 1994 and 1995, respectively, and those two titles, along with Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series, headlined a mid-’90s RTS boom based on mouse-first management rather than keyboard commands. BioWare borrowed that mouse-aided design, transplanting a new interface into an old genre where it was sorely needed. “Basically, you swipe the interface from a real-time-strategy game and plug it into a role-playing game,” Greig says. “That solved the party mechanics.”

It didn’t address a second problem: Mixing real-time management of up to five party members with the complexity of the D&D rule set made the action chaotic. “It became pretty obvious pretty quick that there was no way you were gonna be able to play the depths of D&D in real time without ever pausing the game,” Oster says. “That’s when we came up with the ‘pause and play’ plan.” That addition enabled players to stop in the middle of the game, queue up commands to their party, and then restart the real-time action. Although Baldur’s Gate didn’t invent this “active pause” approach, it did help popularize it.

It's little different from modern RPGs jumping on Open World trend because of GTA or FPS due to Call of Duty.
If BG didn't attempt to attach itself to WoW and C&C there wouldn't even be a BG2

Hah. "Almost real-time strategy-style interface." I remember getting into an argument a while after I settled in to this forum, about RTwP in BG basically being a response to the success of Command & Conquer. Some people didn't believe it. But it's true.

C&C's success had a huge impact on developers at the time, I remember, I lived through it and it was regularly being mentioned in PC gaming magazines at the time (just at a time I was getting into gaming and was interested in looking behind the curtain and nosing around the sausage factory). Strategy games had been a niche while they were turn-based, but C&C blew the strategy game up with the introduction of realtime control (and of course Warcraft and then Starcraft cemented that); I think many developers thought the same breakthrough from niche into the mainstream would be possible with RPGs if they had that realtime element, instead of the old school turn-based style.

I'm easy on the topic as I like both RTwP and turn-based, and I don't think RTwP is necessarily decline (it kind of was for D&D-style games, it turns out they're much more suited to turn-based - but if you design a game from the ground-up with it in mind, like the Pillars games, where the durations of effects are based on a finely-tuned timing rhythm, down to fractions of a second, it works very well with proactive pausing, and I think the second Pillars game showed what's possible in that area, it flows beautifully). But there's no denying the impact of C&C at the time, and the head-turning influence it had on developers.

 

[Palomides]

shut the fuck up.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't mind RTwP when it's done well (like in 7.62 High Calibre, one of the few good examples) but as much as I love the Infinity Engine for its presentation, the combat in those games is kinda bad.

D&D just doesn't work very well with RTwP. Icewind Dale would be a super fun dungeon romp if it had combat like ToEE, but with RTwP it just sucks.

 

[laclongquan]

I don't mind RTwP when it's done well (like in 7.62 High Calibre, one of the few good examples) but as much as I love the Infinity Engine for its presentation, the combat in those games is kinda bad.

D&D just doesn't work very well with RTwP. Icewind Dale would be a super fun dungeon romp if it had combat like ToEE, but with RTwP it just sucks.

You dont play Icewind Dale 1/2? Best tactical RTwP game~ BG is piss easy~

If you anyone ever want to criticize RTwP in combat aspect, Icewind Dale 2 is an unavoidable peak you need to climb. Not playing it automatically disable your opinion.

 

[ItsChon]

Both BG, IWD. and PS:T are fantastic cRPGs, and while RTwP isn't perfect, it worked well in these IE RPGs. Bounced off of BG2 heavily but that wasn't due to combat, and I never played IWD2, but it's undeniable that RTwP in regards to IE games have a great track record. Way better than a ton of shit that is lauded by the Codex.

 

[Tyranicon]

I never understood RTwP as a battle system, even when it works well. The party AI in most RTwP games is almost never adequate, so what usually happen is that you either slap the pause button every .5 seconds so you can get the most efficiency out of your party, or just watch them basic attack through the entire game.

Either upgrade your AI or just go turn-based.

It's little different from modern RPGs jumping on Open World trend because of GTA.

I would say there's a difference between the concept of sandbox open worlds, and the implementation of a very large visual space you can walk around in.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't mind RTwP when it's done well (like in 7.62 High Calibre, one of the few good examples) but as much as I love the Infinity Engine for its presentation, the combat in those games is kinda bad.

D&D just doesn't work very well with RTwP. Icewind Dale would be a super fun dungeon romp if it had combat like ToEE, but with RTwP it just sucks.

You dont play Icewind Dale 1/2? Best tactical RTwP game~ BG is piss easy~

If you anyone ever want to criticize RTwP in combat aspect, Icewind Dale 2 is an unavoidable peak you need to climb. Not playing it automatically disable your opinion.

I played Icewind Dale but all the way to the end I kept thinking "Damn, this would be fun if it were turn-based, but this way it's just frustrating."

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

While I don’t like the Baldur’s Gate games at all, (and I should give how much I love RTS games) the real-time with pause combat in Freedom Force is too good and fun for all this bitching about RTwP being shit and terrible.

Given the obvious roots of Baldur’s Gate combat system, (so obvious it’s odd to hear anyone would dispute it...and I’ve heard people dispute it too) it’s a shame BioWare never leaned into that more and had more RTS stuff in their RPGs. Although Mass Effect Andromeda, and really the series in general, (specifically the first game) always felt like they wanted to have more RTS elements but flaked out on it like BioWare always seems to flake out on their original concepts for games.

Western developers obsession with real-time combat in RPGs, especially once the 2000s hit, has always been this odd little thing that never made any fucking sense. This weird idea that audiences would reject turn based combat, so it had to be real-time. Like that seemed to be the conventional wisdom of western developers and publishers by the time the 2000s rolled around. I mean, I can get the thinking when development started on Baldur’s Gate in the mid ‘90s. But between that and the release of Baldur’s Gate, Final Fantasy 7 came out, and was the biggest game release ever as far as home releases went. You’d think there’d maybe be a little rethinking on what could and couldn’t sell...but not really.

 

[BING XI LAO]

you either slap the pause button every .5 seconds so you can get the most efficiency out of your party,

Bah, another thread where RTWP detractors don't seem to know that Autopause exists with like a dozen triggers

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Both BG, IWD. and PS:T are fantastic cRPGs, and while RTwP isn't perfect, it worked well in these IE RPGs. Bounced off of BG2 heavily but that wasn't due to combat, and I never played IWD2, but it's undeniable that RTwP in regards to IE games have a great track record. Way better than a ton of shit that is lauded by the Codex.

Someone is repressing his memory of Neverwinter Nights.

 

[smaug]

Man, I hate IEfags.

 

[turkishronin]

odd little thing that never made any fucking sense

They wouldn't sell otherwise. Western RPGs only could avoid extinction by latching unto a more popular genre. FF7 is barely an RPG by Western standards

 

[Tyranicon]

you either slap the pause button every .5 seconds so you can get the most efficiency out of your party,

Bah, another thread where RTWP detractors don't seem to know that Autopause exists with like a dozen triggers

I'm aware of autopause, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of the system. RTwP introduces an unpleasant staccato effect in battle: it breaks up the action in a jarring way.

With turn-based, combat is mostly in the headspace. You are planning your moves and anticipating that of the opponent's. This preserves a consistent sense of time, despite the turn-based nature.

With RTwP, you can attempt to do the same but the fact that it's realtime makes each pause seem more artificial. You feel less like a participant in a battle and more like some kind of time god, subtly pushing someone's shield up or screaming "toss a fireball here, asshole!"

 

[†††]

 

[PapaPetro]

Alternatives to RtwP and TBS? Or are we stuck with this dialectic in RPG combat?

 

[Butter]

Thankfully RTwP is dead. Nobody even remembers that there was a game called Black Geyser.

 

[xuerebx]

My first RPG was RTwP (NWN back in 2002) and I remember really enjoying the game as I had never tried TB, so I didn't know any better. Once I started playing TB I just found RTwP inherently less enjoyable because I don't feel like I'm in total control of the characters. That's not to say I've never enjoyed any RTwP games, but I think if these games were TB they would automatically be better/more fun (for me).

 

[Modron]

Alternatives to RtwP and TBS? Or are we stuck with this dialectic in RPG combat?

Non round based fully real time with or without pause (single character, party based, or even RTS level), a variety of types of action combat (hack and slashers, side scrolling, FP/TP shooting, wierd bumper car stuff like Ys 1/2, rhythm based like The Summoner/Witcher 1, et cetera), Phased Based, Wizardry style phased based with rounds, et cetera. I am sure there are probably other styles of combat I can't think of on the spot.

Round based real time is one of the worst combat systems designed and any game I've liked with such combat I've liked entirely for reasons unrelated to the combat system.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

The big problem here is Bioware. If BG2 kept the same design philosophy as BG1 except with much technical improvements instead of going the story-heavy, romancefag direction and Bioware decided to make good games after rather than trash they proceded to make like Ass Effect or NWN, then this thread likely wouldn't exist. But the fact is, the vast majority of RTwP "rpgs" were made by Bioware or using Bioware's engines and assets. Obsidian games like KOTOR 2 was practically just KOTOR 1 with a different coat of paint and edgy storyfagging from another overrated writer on this website. NWN2 was just NWN1 with a party and different graphical assets and a slightly souped up version of the engine. Icewind Dale 1+2 were just combat games made in Bioware's infinity engine.