Simultaneous turn based

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I was reading peoples issues with multiplayer games using turn based and most of them just quote lack of patience as the issue. If a game were to have simultaneous turns for all the users. Imagine the scenario:

*Game enters turn based*

Player A: Fires aimed shot at player B's eyes with 50% accuracy and sequence rating 5
Player B: (Making choices at same time) fires at Player A with shotgun accuracy of 80% sequence of say 4

*They both end turn*

Turn plays out: Player A fires first and hits, the impact to the eyes drops B's attacks accuracy to 30% and he misses, sustaining perception damage.


If that makes sense to anyone else would it be implementable. As far as two players having same sequence rating, you could just have a random chooser. If a lot of people were using the system it would be chaotic, with no sure way of knowing how your attack would work out or what your opponent was planning until after the combat was played out. But it seems more realistic combat ( I KNOW realism isn't everything.) without going twitch.

 

[Adraeus]

"Time exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once. Space exists so that everything doesn't happen to you." -- attributed to Einstein, a bathroom wall, unknown, and other entities. :p

Or games should be developed using this premise: "Time is change." If the world is not ever-changing, then time screeches to a halt. That would certainly make many O/RPGs more interactive... something like Divine/Beyond Divinity or Ultima VII.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

What the fuck has that got to do with the price of turnips at the spring fair?

 

[Adraeus]

What the fuck do you have to do with turnips?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

You're both fucking turnips. Now on with the show!

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Yes, could somebody possibly respond, with something approaching relevance.

 

[Adraeus]

Clearly, you were unable to make the connection between the existence of time in game worlds and turn-based systems within game worlds.

 

[Psilon]

All right then.

You've described phase-based combat. Everyone makes decisions for their turn in the planning phase, then it all plays out in the action phase. Generally this type of combat also has a delay feature so that high-initiative entities can wait for slowly advancing enemies. (It might be called "Wait and Fire" or something similar.)

See Wizardry 8 for that combat system. Personally I rather like the approach, but it can occasionally devolve into a "Shoot, you moron!" shouting match.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I would cast doubt on anything you would define as clearly.

However your convoluted attempts at depth and revelation were either a complexly constructed but misdirected joke, or pure gibberish.

"If the world is not ever-changing then time screeches to a halt"

You think this would make games more interactive, the sheer quantum leap here is lost on me. Maybe there is an entire argument alluded to there that is simply lost on me but as it stands that comment is hollow and frankly bizarre when applied to the context.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

All right then.

You've described phase-based combat. Everyone makes decisions for their turn in the planning phase, then it all plays out in the action phase. Generally this type of combat also has a delay feature so that high-initiative entities can wait for slowly advancing enemies. (It might be called "Wait and Fire" or something similar.)

See Wizardry 8 for that combat system. Personally I rather like the approach, but it can occasionally devolve into a "Shoot, you moron!" shouting match.

Thank you for that, I thought I had slipped into the twilight zone for a moment. Does wizardry 8 have the kind of modifiers, such as damaged perception effecting the already committed attack. If so why hasn't this type of combat been implemented in more games, it sounds nifty.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

I'm of two minds about simultaneous TB combat. On one hand, it's more realistic, because you can't really predict what the enmy is thinking while you're planning and executing your attack. On the other hand, it's less realistic, because it takes away your ability to react in an emergency. There's something very unsatisfying about getting your head chopped off by something you never saw coming because of artificial game constraints. It's the old Pen'n'Paper, "but if I'd actually been fighting those guys, I wouldn't have mindlessly hacked at the first one while the second one blithely decapitated me" reaction.

Then again, I'm assuming a deeper combat experience than you find in most CRPGs.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I can agree with those issues, i would prefer pure turn based in a single player game. For multi player it seems like a decent compromise, it wouldn't take as long and the kind of chaos it would generate would be fun with other human players.

 

[Adraeus]

I thought I had slipped into the twilight zone for a moment.

You are in... the Twilight Zone! Dunananuh dunananuh dunananuh...

You think this would make games more interactive, the sheer quantum leap here is lost on me. Maybe there is an entire argument alluded to there that is simply lost on me but as it stands that comment is hollow and frankly bizarre when applied to the context.

I hope you know that "quantum" basically means "incredibly tiny," and if my idea is lost on you, does that mean your head is incredibly large?

 

[Psilon]

Thank you for that, I thought I had slipped into the twilight zone for a moment. Does wizardry 8 have the kind of modifiers, such as damaged perception effecting the already committed attack. If so why hasn't this type of combat been implemented in more games, it sounds nifty.

Yeah. I've had spellcasters hit me with Noxious Cloud, for instance, which frequently causes characters to become nauseated and spend their actions puking rather than attacking. Another example is blindness, which reduces a character's chance to hit to nearly nothing... unless he's a monk.

And yes, it is nifty. I spent years playing RoboSport, which was a squad combat game using a phase-based system. Wiz8 was great fun as well.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Play Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin.

 

[Sol Invictus]

There's nothing sheer about quantum leaps.

 

[Adraeus]

What the hell does that mean?

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I hope you know that "quantum" basically means "incredibly tiny,"

quantum leap, quantum jump -- (a sudden large increase or advance; "this may not insure success but it will represent a quantum leap from last summer")

Thats just for you moron. Please remove your head from your ass before you comment again.

 

[Talorc]

Play Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin.

I second that! I think I wore a groove into my Hardrive playing the demo for the earlier game in the series - Combat Mission : Beyond Overlord.

The demo at their website is VERY representative of what the final game is like

http://www.battlefront.com

Not sure if it would work in the smaller unit scale of RPG's. In Combat Mission if you walk into a nasty surprise during the action phase where you dont have control, and one of your platoons gets "chewed up", its moderately annoying -- but you still have the whole rest of the company / battalion / ROCKET ARTILLERY BATTERY :twisted: to give some payback with.

But in an RPG, if you walk into a "surprise" and your wizard gets toasted, and your Cleric blinded - and now you only have your Fighter and Ranger to fight with, all while you didnt have control, I can see it not being very fun.

But, as others have stated, it seemed to work OK in other RPGs.

I personally rather disliked Wiz 8 though. I dont like the "your party is one blob" type combat. I much prefer to be able to individually manevure each party member on the battlefield as required.

 

[Jed]

Phase-based combat is the Rock-Paper-Scissors of combat options. Not particulary strategic or tactical if you ask me. I think the whole point of TB is to take into account your enemies actions and the consider the best reaction. Phase-based for all practical intents and purposes eliminates those possibilities.

 

[Rosh]

The main problem is that phase based combat still doesn't work in a MMORPG.

Because of the general mechanics, while some people are fighting, others are still running around. How are you going to differentiate those times, then? If two people started fighting in TB or PB, then it would be likely that someone else would walk up and attack those who can't run away. Or, for that matter, get to a relatively hidden spot and start sniping someone in combat. They can't run anywhere, except possibly in turns.

Anything other than real-time combat in a MMORPG, without something like a separate combat screen like in The Realm, would result in clusters visible from the game world's outer atmosphere, as people would constantly jump those who were occupied in battle or sniped them from afar (and then the sniper was taken out before he could run away while still in combat). That is, unless some artificial mechanics were put into play that prevented people from attacking others already in combat, but that opens up another can of worms. Otherwise, this would lead to nothing but lame PKing over and over.

Welcome to the main problem of MMORPGs. Everything is quite limited, because you have to accomodate for such a large number of people doing different things at the same time. A game with a limited multiplayer could afford to have a TB combat, as if you're going to play with some total idiot when you have the option to choose your own group, then that's your problem.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I decided to give the turn-based MMORPG it its own thread.