I guess when dealing with shitty combat, the faster the better.
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Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
Does that apply to all cRPGs, or only in this specific case because you've got to find some way of proving me wrong?
We've got an impressive case of circular reasoning in this thread. Combat's shitty, therefore let's get through it as quickly as possible. How about designing the combat properly to begin with, so that you actually enjoy it and don't want to get it over with ASAP? Good encounter design is part of that, and so is implementing the ruleset properly rather than turning it into an awkward bastardization.
Excidium
P. banal
"The combat in PS:T would have been improved by a proper turn-based implementation of AD&D 2nd Edition's combat rules."
TAKE A GUESS DUMBASS
Can't have your cake and eat it, too. I'd be the last person to claim that D&D (any iteration) is an ideal ruleset for a turn-based cRPG, but if they insist on using it because they need the brand to help sell their game, I'd still greatly prefer a turn-based implementation.
You may beg to differ. I really don't give the slightest fuck. There have been fully turn-based cRPGs developed using iterations of the D&D ruleset, many of which are respected around the Codex.
You may beg to differ. I really don't give the slightest fuck. There have been fully turn-based cRPGs developed using iterations of the D&D ruleset, many of which are respected around the Codex.
thats because youa re dumb.
However, on modt of your other points, you're right. It makes no sense to argue that another combat system would harm Tides of Numenera because the original had shitty combat. Why must the new one have shitty combat too?
FeelTheRads
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2008
- Messages
- 13,716
Because combat in Torment doesn't matter so it can suck herp derp
Excidium
P. banal
Perhaps people are just being realistic. The one cashing in on Torment's fame is the last of the new RPGs that I'd expect to have good combat.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,404
I'm against the idea of torment 2 don't having combat , because it is a little tiring to read walls of text, after walls of text without something to change the flow of the game from time to time, the main flaw of torment was that sometimes you feel that the game is too much of an interactive book ( I know it is a storyfag game, but i don't see why the storyfaggnes will be ruined by an improvement to combat) . RTwP give a feeling of lack of control, the feeling of every fight becoming a clusterfuck with no much regard for formation, position, movement, allowing kiting abuse (all of those could be more of a problem of the Infinity engine games than from RTwP). Turn based could make the fights take more time but if there isn't trash mobs it is doable without the game turning it into a JA 2/Torment hybrid.
Moribund
A droglike
Don't listen to excidium, he hates combat and RPGs.
Obviously, if combat took ten times as long in TB (lolol) you could fix the pacing to whatever fucking level you want by adjusting how often you get encounters, how difficult they are etc.
However people like excidium will always be unhappy because they are not really RPG fans of any kind. If you admit to liking only a couple RPGs, and you feel bored and overwhelmed slogging through combat in most RPGs maybe you need to try some other kind of game.
Obviously, if combat took ten times as long in TB (lolol) you could fix the pacing to whatever fucking level you want by adjusting how often you get encounters, how difficult they are etc.
However people like excidium will always be unhappy because they are not really RPG fans of any kind. If you admit to liking only a couple RPGs, and you feel bored and overwhelmed slogging through combat in most RPGs maybe you need to try some other kind of game.
To attempt to spell it out for all the people who think turn-based combat is the end-all-be-all in RPGs, there's a large contingent of people who think like this:
The quality of combat in a game is not solely defined by whether it's turn-based or RTwP (or something else), but instead by a number of factors. For simplicity's sake, let's just say the factors are turn-based/RTwP and encounter design. There exists a continuum of combat quality then.
Best: Turn-based with good encounter design
Good-Medium: RTwP with good encounter design
Bad, but still playable: RTwP with bad encounter design
Almost unplayable: Turn-based with bad encounter design
This continuum comes about due mainly to the fact that RTwP can generally go quicker than turn-based, so at least if you have to fight shitty encounter after shitty encounter you're better off without turn-based combat. I suspect most of the people on the Codex (well, me at least) who are pro-RTwP in the new Torment would be perfectly happy, possibly ecstatic, if the game had good turn-based combat with good encounter design. The problem is that they don't trust that the new Torment will have good encounter design. Since so much of the focus of Torment is on the story, characters, and quests, there's a good reason to believe that excellent combat will not be the focus of the developers. And generally speaking, at least recently, when the developers don't focus on combat in an RPG, the combat turns out shitty, whether turn-based or not. Yes it's easy to say, "well they should just improve encounter design and then make it turn-based and it will be awesome," but that doesn't seem realistic. Personally, I don't think I could have gotten through PST if the only thing different about it was that it was turn-based, and it's one of my all-time favorite games. Given that they are making a new Torment, my main hope for the combat is that it's not fucking terrible, not that it's awesome.
Obviously this continuum isn't true in 100% of cases (ToEE's excellent turn-based combat system mixed with awful encounter design was somewhat acceptable, but it's the exception more than the rule). But even ToEE wasn't really a very fun game.
The quality of combat in a game is not solely defined by whether it's turn-based or RTwP (or something else), but instead by a number of factors. For simplicity's sake, let's just say the factors are turn-based/RTwP and encounter design. There exists a continuum of combat quality then.
Best: Turn-based with good encounter design
Good-Medium: RTwP with good encounter design
Bad, but still playable: RTwP with bad encounter design
Almost unplayable: Turn-based with bad encounter design
This continuum comes about due mainly to the fact that RTwP can generally go quicker than turn-based, so at least if you have to fight shitty encounter after shitty encounter you're better off without turn-based combat. I suspect most of the people on the Codex (well, me at least) who are pro-RTwP in the new Torment would be perfectly happy, possibly ecstatic, if the game had good turn-based combat with good encounter design. The problem is that they don't trust that the new Torment will have good encounter design. Since so much of the focus of Torment is on the story, characters, and quests, there's a good reason to believe that excellent combat will not be the focus of the developers. And generally speaking, at least recently, when the developers don't focus on combat in an RPG, the combat turns out shitty, whether turn-based or not. Yes it's easy to say, "well they should just improve encounter design and then make it turn-based and it will be awesome," but that doesn't seem realistic. Personally, I don't think I could have gotten through PST if the only thing different about it was that it was turn-based, and it's one of my all-time favorite games. Given that they are making a new Torment, my main hope for the combat is that it's not fucking terrible, not that it's awesome.
Obviously this continuum isn't true in 100% of cases (ToEE's excellent turn-based combat system mixed with awful encounter design was somewhat acceptable, but it's the exception more than the rule). But even ToEE wasn't really a very fun game.
It's tough to argue with such a well-reasoned counterargument.
Where cRPGs are concerned, I believe rulesets custom-made for the game in question tend to much work better and more smoothly than adaptations of an existing tabletop ruleset... in theory. The custom-designed ruleset has to not suck, obviously. You may recall that I'm also a tabletop gamer. We had that LARP argument, which you won easily, because I'm not enough of a dork to be a supreme wizard with a seat on an international LARP council.
Making a whole bunch of assumptions, more like, but then again the exact thread of this conversation became extremely muddled somewhere along the way. My position is simply this: Turn-based is generally better than RTwP in party-based cRPGs, if it's implemented properly and if the combat is actually satisfying to begin with. If the combat is shitty and the system is clunky as fuck, then sure, RTwP may serve to help the shit flow by faster.
Excidium
P. banal
Oh yeah, redesign THE WHOLE COMBAT IN THE GAME and it will be a lot better. Except he was saying to just make it TB instead of RT and be done with it.
You are fucking retarded
Agree 100%.
Blaine said:
As is proved by the fact that most great RPGs have custom rulesets and most bad RPGs have pre-designed rulesets... Oh, wait, no, the reverse is often true, right.
Me too, what's your point?
Mine is that pre-designed systems that have gone through multiple iterations designed for specific types of gameplay by system designers will always outclass some random programmer-turned-designer's (i.e. most system designers in RPGs) home-brew system, especially since the public testing of proven P&P systems is much more diverse than the homebrew system will recieve before walking out of the door on its crooked ass.
You should know your Codex memes by now, brutha.
He's a retarded shitposter/alt just ignore him like the rest of us do.
Finally, a counterargument with some meat to it.
I suppose the disconnect in this thread is that everyone else assumes (by no means unreasonably; I agree with you entirely) that the combat will be shitty, whereas I've been operating under no such assumption.
It's true—I failed to write a doctoral thesis outlining each and every one of the game's shortcomings before expressing an opinion on one of them.
If only everyone were as intelligent and sophisticated as Excidium.
Moribund
A droglike
Nope, that's your retarded interpretation Excidium. Any big change you'd make you'd have to rebalance a little but it's 1/100th the work of implementing proper turn based DnD in the first place. Why do you think they do rtwp? It's easier.
It's also completely retarded to say TB is slower. What is this 2001? Where's the "I'm too fucking busy for this nerdy video game shit bro" guy?
Kiting in rtwp is the most boring fucking thing in history and shit those combats took forever. Never happened in TOEE that you drug out forever against 3 guys though there were some ridiculous 40+ fights that took a while. Still not as long as IE games, though.
You just show you never played any of these fucking games, just shit games for posers/newfags.
It's also completely retarded to say TB is slower. What is this 2001? Where's the "I'm too fucking busy for this nerdy video game shit bro" guy?
Kiting in rtwp is the most boring fucking thing in history and shit those combats took forever. Never happened in TOEE that you drug out forever against 3 guys though there were some ridiculous 40+ fights that took a while. Still not as long as IE games, though.
You just show you never played any of these fucking games, just shit games for posers/newfags.
You're confusing cause and effect. I'd posit that talented cRPG developers have tended to use preexisting tabletop rulesets for a variety of reasons not necessarily related to suitability, and that they've historically been the ones who could afford the licenses for such systems. Fallout is a great example of what I mean when I say that custom-designed systems are generally superior. Black Isle originally planned to use GURPS (a tabletop ruleset I like and have used extensively) for Fallout, but they didn't, and instead developed SPECIAL. SPECIAL was by no means perfect (useless Perks, dump stats, et cetera), but it worked extremely well. If not for shitty party member AI, it would have been nigh-perfect for the setting.
Excidium
P. banal
Go play some RPGs and come back so we can actually take your opinion seriously. Special is fucking terrible. Reading that it is a superior alternative to GURPS will probably cause Grunker to have an aneurysm.
Kirtai
Augur
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2012
- Messages
- 1,124
On the other hand, just because a ruleset is great for P&P games doesn't mean it's any use for cRPGs. Different requirements and constraints after all.
Incidentally, isn't PS:T notable for how thoroughly it violated D&D rules despite supposedly being a D&D game? And I don't mean combat rules here.
SPECIAL worked well? Are you joking? It is one of the most horrendous video game RPG systems devised. It is shallow, hardly even that customizable for an open system, and worked dubiously in the games, given the number of useless shit. Stats, abilities and skills that do nothing and are worthless compared to their cousins. SPECIAL is one of the worst parts of Fallout, and an excellent demonstration of what happens when you dump proven mechanics for programmer homebrew. The single redeeming objects of the system are the trait and perk-system, a shallow iteration of their GURPS counterpart.
Excidium said:
I believe I popped a vein or too, yes.
I can still recite passages from the GURPS 3E core rulebooks, know them like the back of my hand, and ran actual campaigns played by real, flesh-and-blood fat people, dorks and ugly chicks. It's an excellent ruleset, but implementing it properly into a cRPG? I'll believe it when I see it, but unfortunately, we probably never will.
How about Betrayal at Krondor? Admittedly, it is difficult to find examples of good turn-based cRPGs in which the developers didn't use a tabletop ruleset.
Fighting out a hard-rule (i.e. stick completely to RAW) battle on a battle-mat in my living room and fighting in Knights of the Chalice have no differences whatsoever, except one is in a digital environment. There is litterally no difference beyond that.
The fact that combat rules in P&P somehow differ from the simulation in a computer game is a made-up concept, stemming from shitty implementation in some video games. Like combat in Torment.
You must be confused. Beyond a few stat-checks, Torment has nothing BUT combat-rules implemented from D&D. While the implementation is actually OK, the RT system used for combat and all the superflous shit introduced to IE-combat breaks the combat in half. AD&D is a pretty shitty system, but it's still superior to most homebrewed systems in cRPGs.
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