RPGWatch feature: The Great Debate: RT or TB?

[Brother None]

RPGWatch's Corwin has done a feature entitled The Great Debate in which he attempts to answer the big one; "which is better - Turn Based (TB), or Real Time (RT) combat?":<blockquote>Let me state my personal bias immediately, so there is no confusion. I much prefer TB to RT. For me, Fallout had the best RPG combat ever. However, in the interests of fairness and provoking animated discussion, I will attempt to present the strengths and weaknesses of each.

(...)

Should we be comparing table-top gaming to computer gaming, though? Is this really an apples and oranges comparison? If so, then none of the arguments for player skill vs avatar skill really apply. Does my avatar choose his spells, action, armour, etc? No, I do, using my intelligence, not his. With a TB combat system, I still make all the relevant decisions on strategy - not my character - so while I have taken out the twitch factor, I have emphasised the mental aspect of the player instead. So, does that simply mean that TB games cater more to the cerebral among us, while RT is more of a sop to the dextrous?

(...)

Turn Based, Real Time - which should it be? In the end it’s nothing more than a personal choice or preference. I don’t have fast reflexes and I enjoy thinking about what might be the best approach to a fight, so TB suits me best. Others prefer to simply jump in and blast away. Yes, I do enjoy some RT combat in certain games where it is appropriate, but I’d much rather be able to press a pause key and think about it. Unfortunately, I can’t see many true TB games being produced in the future, but there’s always Fallout 3, isn’t there?</blockquote>Link: Side Quest: The Great Debate on RPGWatch

 

[Sander]

Eh, somewhat decent, but a rather moot point really. Both are different styles, and both are to be used for different purposes. A turn-based first-person shooter or football game would be pretty silly, while a real-time PnP- and player-skill-based game should be equally silly.

 

[Wild_qwerty]

Of course there is a few other grey areas in between.

Real Time with Pause (RTwP), Think Baldurs Gate or maybe KOTOR

False Time (FT), think real time but with an adjustible speed setting, the level can be slowed to an almost turn based level. Battletech: The Cresant Hawks Revenge is a good example of this.

Of course the RTwP still has a turn based ruleset underneath that it runs on, you can still micro-manage all of your players with this.

 

[Sander]

Of course there is a few other grey areas in between.

Real Time with Pause (RTwP), Think Baldurs Gate or maybe KOTOR

Fundamentally different, we've over this several times over the past days. Read this.

False Time (FT), think real time but with an adjustible speed setting, the level can be slowed to an almost turn based level. Battletech: The Cresant Hawks Revenge is a good example of this.

...
Bullshit. This is fundamentally the opposite of turn-based. Making it 'slow real-time' doesn't actually change anything you do, it only gives you more time to think about things. But since it's real-time, there are *no turns*. Hence it's not turn-based.

Of course the RTwP still has a turn based ruleset underneath that it runs on, you can still micro-manage all of your players with this.

Again: fundamentally different.

 

[sanyok21]

Sander, in that article, they didn't address some advantages of RTwP... in Baldur's Gate, the gameplay is balanced perfectly, while only RT would make it impossible to issue enough orders by all party members, and only TB would make the fights last forever, because a fight involves too many actions which involve the flow of time-lasting effects on NPCs.
The base of the whole article is wrong because no matter what type of combat you choose, it must be in a setting which suits it's advantages and gives a good not-frustrating flow to the game. that's why TB didn't really work in Fallout Tactics.
And yes, a setting like in Fallout, which's SPECIAL is designed for TB, RTwP/RT won't work. But if you redesign the whole ruleset, you can choose any type of combat you want. that's why I don't believe in a game like Fallout Tactics which lets you choose which type of combat you want. If you want a game with that kind you choice, you need two games in one/extremely clever design.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

RTwP is the most retarded combat system in existence and I hope it ends up in the same evolutionary dead end street as the dreaded "interactive movie".

 

[Sander]

Sander, in that article, they didn't address some advantages of RTwP... in Baldur's Gate, the gameplay is balanced perfectly,

...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm sorry, did you even read the article I gave you? Or play Baldur's Gate at all? It turned into 'yawn, my characters are fighting automatically - OHSHI he's almost dead let's hit the space-ooh, crap, too late, let's re-load!' combat. Any tactical issue was gone entirely, also because you can just have your character walk out of battle at any time, including mid-strike. Everything happens at exactly the same time, making it completely unsuited to real tactical combat since you completely lose the ability to properly anticipate and react.

Anyway *what advantages*? What advantages does it have over either TB or RT combat? As explained in that very article, you lose the twitch challenge (unless you want to call 'ram that spacebar' twitch)

while only RT would make it impossible to issue enough orders by all party members,

This is the dumbest shit I've read over the past few days here.
Excepting the whole dynamic wildlife and quests deal.

Think! How in hell's name would it be any easier to issue *the exact same* orders to characters in RT than with TB? Where's the advantage? This is all involving efficient interface design, at the most, not the combat system!

nd only TB would make the fights last forever, because a fight involves too many actions which involve the flow of time-lasting effects on NPCs.

'flow of time-lasting effects on NPCS'? What the fuck?
Other than that, get a fucking clue. Most games feature a 'animation speed' slider to make combat go a lot faster. And I just explained why the giving orders deal is completely seperate from the time the combat will take, so explain to me where, exactly, turn-based would take longer?

The base of the whole article is wrong because no matter what type of combat you choose, it must be in a setting which suits it's advantages and gives a good not-frustrating flow to the game. that's why TB didn't really work in Fallout Tactics.

Bullshit. Turn-based combat worked just as well as real-time combat in Fallout: Tactics. It may not have been your specific cup of tea, but that's an entirely different issue.

And yes, a setting like in Fallout, which's SPECIAL is designed for TB, RTwP/RT won't work. But if you redesign the whole ruleset, you can choose any type of combat you want.

Don't be a retard. Fallout was always based on P&P gameplay, which is inherently turn-based. Re-inventing the ruleset so you lose that aspect means abandoning everything Fallout was based on.
Hell, let's not forget that SPECIAL is the basis of Fallout in the first place.

 

[Briosafreak]

Geez he is mad, remember he is just a

This article can help you out with another different perspective from what you are used to sanyok21, we've been through this discussion so many times here that Sander's reaction is quite understandable. Read a bit more before coming to the debate ok?

 

[Morbus]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I don't know Sander. For an unexperienced player, Baldur's Gate combat system looks fine and cool, and someone that hasn't seen better will not be able to figure out a way that BG's combat system could be better Still, even for the most unexperienced player, BG's combat system misses CLEARLY something (even though we don't know what). I mean, i don't simply dislike BG's CS. I can live with it, and I think it serves its purposes quite well (though not perfectly), but full turn based combats would definitely mean a great leap forward in BG's gameplay. Let's see what *they* choose now for Baldur's Gate 3 (don't know who, but i know somebody is developing it).

My whole point: TB is t3h thing in RPG. Period. No moronic rumbling here. RTwP serves well in most cases, and is better than real time (BY FAR), in what concerns RPG's. However, being better than RT doesn't mean RTwP is the best combat system. And despite what i've read here, i *still* think it's the only combat system capable of "pleasing" both console and decent gamers... *if* the rest of the game is good, of course.

 

[Wild_qwerty]

I admit that it depends on how well it is implemented.

RTwP in Baldurs gate was quite successful in my opinion. The player still had to interact with them characters and manage each one, two a point. Yes sure the fighters would run off and start hitting things, but if you didnt control your party and left them to the AI you end up dead real quick.

RTwP in dungeon seige was a complete waste of time. It's like playing a game on auto pilot. Except for the 3 or four times in the game where you had to mash the keyboard to drink a health potion.

I'll concede the point about slow it down just gives you more time to make your moves.

But turn based is not a perfect system either, remeber the fight in the bone yard when the regulators attacked, it took ages to play out, the time everyone had there turn before you got to run a little closer to the bad guys and then wait another 5 minites before you got to move again. It could take what seemed like forever just to get your self into a good firing position. Dont get me wrong I love the turn based combat of FO1 and FO2, but having options to have 'fast computer turns' where the computers moves happened faster would be good.

I like having the ocasional really big battle going on where you are allied with one side and fighting another, but it just plays out to slow in FO, if you could fast forward the computers turn (as an optional setting that can be adjusted to different speeds) it would make mass combats more appealing.

I'd love to be able to help defend a town from an attack by a gang of raiders where the whole town gets involved. maybe the other side of the coin where you join the raiders.

Anyway there needs to be a way where turn based can handle these large scale encounters without taking hours

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Hello,

Have to agree with Wild_qwerty on that one, and if a crucial character was killed (well useful character) you would have to start over again.

How stupid it may sound, wouldn't it be possible that everything near the player moves in TB mode but the rest in RT during a battle?
Or quick computer TB moves.

 

[sanyok21]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm sorry, did you even read the article I gave you? Or play Baldur's Gate at all? It turned into 'yawn, my characters are fighting automatically - OHSHI he's almost dead let's hit the space-ooh, crap, too late, let's re-load!' combat. Any tactical issue was gone entirely, also because you can just have your character walk out of battle at any time, including mid-strike. Everything happens at exactly the same time, making it completely unsuited to real tactical combat since you completely lose the ability to properly anticipate and react.

Anyway *what advantages*? What advantages does it have over either TB or RT combat? As explained in that very article, you lose the twitch challenge (unless you want to call 'ram that spacebar' twitch)

I've read the article when it was written, and i quickly went through it again today before posting.
And, I've played Tales Of The Sword Coast, Shadows Of Amn and Icewind Dale, so I have a "slightest" clue about the game, thank you. Surely you could find flaws in the system, but to sum it up as "ram the space bar" is just aimlessly mocking it, just like saying Football is 22 players running after a ball for 90 minutes(I won't call Football soccer, bleh.) It needed to constantly control the actions of the players, to issue orders to each party member all the time in interesting fights with powerful enemies, and it was quite challenging some of the time to finish a fight with no casualties, and improvise with different tactics a lot. if you just went "brute force" all the time, i think you missed a lot of fun in those games...

This is the dumbest shit I've read over the past few days here.
Excepting the whole dynamic wildlife and quests deal.

Think! How in hell's name would it be any easier to issue *the exact same* orders to characters in RT than with TB? Where's the advantage? This is all involving efficient interface design, at the most, not the combat system!

If you misinterpret what I'm saying, and mistake it for something else which might be absolutely illogical, you might consider it as dumb shit, can't argue with that. hmm... if i would use that strategy against my professor when I'm at an optimizations methods lecture, it might draw a whole lot of laughs... "I don't understand what you're saying!!! DUMB SHIT!!!! muahaha!!"

I was comparing RT to RTwP, and not RT to TB in that particular example, i hope it'll make sense to you now.

'flow of time-lasting effects on NPCS'? What the fuck?
Other than that, get a fucking clue. Most games feature a 'animation speed' slider to make combat go a lot faster. And I just explained why the giving orders deal is completely seperate from the time the combat will take, so explain to me where, exactly, turn-based would take longer?

I was talking about spells which you cast on terrain, like entangling spells and such, while last in example 2 minutes. to have an nice continuous experience and not agonizing, turn based won't do much of a job here.

Bullshit. Turn-based combat worked just as well as real-time combat in Fallout: Tactics. It may not have been your specific cup of tea, but that's an entirely different issue.

Oh really? well, replay Fallout Tactics in Turn Based only, NEVER switching to real time at any point. Let me know at which point you gave up ok? and if you do finish the game, you're probably immortal because we'll all be long gone.

Don't be a retard. Fallout was always based on P&P gameplay, which is inherently turn-based. Re-inventing the ruleset so you lose that aspect means abandoning everything Fallout was based on.
Hell, let's not forget that SPECIAL is the basis of Fallout in the first place.

*sigh*
I didn't say this should be done! I like fallout as it is, with it's system too. I said it COULD be done, in such a way that the results would be very good. it won't be fallout, call it AFTERMATH if i care, all i said is that you could make a successful system, no matter which one you choose.

 

[EDK]

I agree Fallout has the best RPG combat. I find most RPG's combat boring, repetitive and predictable. While combat in Fallout is quite dynamic and sometimes unpredictable thanks to the SPECIAL system perfectly blended with it's TB combat, perception for range and shooting body parts, strength for melee, agility for turns and etc it's all related to how you develop your SPECIAL. And the very chracteristic NPC combat behaviour. Sulik's no fear style, Myron's chicken style and etc.

IMO, Baldur's gate and infinity engine sucks big time. Most overrated RPG in the history besides Oblivion

I am playing a lot of World of Warcraft these days, the most successful game atm and a non first person view game... i don't understand why the freaking publisher think non first person game almost automatically means failure.

While playing WOW, i still has the interest to play Fallout 1 & 2 and has finished them for god knows how many times already. I tried to play Oblivion for a couple hours and i actually fall asleep

 

[Sander]

I've read the article when it was written, and i quickly went through it again today before posting.
And, I've played Tales Of The Sword Coast, Shadows Of Amn and Icewind Dale, so I have a "slightest" clue about the game, thank you. Surely you could find flaws in the system, but to sum it up as "ram the space bar" is just aimlessly mocking it, just like saying Football is 22 players running after a ball for 90 minutes(I won't call Football soccer, bleh.) It needed to constantly control the actions of the players, to issue orders to each party member all the time in interesting fights with powerful enemies, and it was quite challenging some of the time to finish a fight with no casualties, and improvise with different tactics a lot. if you just went "brute force" all the time, i think you missed a lot of fun in those games...

Exaggeration, of course, but a very good core of truth. Tactics almost always involved buffing up before a fight, and telling everybody to attack something until it's dead. Of course, you then do have to pause for the mage every round.

In any case, you didn't answer the question: what advantages?

If you misinterpret what I'm saying, and mistake it for something else which might be absolutely illogical, you might consider it as dumb shit, can't argue with that. hmm... if i would use that strategy against my professor when I'm at an optimizations methods lecture, it might draw a whole lot of laughs... "I don't understand what you're saying!!! DUMB SHIT!!!! muahaha!!"

I was comparing RT to RTwP, and not RT to TB in that particular example, i hope it'll make sense to you now.

That's a bit more logical, but a point that *completely* misses the intention of a real-time system. There's supposed to be a challenge in games, and as explained in that article, RTwP eliminates the twitch-based challenge (which is exactly affirmed here), and also eliminates any valid tactical challenge.

I was talking about spells which you cast on terrain, like entangling spells and such, while last in example 2 minutes. to have an nice continuous experience and not agonizing, turn based won't do much of a job here.

Because? Those spells would be measured in the amount of turns instead of the amount of seconds.
Which is, incidentally, exactly how the spells are measured in the original ruleset as well.
Go play Temple of Elemental Evil.

Besides that, this has everything to do with the design of the game and how you treat spells, not with turn-based combat inherently.

Oh really? well, replay Fallout Tactics in Turn Based only, NEVER switching to real time at any point. Let me know at which point you gave up ok? and if you do finish the game, you're probably immortal because we'll all be long gone.

...
I did that the first time it came out, pal. Okay, not entirely true, I gave up at mission 12 or so because the game itself just wasn't my cup of tea (run in, kill enemies, run out, repeat ad nauseam). It had nothing to do with the combat system, though.

Again: that may have not been *your* experience, but this doesn't make the turn-based combat either better or worse than the real-time combat.

*sigh*
I didn't say this should be done! I like fallout as it is, with it's system too. I said it COULD be done, in such a way that the results would be very good. it won't be fallout, call it AFTERMATH if i care, all i said is that you could make a successful system, no matter which one you choose.

..
That's another entirely useless point. Of course you can always create a 'fun' combat system if you do it well. That's hardly something anyone's going to argue about.

 

[radnan]

its not that realtime w/ pause can't work its just that it has to have smth tactical about it .. something your doing based on the situation - problem was in BG and especially in Obliovion if it was melee or ranged it would just be like: HELLO - SLASH - SLASH - SLASH - SLASH

 

[Augustus]

IMHO the best turn based combat is in Silent Storm (tactical game with RPG elements) and in its expansion "Silent Storm: Sentinels" from Nival Interactive. TB combat could open in front of player, much more possibilities than RT, even with active pause or order queue.

 

[wamingo]

I like having the ocasional really big battle going on where you are allied with one side and fighting another, but it just plays out to slow in FO, if you could fast forward the computers turn (as an optional setting that can be adjusted to different speeds) it would make mass combats more appealing.

And another quote often heard "just put speed up full and tb is fun"

I find these rather self defeating. I would prefer a CTB variant for many reasons, but one of them surely is that we're actually able to see the action unfold. Making a badly sped up TB system that practically "skips" the action would be the same as skipping combat altogether, or adding in a "roll 3+ to continue".

I am playing a lot of World of Warcraft these days, the most successful game atm and a non first person view game... i don't understand why the freaking publisher think non first person game almost automatically means failure.

They don't. Not since a while anyway. The 1st person "decade" is over. 3rd person games has a been in the shooter genre for a while now and players enjoy seing their characters in action.
What is less certain is the isometric or fixed bird view.

 

[sanyok21]

Sander, again, basically you're trying to simplify the combat in baldur's gate to an extent which gives an impression that you don't have to think at all, and there's not point using all the ablilities you posess. That's not true, and many times only a particular way to approach a fight would work very well, while it would fail miserably in another fight. and i didn't buff up always, that buffing up sometimes appeared to me like cheating, because it made things too simple, and i like a little challenge.

For me the advantage is that it's another combat system which i can use in a different game, which would be fun for me, and it would serve a little variation. I don't want all the games I play to be the same. I don't want Fallout to be anything but turn based, and I don't want Baldur's gate to be anything but RTwP. and i would like more games like those, like we all do i guess, and my priority is of course TB it just doesn't mean the other method should be wiped out.


about RTwP eliminating the twitch-based challenge, again, it's a different setting. in a game with twitch-based challenge like a FPS, fully pausing the game will serve no purpose(i mean total pause not bullet time). MY intention is that i'll have an interesting combat system which challenges me, and won't bore be. It didn't? so it's good enough for me, and no need to vat it.


about the time-lasting spell thingy, i didn't argue with that, that it could be implemented in TB, but it worked well there so again, good enough for me(and many others i know). Actually it was my whole point from the beginning, that you can implement everything well exactly like you want.


Ok great! That was not *mine* experience, and baldur's gate's combat wasn't your cup of tea, does this mean neither should exist? all in all, i liked both games, and i used TB in tactics some of the time(when things got rough, i remember one mission where you needed to defend a town of ghouls, and TB really helped there, though you had to wait forever for your turn all the time, and that's what i didn't like in TB in tactics, and i also wanted to see the computer's moves, so for me TB works only in a small scale fight).

"Of course you can always create a 'fun' combat system if you do it well. That's hardly something anyone's going to argue about."

again, my whole point from the beginning. just because someone likes one system much more than the other, of he believes one system has much less flaws than the other, doesn't mean all others don't have right to exist.
good day.

 

[Wooz]

It's pretty unlikely the POV in F3 will be a fixed view.

I remember you could view you character from an isometric-ish bird-eye angle in Oblivion, similar to one of the view settings in NWN2.

Since F3 is being made on the same engine, it wouldn't be too much of a leap of faith to guess it could be one way or another, implemented in F3.

 

[Sander]

Sander, again, basically you're trying to simplify the combat in baldur's gate to an extent which gives an impression that you don't have to think at all, and there's not point using all the ablilities you posess. That's not true, and many times only a particular way to approach a fight would work very well, while it would fail miserably in another fight. and i didn't buff up always, that buffing up sometimes appeared to me like cheating, because it made things too simple, and i like a little challenge.

Ehe. And you claim it's perfectly balanced anyway?
Yes, I know that there are different approaches to different fights. But those approaches are very simplistic. They really aren't in any way as tactical as Fallout or other turn-based games.

For me the advantage is that it's another combat system which i can use in a different game, which would be fun for me, and it would serve a little variation. I don't want all the games I play to be the same. I don't want Fallout to be anything but turn based, and I don't want Baldur's gate to be anything but RTwP. and i would like more games like those, like we all do i guess, and my priority is of course TB it just doesn't mean the other method should be wiped out.


about RTwP eliminating the twitch-based challenge, again, it's a different setting. in a game with twitch-based challenge like a FPS, fully pausing the game will serve no purpose(i mean total pause not bullet time). MY intention is that i'll have an interesting combat system which challenges me, and won't bore be. It didn't? so it's good enough for me, and no need to vat it.

about the time-lasting spell thingy, i didn't argue with that, that it could be implemented in TB, but it worked well there so again, good enough for me(and many others i know). Actually it was my whole point from the beginning, that you can implement everything well exactly like you want.


Ok great! That was not *mine* experience, and baldur's gate's combat wasn't your cup of tea, does this mean neither should exist? all in all, i liked both games, and i used TB in tactics some of the time(when things got rough, i remember one mission where you needed to defend a town of ghouls, and TB really helped there, though you had to wait forever for your turn all the time, and that's what i didn't like in TB in tactics, and i also wanted to see the computer's moves, so for me TB works only in a small scale fight).

"Of course you can always create a 'fun' combat system if you do it well. That's hardly something anyone's going to argue about."

again, my whole point from the beginning. just because someone likes one system much more than the other, of he believes one system has much less flaws than the other, doesn't mean all others don't have right to exist.
good day.

So, let me get this straight, you stumble into a thread discussing combat systems in RPGs on a site that generally discusses issues based on *design*, and then place some off-hand remarks about RTwP being 'fun' and 'tactically good' only to justify them with 'I like it!!!11'