Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Delayed turns - They need more love

And, why should delay not allow it?

If the order is reversed, let one wait... and you can do it?
You need to give a bit more details or an example of such a happening where the current system is insufficient.
And "I might die, so I want a position in the middle to zip potions, but a little later than the start to see how much HP I will loose" is not an appropriate answer

As I mentionned before, I reaaally have a hard time envisioning the feature, considering the case where you manually choose your position in the queue, being anything other than "cheating" during a fight. UNLESS the IA is able to also delay their turn... Which would lead to insanely boring situations were everyone delay their turns until full AP.

I think it should not be manual, but automatic, calculated on the characters stats. Maybe a very fast character could virtually choose when he strikes, because each time you delay their turn, their position in the queue move just after the next one in line ( A B C becoming B A C and then B C A ). On the other hand a slow or encumbered character would be put further away in the queue, down to last position before the next turn. That would maybe makes sense for, say, a healer, when suddenly the speed stat becomes way more interesting, especially considering there may be cooldowns on their heals ( free bridge to the "cooldowns and AP are redundant" discussion ). On the other hand, it may not be a good thing for a healer to put too much points into the Speed stat, so, decisions, decisions !

At the end of the day, I think this would somehow mimic how turns work in Heroes of Might and Magic. I'm don't quite remember, though.

In HoMM creatures have a place in the turn order based on their initiative and intiative modifiers. Then, they can wait to act after every one else, or pass to gain defensive bonuses. So that's basically how initiative works right now in D:OS, except there is no "pass to buff defense" option.

I fully agree with OP. Delaying your action should allow that character to choose exactly where he wants to act, but this choice would become permanent. Meaning your position in the turn order would remain in this position for all future rounds.
Going first, then delaying to the the end of this round then going first again in next round doesn't make any sense and would seem op.

My best example is this:

Mage with a kill everything fireball, and a melee warrior want to attack a room full of orcs, but theres a door that needs to be opened first.
In 'real life' those two characters would say, "Hey warrior, go open that door then I'll launch my fireball in there".

Now in this game they could still have that plan, but then combat starts and the mage is first in the initiative order. Well he can't launch his fireball cause the door is closed. So what can he do? He SHOULD be able to say to the warrior "I'll just wait a sec till you go open the door." But he can't, so he chooses to delay.

The warrior then goes and opens the door and says "Launch it now!".
Mage replies, "Oh I can't, I had to act before you, I have to wait till all the orcs get a chance to go first, but then I can launch 2 fireballs!"
Warrior says "WTF are you talking abo....", as he gets mauled by all the orcs coming out of the room.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I think initiative should be more of a 'combat awareness' skill. Characters with high initiative should be better at reading and reacting to whats going on, deciding when and how to act.

But... that's the current situation! (well, when the next round depends on initiative of course, but I notice it's usually my team)
And you can't really use 2 fireballs in a row... you know, cooldown and all .
So far I've also found my 2 Melee characters always go before the mages, even if their initiative is the same (of course Initiative IS bugged here in the beta).

The whole point of having a "manual delay system" is giving players agency. It's not cheating simply because games that use this system are balanced around the idea of a flexible initiative queue. Players ARE SUPPOSED to take advantage of smart sequences of actions: if they don't, they lose. End of the story. The games I mentioned before are great tactical games precisely for this reason: they reward players for being smart in a way that games with static initiative (or semi-static) can't.
As for Heroes games, see below.

Details? Here they are: D:OS already features many interesting skill combos (or skill+environment combos). 2 Bitter cold spells freeze your enemy, a wet mob is more vulnerable to a lightning spell, you can throw a barrel near an enemy and then send both to Mars with a fire spell, etc... Delaying your turn till the end of the round doesn't allow you to take full advantage of all these combos: if one or more mobs have the opportunity to move before you complete a combo, odds are that they screw your plan.



As much as I love HoM&M games, they are not a good example here. They are great games when it comes to the strategic layer, but tactically speaking are just average. You can't simply compare their combat system to Jagged Alliance's or ToEE's.

I think I get your point, your examples are basic yet exact.
Actually my issue with what you're describing probably lies in the quote I made from you : D:OS combat system hasn't been balanced around the delay turn function. In fact, it didn't make it into the game until quite a few builds in. I believe it was added by popular request.

So, while your examples are coherent and I can perfectly imagine a lot of situations where you'd want to strategically move an oil barrel in order to set it ablaze with your second character, I still think that it would on the other hand give too much flexibility to the players. Essentially what I called "cheating" earlier.

It all boils down to that : since the game didn't include Delay Turn from the start, and the Larians© aren't going to rebalance the game around the feature ( unless specified otherwise ), how would giving too much flexibility to Delay Turn actually impact the game? Wouldn't it make it too easy than it already is right now ? ( altough I'm quite confident future fights are going to be much, much harder. )

Similar why I said cheating.
I agree allowing a perfect setup of your PC's "place barrel, shoot barrel, lightning barrel" to be very nice for said player, but a bit overpowered.

War means respond to changing circumstances, not be able to allow to just set everything to your hand as you want.

My opinion...

Well, balancing passes aren't that expensive and/or time consuming. It's hardly a coincidence that they are relegated at the end of the development circle. So, I'm still hopping.



Characters speed is still a factor in the games I mentioned. You are allowed to move only backward in the initiative queue. Never forward. So you must adapt to the situation anyway.

Wouldn't say it's because it's not expensive or time-consuming. It's just that in the end, when all systems are in, only then you can look at balancing.
Little hard to look at the balancing of spells for example if their area effects aren't coded in, or if powers are not too powerful if the AI happily lets you bash in their heads making any proper difficulty balancing... difficult

I just want to put out the reminder each turn in combat is, what.. a handful of seconds? And it's the same amount of time whether it's a turn with two characters taking action or twenty-five.

So, while one character may be fast enough to act before another character within that brief slice of time, that doesn't mean they're so fast that they can choose precisely when they want to act down to the fraction of a second. These are not superheroes like the Flash who see everyone moving in slow motion. And so it's reasonable to suggest that just the act of intentionally delaying your action can cause crucial moments to slip by that you lose the ability to interrupt. Again, these turns represent seconds, not minutes or hours.

Blackguards has a delay option and using it shifts that character to the end of the list. It allows for some meaningful tactical choices without being overpowered. Point is, the current setup is far from useless, and probably more realistic (and easier to balance) than the alternative.