Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides The Turn-Based/Real Time with Pause topic

Yes, in RTWP, for MP I always disable the pause. When you're driving one PC you shouldn't need it.

There are a lot of things, but the main thing is the flow in RTwP is realistic. If you want to make a new decision, you can pause and give the command and let it flow. It's both tactical, and realistic. TB is not realistic, because, I know this might come as a surprise to you guys, but real combat in real life would actually be real time. Nobody waits for each other to take their turns. Pausing in RTwP does not represent taking turns, it actually represents the ability to make an instant decision, just like how you would do in real combat as if you were fighting.

Your point about goblins and thrash mobs etc is not relevant to the system, it's about the encounters. So yeah, you can criticise the encounters in Baldur's Gate 1, but that doesn't make the system itself any worse. Another thing that can be criticised for the Baldur's Gate games is the AI. The AI for RTwP needs to be much more sophisticated as RTwP requires many more parameters for the AI to take into, and those parameters are constantly changing, not just once per each turn. However, there is a mod called SCS(Sword Coast Stratagems) for Baldur's Gate which makes the AI incredibly sophisticated and provides a huge amount of tactical depth to the combat, more than you can have in TB as in TB the parameters and the possibilities are limited.

So, if a mod developed by 1 person for a 20 year old game can provide this sophisticated tactical depth which makes the game replayable unlimited times, then Larian has no excuses not being able to implement that sophistication in their own AI with RTwP. I'm sure they're able to do it, but I'm not sure why we are even debating the system as we are talking about a Baldur's Gate game here, not Divinity as far as I know. Larian has the ability to implement any combat system, just because they have done TB for some Divinity games doesn't mean their skills are limited to TB only.

Just found this forum, very excited, wanted to jump into the first ragin' debate and give my 2 shekels..


From a very, very general perspective, and I mean after just watching a few second's worth of footage of the 2 systems... this should be fairly simple I'd think. This is Baldur's Gate... it's gotta be RTWP, doesn't it?

Baldurs Gate is just not a game in which once combat begins, your characters are standing still, doing.. 'animations'... while waiting for their turn. It's just not part of it's identity. It's not part of it's design.

I get that this is a fundamental characteristic of Turn Based combat and an identifying feature of what that style of combat is and what it looks like (and I fully get that building your game around that system is a legit and successful style of game design). But the pace of BG was never that segmented. It is intense and punishing because of how that Space Bar effects everything. It ushered PnP tabletop into the digital age where you no longer have to wait. It transformed the state of computer RPG's forever.

If Larian agreed to take the reigns of an epic franchise like this, and they are not planning on totally changing something that central to the franchise's identity, then I honestly can't imagine this is even a question for them.


Again, so excited to be here! Thanks Larian and Good Luck!!!

Ill apologize for replying to everyone but theres a lot ot unpack here.

Kanisatha:
Sure it is buddy, and you obviously know what tactical means and dont just use that word to discribe "thing i like".
Nobody discribes Kingmaker as a tactical game. While OS2 is getting a spinoff thats a spiritual successor to THE tactical combat game series (xcom).
Summoning 3D6 Dire ponies truly is the pinnacle of squad tactics.

Try2Handing:
there was a comma missing. Its a flaw with RTWP to amplify the problem. Caster supremacy is a fundamental flaw in DnD since ADnD.
Only 4E didnt have it and grognards didnt like it as a result.
On kiting: kiting is a stupid mechanic, its been stupid in MMOs and its stupid in RPGs. You cannot do it in any tabletop RPG and you cannot do it in real life, its a flaw of the RTWP system.
Baldurs gate doesnt have attack of opportuniy because attack of opportunity wasnt an official rule in 2E, it was an optional rule IIRC and was introduced in the third edition.
But from how i see it, it doesnt work well in NWN2 either, RTWP doesnt work well with AoO detection. ToEE does it better. And AoO generaly is pretty weak in DnD because you tend to get only 1 unless you pay feat tax.

So its a balance AND an RTWP problem.
What i meant with movement beeing to safe is basically the reason why kiting works: you move at the same time as the enemy, so the enemy cannot catch you, in a turn based game this wouldnt be possible. Simmilarly, you can change directions any time, so you dont have to commit to positioning. Making it inhernetly less tactical.

On trash mobs:
No such thing in a well designed turn based game. There isnt a single trash fight in OS2 or in Xcom, or in Final Fantasy tactics. There were trash fights in ToEE because the game was made with a specific DnD module in mind.

On What you consider tactical: And all of those things you mention that you can do in RTWP; you can also do in turn based. Meanwhile in RTWP you cannot manipulate the turn order, you cannot effectiveley block movement, you cannot do things as throw items form your inventory, you cannot do off-turn actions and laying traps for your enemies in such a way.
Basiclaly Turn based can do everything RTWP can do, but also more.

On your last paragraph: you discribe artificial difficulty, thats not tactical. And other than what you discribe as the "pace" of RTWP, those things can be done by turn based. Immediate reaction is not a good thing, you can have it as your opinion that it is, but as far as im concerned, what makes chess tactical is the part that where you make a mistake, your opponent takes your pawn.
What would not be tactical is if you make a mistake, your opponent moves your pawn and you go "oh nono, i didnt mean to do that" and just redo your turn.

Ioudent
Your entire point seems to be that Turn based doesnt do multiplayer well which has been disproven by OS 1 , OS2 and of course countless other games that do this combination and do it well. Im pretty sure multiplayer with turn based combat is FAR more popular than RTWP. Peresistant servers dont do RTWP so the only kinds of RTWP MP i see is Baldurs gate and Icewind dale aswell as the NWN campaigns.
Meanwhile the entire 4X genre lives off turn based multiplayer, OS1 and 2 not even to speak of the insane ammount of turn based japanese games that feature multiplayer.
If anyhting, RTWP is considered a hassle for multiplayer and is turned off in almost all cases where more than 2 people are involved.
And you admit it yourself. You turn it off in multiplayer.
So realy you are advocating for Real time, which is a different beast alltogether.

On AI:
you dont know what you are talking about, simple as that.
RTWP AI can constantly react, the only thing "Complicated" about this is that the AI constantly has to check states. This is more taxing on your CPU but it doesnt make the AI "smarter".
A turn based AI needs to take potentail turn of the enemy into consideration rather than only react to current states. Which is not something AI usually does. Other than that, there is no difference.

kasapnecmi
RTWP is 1.) not realistic and 2.) if it were, realism is not what makes a good combat system.
Immediate perfect reaction of every combatant is not realistic.
Pausing in RTWP doesnt simulate a real life combat situation, it simulates a perfect coordination and perfect reaction of all combatants. Removing any risk taking at all.
Meanwhile, turn based simulates a real time combat by having initiative, by having actors commit to an action and by having plans go wrong.
Both of these things are mechanical abstractions, neither is realistic. If you want realistic, play Mount and Blade or some other HEMA simulator.

Trash mobs: you are flipfloping. On one hand RTWP is good because it makes dealing with trash mobs easier... but then you dont need trah mobs. Yeah exactly, you dont need trash mobs, and thats why you dont need RTWP. you are making my point for me.

Artagel
dont know what to tell you mate. No. The infinity engine beeing RTWP was just something that happened more on accident than anyhting else.
I get that you like it more, but dont make it sound like some grand revelation, it was a thing that happened because of circumstance and nothing more.

RTwP is not just better for thrash mobs, it's better for all combat. It provides more tactical depth in addition to realistic flow for sophisticated encounters. Stating the same things over and over again doesn't make your arguments more valid btw, but feel free to keep trying.

Ok.
Funny how i explained exactly why RTWP is not what you discribe it to be.
While you keep repeating that it is the best combat system (for all combat!) without explaining yourself at all.

Since when is pre-buffing then right-clicking the enemy once considered tactical depth?

We all know what he is, so don't keep feeding him. He's the classic know-nothing, loud-mouth, blowhard who thinks throwing out a wall of asinine nonsense will impress people.

still waiting for those actual arguments

This point is not very relevant but how can you be sure that you can't "kite" in real life? You tried doing it before?


Not sure what you mean by you tend to get only 1, but have you played PoE2? That game does AoO decently, IMO.


You cannot manipulate turn order because.... RTWP is not TB? Though, Pathfinder: Kingmaker does have an initiative order system. It wasn't very good, apparently, when I last played it, and I didn't play it for long, either, so I can't say much, but I think the possibility of something akin to a "turn order" can be implemented in RTWP. That said, this is simply an inherent feature of TB, nothing more, nothing less.

Not sure what you mean by "effectively block movement". But you sure can do things like throw items from your inventory and set traps in BG games during combat.


Umm, no. That's why I said "the real problem is AI". "Real", as in, it's a separate issue, although it is related to the overall tactical depth of the combat. Combat mechanics won't mean much if the AI is too primitive.


"Those things can be done"? What, exactly, can be done by TB? You're saying TB can produce exactly the same kind of feel as RTWP? So you can play a TB game but feel like you're playing a RTWP one?


Quite, but what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that RTWP system is inherently a more forgiving system? If so, I won't try to convince you otherwise, since it's a matter of opinion. To me, how tactical a game's combat is is indicated by two things:

1) How much there is in the game for the player to learn, and
2) As you learn and gain deeper understanding of game mechanics, when you actually apply all that knowledge, the combat consistently gets more sophisticated, exciting, and rewarding.

That is it. How much you have to "commit" doesn't really play any role here. If anything, it measures how "punishing" the combat is, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how "tactical" it is. You like your game punishing? Fair enough. You can think that a TB system is more "punishing" by nature, sure, but if you claim a RTWP game cannot be punishing, that is just ignorant.

At this point, it's quite clear to me that the key factor that defines "tactical" for you is "whether you have to pay for your mistakes or not, and how much". You've been speaking as if in a RTWP game it's impossible to make mistakes, that there's little to no punishment, that plans can't go wrong, that there is no "committing to a plan", and that you can undo every single move. Most of your reasoning so far hinges on these points. This is flat out nonsense, to put it politely. You can't have played any decent RTWP game for any significant length of time and seriously say something like this. I'm tempted to ask what RTWP games you have actually played, on what difficulty, and how many times, and so on, but... nevermind.


Based on your reasoning so far, what you're really saying is: you can do TB things in a TB game. Which is about the same thing as saying "you can do RTWP things in a RTWP game."


This is a plain encounter design problem. Has absolutely nothing to do with what combat system the game is running. The BG games are twenty-year-old games. Back then everything was still fairly primitive, especially in the first game. In BG, the random encounters with hobgoblins, kobolds, etc. are there mostly so that there is something for the player to do, since the wilderness maps are pretty big and there isn't much going on in them. Again, the game was very primitive. These encounters can happen repeatedly in a short time when your party wander about; they need to be easy encounters. One of the key things to keep in mind here is that these games did not try to be punishing, like modern games tend to do. The developers simply wanted there to be things for the player to do, as an attempt to keep the games from getting too monotonous. It's as simple as that. Claiming that this is a flaw of the RTWP system makes no sense.

In fact, even in modern games, if you turn the difficulty slider all the way to the left, most encounters automatically become trash mobs encounters. I'm just going to repeat myself here: this is a problem of encounter design and balancing.


I don't know. Making a generalized conclusion like "This is more taxing on your CPU but it doesnt make the AI "smarter"" without any concrete example is... not convincing. I'm sorry, but if anything, it makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. Making the computer check for various conditions is part of making AI smarter. How else do you enable AI to react to different events and scenarios? Have you looked at codes from Sword Coast Strategems for the BG games, or other mods that improve AI? Or are you saying all these mods do is slowing down the games without actually making the AI smarter? Or am I just misunderstanding you very badly?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you've never played BG2 with any significant investment into it. Which means you would have no idea what its combat is like when "properly" modded.

I enjoyed the RTwP of the bg/IWD/Poe/pathfinder series, but also the TB of DoS,Torment, etc.

In the last installment of POE2 you have the option at the start to choose Turn based or RTWP. The game is the same besides combat. So, why not both?

Say what?

A grand revelation is exactly what it was. As this is a BG3 forum, I'll assume you've played the previous BG games, but I'm not sure you realize how leading-edge the RTwP dynamic was. It almost certainly was the first system that allowed people who never played pnp tabletop DnD a chance to seamlessly experience it on the computer, in a triple A title, without any prior knowledge of the DnD game. People waited years and years for such a thing. That's not something that occurred by "accident'.

Furthermore, to say that the way in which the RTwP dynamic was designed was an accident is a massive insult to the people who created it. The programmers who interpreted the pages and pages of rulebooks and manuals into a working, real-time system in which you could use all those stats, player states, tables, etc, to define and dictate exactly what happened whenever you un-paused your game and watched the engine work? All their work was an accident? I don't think so.

I have played POE2 for few hundred hours in RTwP. Have you played POE2? I know how it likes when playing TB in POE2. Yes why not both? But i simply think that either mode may cause shortcomings or restrictions against each other.

I would venture to hypothesize, based on the divide in the community and statement by 'Raze' recently that they are primarily focused on getting back to work on the game, that any comment on something as significant as this would have been made by now if there was good news for both sides.

Perhaps somebody brought up the fact that if Obsidian can do both systems with PoE2, maybe it's worth looking into here. Again, this is only if the above is correct.

Maybe it's not?

Honestly, the lack of a release date makes it hard to frame a lot of these discussions because we don't have any place to start in terms of what we know about the game.

As I said in the poll thread, I don't see any point to making these requests here. The game has been in production since at least late 2017. Something as central to a game as its combat system and other similar core mechanics will have been among the very first things Larian decided on and set all the way back then. And I'm sure their choice was TB, based on the false "lesson" they've taken away from the sales success of D:OS2. And since then, I am sure they have also been porting over other systems directly from D:OS2, because they've been told by D:OS fans and reviewers those systems are "the best" ever created. This is why I have no doubt this game will be essentially a D:OS game (in terms of its look and feel and how it plays) but of course with a D&D coat of paint over it.

While I also believe that central gameplay elements such as the combat system were decided on a long time ago, I disagree with the notion that there's 'no point' for those who are interested in the game to express their hopes and/or wishes for the game. Pillars of Eternity 2 was initially released as a RTwP-only game and added an option to play the game in turn based mode approximately a year after its initial launch.
If BG3 releases with only one option and there's a sufficient amount of requests for the other option, I don't see why a company with Larian's capabilities (and apparently also a major budget according to recent interviews) wouldn't be able to implement such a feature.

It's going to be an extremely polarizing announcement.

I do not envy the mods here whenever that moment arrives.

Well it has been said in an interview by Swen that they are going to follow the D&D combat systems.



https://www.pcgamesn.com/baldurs-gate-3/larian-developer-interview

Keep in mind that his answer was in reply to the interviewer asking how many of D:OS2's features that'd get used in BG3. Aside from confirming that it'll be based on 5e, Swen has been reluctant to share details about BG3's system, so we still don't know if it'll be TB, RTWP, both or something completely different.

Try2Handing
Im not gonna debate wether or not kiting is a sensible combat strategy in real life. This debate has become silly enaugh
What i mean by only getting one AoO is that in most DnD editions (that have AoO) you only get one Attack of Opportunity per turn, in 3E you could take a feat that increased the ammount of AoOs by your dex modifyer, in 5E your AoO is your reaction, you only get one reaction per turn, which makes it even worse than the original rule from 3E since you cannot use your reaction to do anyhting else.

Yes turn order is an inherent feature of turn based systems, also a good one because you can play around it. It makes initiative matter more and you can deliberatley delay your turn to set up plays. Its nuance missing in other systems.

Obviously a turn based game isnt going to FEEL like RTWP, but it can emulate all of its features, theres no feature RTWP has that cannot be done in turn based.
The opposit is not true.

1) How much there is in the game for the player to learn, and
2) As you learn and gain deeper understanding of game mechanics, when you actually apply all that knowledge, the combat consistently gets more sophisticated, exciting, and rewarding.

How does that not coincide with commitment to actions?
You will need to learn what your enemy is capeable of doing on his turn, you cannot react immediatly, thus you need to know what kind of options the enemy has.
For what its worth, your definition is not what i would use to discribe what "Tactics" means.
What tactics means to me is that you have a limited ammount of options to take and have to use the correct options to beat the encounter, while you fail when you use the wrong ones.
In a game like lets say Skyrim, you have almost no options, you can hope that the enemy health bar depletes before yours does.

Im also ot saying that you have absolute controll over what happens in RTWP; the chess analogy was obviously en exagrated one. But my point about movement isnt wrong is it. And yes, i did play several old infinity engine games aswell as NWN 2 which last time i checked was RTWP too, aswell as Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition (tho the latter bareley is RTWP as the tactical camera is basically pointless)

Encounter design: you are not wrong that this is an encounter design issue, but RTWP so far has led developers to employ this kind of encounter design because it blends better.
Filler encounters are a way of padding the game, in RTWP, players find this acceptable, in turn based they dont as it gets boring.
Also XCOM is older than Baldurs gate so that argument doesnt count.

On AI: no? My point is that making the computer check every second rather than every turn doesnt make it smarter, it just does the same thing more ofthen.
Its descision making progress isnt any more advanced.
by your definition, the WoW AI would be a golden glorious god of AI design.

And yeah, if you base my opinion on RTWP games based on what mods ive installed, well idk what to tell you honestly. I like to play my games vanilla and the only mods i tend to use are those that enable a higher resolution. Modding comes for second and third playthrough and i dont have time for that with most games.