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

It's @@@ weird to me as someone who still has goldbox games to see people referring to Turn Based as the new shiny thing, with RTwP as the old gonard stuff as the first CRPGs I played were all turned based. The Goldbox Games, Ultima Games, Fallout 2. What was old is new again. I do understand the turn based mechanics have changed a lot and the technology is a lot more advanced and that part of this is due to the success of newer TTRPGs which are turned based.

What is old is new again.

Back To The Future...

That's because it isn't. It's a deceptive argument more than anything.

Pillars of Eternity was launched around the same time Original Sin was launched. and the turn-based rpg sold less than the real-time rpg.

I've been following their game from the moment it was announced and will be backing their KS. They have said very clearly that they don't see TB as being superior or better than RTwP, but for their vision for their game and based on their personal preference, they have decided on TB over RTwP. So there is no objective argument there in favor of TB over RTwP.

I am fine with people who say TB is just their personal preference. We all can have preferences, and mine is for RTwP.

But I am not going to sit by and allow someone to claim, as though a fact, that TB is inherently better than or superior to RTwP or that TB is what is "appropriate" for a game because tabletop something something. That is what I consider to be complete BS nonsense.

Yeah, I will possibly back the game too because of the d&D rule's implementation, adding jump and fly,... amongst other things.

I am ok with both, tb and RTwP played very good games either way. My vote was to use both like in POE2, but we already know that, as stated, it is not going to be the case.
I just wonder how you can make rules like bonus action, ready action, reactions, etc in an RTwP game, and if they will implement those into the game, if the game is in RTwP.
https://crobi.github.io/dnd5e-quickref/preview/quickref.html
And that video shows that this studio deemed that it is doable in TB. Good to know from experience.

Why is this repeated over and over like it's a mystery of the universe?
If the game wants a reaction from the player, the game will just pause and prompt the player for actions. This has existed for decades.
Want to ready your weapon? Just click the weapon icon.
Want to ready your shield? Just click the shield icon.
Want to jump on top of that wall? Just use that toggleable section of the wall which developers have prepared for you, the game makes an acrobatics check or dexterity check and the character is up on that wall.

There is no super mystery about any of this.

Yeah, because four-five characters with a ready, a bonus and a reaction per turn (turns are usually 6 seconds) pausing for prompt every time ( 5x3=15 automatic pauses in 6 seconds to issue orders) are not going to slow an RTwP combat game at all, no sir...

ed: And let us not talk about how you could manage the ·"help" action, but you can do it, but you will have to pause every few seconds because you do not know exactly the initiative order in RT. I wonder if they could make this into a real combat situation without making it very slow.

Allow me to rephrase my previous question: how can you make this mechanics, not possible, but manageable in RTwP?
I am afraid they do not, so we could lose these fun mechanics if the game is not TB.

Those pauses can be turned off if you don't want to deal with them. It's as simple as turning off the a.i. for the party members.
If the player wants a particular character to ready something, just enable the checkboxs for it.
If the player wants to be prompted 6 times for reactions, then the player must deal with the fact that the game slows down a bit. This is something voluntary.
If not? Then just turn off reactions for 4 or 5 of them.


There it is again. The defeatist mindset.
You will get much farther if you think constructively and use your creativity.

If a heavy lever needs to be pulled and you want "help", just select two characters, move them to the lever, and the game will calculate whatever Advantage check, or whatever STR check is needed.

Well, if you turn them off it is the same as if you do not have them, so what is the point if you can have a game mode that you can have all of them without disadvantages?
Sounds like "You have to do this way no matter what because I like it, even if it would be easily attainable with a different game mode" Ockam´s razor, pal.

Oh, I can think creatively many ways to do it, but I am afraid the developers do not have that luxury, having time and budget constraints, so I am afraid they simply do not use this fun features.

The"help" action? you can do it that way but you do not know the exact initiative order in RT usually so it could be troublesome.

This is false. For example I could turn it off for 5 out of 6 characters if I preferred to have the combat run more smoothly.

Secondly, if you were a creative and constructive person, you could even suggest the reactions are part of the NPC's Battle a.i.


If Larian does not allow its developers to be creative and constructive, then perhaps it's a studio that does not deserve the Baldur's Gate 3 license.

Nope, I am a realistic person. Ideas are good. You can have lots of them, abstract ideas, everybody. Go for infinity and beyond! eternity is your limit
but later you have to implement them. I am pretty sure there are full of amazing ideas in Larian. They always came up with something new in their games, sometimes they critical hit, sometimes they get a natural one.

An architect ( some of them are real penpal general armchairs) can come to you with this incredible idea of a building in the shape of the Igdrassyl tree, with spires and transparent lifts in the exterior running in horizontal and vertical; multiple penhouses and restaurants in the treetop. All celebrating the fusion of human and nature. He states that you can do it with proper time and materials and asks you to crunch the numbers for that._(JFTR, that design would be highly inadvisable due to thousands of practical problems that you would encounter day-to-day. The people that hired Santiago Calatrava and guys like him maybe do not care, but usually, it is not the case)

Well, The fact that it is possible to do it does not mean that you can (or should) do it.


Let us remember the map-travelling feature in ME:Andromeda. It was amazing the detail of every planet you move to, and the animation and movement of the travel was well made, but, every time you have to move from point A to point B you had like 45 seconds of inescapable animation (amazing animation, but that were 45 seconds delay every time you left a planet), and you have to scan every planet in the 14 systems of the galaxy of andromeda.
So, due to negative feedback, they have to make an emergency patch to allow instantaneous space travel. To the point that nobody ever uses that feature because as every veteran in every game ever always skips things that are pure time-eaters, and because it was very annoying the wait for starters.

Those were days of work lost that could be used elsewhere due to lack of playtesting, and an example of how a cool feature badly implemented usually annoy players because causes too much time consuming, requires too many steps to do a simple action or has a messy UI; Those are things that are avoided in game creation. Because they could be amazing, but nobody is going to use it due to the way we made them.

Ed: So, I think your approach is doable, but it would be likely to be cut before game launch if it is indeed made like this due to negative feedback of the playtesters.

These two situations are not really comparable.
The a.i. feature in BG2 was never in the way for anyone, people who wanted to manually issue orders for all 6 characters were free to do that. And people who wanted 1 to 5 of the characters to be a.i. assisted where free to do that. It was a flexible system that let everybody toggle their preferences on the fly.

I'm sure there were naysayers back in the day who insisted the first Baldur's gate games should have been turn based.
But the millions of sales, and fans world wide have proven you wrong, d&d HAVE been made real-time with great success.

Clockwork, some of the things you say have a certain logic, mistaken logic but at least makes sense, but you really ruin everything with your insistence in discredit in a personal way, people with a different opinion, it only diminishes your points. It is uncalled for and frankly, bothersome.

Ai off does not affect the rules of the game, its like sound of or hide helmets. Also does not cause annoyance or bugs, be it on or off (At least in the unmodded game). If you say that the ME: A comparison does not stand, yours is... well...

Honestly this is not bg2, this is not the studio who made bg2. Thats a good thing. And if you see all the things this studio has done to get to where they are literally they were rock bottom with no money; creativity is what landed them BG3. If you dont like larian, or turn based dont play dnd, dont play any games with said mechanic. Like why not just go play a rtwp game or go stick around on bg2 ? People are not going to build games for nostalgic reasons just to make a quick buck or to please just one small niche community.

Secondly its based on 5e for a reason which got wotc millions of new players which you can guarantee would not bother with bg2.....ever. so if you honestly think theyre going to cater to the small steam community that want rtwp which i might add you might as well take a turn all that pausing.....

Honestly clockwork you say things that dont take into account that you know little how developers work, money, time, marketing, sacrifice and how wotc works in general with who they decide to hire and the audience they are trying to reach. Those players playing 5e are going to want a video game and it will not be bg2 with updated graphics. You also have to take into account stadia. Every stadia commercial host bg3 trailer either at the beginning or end of their trailer. This means this is a bigger breakthrough for larian because wotc + stadia debut. That means its designed to have multiplayer online so ppl can play a TT dnd video game online with their friends as if they are playing 5e at the table at a friends house.

That being said "turning off the pause" or having it on makes zero sense to implement on this type of platform. People cant let personal tastes whether nostalgic or otherwise cloud their judgement or accusing a studio of not being worthy of a game when YOU have no idea what wotc wants or how to develop a game yourself. Not to mention the sacrifices made. Now that they have backers and more money they can do more, before they didnt. The mistakes in Os2 were many but updates cost money and man power to fix so unfortunately these things went unfinished because of money. Thats not the case here. They are not going to make a game like the hundreds of others out there that didnt even sell well except to people in a niche group and still be able to appeal to 5e TT players, stadia players and gamers. Its ridiculous that you arent thinking this big and youre not incorporating all the factors. Its not bout pleasing people from years ago which the gaming community was even smaller then and even smaller for rpg games. Its about innovation and advancement with 5e, gaming, ai programing and all those things incorporate backers aswell as the audience wizards is going for.

I dont say any of this for debating but rather people have to think critically about things before being harsh just because you think you know better or what it takes to make a game. You can be cheap and recreate the past which will be extremely cheap and not as rewarding or you can be innovative in the present. Vic has been critically thinking on every post he makes and considers both styles and how they would work mechanically on the platforms this game will release on. Instead of just mouthing off "rtwp takes skill", "tb is for noobs", etc.Then theres the statement of just give the option to turn off the pause button but i HAVE NEVER seen one player play without it. No point in having it in the setup theyre going for. Im not saying any of this in defense of xyz but i am saying these convos wouldnt be happening if people didnt try to act like the past is better and applies to now or that the entire dnd community from adnd1e to 5e should conform to people who love bg2 from ages ago. I love bg2, sarevok for days but id rather see BG move forward from that mechanic and i dont care if its Tb or something we domt even expect. I want TT in my dnd game not an updated bg2 game from way back in the day. I dont want to descend into avernus with same old nostalgic musing just cause it sells to a niche community, i want to be impressed by fresh thinking. Obviously wotc chose them for that. So you just have to deal with it or dont play.

Your community is even smaller than the real-time RPG community.
Original Sin II sales don't even hold a candle to the Baldur's Gate games.
Even new entries like Pillars of Eternity outsold Original Sin.

First, realise just how small you are before you talk like this towards others.
It's you who is the tiny minority niche, trying to hijack a larger franchise and destroying it.

I'm pretty sure the game has been decided as a TBS a long time ago. The didnt wanna say it because they'd rather show it.

Here's why:

1. Sven mentioned an exampe, during a fight you can set a chair on fire, pick it up and smash it on someone's head. I can see this working in a TBS pretty easily, but in RTWP? It would be a nightmare to micro this while you are getting beat up by random monsters at the same time.
2. This is gonna be a MP game from the ground up like DoS2. Do you know what 4+ people, fighting a battle at the same time, while all having a pause option would look like? Worse than a slide show for sure. You unpause, one guy pauses. He unpauses, but the 3rd guy isnt done. So he pauses amd the first one messes his thing now cos he didnt expext it. Literally unplayable, people.
3. TBS is something that is natural for dnd, it would be a lot easier to implement features that had to be cut in RTWP.
4. Juat cos itw TBS it can be vastly different than in DoS2.

Whats "my" community?

Also i never stated i was big.

I never said it outsold bg2 and i mentioned i was a fan of it but want something more akin to TT, naturally since ive from 1e onward.

To your last statmrnt what niche do i belong to as a gamer in both videogame and TT? Hope you realize we are talking about rpgs as a whole, NOT video gaming in general otherwise the whole topic is null. I thin

I think your assuming much, i never said os2 outsold other titles i simply said the style of videogames rtwp, tb, rpgs in general do not garner attention in general. Youll also find that there are far more people playing TT than you think if thats what youre talking about. And great job not addressing in the platforms i mentioned in which the mechanics you want would work. As the last sentence of my post still stands.

And btw no one besides people that want a niche whether it be tb or rtwp or RTS style like SC or WC3 will care. Those that want anything specific will be mad they didnt get what they want. You cant please everyone.

Did you play any dos at all are you just here to vent your hate? Ive played all of these rpgs and they each do something good, theres something i love about them all even ToT. Im just realistic about the situation. Where it looks like your coming from this petty community tb vs rtwp flame war. Which is the wrong way to be. I enjoyed both styles of play but the problem is as i said you and others are trying to force an opinion on others and larian just because of personal tastes.

Youve taken your stance and attitude as someone who is judging things based on community wars and have assumed im on a said when ive played and enjoyed all of these no matter their mechanics. So youve assumed wrong about me and my stance just because ive played far too many pause plays and dont want another. Anyone can understand that. Something new would be quite refreshing. Sorry you cant handle that.

Why are you here if you dont like larian? If you dont like dos? Do you even like dnd TT? I mean thats kinda what their goal is with bg3. Waste of time for you to be here just for the sake of complaining with whatever community wars people have created. Why cant you all just play rpgs and accept them for what they and be honest when something has been done a thousand times too many and want something new. Why try to be petty with ppl who want a breath of fresh no matter what mechanic that is for a Dnd videogame(being specific so my context isnt misunderstood )

Exactly

Agreed.
To be honest I do not care RTwP or TB in general, I play both types of games(D&D in TB like in Pool of radiance and TOEE was good, D&D in BG, IWD, and the other IE games was superb), but what I want is a faithful representation of D&D5e, and I think to do it in RTwP is going to cut lots of fun features of 5e, even more if you consider that the game is going to be multiplayer and in Stadia.

And to be honest I do not really care if the game does the same mechanics of their predecessor. When the fallout franchise became a 3D shooter most people got angry. I was a little skeptic too, but when I tried I had my blast with Fallout: new vegas and tons of fun.
That said, please do not make BG3 a shooter... one is enough. That tabletop conversion went well with Warhammer Vermintide, but please don't.

The guys making Solasta, a game based in D&D 5e, chose to do it that way, In TB, and are planning to include 90% of the ruleset, even the jump, and flying mechanics.

If the game is RTwP? I will bough it and play it anyway, its Larian, its Baldur´s gate, and you never have enough games based in this setting.

You know exactly what you did, and I even helped you with the quotes.Your crowd is the tiniest one in this discussion, it's your crowd that should not be pandered to.

You didn't have to hijack Baldur's Gate to achieve this. It could have been anything else.

Guess what? Baldur's Gate fans want faithful representation of Badur's Gate.