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

Show me one shred of evidence PoE2 sold poorly because it was RTwP.

Oh, and a recent interview with WotR director confirms RTwP will be the (only) combat system for the game. Thank God there's at least one studio out there that knows how to make good cRPGs.

The fact that the marketing was terrible doesn't ring a bell? Maybe it's also because the combat was weak in the first game, way behind the original TBwP. Then we have kingmaker, which is a bag of bugs and very questionable design decisions. Yet, it was profitable.

Even Obsidian added Turn based later on. And I do not need to prove that it's what the whole industry thinks, DOS 2 outsold literally every other CRPG made in years.
Pathfinder was a new IP and I fear that Wrath of the Chosen won't be as popular because even POE1 was a huge hit then. I am really excited about WOTR and I personally enjoy RTWP but the majority thinks it's too complicated.
Owlcat Games is a small Russian studio they can make their games so cheaply that it can survive with sales in the lowe 100ks, Larian with their 200-300 devs simply can't.

Adding TB did not help PoE2 sales much at all. PoE2's sales woes had very little if anything to do with RTwP and rather with a whole slew of other factors including not having co-op and not being on consoles and being pirate-themed. In the industry, big AAA games are still very much RT or RTwP. D:OS2 sold somewhere between 1.5 and 2 M copies. Relative to other niche games like PoE, that's high. Relative to mainstream RPGs like DA:I, Skyrim and Witcher 3, that is paltry. So being the highest selling game among a bunch of low-selling niche games is not a meaningful achievement at all.

TB is just a fad at present for a small segment of gamers who can't handle anything complex and want everything to be easy and dumbed-down (even while giving them the false perception that they are playing a challenging game). If those people are the extent of your audience, sure, go TB and cap your sales at 2 M. Meanwhile, Witcher 3 has crossed over 35 M units sold and recently set a record for a 4 year old game by having 100,000 people playing it on Steam alone. So RTwP fans like me will go play awesome games like Witcher 3 and ignore silly TB games like BG3. Plus, we still have the REAL Baldur's Gate games available to play too. Why bother playing a fake BG game?

it didnt help PoE sales because it came out way after the fact

In which parallel dimension is The Witcher 3 an RTWP game? The number for DOS 2 is higher it's around 3.5 million for Pc alone and BG3 will be a AA with a huge license game so sales will be even higher. DOS 2 alone was one of the highest-grossing games on Steam for 3 years! They made more money than most Action RPG more money than most Action RPGs!
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2019_top_sellers
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/winter2018bestof/
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/
Pathfinder doesn#t even appear in that list it simply didn't make enough money
So stop pretending like turn-based RPGs aren't outselling RTWP ones it is simply wrong.

Wrong. Swen himself was asked about this in an interview last year and he laughed and asked the reporter where they were getting their numbers from because Larian did not make anywhere near that kind of money or sell that many copies of D:OS2. Then he went on to confirm that sales (at that time) were a little over 1.5M, so I am extrapolating that to about 2M now. To compare D:OS2 to major AAA ARPGs is downright laughable but feel free to keep at it. It only flies on this forum.

Well, if it becomes a real-time gameplay, then there should be a reasonable game flow or at least in the options it is scalable for the game type.

I like it when I have long real-time battles like an old school MMORPG.

So I get continuous damage, but still my HP bar does not jump like stupid immediately to 0. Instead, you can assess the damage and, in real time, use healing spells with magic time, as it is in an MMORPG.

Likewise, enemies get slower damage and, as I said, do less to the player / group. So that the fights there are just longer, but there is still a good flow of play. So you can bring magic times in and do not have to have these stupid cooldowns on many talents.

In addition, a better different gameplay and feeling can be integrated for the individual classes.
Now that the fighting is more linear and you have time, you can also get involved in mechanics that are otherwise hardly possible.
So a barbarian can also get angry and then reduce it via styles. A shooter aims for a while and slows down the bow etc. so that it looks more like a real shooter.
Mages and healers have magic times and can also use dot spells better, or druids have heal over time, which then also works very well and is a good alternative to the direct spells of the cleric.

In addition, you can also very well incorporate AI behavior so that the group appears realistic and the NPCs appear so that they really have their own soul, will, and combat experience.

Furthermore, the worlds can also be limited directly with the strength of the mob. Because you will very quickly recognize in the course of the fight that it is better not to go here, because you had to suddenly do everything for a simple enemy in a border fortress to defeat him, but it is clear that you are still too low for this zone is and you will die ..

I am not a fan of HP ping pong, where enemies do massive damage and you only need pause buttons and drink potions. This is silly and disturbs the feeling of tanks and healers etc.
It is also unattractive when enemies die too quickly and somehow you get nothing.

Well balanced gameplay is much better there ..
Actually, the good old MMORPGs do the best.
You just have to transfer this sensibly into the single player games and not make it too heavy on action.

Above all, you could then leave it to the players via option switches how they want their fights.
Short and crisp, or longer and more manageable.

___


The situation is different with turn-based RPGs.

Here the basic concept is completely different and the gameplay is absolutely decelerated anyway.
Depending on the round of things to do, wizarding classes mostly benefit, but the dynamics draw much more from melee classes.

How do you want to convey a real feeling of rage when it can only be seen otpically through rounds, but is not conveyed through the gameplay?
If I build up anger in real time and then combat styles can be selected from certain rage levels onwards, and then I let the anger flow into actions and damage, it has a rousing and dynamic effect in real time. You can never convey that in turn-based combat, but in the end you choose such a class in order to stand out from other melee fighters.

I also like turn-based RPGs like the DOS series, so it's not ..
But if we also have real time, the break portion there should be narrowly limited to the really fat boss fights, where one intervenes here and there in the actions of the AI-controlled group members.
Although that would not be necessary even there, if you implement it sensibly and the AI ​​can be controlled well by adjustable tactics, etc.

i understand what you mean with oldschool MMOs and i long wondered why there hasnt been a CRPG that emulates oldshcool MMO raiding with RTWP combat.

That beeing said, DnD as a ruleset doesnt lend itself to that.
Maybe 5E does because it gets very high HP numbers on higher levels. But class mechanics in 5E arent very differentiated, thats because DnD is a game where an idividual plays a class, so its less important for a Sorceror and a Mage to have different Spells as it is to have different mechanics of attaining them.

Well, that appears to be the current philosophy anyway

So, then should BG3 be a block game because Minecraft outsells everything? Or there are other reasons behind a decision to choose a genre?

Free moving and turn based fights and actions like in D:OS.

Has Larian said If BG3 will be turn based or pause n go like bg1-2?

Wonder how hard it would be to have both? Maybe a mod makes all happy here ?

Nope they haven't which one we get but we know we won't get both systems.

With the caveat that I only played PnP D&D in the 1970s and 1980s, I don't think either TB or RT really capture the tabletop ideal.

To do that you would pause at the start of a combat round, wait for all actors to enter their orders ( so it works with either single or multi-player ) then run the round with all 5e reactions being offered as they occur ( with auto-pause or maybe a temporary UI button ).

It would probably be quicker than turn-based as well as overcoming its time-serialization problem, without going to full real-time. If it were possible to restrict reactions to simple one-click activation ( again, I don't know much about 5e ) then each round could complete fully in real-time, even in multi-player.


Obviously BG3 only continues the City/Setting, not the original story; and clearly it will be using modern technology, and from what little has been said, BG3 may not be just DOS with 5e rules.

Larian do seem to be spending a lot of money on the game, so I suspect they will need to appeal to a wider audience than DOS to break even, which may also indicate significant differences to their recent games.

In tabletop if you're 60ft away from an enemy and they use their turn to move 30ft towards you - then you can move 30 feet towards them and attack them on your turn. In the system you described, they would both (or neither) be able to attack.

Additionally, and perhaps my biggest gripe about the system you describe, say combat just started. I rolled max for initiative, I go first. I cast fireball at the grouped up enemies and they all get hit. In the system you describe, I cast fireball at a set spot and during the animation they get to simultaneously use their move to walk out of the AoE that they WOULD have been in on PnP.

I realize that, in regard to immersion, the entire round happens in the same 6 seconds for everyone - but that simply isn't how it plays. Nobody should know that better than a PnP veteran that has ever tried casting an AOE spell in a RTwP game.

The D&D branding itself will bring in the wider audience, regardless of the system they use. It has been polled anyway. Only 8.5% or 9.5% wouldn't play the game due to the system. Turn Based wins in polls - both in "prefer but will play regardless" AND in "won't play unless turn based"

Risky. I'll put up with TB if it's a series I'm already invested in or otherwise have a reason to be specifically interested, but if it's something that might've caught my attention and was 50/50 as to whether or not to buy it would push the consensus towards not interested. Maybe if I was coming from a D&D background I might have a different opinion.

I don't know how it is in 5e as I stopped playing PnP D&D at 3.5e, but this is not true in 3.5e D&D. You can start casting your spell at your initiative point, but your spell goes off only after your spellcasting time has elapsed which, if that spellcasting time is a full round, would be at the end of the round. So your targets can in fact move out of your AoE before the spell goes off. And, that is exactly as it should be. Maybe 5e has done away with casting time for spells, in which case that would be yet another huge negative against 5e.

@etonbears, I completely agree with how you describe a good comat system for replicating tabletop gaming. If that is what was meant by a game being "turn-based" then I would be much more favorable towards it. But TB as it is generally understood is immersion-breaking and unrealistic and completely sucks.

Turn-based is the best combat mechanic for RPG. It allow us to have total control on every aspect of the combat.
While RTWP is chaotic, counterintuitive and can easily go out of control for many players especially the newbies.

Well, that depends on how you relay your intent to the DM / videogame. If both combatants are moving to melee attack each other from 60ft apart, each with 30ft movement in a six second round, neither would know what the other intended to do, so each would simply express their intent to attack the other, and it is up to the DM / videogame to resolve the outcome.

In this case, by the end of the round, the combatants would have closed the gap to melee distance, and both would therefore attack, in initiative order. Had one combatant not decided to close the gap, then neither combatant would be in a position to melee attack, as they are still 30ft apart. Depending on the rules being followed, and how the DM / videogame choose to operate, the moving combatant unable to attack may be offered some alternative action instead, or just lose the attack for that round.

Interestingly, in the 5e strict turn order case where the same two combatants are closing to attack each other, the combatant with the higher initiative that goes first will never be able to attack, since it can only just reach the lower initiative party with a double-distance movement. The lower initiative party, however, then gets a free attack, which does not seem to be an ideal resolution.



I suppose that depends on how you view resolution of multiple actions within a bounded time. It is generally up to the DM in PnP to decide how to resolve the actions in a time period. Earlier PnP versions used 60 second bounds with action resolution suggested to be at the end, after all movement, but in initiative order. Later versions reduced the bounds to 6 seconds and removed all possibility of simultaneous actions ( no tied initiative ), to the point where 5e actually uses the notion of turns based on initiative. But ultimately, it is still up to the DM to decide how that 6 second bound is resolved because PnP was always deliberately loosely defined, with rules and interpretations chosen by the playing partners.

If I were to act as DM to encode the situation you describe above in a 5e videogame, in accordance with my suggested notions of resolution, your fireball would happen immediately, because you did not indicate movement prior to action, you have highest initiative, and 5e actions are not specified to take any time. Had you also specified movement before the spell cast, the position of the other combatants may, of course, change according to their orders/intent. To me, that would seem to be more reasonable than destroying temporal continuity, but opinions differ.



I suppose I'm trying to point out that there are multiple ways to consider and to implement the spirit of a rule-set in a medium for which they were not designed. RTwP was one way selected in the original BG to try to benefit from the videogame medium. As this thread shows, some people thought it a masterstroke, and some thought it garbage. I thought it was a decent effort, for the time, but hardly perfect.

In my view, the best attempt to give a D&D game adequate control without losing the fluidity offered by the computer medium was NWN2. The AI for non selected party members, and the ability to queue orders for multiple rounds made for an acceptable experience. It could have been better, as I sometimes still needed to pause, but learning from that experience, a modern attempt at something similar could do a good job.

Plus, of course, there are NWN2 modules that are fan-made versions of IWD, BG/ToSC, and SoA/ToB, which are fun re-runs of the originals.




Well, maybe. The estimated PnP player base is 15 million, with 10 million 5e players. Obviously, not all are also computer gamers, but there are also quite a few million computer gamers that like party-based fantasy RPGs that don't like PnP. But, unless Larian seek to offer an experience that appeals to those that prefer real-time RPGs, I doubt they can expect more than 5-10 million sales, even with the BG and D&D names. Purely speculation, of course, and ultimately the game quality and reviews will likely determine reach.

If they don't spend more in game creation and marketing for BG3 than their profits from D:OS2 they will be fine, but we really don't know what their budget calculations are; the flashes we have seen just looks high-ish budget. They definitely have not kept up their promise of frequent communication!

I have much the same view even though I do come from a D&D background. I don't hate TB, but when they are combat-heavy in content I find them difficult to like. For me, BG3 would have to be a step-up in all other aspects of play from D:OS to be worth slogging through that sort of TB-combat.