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

(smiles) Any time!

I think my primary reason for wanting RTwP over Turn Based is that in Turn Based games you HAVE to micromanage the actions of EVERY party member, EVERY round. Atleast, that is my experience with every Turn-Based game I have played. While every RTwP game I have ever played has always included an AI system so that you can generally let the party manage themselves for a couple rounds. Maybe people like micromanaging every party member, every round. I don't. If I was only micromanaging my own character, I would be more fine with Turn Based, but it looks like that is only the case in Multiplayer.

Ofcourse, as I have said before, RTwP is only as good as the A) precoded AI, and B) how thorough you make the pause settings. For example, PoE had very poor AI options, but decent default pause settings. So you can't put half-effort into writing the AI.

I don't like the chaos in RTwP. Everything happens at the same time and the things that happen lack impact, because I mostly miss it and I have to pause and check on every monster to see whose most wounded, who just got hit and the like - messages scroll like crazy and I generally dislike the lack of focus on a specific monster or PC.

In turn-based games, I love the 'it's my turn now!' feel that I get from every single creature, as it becomes the star of the game for a little while and everything is shown from its own perspective. Which is also why I love the new X-COM games as well. You can also control the pace of the battle as you like. And I like how the camera focuses on each creature each time.

In RTwP, you almost feel like a distant observer, where shit happens and no one really matters. There's chaos everywhere, yet at the same time, everything lacks impact.

Don't really know how to describe it.

Nostalgia this is the EXACT same arguments with Baldurs Gate

Great points and this is something that I've always been saying about RTWP.

My own take on this is that RTWP is not very "RPG" like. In RTWP, your speed, your reaction, your ability to be conscientious about what's happening on the battlefield and what's happening to all characters on the screen every half a second is what's focused on. In TB, that is not the case.

The characters' abilities, attributes and capabilities are what are highlighted in TB, in RTWP, it's mostly about how fast you can move and that always puts me off. Not to mention, the enemy AI in terms of reaction speed can always have an upper hand in RTWP.

This is exactly how I feel as well. RTwP let's you "speed through" easy encounters or rely on the AI and put more focus on the harder/important fights.

Something that would work for me as an alternative to the time consuming, focus demanding nature of TB would be the possibility to let the AI control my party. Then I could choose to pay less attention during smaller, easier fights (and maybe even learn new tactics from the AI's perspective) and pay full attention and control the fight during boss fights or more important fights.

An argument could be made that "easy" encounters are unnecessary filler fights and that every encounter in a game should be challenging and rewarding.

Being able to breeze through easy fights is fun once or twice - but becomes boring at some point (at least for me). So for me (who likes several RTwP games and has no clear preference) this is not a convincing argument.

TB combat does indeed take more time if you insist to use too many combatants. Some encounters are fun with a ton of enemies - and if it's just to give you the feeling of a chaotic, "swarmy" combat (hello wichts in PoE) and here RTwP has an advantage. But it is easier to design and balance challenging yet fair encounters with TB.

I think RTwP caters more to an audience that also likes action RPGs games but isn't overly fond of chess (don't take this literally) while TB is more of a puzzle. There ae exceptions of course (FTL vs. Into the Breach - one is RTwP, the other TB - both quite puzzle-ish). I like both approaches.

Yeah, I defo agree that RTwP is more appealing for people who want to focus more on story and the world, and we look for different kinds of fun in a BG game. On the other hand I feel like TB crowd is more interested in playing aforementioned chess/puzzle style combat. This is also why you will often notice RTwP folks say that TB feels like it's just there to waste/pad playtime.

We want combat as an exciting part of story, and fighting 6 rats for 5 minutes (exaggerating) sounds neither exciting not flowing with the story.

Fighting large crowds of relatively weak enemies is a great way to deliver on power fantasy or story (for example storming a keep, or fighting in a large scale skirmish). And TB sadly pads time like crazy when it comes to large fights. It also makes them feel less chaotic, which is a bad thing considering that often large scale fights are meant to be chaotic. And yes, as all things these should be used in moderation. They can feel great and refreshing in RTwP, while in TB they are almost guaranteed to get annoying fast.

Another problem with TB is that it has too much downtime when you just sit and watch AI do it's turn. Personally, it's second biggest deal breaker for me - I want to be playing, not waiting and watching.

Next big one is that you have to micromanage your entire party at all times. Again, I prefer to play my character and let party do their thing, only micromanaging them when required. I love putting some gear on them, picking some spells for them to use (although I'd rather have a "suggested level up" pop-up that would hopefully save me from screwing up too bad). I like to think of my party as somewhat self sufficient companions that can hold their own if needed and who can make use of what PC gives/suggests them, and PC as the party leader who sometimes tells everyone what to do, but mostly lets them go about it in their own way. This is probably a number one deal breaker for me - having no AI to manage my party while I focus on experiencing my main character. When I sit down to play, let's say, a rogue I want to play a rogue, I don't want to also play cleric, and warlock, and ranger, and fighter. I wouldn't complain if I have to sometimes exercise some direct control, but only for really difficult stuff like bosses.

Another problem is narrative pacing. TB takes a lot more time. For example chasing a bad guy who sends his cronies to cover his escape will feel pretty ok in RTwP, because you can deal even with several waves of them pretty quick. TB will drag it out much longer an will (imo) stop feeling like a chase. TB really screws with the time passed perception - story-wise it may have been only a few minutes, while IRL it was more like a dozen. And I don't agree with a defense "but that's how PnP works" - in PnP we are forced to do turns because of the limitations it implies, nobody imagines the fight we have as they happen at the table - we all imagine it happen about at the same time. Most accurate representation of this imo would be pure RT. But this is where digital limitations come in - first the fact that game needs to be playable in single player mode, next that we need to use UI and controls to process and react to what's going on (as opposed to just "being there" and naturally swinging sword/casting spells as it happens more naturally in our internal narrative). For this reason we do need pause and AI - one to provide us with time to interface with the game and another to substitute for the lack of DM and fellow adventurers. Imagine playing DnD, but it's just DM and you, playing 4 characters at once. What an awkward game of DnD that would be! Overall, TB just feels like a chore for me that I begrudgingly power through to continue with the story. I still wouldn't turn it down to story difficulty because I want challenging fights now and then, when and where it feels appropriate, but I can't help but feel that it's just there to artificially put metaphorical spokes into my metaphorical wheel of story progression.

Despite above being pretty much how I personally feel abot TB, I think a lot of RTwP fans feel similar on what I've described.

Here's a good example for why weak enemies are needed (imo):

Imagine using a fireball that is a level 3 spell at an appropriate level (let's say 3 lvl 3 spell slots per long rest) and not killing anyone. Or using same fireball with a higher level slot and not turning your enemies into neat piles of ash. That's a feelsbad. And if we talk about going somewhat closely to DnD ruleset - spells have rather limited amounts of uses and require rest to replenish. It's not divinity where your only limiting factor is cool down and so gain.

Also if they want true DnD experience AP as we know it from DOS has to go. In DnD moving doesn't eat into your action count*, and characters have set amount of actions, bonus actions and movement they can perform each turn, as well as some ways to perform extra actions, reactions, etc.. That is of course if they actually meant it when they were saying that they want to be true to PnP and it wasn't just an excuse to put minimal work into gameplay.

For all cool things about DOS it never really delivered on power fantasy for me. My character never felt particularly strong, in particular due to the fact that there was no powerful high level spells that you could use consistently and very little encounters with weak enemies to draw out that engagement type. If game didn't tell me I would never really consider my character a god (in the end of DOS2).

If that's the level of power fantasy they want to shoot for (non-existent)it will be a pretty miserable DnD experience.

I will let you argue for my case from now on! This is exactly 100% spot on how I feel!

"you need trash encounters to deplete spell slots" is a ridiuclous argument.

instead of having 7 trash encoutners wehre your wizard is stuck using the crossbow, why not have 3 good encounters that drain the spell slots because they are hard.

It baffles my mind how people can consciously argue in favor of BAD combat design.

Hear hear!

I never played the original BG games. I don't think I played a lot of RTwP games. The only ones I've played recently were Pillars of Eternity and Masquerada: Songs and Shadows.

In both of those games, I found the RTwP combat to be pretty clunky because I had to constantly, CONSTANTLY pause the game to change what my various party members were doing, because with 3-5 party members and 4-5 enemies all roaming around trying to use abilities or melee on each other at once, almost all tactics attempted go out the window immediately.

RTwP is well, kinda crappy. With so many characters, the only way to play it is with constant pausing, and that's just inferior turn-based gameplay.

I agree with a lot of this. The only difference for me is that I would (and have when trying to play D:OS) go ahead and lower the difficulty to the bottom when approaching a TB fight in order to get through it as fast as possible. For me TB is that aggravating. Playing through a TB encounter literally makes me feel like wanting to drive a spike through my skull. A game is supposed to be pleasurable, something you enjoy doing. If I wanted aggravation and frustration, I get enough of that from the real world.

Well the problem there is that in TB, all combat encounters become "filler" encounters (for me). Firstly, I strongly disagree that they are/can be more challenging. For me, RTwP encounters are challenging. TB encounters are decidedly not. Ever. And then add to this the aggravating, annoying, tedious, boring nature of a TB encounter results in my wanting to get through it as quickly as possible. In TB games, if I were given a button that I could press to skip through the encounter entirely, that would be lovely and awesome.

still love hwo TB is the boring and agrevating one, not the one where either the "combat" bit is teaching your AI to autoattack or constantly pausing to micromanage everything

Honestly for me, I can work with TB or RTwP. I've played both and both offer something to enjoy, so I'm not too concerned about it with this game.

Generally, I find RTwP a more energetic style of combat with a larger sense of agency. It also tends to be absolute and total chaos where even the best tactics ultimately break down and which character is doing what and at what stage becomes almost impossible to discern (and at high levels when the most powerful spells are flying, good luck even finding your characters in the visual maelstrom of it all lol).

I find TB a much more glacial, plodding approach with excitement occurring in fits and bursts. It also lends itself far better to a tactical, thinking approach and is (to me) far, far easier to manage and track party actions. Something that truly helps augment the innate dullness of TB is a soundtrack of supreme quality and excellent sound and visual design for the actions when they do occur.

Basically, RTwP is a rock concert, while TB is a stage musical.

Hey all you RTwP fans, I would urge you to go check out The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes, which is set for release in 2Q/2020. We are getting screwed over and discriminated against by the TB orthodoxy that exists these days, so we need to support every single RTwP cRPG that is released. And this happens to actually be a really good game.

And of course also do consider supporting the new (second) Pathfinder game Wrath of the Righteous, whose kickstarter campaign is closing in on $1.5M and still has about a week to go.

+2

By the way guys... Baldurs Gate was always turnbased in its core -> but not super slow!
Please explain me why the hell pausable realtime (with turn mechanics like bg always was!!!) is bad ad all?
For a turnbased player there is no difference if you first press space on your own or the game does it for you automatically