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

I just love the end result of the PC Gamer twitter poll on RTwP vs TB.
33 337 votes, 53.6% TB, 46.4% RTwP.
It's so even and enforces my idea that half of the possible players will prefer the other way, so there is no possible way to win and no way to make more money by chosing one of the two (well, that depends partly on overlap, are TB or RTwP fans more likely to accept the other system?).

The software is fairly ancient. An update is mooted for... well, some point, anyway.

i wouldnt say its impossible to make money.
Divitny OS2 certainly made money.

but yes its hard to please both camps.
tho i guess most TB fans wouldve played RTWP aswell, while grogs seem to be overly zealous in their hatred for NEW GAME BAD.

but thats the pont.
Even if ti was rtwp theyd have hated it for some other reason.
like the "its too cartoony" thing which comes up and isn tbased in any reality

Its about hating the new thing, because they feel like their love for an old thing is under attack

Thanks for the answer. Luckily I spend most of my forum time at the PC.

Well... while I basically agree on the rest: D:OS is too cartoony for me as well. "Cartoony" might not be the right word though. More like "goofy".
However, I didn't see this goofyness in the BG3 gameplay reveal. And the cinematics surely weren't goofy at all.

I will always prefer turn based. Iovdd toee after the unofficial patch

Social media networks are big fans of censorship so you can't rely on visible feedback to tell if your product has been well received in total. For example, to me Twitter seems to be pedophiles' (both closeted and self-admitted) preferred social media platform but you need to conduct a study if you want conclusive answers. The question is: Does anyone care about the negative feedback? There are lots of D:OS players so the game will sell lots of copies regardless of how much resemblance it bears to the previous ones.

Actually found social media comment by Boeroer quite good. It's a good question and a good answer.

Not everyone engages with social media, at least from my generation (including me). Many feel that it's just a waste of time (reasonably so), or that you can only get in trouble with it (also reasonably, angry Twitter mobs are known to have caused some people to lose their jobs). Especially now, when "censorship" is at it's highest on said media. One could even say that platforms such as Twitter are echo chambers. A lot of people who happen to be fans of original 2 games are much more likely to be used to forums as means of communication, hence why you see us here and not on, say, Twitter.

mate, Zuckerberg has no interrest in supressing opinions in baludurs gate

Also nyxery, likewise, this generation also likes to show up in forums, while others dont.
and those people hwo like to complain ten dot show up in forums to do just that.
Funny ho that works

Oh, I wasn't talking about that kind of censorship. I just meant how majority will use all means available (ordinarily - downwotes, in some cases as far as reports for stuff like instigation, trolling, etc., and almost always social pressure of vocal faction on the media of choice).

Case study: try going on Reddit and posting an unpopular opinion. It will get buried under a pile of dislikes and will never see the light of day. Your karma will take hit too. You may even get reported, depending on how bad is your study subreddit is.

People really don't like opinions that contradict the "accepted" opinion of their platform. And the "accepted" opinion is usually determined rather early on in the life cycle of that platform/community, and from that point begins the process of selection: people with "correct" opinions are welcomed, accepted and encouraged to stay and participate in "positive discussion", while people with "incorrect" opinions are made feel unwelcome, marginalized (unsurprisingly, since any "wrong" opinions are not allowed to gather any significant following in said community/resource) and ultimately leave and don't come back. Now, if we move to a platform that's not about just 1 thing, it gets more complex - there may be more topics that require you to have a "correct" opinion. And that's where we get to the censorship. While what I am about to describe may not be an explicit form of censorship, it nevertheless is limiting how freely people can express what they think. Say, your opinion aligns with what's established as "correct", but a topic comes up where you don't agree to the popular opinion. Most of the people will just either stay quiet, or reluctantly agreed with the majority because now there is a good amount of social pressure on them. On platforms like Twitter such social pressure might go beyond the internet and spill over into personal life - for example it may get you fired (which I am using purely as an example of it going too far, it's unlikely to happen over an opinion about some video game, or is it?).

Of course the degree of severity of what I described varies, and often you will find some people still going against the majority, but these results will always be biased in favor of platforms dominant faction. It's somewhat of a vicious cycle - these communities do their best to attract people who agree and chase off people who don't, therefore there is always majority that agrees and because there is always a majority that agrees it's hard for unpopular opinions to gain any friction, therefore people with unpopular opinions stay quiet or leave, etc.

While this is not explicit censorship, it achieves the same goal: keeps some of the people quiet either through social pressure or via technical means such as downvoting, reporting, feed display algorithms that hide controversial topics, etc..

Also as you could have noticed I didn't mention the actual owners of said platforms. They may or may not have some indirect influence via search algorithms and feed personalization, but all of it is the work of people who use the platform as users, sometimes user appointed moderators and such.

Point is: social platforms tend to degrade into echo chambers where any "incorrect" opinions are not welcome. So "most people on Twitter" is a poor indication of anything - asking Twitter or similar echo chambers about anything is just that - yelling your questions into an echo chamber.

Regardless, the fact that some opinions (that may be neither illegal nor immoral) are being suppressed compels people not to make an account on various social media networks or to continue perusing them. I agree with Nyxery in that Western countries are all about echo chambers, baby.

Yeah, I really didn't want to bring up politics (since it's not one, not two, but who knows how many cans of worms) but politics are a really good example of how social media work and "soft censor" speech. Another good example would be academia and how it's borderline dangerous to express any non-liberal opinion there, or worse publish or just do research that's not colored with liberal ideology. People get expelled, suspended, etc..

But again, I'd rather not talk politics. Gib RTwP.

Sure thing. Do you know why it's taking countries so long to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic? It's because Wall Street wants to keep the markets afloat as long as they can according to rumors. Echo chambers can threaten lives too. Either way, looks like we're not getting RTwP.

Well its funny because those opinions that get drowned out are the pro TB ones by hordes of 5 post new accounts screaming for RTWP.

and comparing this to a liberals censoring conservatives argument....
RTWP always seemed to be the system of progressives when you look at PoE, Siege of Dragonspear or Nu-Bioware : ^)

just to trigger you a bit

I am one of those people who has played BG1/BG2/IWD1/IWD2/PoE1/PoE2 for countless hours. And played with this "real time" combat both back when it was first released and with the newer games that use it. And I simply cannot see how people prefer it over the turn-based combat system.

The amount of time I lost by having to pause/unpause, pause/unpause, pause/unpause, plus the time I lost by having to reload because my companions ran into my Fireball/Flamestrike/Bladebarrier or walking/pathing got stuck, simply made the game very slow. The amount of times I got frustrated because the game mechanics would not let me do what I wanted or just simply got stuck was unreal.

Yes, it's "faster" when you have to fight 4 low level bandits x 100 times. But that was never a fun part of the BG games. In Divinity games - and from what the demo showed us it's the same in BG3 - every encounter is memorable. Even when in your mind the encounter was "the one with the big bouncy dude that blows the trumpets with the 2 wolves and the 4 little gremlins by the lighthouse", it is memorable. How many people remember those 4 bandits from BG2? No not those. Not those either. The 34th group of 4 bandits from the 100 groups of 4 bandits you fought. Yeah that one. Do you remember it?

I remember every single encounter from both Divinity OS games. Every single one.

Still, I get the frustration from those who wanted this "fake real time" combat. If you prefer something, you will be disappointed when it's not the thing you prefer.
I'm just glad they are offering a system that allows both truly tactical combat and meaningful encounters throughout the game.

I don't see why I should be triggered as I'm not even remotely "conservative". Depends on what you'd like to conserve but frankly my list isn't very long. You see pro-TB opinions being drowned out, others might see threads and comments that suggest the contrary so none of that allows us to draw definitive conclusions about the community as a whole. A well-made poll might have but obviously it's too late now since all the important design decisions appear to have already been made.



So do I. Mostly because every single encounter was agonizingly long. On the other hand, I couldn't tell you much about the story because the overwhelming majority of the hours I've clocked in together with my buddy can be chalked up to taking turns fighting monsters. Sure, multiplayer is different but I didn't notice the pace picking up when I switched to single player mode. Maybe they'll tone it down a notch for BG3? Sure would be great.

Because RTwP is fun.

RTwP is faster paced.
RTwP is more realistic.
RTwP doesn't make you constantly wait.
RTwP allows larger scale battles.

D&D tabletop players also imagine that combat is happening in real time and not playing out like fantasy kabuki theater. So why not try to make combat in a CRPG, that has a visual representation of the world and characters, simulate reality as closely as possible?

I mean, I also like turn-based combat, but I don't want every damn CRPG to be turn-based, for these very reasons. Especially not my favorite IP, which is Baldur's Gate.


Have you tried being honest with yourself and just turning down the difficulty slider?

I mean, if you're playing on some low difficulty setting where you don't need to micro-manage everyone for any 0.3s period you can steamroll any combat encounter in turn based as well, it won't take long because you don't need to think about anything, I promise you that. Personally I didn't mind my characters running into fireball as much as I did mind them not doing anything without 10000 hours of AI setting up (without the AI setting up they'd just waste spell slots casting magic missles at basic 1 hp rats)

I think the way the negative or criticism-y opinions are presented is the most important thing. If you walk inside a positive forum about BG3 and start whining about how 'Larian ruined BG' or how 'they became sell-outs', it's quite possible that you're going to be marginalized and kicked out. There's constructive criticism and there's drama that borders on trolling.

When I hear how BG3 is not BG because of the UI or the portrait position in the screen, I can't help but shake my head in disbelief. Like, really? THIS is what made Baldur's Gate for you guys? The whole point of BG3 *for you guys* is a nostalgia trip? You want to see the old UI to think that this is the game you remember playing? You want the portraits from top to bottom to remember the game you used to play?

I mean, were the BG fans ever D&D fans at all?



And let's not forget those amazing moments in the old games …

Oh yes, it was f&%king awesome when an enemy mage would start the battle by casting mass confusion on my party and everyone would start running around, while the only PC who could cast dispel magic on ONE of the PCs was almost guaranteed to fail, BECAUSE THE F&%KING SPELL WOULD TARGET THE PLACE THE PC WAS STANDING AT THE TIME YOU CAST IT - meaning that by the time the spell is on its way to hit the character, the confused character has ran to the other side of the screen, making dispel magic utterly useless. What fun! What amazing times! What amazing battle system! How jolly it was when I reloaded the battle 20 times until I would get a chance to save vs this spell!

F&%k the real-time-pause RTUEIORUJADP battle system. F*$k it to hell, burn it to the ground, and I hope to God I don't ever see it in a D&D game ever again.

Baldur's Gate never became a cult hit because of the real-time pause system. People loved the lore, the setting, the characters, the music, the customization, the (back then) AAA production values and the cheating b&*%shit they would pull in order to spare themselves of difficult encounters (i.e. dying from a boss battle, then loading the game and casting fireball in the under-fog-of-war-area the boss character is in order to kill most of his underlings and damage him before the battle actually starts in order to have an edge when it does - yeah, we all did that).

BG3 is the most D&D video game I've ever seen since Temple of Elemental Evil and I don't care what the BG1-2 purists say. They wear their nostalgia goggles proudly, forgetting the silliness the original games had and accusing Larian Studios of making BG3 is light-hearted adventure (which is another HUH!? complaint - was I the ONLY ONE who saw the intro video or the teaser almost a year back ?).

If there was a tipping system here I'd mash the hell out of that button. Thank you very much for the good laughs!