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

People said this exact same thing about D&D 2e and yet the IE games implemented the D&D mechanics just fine. And RT works just fine in many strategy game as well.

Yes indeed. The decent thing for every TB cRPG to do would be to provide some form of 'auto-resolve' option for combat for people who don't want to have their valuable time wasted with the tedium and aggravation of needlessly slow TB combat. A truly well-made game would go even further by providing a path around combat for every combat encounter.

That's one of the failures of many video games ( RPG or otherwise ) ; take away combat and there is not a lot left. For RPGs in particular, this is something of a failure to make a faithful transition to a video format.

I was particularly pleased that CDPR took in the feedback of many who saw their early CP2077 game footage and asked for non-combat options; such that they now say the whole game can be completed without combat ( not without mayhem and death ) using stealth and tech options.

But then CDPR have so far proved to be the gold standard both for RPGs and for listening; few other big video games companies seem to even try.

I agree with all this 100%. CDPR is my #1 RPG developer out there. I have long hated first-person RPGs and also cyberpunk genre RPGs. And yet, because CP2077 is being made by CDPR, and for solely that reason, I have it on my Steam wishlist. For a true AAA game of that magnitude to allow you to complete the game without engaging in even one combat, that is amazingly remarkable.

Also, so true about what modern cRPGs have become. As I've said elsewhere, RPGs used to be role-playing with some combat elements mixed in. Now, they are mostly combat games with some role-playing elements mixed in. I think we need to start demanding that cRPG developers tell us upfront what percentage of their game will be combat versus outside-of-combat time. After all, they are able to estimate how much time in total the game will take to play, so it should be only a small stretch from there to also estimate what percentage of that time will involve combat. And of course the greatest benefit of this would be that for games in which combat is only a small % of the game, the combat system won't matter that much and we can all move on from the RT v. TB wars.

the autistic focus on dialogue is whats wrong with modern CRPGs tho.

WORDS WORDS WORDS doesnt make a game good.
ITs good for niche games like Disco Elysium, but does that make a game good? only if youre some kind of games journalist.

>CDPR
not holding my breath for Cyberpunk.
Seems like most of the Team that made the Witcher games good doesnt even work at CDPR anymore

Words, like combat, should be an element within an RPG. Without words in some form, you would be largely clueless about the RPG world; although exploring and making sense of a totally wordless world might actually make an interesting game.

Pre-determined branching dialog was never a particularly good thing, but it has now been pretty much entrenched by the move towards spoken cinematic presentation. I agree it can get quite tedious when it's taken too far, unless that's what you are really like, just as too much combat is tedious.

For my tastes, an RPG should be as open-ended, enabling and permissive as possible; unfortunately most video-game RPGs have become formulaic and narrow, because anything else is risky.

People are still argueing over this?!?!, why what is the point now?

At the very least people know exactly what they're getting ahead of time even before Early Access is out.

How does one avoid pre-determined dialogue in a videogame, if I might ask?

I never really got into DC, but prefer DKS to DOS/2. I mean I like the latter and all, but they always felt a bit stilted to me.

Probably still the same.

They still don't understand that RTWP is the best way to translate the rules of a D&D game in video game.

D&D is TB because it's obviously impossible to do something else... just read the rules to understand TB is used because there are no other way of playing tabletop games properly.

Video game is the perfectsupport to reach the philosophy of D&D but they don't understand

It's not.

The reason why it's not is because one person cannot properly control 4-6 other people at the same time, reacting to 5-10 enemies acting at the same time in a game with a billion different options and situations.

Maybe you can't... Maybe you need an easier gameplay, idk... Your "skills" is not really what I was talking about.

Of course it's not possible in PP, but it is in video games.
TB is just a tool for convenience if you read the rules.

Constructed on the fly from game context ( who you are talking to, what they might know about, diffusion of game event information etc ), conversation rules, and player input.

Developing a sophisticated conversation engine is non-trivial, even without voiced characters. If you want fully voiced conversations, you would have to also develop a voice synthesis engine, and add mechanisms to cater for spoken intonation, emphasis, volume, tone etc).

It's a lot easier for developers to not think about it, and just continue to use dialog trees, particularly for strongly scripted and cinematic games, which is the general trend.

I'm sure someone will eventually be brave enough to try something different.

I think it is matter of preference.

TB +: More time to think, easier multiplayer, easy to understand, more opportunity to interact with environment, easier to be strategic
-: Slow and long sometimes boring battles, fights are like playing chess, balance issues,

Real time with pause:
+:Fun to fight against weak mobs, not much balance issue here, possibility for more enemies or characters, fights are more dynamic and way faster
-:Multiplayer is harder for 3 or 4 people, harder to interact with environment, takes time to get used to

--Also I think TB influence the animation style to be more shiny, so you probably feel more action during battle, like bows, that work like rocket launcher.

When was that exactly? There were some, but those were rare and outliers. Social aspect was always more challenging to recreate then combat, and with computer games generally adoring violence, PC RPGs have always been very focused on combat, and dungeons. If anything, majority of recent RPGs tended to aim more towards roleplaying then RPGs of old - especially Bioware which was always very limited when it came to actual roleplaying, with very defined protagonists and very binary choices.

Exceptions which spring to mind: Planespace Torment, and Tim Cains games: Fallouts, Arcanum. Other then that, combat and genoside with a good story and characters, if you get lucky.

Not trying to say anything negative about you or anyone else, but I for one have no problem whatsoever handling all those actors and other moving parts in RTwP.

I think most of people here tend to forget that Baldur's RTwP was actually very flexible. You could adjust the game to pause automatically after selected actions, wchich Led to making it Turn Based if you needed/wanted...
So i think the discussion about wchich system is better makes no sense as Baldur's system could be what you want - real time, Turn Based, or something in beetween. It was up to you how you want to play.
As many people have said here, Larian is not making TB because it's better, they are making it because it's easier for them...
I think it's a pitty when they are creating a game with such a Legacy as BG, you should realy try to make it feel like a part of This Legacy (i don't mean 2d) and not only using it as a settinga.
Otherwise it could be named Forgoten Realms : Divinity Lost

only it didnt make it turn based how about you stop lying, also its a moot point, the descision has been made ages ago

That’s not turn-based.... as the name suggest in turn-based game units take actions in turns. Auto-pausing a real time combat doesn’t make it turn based.