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

I think I might have said this earlier in the thread, so apologies in advance if I am repeating myself, but, for me it boils down to cinematics.

RTwP for the most part gave this impression of a fight happening, with sword clashes and spells and so forth and for al of the easy battles or those of a balanced nature it was fine. For anything difficult it descended into an absolute slideshow of constant pauses and reactions to hits with heals etc... It's horrible.

Turn Based get's round that and introduces more options, more intracacies (sneaking into positions, pushing, etc...), but it is cinematically bland by comparison and unnecessarily slow in easier fights. It's like chess, move and hit. Yes you can have the odd flashy effect, but the opponent just stands there and takes it. I have always wondered whether it isn't possible to add more animations when characters are in melee combat (but it isn't their turns), clash of swords, shields, taunts from archers high up. Disengage animations if you move a character out of melee and so forth. There is a risk of slowing down combat with extra fluff, let alone the programming issue, but it's my two pennies worth on what often bores me with TB, especially if a fight drags.

The issue I guess for me is I like both sytems, it would be great if I could RTwP and "slow time" for intracate moves, lke sneaking behind opponents, moving in for a push, etc... But sometimes you just really need the TB for larger complex fights.

In short I am fine if they HAVE to stick to one vs the other with it being TB, but then I would like more visuals and fewer static characters awaiting their turns and only visually reacting to hits (If I miss can the opponent not visually dodge or block, parry, lucky armour deflection?!)
But as someone who has enjoyed RTwP in the past, I am certainly not against Larian implementing it for those who only wish to play this way. IF POSSIBLE. Choice is good.

As it isn't critical to my purchase decision, I have perhaps fewer stakes in this argument than others and I would prefer priorities to lay elsewhere, but that's just a personal opinion of a vault dweller.

Just FYI, PoE2 does have a toggle to slow down the game during combat. Also, Tower of Time (and its upcoming successor game Dark Envoy) have an active system to slow down time during RTwP combat.

Active with pause is great when you're controlling a single character, frequently not so good when you're controlling a party.

Since BG3 has ZERO party AI you have to directly control each and every character. You can't do this with anything other then turn based mechanics.

I like it as it is.

Its not like its impossible to have both systems. Few games done it before with success-so why not? Variety is a good spice for replayability too.

To get closer to the combat pacing that RTwP provided in the late 90s while still maintaining what they've got, I think they just really need to rescale the encounters especially in these lower lvl starter areas.

I think TBS is suffering from the decision to cap the party at 4. If I'm routinely facing a ton of monsters at once, it would make sense for parity if the party was larger. I'd rather have some Mercs getting chunked along the way, and some fodder when facing the horde. I mean if they're throwing mass combats at us right out the gate, to me it makes sense we recruit a larger crew.

The Goblin Camp and the Druid Grove each feature combats that can easily have like 20+ participants and grind to a complete halt if the character makes a wrong left at Albuquerque. I think my sd card is about to cast a fireball of its own half the time lol.

Surely there is a way to make this combat system hum, and I don't think it needs Real Time with Pause, it just needs to get closer to that kind of gamepace. Or basically just finding more effective ways to scale in the TBS combats so they aren't so time consuming.

I know for my part I'm having some PTSD thinking about parallels to Troika's TOEE when it first dropped, moreso than I am thinking about unboxing BG2 for the first time haha. The shift to Turn Based combat from RTwP is significant for a game with this title, so much so that I wish a lot of other BG looking stuff was in here like comfort food to ease it in with change to combat style.

I think the UI could be used in that way, even down to the iconography and organization of menus. The design (by which I mean the actual borders and textures of the UI menus) is beautiful here. Looks clean. But I wish some familiar icons and menus were in place. Or that the basic layout looked a little closer to BG1/2, vertical portraits along the side, stuff of that sort. The little spellcasting icon for example, crescent moon with 3 stars, that guy was a classic! Something to hold onto from BG1/2 UI-wise, while settling in for the return of TBS gameplay after the era of Diablo dominance. Its clear that if what people are after is gameplay almost exactly like BG1/2, Torment, or IWD, then the game to get is probably Pillars over this one. Obsidian has that style of play down. The only bummer there is no Faerun, so if thats the fix you're jonesin' for then the world of Eora probably doesn't do the trick.

This one is basically a 3D version of the old Gold Box games. Its almost identical in feel. It still plays way more like those or even Might and Magic than BG1 for the mechanics. Without a Divinity touch stone to compare it to, since I haven't played those, this one makes me remember the very first D&D games I ever tried to play on the computer. I'll say the Gold Box games were pretty tough, and not just cause they were almost certainly beyond my reading comprehension level at the time. The mechanics of combat were just way more involved than BG. Baldur's gate was like an action game. It had more in common with RTS combat from games like Dune II or Warcraft or obv Diablo than its immediate D&D CRPG predecessors.

I feel like what Larian is doing here has the potential to be a really killer page turner for the genre. In the same way that BG1 was back then. I really hope its badass enough that we get Baldur's Gate III "Thrilling Expansion Title" and then Baldur's Gate IV. Using the same system carried over, to be followed by an expansion of its own. Just to cement the playstyle and give it the broad sweep and epic scope that the franchise deserves.

Anyhow, I'm on board with Turn Based as the model, but I still think they have work to do so that the pacing doesn't break down like this, or overshadow what's fun with what's tedious.

Since this is the great ragin debate, I'm curious, for the proponents of the current Turn Based system what you think about the scale of these first EA combats?

The initial battle in front of the gate to the Druids Grove, that one felt pretty cool to me. Just nearly pushing the edge of the limit. But man, trying to raid the Grove at the end is insane, and this is still only act one? I think fewer mobs and more bosses would help. Smaller groups with more powerful enemies for the most part.

An example of a good combat I think is the one at the entrance to the Forgotten Ruins. There you got a Enemy party roughly matched with the Player's own party. there's cool trap with the hanging stone and an environmental effect with the tangling vines. Some differences in elevation, cover, and terrain obstacles to play around with. It immediately reminded me of some of the better crew vs crew punk outs in BG1.

That encounter is scaled well for the party of 4 I feel. I think the game should feature a party of 6 ultimately, because this is Baldur's Gate, but that doesn't mean we need to run into 6 companions immediately or all at once. I'd actually prefer it if the combats in the first act were designed more around an incomplete party with a couple slots still open. But eventually would be nice to get 6. I think many of the later battles that involve more mobs would just scale much better that way. More PCs means a faster clear out. Right now it can be a real slog when Skynet is commanding a small army, and you're out there trying to make it happen with just 4 corners.

This is an excellent question. I also noted in several streams I've watched where you have combat encounters with a very large number of enemies. The supporters of TB combat always use as one of their main defenses of TB that in TB combat games you don't have "trash mob" fights. Now I've always rejected that claim, because it simply isn't true, but right here in BG3 you have several encounters with large numbers of enemies that drag on and on. What's the explanation for that?

The implementation of turn based mode made me revisit PoE2. I think it is fair to say though, that the game did not do a good job with its implementation of RTwP combat. Fights were either to easy and over way too quick or it ended in pure chaos.
Maybe this just burned me out when it comes to that style.
Although I do remember having fun with the custom AI settings in Dragon Age. So something like this would probably be ... interesting. You might not control them during combat (unless you switch to them) but you basically finetuned them earlier. But honestly I don't expect them to add something like this. Would be too much work to add afterwards.

When it comes to the big fights in and outside of the goblin camp. You can seperate them, but it is hard to do and in the end you still fight all of them. At least that is what I did because I wanted the loot, xp and blood! But in the end it is up to larian to design their encounters in a way to involve less combatants or break groups in smaller parties, maybe add scripted events so you can avoid fighting against reinforcments etc. Also, the spider matriarch is overtuned when it comes to additional spawns. Why not make it a swarm instead of multiple single spiders?
#balancing

you know, I actually really liked ToEE, its combat was pretty great, its just the game itself lacked too many 3.5e things to make it good (it at least needed some the base PRCs, more of the spells etc, thankfully mods added a bunch of those things later).

Huge combats with huge numbers of enemies isn't the end of the world if they're scaled properly, even in turn based mode, AoEs should actually be easier to use as the enemies dont keep moving as you're casting.

But yeah having combats not pull other combats in so easily would probably help too.

In my opinion, turn-based is the only type of combat that an isometric party-based RPG should ever have. I think the real-time-with-pause style pioneered by Baldur's Gate is awful, and should never have been done. I've enjoyed a lot of games with that style of combat, but I would have enjoyed them much MORE if they'd been turn-based. I'm super glad that Baldur's Gate 3 is turn-based. Just like D&D.

Honestly, one of the biggest things I enjoyed about the real Baldur's Gate games was the live-with-pause feature of the gameplay. Now, I knew, with Larion taking the reigns, live-with-pause would be unlikely. However, the inability to pause and effectively launch a party ambush within a surprise round by first staging, and then putting the rest of my party into simultaneous action is beyond frustrating. I'm fine with turn-based combat, but at least give me a pause and command function where I can actually use my whole party to surprise the enemy, and not just a single character before initiative rolls into action.

So then "screw you" to those of us who like RTwP over TB. We don't get to play any party-based RPGs. How wonderfully inclusive of you.

Why does it have to be either/or? I'm not minding the TB, but I do love my RTWP games too. The one thing that I see in favor of the latter is that combat flows a lot faster.

With all these discussions, I am just happy to be part of the minority where I love both RTwP and TB games lol
Not gonna lie, it will be a welcome change to see Larian takes on RTwP games.

I'm totally fine with BG3 being RTwP AND TB. However, it needs to be TB combat as default and in multiplayer. Otherwise, you aren't making a D&D game so much as another Dragon Age clone. For multiplayer, I think RTwP can be a lot of fun, but if people can't agree between the two, it needs to be TB.

And I as a die-hard RTwP fan would be okay with this too. That's the thing for me. I love RTwP and strongly dislike TB. But I am also someone who very passionately believes that you should always try to bring as many people as possible inside the tent and not leave anyone out in the rain. So I would never want a society where only RTwP fans like me got to be happy and TB fans got screwed. Solutions that maximize happiness is what I always gravitate towards.

You're right. My comment was worded overly strongly. I think it would be ideal if every RPG from now on actually offers the choice between TB and RTwP, so everyone can be happy.

Wow. Very pleasantly surprised.

Ultimately, I think all of us wanting this as the ideal is what matters, even if in the real world it may not happen right now. But perhaps in time ....

the issue with providing both, is it requires the game behaving very differently for each potentially, which is a potentially huge amount of extra work being asked for.

I do agree that it's a nice goal, but with a D&D game, focusing on getting the rules right comes first for me (and seemingly a fair few others), if they can show they could get the rules right for both RTwP and Turn Based, I'd be down for it, but if they have to compromise the rules to fascilitate RTwP, Turn Based should be the only option.

But who knows how it'll pan out

In my opinion the first step to making RTwP possible is to create assignable AI to each of the characters so that you don't have to control each of their actions every round. Although if I am being completely honest, this is all I really want. I don't really care if it is Turn-Based as long as I can A) Play Single Player, B) Have A Full Party, AND C) Not Have To Micromanage Every Character Each Round.