Sorry, man, I found 200 threads with "turned based" and no particular standing out. So I write here.
I mostly address my post to the developers and sorry if I seem aggressive, but in my language there's a saying: you resemble wind, you collect storm.
Don't get me wrong, I don't say to throw the turned based system completely to the garbage, because you need it in very hard battles. When I played BG2 Black Pits at bhaal's legacy difficulty mode I was "emulating" turned based in most battles by pressing space. But you can't just play turned based forever, it's completely boring and stupid.
Some arguments, when you should admit that turned based is awful and should be removed:
- if you play a fighter you want to hack and slash, not to watch mages reading their scrolls or goblins "planning" their next move
- if you play against an easy party you want to skip some of their useless moves, especially when they "think" and wander without point
- if you play against a very big party, you don't want to spend 70% of the time watching of others' moves
- if you simply don't want to watch your enemy doing moves, you don't care
- if you simply don't want to play chess with D&D rules and want to play a video game
Turn based is NOT an evolution, at least not FULL turn based.
My opinion is that choosing this mode is purely a business decision (you already had the engine for this) and now trying to sell it as an "evolution". Ok, don't admit it, but listen.
As for the players who embrace it, they either don't care, they either didn't see something better, they either are D&D game maniacs who should play with cards and chips (sorry but really).
Yes, in BG2 if you pressed the button at the right time, you could have lost an action for a turn, so I understand the frustration for a control-freak d&d player, but playing a 2020 videogame as "chess" is definitely not the solution; I can go play chess if I really want that, which is a great game btw, but not this.
The turned based system is the logical evolution to or from a tabletop game, but NOT from or to a video game.
The logical evolution through automation and player feel is: dice and turns (board game) > full turn based > real-time with pause and glitches (BG1-2) > ???
If you WANT an evolution, then EVOLVE it!
Some ideas:
1. make it so that you can choose to skip watching enemy moves; just add a button/command that I can switch on and off when I want to watch enemies by turn, else when I end my party's turn, just let enemies fly around and attack or take punches, then go back to turned based and leave me think for my party
2. make it so that you can choose to skip everyone's moves (enemy and party) and make it real-time, in the middle of the battle; i.e. start turn based, gain advantage, then when the battle looks safe, hit the button and let the slashing begin
3. you may want a more "orchestrated" battle, then allow possibility to configure more turns in advance, for each character (use ability 1, use spell 2, attack, etc.), then hit the button and unleash "orchestrated slashing", then after X turns go back to turn-based mode or allow planning the next turns
4. you want more "chess" control? then display somehow (in a foldable window) all turn and D&D information, including order of characters in turns, skills you selected for each in the next X turns, possibility to change them, rotate them, etc.
5. you want even more "chess" control during real-time battles? then add an analogic clock somewhere and show how the time flows for a turn and based on that decide if the player's click was considered or not as an action during that turn (to cope for the glitches in BG1-2)
6. add all of the above in a stepped scrollbar between full turn-based control and real-time feel, so that you can swap during the game and during battles depending on difficulty and mood
I didn't play "divinity whatever" or other recent games based on d&d, but I played rts, fps, mmorpgs and real-time is needed as part of the action! I never played Heroes because of the stupid ancient turn- based and now I buy BG3 with turn-based? Do you think that BG1-2 would still be a great game if it was fully turned-based? For sure it would have been easier to code it as turned-based, but it wasn't. So if you want to stick to your turn-based system, then fine, but please remove the title BG3, make it Baldur's Gate adventures of the mindflayers or something, because as this is today, it's an involution to the gaming community.
