Generally speaking a turn-based combat doesn't need to be "fast", but it needs to be careful with unnecessary, gratuitous parts that waste time for no additional benefit.
Few examples:
- every animation is fundamentally a "waste of time" but it also adds a lot to the visual appeal of the game, so the ideal compromise here is having animations that look good and are quick to execute, while also being "snappy" in giving back the controls to the player. If your character finishes its attack and then you have to wait an additional second and half just to get back full control and/or switch to someone else, we are going to have a problem. Looking at what's already there, virtuous examples may be the spells that do some "pre-cast" when you are selecting a target (so shortening their overall length/duration on confirmation) while bad examples would be the Berserk ability lasting at least a full second more than necessary or the Dash ability wasting a second to animate a "powering up" that doesn't even make sense or feels good to see. Also not a fan of jumps coming with a wind-up, a loud, ungraceful Hulk stomp and some unnecessary delay in responsiveness after.
- AI needs obviously to "think" its moves as fast as it can, but I doubt any developer needs to be told this. It's a design goal that is most likely a constant concern for them and whatever we'll get in this area will be pretty much the best they can do. Asking "the AI should be faster" is like asking for engines that require less carburant and batteries that last more hours. A "no shit" type of suggestion.
- being prompted to make a decision (i.e. reaction) is not "slow combat" as far as I'm concerned. Every time the game is in "pause" waiting for the player input is perfectly fine in my book. But if confirming or passing that reaction is going to be cumbersome, counter-intuitive and unresponsive, then yeah, we are going to have a problem with unnecessary slowness.
This will be a game with a finite, non-repeatable number of combat scenarios, not one where we'll be constantly interrupted by random fights. Even in a case where these may be added while traveling on the world map (that doesn't really sound like a Larian thing) they will most likely be a limited number of pre-planned one. So in general I have absolutely no concern about how fast I'll breeze through each one of them, but I want it to feel as good as it can when controlling the flow of the action.
Last edited by Tuco; 14/08/22 01:56 PM.
