Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Thank you for going turn based. (Feedback.)

I recently tried playing Pathfinder - Wrath of the Righteous. Before trying it I didn't care for the turn based system in Baldurs Gate 3. I thought it be better as action, but I was so wrong. An action based system for this type of game felt like @$$. I felt like the only one I could really concentrate on controlling was my main character and the rest were on auto pilot. Which makes it really hard to gather why you are losing when your other companions are just doing stuff on their own. It gets really hectic even with a pause function. Now to be fair Pathfinder have a built in turn based mode as an option, but you can tell it was an after thought and it doesn't really work right. So yeah, thanks for going turn based.

Bg1 and 2 are some of the best rpgs I've ever played, I still play them now.

Rtwp allows for fast combat when fighting easy monsters and lets you set your own paceing, i personally miss it in bg3, i miss the depth of dialog trees from bg2 i miss a lot of the feel, that path finder captures a little better, it certainly has its faults and the game trails off about half way threw, but imo pathfinder feels closer to what a modern bg3 should be then what Larian has created, not to say bg3 is bad, its amazing and way better then dos2.

Im glad most people are happy with the game, but i can certainly understand why a lot of the old school fans are not

Though I enjoy BG3s system (still too slow..) Turn base slows the game to a crawl for me. Simple battles take 15 minutes. Battles are less and fewer apart.
A 20 hour RPG becomes a 50 hour RPG with just have turn base battles basically. Very convenient way to make your game <longer>.

Really wish there would be a way to have both. INTERESTING fast real time battles (world creatures, minor quests...) and the more STRATEGIC longer turn base battles (bosses, major quests, key story moments).
As in example, NO WAY the first imps battles at the beginning needs to be turn base...waste of time, its silly and stretches things out way more than it needs to be, make THATS real time with pause. Creates URGENCY, and SPEED. But keep the end part of the ship as turn base. Larian could of created a unique dynamic system like this that I think would of worked wonders for the game.

Honestly, WOTR's rtwp is the problem with the game itself I think rather than with just rtwp. I don't usually mind rtwp but with WOTR still using rounds it easily becomes hectic while due to how many combat encounters there are in WOTR TB slows the pacing way too much.

I think it is intended as a tutorial battle. So it makes sense to have it make use of the same mechanics as the later, tougher battles.

^This.

Essentially, for TB fans, RTwP makes combat chaotic and difficult so let's replace that with a system that makes combat stupid and boring and tedious and a huge waste of my time. I wish all TB combat games came with an auto-resolve button so I can quickly move on past the pointless and painful combat.

The purpose of both styles are different.
TB is more tactic-oriented while RTwP gives a better feeling of real and chaotic combats.

Playing RTWP games in TB is often boring (as proven by Pathfinder and Pillars of Eternity) while playing Xcom or BG3 in RTWP would probably be close to impossible.

I love both but I really think that Larian could get inspired by other TB games to improve their combat system.

Aside for the fact that I never made a secret of my net preference for turn-based tactical gameplay (and even as a fan of the past two Baldur's Gate I always found RTWP a serviceable compromise at best), I have to say that to this date I'm still not sure how some people here think a real-time adaptation of the 5th edition would even begin to function...
We already have a lot of (rightful) complaints about how poor the current reaction system is, it would be ten times worse in a real-time environment. Half of the mechanics and skills that define this ruleset would arguably be "lost in translation".

Well, "adaptation" is the key word there. Since I am well established in the record in this forum as someone who does not really care that much about D&D rules and mechanics, I am all for a developer changing up the D&D rules and mechanics if it will produce a more enjoyable gameplay experience.

Of course, in changing rules or mechanics, if you end up actually making things worse, that is just nuts. That's what seems to have happened with at least some of Larian's attempts at adaptation with BG3.

Let me throw my two cents in. I really love turn-based. I'm not someone who's really "good" at games. I'm a pretty meh gamer all things considered and I don't really play rpgs for the challenge anyway. I usually play games on the easiest difficulty several times before I feel comfortable upping it to normal, and I never go past normal. I find RTwP to be chaotic and usually it ends with me checking out of the combat and letting my characters just whack away, keeping enough of an eye to make sure they heal when they need to. I love being able to really think through moves and plan things out in TB. Nowadays with WotR, which I love and have put like, 600 hours into at this point, I usually just go RTwP for the casual mobs and such, and use TB for the dramatic, big bosses. Being able to strategise and move characters around like chess pieces just makes me feel cool.

Second that, pretty much.

In BG2, the main drawback of rtwp is best seen in difficult encounters. Ordinary mobs don't really matter much, I just made my frontliners to chug a bottle or two after the combat, and move along. But with Twisted Rune, Kangaxx and the like, the game essentially becomes turn-based for me, as I had to continuously hit pause to babisit my party members, watch the combat log for any dangerous spells being cast by opponents, etc. This was rtwp in name only.

If I want something like Diablo, I would just reinstall Diablo back. No character switching, complete immersion, here we go. I just don't know how this playstyle could possibly work for party-based games, unless companion's AI is better than me. And I have yet to see a DnD CRPG where the latter would be the case.

This. I very recently started playing WotR and, after restarting a couple of times, I must say that I find this mix of RtwP and TB to be the absolute sweet spot. Trash the mobs/easy fights and then take your time for the tough ones. If I had to pick one though, I'd go TB.

While i enjoy turn based ...
I was really curious about that hive mind, or how they called it ... but when i just fighted skelletal scribes, they were still acting one-by-one ... do i need to turn it on somewhere, or just some enemies will use it? :-/

I don't think RtwP is inherently less tactical than turn-based mode. Nor do I agree that when you pause a lot it essentially becomes turn-based. Both statement just seem wrong to me. The main and critical difference is this: in RtwP people act at the same time. This has two effects, one is clearly an advantage in video games, the others can be discussed:

1) with decent graphics in RtwP combat is simply more cinematic - even if you pause you could store a video of your game, cut out the combats and have a video of fluid combat. That's a positive thing, even if you personally don't need it. It also yields itself more natural to showing in-game cutscenes of combat that look and feel like the actual combat in the game. For me, this helps with immersion - with BG3 you can always tell if it is in 'cutscene mode' or in 'gameplay mode'.

2) people acting at the same time has obvious tactical implications. It is perfectly possible in RtwP for two mages to fireball each other and both die. In turn-based one of them wins initiative and just kills the other one. Turn-based combat without a game master usually ends up in one of two directions: it becomes a long, drawn-out thing (consider table-top strategy) or it becomes all about striking first (XCOM). It's either one or the other: slow attrition or first strike. That's not always an issue - I like XCOM. But in an RPG I don't think either of the two extremes are good.

Not all groups have been swarmafied yet.

A cinematic look is nice to have, but not at the expense of gameplay and functionality. Real-time with Pause is quite cumbersome in many ways, especially when it comes to area of effects.

+1