That really illustrates my point - that not enough attention is paid by developers to how players interact with their games. I completely agree that most AI sucks. The best I can remember is DA:O, which allowed you to define detailed rules for each companion's behaviour, and had a very good UI for defining rules, as well as trivially prioritising rules and turning them on/off. But that was very much an exception, and probably represents the apogee of Bioware's design in this regard. ... Players who express a strong preference for TB seem ( on the whole ) to stress a desire to direct all activities in detail. While such micro-management is possible in a typical RTwP game, in most it is undoubtedly clunky to do so, and therefore frustrating.
Conversely, those that express a strong preference for RTwP seem ( on the whole ) to stress a desire for fluidity without detailed management. While it is possible for a typical TB game to automate control, most do not do so, also leading to frustration.
DA1&2 had such a great system with tactics! They were there as an intelligent default over which you had control, you set them up and then didn't have to think about them anymore, but you could always pause and interrupt a tactic in order to do whatever you wanted or needed in a given specific situation. I loved that so much.
I'm still torn on TB versus RTwP in a sense. TB is surely more D&D-friendly (though not so much the party-based initiative.) It's pretty much exactly the way D&D does it in, fact. RTwP, though... it's how the series always did things before, so it's less D&D-faithful but MORE BG-faithful! That's a rough dilemma already.
RTwP feels more dramatic, but it also gives me MORE control. You have control over every fraction of a second rather than, as has been mentioned, being thrown out of combat and then desperately fighting to drag your people out of the poison or the fire or whatever so they don't die. Same situation, but with RTwP--you can pause, direct person 1 to the left, 2 to the right, 3 to the middle, 4 in the opposite direction... you can coordinate. You aren't left scrambling and panicking to avoid people needing to be resurrected.
I find in DOS2 I frequently see something happening that I did NOT want to do, but all I can do is watch helplessly as someone climbs up or down a ladder, wasting their ENTIRE turn, instead of stopping where I wanted them to stop. Incredibly frustrating. I'm not a micro-manager, that is true, but I still prefer more control than the game gives me over what my party is doing when it actually matters. RTwP gives one more leeway, it's more forgiving of misclicks, it's a layer of protection against "OH GOD NO I DIDN'T WANT TO DO THAT" after which the entire fight is lost because the game and I disagreed on what I was trying to do.
Even non-combat related things such as accidentally directing an uncharismatic party member to talk to an NPC can be avoided with pausing. I guess a pause feature is pretty desirable in any case for that reason.
