Yes this is what I was getting at. I like your description of 'flow' in TB combat as an illusion. That's exactly what it is. That's also why I don't see the value or point of animations in TB combat. Comes across as artificial and fake to me. What's the point of showing me an animation of me hitting an enemy where that enemy is a frozen statue?
Yghhh... I'll bite. Visual flurish in many games is just an "illusion". Graphics are nothing more then representation of mechanics. Devs generally don't prototype animations - they prototype mechanics - graphics are then added to either visually communicate what is happening mechanic-wise. That why games like rogue and likes worked just fine - games like that don't NEED graphics to work mechanically. But graphics make games more approachable and enjoyable to play. You don't need nice figurines and well produced pieces in a board game - but it helps in comfort of play, and understanding and remembering mechanics.
If the game is designed from ground up to be a computer game, that's true that they can use visual flurishes (such as attack animations) as mechanics. But BG3 is based on a system that couldn't be designed with that in mind - animations would have little meaning in BG3 whenever it would be semi-RTwP (afterall, BG1&2 aren't real time - they are simultaneous turns, something which confused me a lot back in the day) or turn based. I expressed somewhere else on this forum controversial opinion that I would wecome top-down RPG that wouldn't be based on dice rolls and other PnP style mechanics. I think one of the reason I like PoE series so well, that at least in some ways they make the systems more native to computers (like using real time recovery, rather then attacks per turn).
And yes, Turn-Based system does bring the mechanics to the main focus, and tends to dispell the "illusion" or "immersion" other computer games might cultivate. But one might appreciate that it doesn't muddy the mechanics up - afterall, in the end in IE games or Pathfinder the combat happens in the small box in the corner, not on the "illusion" bit of the screen.
Yes I am ok with everything you say here in general. All graphics in videogames are one form of illusion or another. But at least in a RT(wP) game, that illusion holds, and immersion is maintained, at least for me, whereas in TB combat, it automatically gets destroyed the moment the game automatically freezes everything on my screen.
As to your controversial opinion, I myself have said in several threads here how much I dislike dice/luck-centered RPG mechanics and as such that I have slowly over the years becomes disillusioned with D&D mechanics. I also much prefer a game where luck is not central and how the player chooses to build their character (and also companion characters) and the choices they make in-game should be the driver of mechanics.
In reality, we are often in agreement. So it puzzles me why you so often choose to post negatively towards me.
