Lazy git is probably sodding off, playing video games or some such.
I think what he means, ( and thank you, Hoplon, for clarifying your earlier comment to kof), is that turn-based combat is mostly consistent of picking a choice from a range of chioces presented, leisurely, akin to ordering food from a restaurant. You know, select Guy A to move to Position B, activate Power C, etc.
And it is fun, as i find Divinity Original Sin fun, but it is not steadily exciting. It =is= exciting in spurts, as your choices play out and you watch in horror as the enemy choices play out. "Oh, crap!". It's a different kind of action, that's for sure, and a different kind of play.
If we must descent to sports analogies, it's akin to chess, not football.
I see. He should check out X-COM: Enemy Unknown. There is a lot of action in there, despite game being "menus of actions" and turn-based.
In fact there is an interesting thought. In "Putting the Punk back into Cyberpunk" one comment was: "The main problem is that the original system is based on dice rolls. When you think about Cyberpunk you think about shooting, action, a lot of explosions. But that doesn’t fit dice rolls in a video game." In comparison X-COM has something akin to dice rolls, it's a video game and there is a lot of shooting, action and a lot of explosions. So the whole comment about system not fitting into a video game is not adhering to reality.
X-Com wasn't very exciting, combat wise. It was fun and kind of gulp-oh-crap-phew-my-turn-now exciting, but not run-run-hide-grenade-pray-shoot-jumpincar-yeehaw-still-alive exciting.
It was action-on-pause, or safe action.
Dice roll results can fit into a video game, but it's tough. Playing FNV right now, I'm reminded of hwo clumsy and often frustrating the combat is compared to, say, Watch Dogs. Or GTA. Or, well, the Witcher series. FNV is lots of fun, but the aim-and-miss at close range, although not unrealistic, is pretty frustrating. Especially if you're crouched, aiming carefully, stationary target, etc.
It was action-on-pause, or safe action.
Dice roll results can fit into a video game, but it's tough. Playing FNV right now, I'm reminded of hwo clumsy and often frustrating the combat is compared to, say, Watch Dogs. Or GTA. Or, well, the Witcher series. FNV is lots of fun, but the aim-and-miss at close range, although not unrealistic, is pretty frustrating. Especially if you're crouched, aiming carefully, stationary target, etc.
You have strange notion that it has to be action in order to be exciting. I found combat exciting, because it was lethal. You had to use your turn in a way that maximized your gains and minimized risks, because there was always risk in the background of each action. It was by no means safe action. The only reason I see CP77 not fitting into this system is when you're not having a team, especially when combat is supposed to be lethal. On the other hand, Fallout had fairly limited team (or no team at all) and it did pretty well.
Sure, combat was lethal.
So's chess and checkers - you lose a piece, it's gone. But it's not -you- and it's not scary. It's just a piece and besides, you have time to go get a drink and think your next move over.
X com was plenty exciting - development, mission plans, deployment, the battles as they went off...but the combat itself, the back-and-forth, the, well, the try-to-kill-the-other guy, that part was pretty placid.
The situations themselves could be tense - the base invasion on Ironman, Hard, yeah, that was some tense fun. But the actual battling, the gameplay of the fight, no, there was no reason to sweat, because you had lots of time to make your moves. And it was just guys on a screen, far below.
CP 2020 combat is exciting in PnP partly because it's your only character and partly because it's pretty quick. Unlike in X-Com, their is a timer and it's a short one. I typically want an answer from my player immediately. Like, right now. They have to think on their feet. I interrupt their actions and they interrupt enemy actions and we form a rolling narrative.
In both Dark Heresy and Cyberpunk, I often dispense with turns just to get that narrative.
"The two hunters come sprinting up the stairs, hunting for you, targetters seeking heat sources/ You're planted above them in an alcove, waiting. Roll. Three hits, the first one goes down, dark blood pouring from his wounds, while the second hurls himself over the railing to avoid your gunfire. What do you do?" "Okay, roll twice..two successes..emote bounding after him and managing to not tumble over your own weapons. Note - as you clear the railing, you see him/her/it falling backwards on a grapple-line, spinning towards you and raising their gun. Add that in..."
Combat, exciting combat, is a frenetic decision factory, where time is tight and choices hard. As much as I sympathize with Suhiir, for example, wanting an option for the older, slower players, I have to say, I don't want combat slowed down in Cyberpunk 2077. I want it fast, furious and deadly. 3.2 seconds and you're dead or they are, just like the PnP.
So's chess and checkers - you lose a piece, it's gone. But it's not -you- and it's not scary. It's just a piece and besides, you have time to go get a drink and think your next move over.
X com was plenty exciting - development, mission plans, deployment, the battles as they went off...but the combat itself, the back-and-forth, the, well, the try-to-kill-the-other guy, that part was pretty placid.
The situations themselves could be tense - the base invasion on Ironman, Hard, yeah, that was some tense fun. But the actual battling, the gameplay of the fight, no, there was no reason to sweat, because you had lots of time to make your moves. And it was just guys on a screen, far below.
CP 2020 combat is exciting in PnP partly because it's your only character and partly because it's pretty quick. Unlike in X-Com, their is a timer and it's a short one. I typically want an answer from my player immediately. Like, right now. They have to think on their feet. I interrupt their actions and they interrupt enemy actions and we form a rolling narrative.
In both Dark Heresy and Cyberpunk, I often dispense with turns just to get that narrative.
"The two hunters come sprinting up the stairs, hunting for you, targetters seeking heat sources/ You're planted above them in an alcove, waiting. Roll. Three hits, the first one goes down, dark blood pouring from his wounds, while the second hurls himself over the railing to avoid your gunfire. What do you do?" "Okay, roll twice..two successes..emote bounding after him and managing to not tumble over your own weapons. Note - as you clear the railing, you see him/her/it falling backwards on a grapple-line, spinning towards you and raising their gun. Add that in..."
Combat, exciting combat, is a frenetic decision factory, where time is tight and choices hard. As much as I sympathize with Suhiir, for example, wanting an option for the older, slower players, I have to say, I don't want combat slowed down in Cyberpunk 2077. I want it fast, furious and deadly. 3.2 seconds and you're dead or they are, just like the PnP.
Dying in video game ain't scary in general. I fail to see how dying in a FPS game is somehow more scary than having your squad wiped out in a turn-based game. It's a matter of opinion I guess. It's pretty clear there are two ways to go about this. As for losing pieces? Replace anonimous pieces with your character and NPCs. It gets much more ugly that way, because you're not betting on easily replaceable pieces anymore.
That's the point. It was tense, because of how action developed through the course of the battle, not because you were 0.5 second slower than your opponent or there was a timer that forced you to play your orders in a hurry. Fear factor was placed elsewhere, but it was there.
It sounds more like it's how you narrate your PnP sessions, not general rule how CP2020 plays. I would appreciate a source, because I have trouble finding anything on time constraints in CP2020 (or PnP RPG games in general).
I don't see it quite that way. Tough decisions and hard choices, lethal, yes. But (real) time only matters depending what the goal of the combat is. In a regular shooter like Call of Duty, reaction time is obviously an issue. But it gets harder when you have an RPG in your hands where there are supposed to be set of progressive statistics that represent the characers abilities.
The 3 second mark was an abstract of a real time situation. If, in real time, the lethality was up the roof (as people want) and combat encounters generally taking few seconds in close quarters, I think it would be pretty horrible combat and result in a game where everyone just reloads constantly because they can't keep up or make out what is happening in the mostly close quarters events (it's different in games like Arma, where things are generally pretty slowpaced and usually team based -- and further, Arma with skills and stats dictating accuracy.... yeah, think about it....) because they lack the reflexes and/or their character too lacks the ability. I mean fast and messy is what FNFF is supposed to represent, but it's bad if the game is fast and messy at the same time. I'd reckon that'd not be very fun to play in the long run.
If the 3 seconds were, as in the PnP, the time represented in a turn. It would mean approximately 1 (or possibly 2) actions per turn; and with lethality up the roof, it'd very likely result in very fast TB combat. Over in few rounds. You'd be on the map of what happens all the time, but that'd only help in decision making because no matter how much time you have to think about it, your odds ain't improving and you are always in danger to fail no matter how ingenious tactic you might come up (and then need to readjust).
All that said. They're not making it TB; I wish they would (at least add a gameplay mode for such), but I don't believe they will. There are ways, though, to adjust a real time combat accommodate and partly mimic it. I'd wish it's not just action and explosions -- that, along with the "dicerolls don't fit" comment (which I find borderline ignorant), is just typical flirting with the mainstream; and if mainstream is the aim (which I've so far understood it shouldn't be), I'll gladly drop out.
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Not only have I played X com, South Park- the stick of truth, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the old republic and Shadowrun Returns (turn based See) GTA when it was still a top down Amiga game and some ZX Spectrum RPG i no longer remember the name of (the 80's where a long time ago)
X-com i gave up on because the combat was just so frustratingly slow and out of my control. South Park (and the others) i got through despite the combat, and have given up on a lot of game because they kept taking away control of my actions at crucial times to tell their horrible bullshit stories. That is the biggst problem, I am not doing anything while those animations play out and if I'm not doing it, it might as well just be a film.
Also, the menus thing? Literally how you did things in the Final Fantasy franchise. appalling games.
X-com i gave up on because the combat was just so frustratingly slow and out of my control. South Park (and the others) i got through despite the combat, and have given up on a lot of game because they kept taking away control of my actions at crucial times to tell their horrible bullshit stories. That is the biggst problem, I am not doing anything while those animations play out and if I'm not doing it, it might as well just be a film.
Also, the menus thing? Literally how you did things in the Final Fantasy franchise. appalling games.
Neverwinter Night's and Knights of the Old Republic aren't turnbased, though.
Not quite true. Firstly, you have control. You influence the odds to tip them in your favor. I suspect it's no different than PnP CP2020 in this regard. Secondly, you don't play a film, because a film is passive experience you have no control over. It's like story in action games (FPS games). You play some action sequences, then you watch a movie cut scene and so forth. In X-COM you decide what you do and then the outcome is visualized. That's the key difference.
It is. Kind of. Combat in NWN and KotOR is based off games like BG and combat in BG was based off PnP, which is turn-based concept.
Yes, it is based on PnP. But no the games aren't TB; what they are instead, is realtime with pause (RTwP) which is - imo - usually a lousy in-between compromise in attempt at speeding up the TB concept. The characters have internal attack delay clocks, and there are (sometimes) rounds, but things work in realtime (and automatically at that) and nobody's taking any turns (pausing the game in regular, or irregular intervals don't consitute as taking a turn).
It depends on the game. Albeit I agree with Sard's position, I don't think that "scary" is the appropriate term either. "Pacing" I think is much more descriptive.
Have you ever played HoI in a LAN setting?
The beauty of HoI is that you don't really know you're winning until it's truly over and in a multiplayer setting it is a very stressful game.
You can be on the high horse of victory and be stressed out of your mind as the enemy finds a way to flank you.It is that emotional rollercoaster that makes up the excellent pacing.
I don't think a TB game based on gunfights will ever be deep. Simply put, it's just not a complex setting. It's a firefight, not exactly rocket science.
X-com gave the impression of it simply not being a very deep game in spite of being turned based. The optimal strategy was bounding overwatch ad inifinitum. Occassionally, I had to use a gambit (usually /w an easily replaceable rookie) to break through --- but then his survival was more up to statistics then to l33t strategy.
Now to be fair I only played it for a day BUT the thing is bounding overwatch is pretty much the optimal strategy for EVERY TB tactical game.
Jagged Alliance 2 was a bit better because there were a lot of different environments/situation also crucial tools like grenades could sometime be scarce. Fallout 1 & 2 weren't difficult at all. The main factor in success was your gear not your smarts.
These games were "complex" because you had to know the stats & mechanics but once you knew them, the strategy proved to be awfully simple. It's more akin to stamp collecting then strategy. It didn't help that the AI is not very bright.
Chess games can actually be very stressful. Much more so then any other games. Chess champions have been known to lose several pounds over the course of tournaments. There ARE actually time limits to them. I think you have to do something like 20 moves in an hour or so. That's not a lot. That's 2 minutes to think per move.
Arma with stats It sounds pretty funny said like that, but that's essentially how the early Tom Clancy games rolled:
There was a huge difference in shooting skills between Ding Chavez and that random UN trooper in the first R6.
Likewise in Ghost recon.
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I can agree with this. However, it doesn't change what I've said earlier.
Same can be said about emotional dilemma caused by "what to do?" and "what will he do?" scenarios in turn-based games.
I find turn-based games usually deeper than action games, even those more complex (as complicated) ones. In fact I can't think of really deep action game with guns while there are many turn-based games with guns that are deep or deeper than action equivalents as action games are much more simplified in what they actually allow you to do.
X-COM was deep. Deeper than most people give it credit for. The key were abilities of team members. On basic level there was little one could do, but the more skills you got, the wider array of options you had to deal with the given situation was. I don't know on what level you played, but in my experience - on Classic Ironman - overwatch was too much of a risky gamble to stake life of my soldiers on it. It had it uses, but it certainly wasn't the game winner for me and potentially excellent mission could've gone to hell relatively easy.
Survival is always up to statistics or luck. Strategy comes into play in terms of beating the odds, turning the table with what you have. If you put yourself in a position of disadvantage and then are forced to relay on fate (or statistics), then you did it wrong. Your purpose is to cheat it, so to speak. It's same as running directly under a machine gun fire and count on not being the one who gets killed, because there is the whole crowd of people running... It's pure luck that you don't die, because the machine gunner focuses on someone else (as he has many target to pick from). What about artillery fire?
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1.) You can't get anywhere close to the end of a turn-based game in a day. How would you possibly know something like that if you skipped out before combat actually began to become challenging? That's like playing the first level of Mario 3 and being like, "dumb platformer guyz you can just fly through the entire game."
2.) How about the fact that a ton of turn-based tactical games don't have overwatch or anything resembling it?
Anyone who's never had a scary moment in a turn-based strategy game has clearly never played many of them. The dread of an enemy phase in my personal favorite, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, is far more prevalent than in any shooter where I know doing something stupid will allow me to respawn ten steps away. Part of that is the game's permadeath for characters (and refusal to give you new ones to replace the ones you lose) along with the hard mode's lack of in-battle saves, so every turn of the hour-long maps has to be perfect or else you'll suffer the consequences for the rest of the game.
Having the time to plan out my characters' moves doesn't make it any less scary than a real-time game. Besides, real-time games have plenty of lulls, as well. Hell, how much of Half Life 2 and other shooters consists of just walking down hallways and under pipes/miscellaneous obstacles between those oh-so-scary gun battles? Lots, but those lulls never seem to be brought up even though walking away from the game to grab a drink or something during those is equally viable.
How is that any different than learning the best way to approach different kinds of enemies in a shooter? Obviously the more you learn, the easier the game will be for you. Spoiler alert: that's true of all games.
On the topic CP2077 I want something quite complex to match an RPG of it's pedigree and voted as such. For games in general I can play and enjoy all types and hold no bias on complexity. For me it depends on what the game is trying to achieve, after all not everything needs to be The Witcher. I'm probably the only Nintendo fan on these forums, but I mention that now to show that I enjoy those kinds of games just as much.
But the "depth" doesn't come from the superficial setting of "firefight". It comes from the combination of options and outcomes the player has in it, based on the enemies and their faculties, the terrain and how the PC in the situation has been built (what he is able to accomplish and to what length). The character is not tied to the limits of the controller of choice (be it mouse and KB, or Xbawks or what ever), so the player has deeper control over him so he is potentially able to perform tasks you wouldn't be able to do with your controller; or really feel the effects of. Further more, since you have your turn to ponder about your moves, you are able to make much more indepth decisions about your next move and thinking beyond that because you (optimally) take so much more different variables into account than in a hectic realtime situation.
Why I'm only begging for a "pause" option not slower combat. Those that like RTS combat should have it, but some folks claim that the option to "pause" ruins the game. Why I have no idea. L33Tism is my best guess ... "If you can't handle RTS you have no right to be able to play the game."
As I've said elsewhere, RTS (with a "pause" option) is just fine if it's a single character NON team game. But when a game requires team play (think the various D&D PC games) then RTS just can't work because there's no way to control multiple PCs/NPCs without something similar to what DA:O (PC version) or the yet to release DA:I uses, unless the AI/scripting for them is FAR better then it is in 90% of games. Because if it's released as RTS/team/no pause/typical AI they're cutting their own throat.
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Yeah, but you're supposed to think about these beforehand. Something which you're going to do if you like the game anyway.
How is finding an optimal way to build a PC in a TB different from finding a new build order in Starcraft II?
This is complexity not because of cleverness but tedious number crunching and why I usually don't play them.
Conceptually, I don't think that gun-based TB games are much more complicated then multiplayer FPS. I largely clear a room the same way in Jagged Alliance as I would in Rainbow 6.
At roughly equal skills, you could argue that FPS is more complex , for one you have time pressure. For two, you have to coordinate with other players, which is much like herding cats. And three, for the casual player, you do not know the strenghts and weaknesses of your opponents (and oftentimes teammates) beforehand.
If you need 10 minutes to make a decision, then it is likely that you should have thought about it beforehand, or the game relies more on micromanaging minutae details then being clever. Again, chess tournaments have 2 minutes per turn in average.
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