Is Turn Based RPG's Dead?

xSamhainx said:

i liked Dungeon Siege 1, everyone always rags on it but I had a good time with it!

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I agree that it's a good game (but never played its expansion) but also I found DS2 quite better. And again, even for it, DS1, it is for me much more clearly a RPG than any Diablo. I agree it pick the Diablo approach and many tricks but also tried to temper it to make it more RPG and succeed well in part.

Corwin said:

DS1 is MARVELOUS, as the base engine for Lazarus and U6P; make sure you have a copy!!

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Do I have to have the Aranna-expansion for Lazarus ?

No, nor for U6P either, just the basic 1.11 patch which is easy to find.

Ah, thanks !

I've been wondering (about) this for a long time !

owever, when it comes to a game like Baldur's Gate II, I found real-time with pause really took something away from the fighting. With 6 characters, each with special abilities, I felt like even though I could pause any time I want (and lord knows I paused a lot), I just wasn't in control the way I was back in the turn-based days. So many times I'd give half my party orders, and then unpause it because I wanted to see what happened before I thought about what I wanted my other half to do. I don't know, it's hard to explain. Real-time is absolutely more realistic, but again, realism is not the only or highest goal a game can achieve.

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For a true tactician, I can see how BGII's style or real-time turn based would be frustrating. I have to say that (maybe thankfully since everything is going that way?) I prefer it. I'm just not a tactician. I don't mind pausing and then setting up a few commands, and I generally change all my characters to as close to you can get to puppet mode without being pure puppets, but my battles often turn out more like huge whirlwinds that I wonder what happened at the end!

When wandering through the net I found this article:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thu...-traditional-console-rpgs-the-way-of-the-past

Its topic is quite close to the topic of this thread and there's also some quite interesting readers comments. It's a console point of view but reflect quite well this topic.

Dasale said:

When wandering through the net I found this article:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thu...-traditional-console-rpgs-the-way-of-the-past

Its topic is quite close to the topic of this thread and there's also some quite interesting readers comments. It's a console point of view but reflect quite well this topic.

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So console gamers are complaining about the decline of their RPG's too. Heh!

Interesting article. I definitely agree with the comment on there that turn based games were more likely a result of the limitation of hardware than actual intent in most cases. That said, when done right, I think they can still be very enjoyable. I think one key is that you have to keep animations to a minimum. Otherwise, what should be a 5-10 minute battle drags into half an hour or more.

Quote that this topic was more than one year ago. I think articles and some (console) reader posts would be different or shifted a bit now because of the NDS. I was looking at a site with lists of future release of RPG for any platform and the list for the NDS only is almost as big than the sum of the list of other platforms (Consoles, other Handheld and PC). And plenty games released for the NDS are turn based.

But that's probably not a hazard if it's the weakest modern hardware of its time and have so many turn based. The weaker the better, reminds me something! :-D

I always liked the tactics of turn-based. I loved playing Jagged Alliance 2 and couldn't imagine it in realtime. I think turn-based helps bring certain stats to life such as agility that allows more movement, or strength that does more damage. Playing Fallout 1 and 2 gave no illusion to what it is: an RPG. While Fallout 3 felt too vague to me. Most of the time it was an FPS and I killed creatures as fast as I could click. I missed the turn based elements from the previous games...

I don't know, I can appreciate real time, but I just wish it wouldn't replace turn based. Why can't there be both?

BONUS FACT: I started off putting a dash in between "turn" and "based" and then removed it. I don't know why.

You left the first one in!! I agree, I love TB, but there aren't many games using it anymore. Action is fine, but it caters to one demographic and IMO, that demographic is already OVER catered for. It's like TV, it holds limited appeal for me since it also is geared to the same group. People my age have more money than these youngsters, and frequently nothing worth spending it on!!

Imho very well said, Corwin.

blatantninja said:

Interesting article. I definitely agree with the comment on there that turn based games were more likely a result of the limitation of hardware than actual intent in most cases.

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Along history that is certainly right but for RPG real time involve additional problems from a game design point of view.

The main problem of real time is managing a party of PC. I don't remember any RPG that ever did a really good work in this area. In fact the best is the last I played, NWN2 and packs. But many player complain about it anyway.

So we have the intermediate system with pauses. This involves different problems and I don't remember any CRPG with party and real time plus pause that either offer some challenge in fights either can be played with a small number of pauses. BG series typically felt into the problems, either too easy and automatic either requiring a highly careful pausing at right times and relatively often.

The only real time fight system I ever seen working well in CRPG was with single PC, no party. And no party change a lot the CRPG design.

blatantninja said:

That said, when done right, I think they can still be very enjoyable. I think one key is that you have to keep animations to a minimum. Otherwise, what should be a 5-10 minute battle drags into half an hour or more.

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Definitely agree, I think animations should be as you said and even games like this should have an option to even reduce more any fighting animations. In FF4 DS remake when there are animation you can continue other actions if there's any to do. But that system is far to be a true TB system because it is based on time delay not TB.

I'm playing a CRPG fully TB, and its animations are very minimal when there are any. The result is that despite quite many units involved in many fights (it's not rare to have mini wars with 30 to 50 units involved in a fight) fights run quite fast.

Tycho said:

I don't know, I can appreciate real time, but I just wish it wouldn't replace turn based. Why can't there be both?

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What you mean? A same game support both systems or more modern games support TB?

About a same game supporting both system I have strong doubt about this choice because fights should be designed differently if it's a TB or RT system. In TB the difficulty must be raised more than for RT. And for TB an extreme care should be put in fight length, fun and rate of fights. RT will support more easily a higher rate of fights even if they aren't that challenging. Additionally the time of a same fight played RT and TB is tremendously longer for the TB system and fights working in RT could easily kill any game in played TB.

Corwin said:

You left the first one in!! I agree, I love TB, but there aren't many games using it anymore. Action is fine, but it caters to one demographic and IMO, that demographic is already OVER catered for. It's like TV, it holds limited appeal for me since it also is geared to the same group. People my age have more money than these youngsters, and frequently nothing worth spending it on!!

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I don't have the exact numbers but I think you overevaluate your (our) niche market. A traditional myth around computer games is they have a bigger market than movies. In fact the game market become bigger than movies tickets many years ago but with DVD market and tickets market the movies market is quite bigger than the game market and with TV rights the movies market is far bigger than game market. Alas I don't have the numbers at hand so this need some check.

Another illusion is that almost everybody is playing video games. For the young generation that is more true but only very few of them could be attracted by a TB CRPG (if we forget JRPG). For older generation this is far to be true, even best numbers I saw from some posts in these forums was something like 20%. But in those 20% how many really buy regularly games and among them how many could be attracted by a TB CRPG? Probably much much less.

The second source of illusion when comparing games market to movies market is to forget that the global game market should be divided by the number of game platform. If we stick to computer game market (which is what you probably have in mind) it is certainly quite small when compared only to movies tickets market so with TV rights and dvd the comparison is probably quite ridiculous. For sure piracy is setting up a different drawing but here it's about niche market.

A last point is let take older people like you and me, ok we have more money and are more ready to buy more games but still not that much games and not much more and probably much less than dedicated younger players. There many points that make us less significant game buyers:

• A first point is that most best companies don't look only at todays sell numbers but are also interested by tomorrow sell numbers and from that point of view, there's two points:
  • The first point is that targeting younger is more close to targeting tomorrow than if you target old people.
  • The second point is the game image and publicity get freely from the net. It's points that could help setup an image and help for tomorrow sells. But our long gaming experience make us more demanding and hardly anymore a fan as we are less blind and has clean some illusions. Young will still have plenty enthusiast (blindness and illusions ) and there's more chance that they'll make a bigger and more positive noise on the net.
• The second point is that even if we have the money for and are ready to buy plenty games in practice we won't because we will not want to buy another crap even if it is TB and CRPG. As I explained above the decades removed us some illusions so removed us some incredulity, some naivety and some enthusiast capacity. I'm just playing a typical example of this. It's Realmz, well scenario for it. Is all of you TB CRPG old fans buy it and all its scenario? I bet not and there's point to not do it despite it has some great points making it (or some of its scenario) a quite great TB CRPG playing experience. But it's not the rare perfect game and that's why many old TB CRPG "fans" never bought it.

When playing (or replaying) some Realmz scenario I realized or remember a point I had forgotten.

WRPG (Western RPG) are going to more and more realism often forgetting gameplay basics. One point that bring this evolution is to have real outdoor and have vast area in full 3D. Alas this realistic approach is wrong from a gameplay point of view. With this approach we lost the feeling of vast area and wide world or get it at the price of long boring walks through empty areas.

Why put that in TB thread? I didn't want open up a topic only for that and this it is closely linked to TB, we not only lost TB but we also lost the two scale approach and the real feeling of vast world or area. And both lost was in large part the price of "realism".

EDIT: And about immensity we also lost with real 3D those crowd of monsters building up well feeling of war and submersion, not only in CRPG but even shooters. Where have disappeared those armies like I could find in Realmz or like there was in Doom?

Dasale said:

I don't have the exact numbers but I think you overevaluate your (our) niche market.

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Everyone's welcome to their own view of it, but strictly speaking the market for PC games consists of everyone who owns a PC and can afford to buy a game. Historical sales are certainly worth considering, but it's an easy mistake to consider them too significant in high-technology markets.

Other markets work differently. For example the market for dog food. There are only so many dogs that are only going to eat so much dog food. That's pretty much all there is to that, while this market is still emerging.

As far as I can tell, the target market for CRPG should be everyone who owns a PC and also enjoys reading science-fiction and/or fantasy-adventure.

Well, I'm replaying Ultima 6, which is turn based and I have to say I'm enjoying the full turn based style!

Squeek said:

Everyone's welcome to their own view of it, but strictly speaking the market for PC games consists of everyone who owns a PC and can afford to buy a game. Historical sales are certainly worth considering, but it's an easy mistake to consider them too significant in high-technology markets.

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It's funny you see it like that I have the exact reverse feeling, that people think PC games is the bigger in entertainment market. Again, I'm almost sure that movies is much much bigger from a money point of view and also that it's easy to forget console games. I read one or two year ago that the only world area where the PC games sold was higher than console games sold was Europe, even in North America the balance was for console game sells.

Also, and I doubt it's so different in North America, many people that own a PC just never buy a single PC game particularly for the people mentioned by your friend Corwin, older one and at least that's totally true for oldrr people I know (may age, a bit less and a bit more). Look at DS games sells, here you have older generation discovering games and see what are top list selsls, those list clearly show what games they buy... that's very far to TB CRPG that was the topic of Corwin.

Anyway the point here is about restricted market, that was the quote of Corwin, ie to suppose that there was a viable market for CRPG TB. Perhaps or not, but it's not by looking the market share in a very general point of view that this point is targeted.

Squeek said:

Other markets work differently. For example the market for dog food. There are only so many dogs that are only going to eat so much dog food. That's pretty much all there is to that, while this market is still emerging.

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I don't understand your point. Yes they work differently because game is entertainment and because you cannot pirate dog food.

Squeek said:

As far as I can tell, the target market for CRPG should be everyone who owns a PC and also enjoys reading science-fiction and/or fantasy-adventure.

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I don't think this is true for CRPG TB and that was the subject, not CRPG.

Quote: I wish people debate without epidermic reaction to "defend their friends". Sorry Squeek for this quote but that's so clear and well I doubt this quote will improve anything but nor that it will make things more negative. Anyway the point isn't the friends or not, it's just to never forget that it's about debating a little, not to prove you are right and that you or your friends win. Myself I think I continue forget that sometime without to realize it.

I suppose I should have read your posts more carefully or made myself more clear, because my comments weren't intended as some sort of "win" for Corwin or anyone else.

When you referred to "the exact numbers" I assumed you meant sales numbers, since all others are just a matter of opinion. Sales numbers are more significant in established markets where there's little or no growth potential but less significant in emerging ones.

Everyone who's ever worked in marketing expressed opinions using numbers. Understanding those numbers is the key to evaluating those opinions.

You're on your own, dealing with Corwin.