Pillars of Eternity - Interview with Josh Sawyer

What RPGs would you say implemented RTwP well? And that's not a rhetorical question, I'm curious if haven't played the ones you'd consider to have good combat.

"Well" is a very subjective term. I don't think I've ever seen a CRPG that did it well enough to match the control and comfort of a good turn-based system.

But there are several that have functional and decent systems, including:

Baldur's Gate 1+2, IWD 1+2, NWN 1+2, Drakensang, X-Com Apocalypse (RPG-ish), Dragon Age: Origins, Dungeon Siege 1+2, and others.

PoE is one of the worst examples of RTwP that I'm aware of, especially considering the engagement zones and the amount of active/modal abilities available.

Truly awful implementation.

2.0 patch helped a little, but it's still very bad in my opinion.

Now, the Infinity engine games are far from perfect - but if you're careful in picking the right scripts for your party members - most fights are quite easy to manage.
 
Drakensang's combat was a clusterfuck. Man would that game profit from some proper positioning.
 
All I remember from it was that it worked and I had no trouble with it. That said, I didn't get very far.
 
Drakensang: The River of Time's RtwP system was fine, what made it a clusterfuck was things like having no zone of control (a problem SitS also had). But in both games the act of pausing was crucial to gameplay and designed well in that regard. DA:I had a pause system there but failed to implement any gameplay relevance for it, it wasn't the game's primary focus.
 
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I've played on Tactical and I would disagree. All RtwP combat can be trivialized with the proper skillset.
 
It's Sacred_Path, it must be time for The Pronoun Game!

Played what on tactical? Drakensang or DA:I? What do you mean by "Skillset" and in what way do you mean "proper"? Programming AI or just your own awesomeness?
 
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I've played on Tactical and I would disagree. All RtwP combat can be trivialized with the proper skillset.

All doable challenges in gaming can be trivialized with the proper skillset.

Fixed :)

Meaningless statement, really.

It's not about the challenge of combat so much as the challenge of controlling combat.

Any kind of combat system can be challenging, that has nothing to do with the real-time or turn-based nature of it.
 
DA:I, obviously. Pause is a must against dragons but very handy in other cases, too. And the point is that i.e. Infinity Engine games can be played without pause, too.
 
DA:I, obviously. Pause is a must against dragons but very handy in other cases, too. And the point is that i.e. Infinity Engine games can be played without pause, too.

You're taking the pedantic and speaking as if it were majority. A game which has the odd fight which can possibly benefit from pausing versus a game where the odd fight can be left to real time. But then why am I surprised, it's Sacred_Path!
 
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You want to add some hyperbole to that? :lol:

Updated my journal: a good implementation of RtwP is a game where the AI is too bloody stupid to not micromanage.
 
Again, I have no idea what you're even talking about, no games have good AI... Oh look, we're back to the pronoun game!
 
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You need pause in one game. You don't need it in the other.

Think about why that may be. It's mind-boggling.
 
Infinity Engine games can be played without pause, too.

Some fights yeah, but there were plenty that definitely needed the pause unless you were already completely familiar with that encounter, and even then I don't see how some of them could be done without it.
 
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I probably play 90% of the fights in BG without pause. That's possible only because the scripts are relatively flexible.

Also, the VAST majority of fights are trash mobs - so it's only natural.

The hard fights, obviously, are another matter. Maybe godlike gamers like GG can do them without pause - probably blindfolded whilst criticising Bethesda graphics on 3 forums at the same time - but she's in her own category entirely.
 
Right, let's clarify, because all of SP's abstract one-liners really are muddying the point here.

Balder's Gate - The people who designed the game designed it so that pausing was a primary focus of the gameplay. The pause button is a major aspect of the UI and the characters are often is situations whereby they need to use either inventory items or deeper UI skills or the option to change weapons mid-battle or because they need to re-direct a party member to a different enemy (all 'for examples', the list is not exhaustive).

However, for more experienced players, they also implemented optional short-cuts and automations to some of these aspects via hot-keys, formations and the like so that the experienced player does not have to spend so much time on a trash-like mob.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - The people who designed the game designed it so that pausing was an optional aspect of gameplay. The pause button does not play a major role in the UI and the default is for everything to be automated for the inexperienced player, but having pausing optionally available for the experienced player on the very toughest difficulty setting.

The design is the key - so for Balder's gate they design their encounters with pausing in mind. For DA:I they design the encounters with real time in mind. This is the difference.
 
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The funny thing I've noticed about RTwP combat; whenever the discussion of whether or not it is a good system, the people who claim to like it and want more RTwP games will dismiss certain games (e.g., DA:I, DA2) as not really being RTwP despite the fact that the combat (a) plays out in real-time and (b) you can pause to issue commands to your party members…. I don't think using these as the defining features is being pedantic, so much as consistent.

Now, it may very well be the case that you generally "don't need to"- which is probably somewhat subjective- (I haven't played DA:I so I'll take your word on that game), but that doesn't magically make it "Not RTwP", it just means the pause feature was not implemented well. There have been plenty of games with turn-based combat where you generally don't need time to think about your character's actions, but I wouldn't claim that somehow makes them not turn-based; they're just not good turn-based games.

One thing I'd agree with is that there haven't been very many RTwP RPGs. But it seems like fans of it still saying the best examples are BG and IWD… So maybe there's a reason there aren't more RTwP games being made.

I think the closest thing to good RTwP RPGs I've played was KOTOR 1 & 2; seemed to work well there because combat was pretty simply / straightforward; most of the time you're attacking and only really pause to use force powers. IIRC maps weren't very big so there wasn't as many issues with pathfinding as other RTwP games. I also recall liking Lords of the Realm 1 & 2 and Lords of Magic; which again I think worked well because combat was pretty simple.

Dungeon Siege 1+2

Thanks, I haven't played these, so I may have to check them out some time.
 
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