What you said is absolute insanity. You are saying moving in NWN is where the tactics are?
Insanity? No. I started from the general definition of tactics.
Manoeuvering is the part that is difficult to bring into video games.
Either you want to bring tactics to a video games or you can make a game using a few mechanics and call that tactics, no matter how distant it is from the general acception of tactics.
Why not compare NWN 2 and TOEE since they both have the exact same rule system and pretty much the same party size if memory serves me correctly? Moving in NWN 2was the challenge?
The same rule system? What has it to do with tactics?
Manoeuvering is not simply moving.
Would chess be more tactical if each side had to move at the same time? In ToEE, a game that did nothing more than implement a P&P rule system faithfully, the decisions you make every round are important.
A large number of RTwP games provide the normal sequence of turns. You play first, and the adversary's turn is resolved after yours.
The difference between turn by turn and RTwP is simply the 'length" of a turn.
In one, a turn might allow to spend 16 action points while in the other, you spend 2 action points.
The perspective changes. The short turn in RTwP forces to string several turns together.
You guys are probably young and have no idea what you are talking about beyond you think you know what you are talking about and are defending what you like. In the good TB games every move you make has a significant impact on the outcome. Every decision has a plethora of opportunity costs. Your build is significant. The slightest edge can make a difference. What you do is meaningful. Strategy and tactics matter.
Strategy is different from tactics.
It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with the approach you support. Tactics existed before video games. You might want to bring tactics as it is known everywhere else to video gaming or you might want to develop games around some mechanics and call that tactics.
Now looks look at every RTwP game, and I’ve played them since the first came out, Darklands, up to and including the latest Drakensang or DA2 (whichever came out last). Besides Darklands, they have all been extremely not-tactical to the point where I usually play in windowed mode and do other shit during combat because combat does not need my input. Anyone can literally beat the KTORs and NWNs by slapping their testicles or labia on the mouse during almost every combat encounter, or, even by doing absolutely nothing instead (TACTICS!). The Infinity Engine games had more of a need for player input during boss fights but were still about as tactical as two fat kids with asthma playing laser tag.
Well, again, the same thing. The measure of a good tactics game might be how it relates to tactics. Or if it makes you feel central.
If you want to bring tactics to video gaming, the measure is how the game supports the implementation of tactics and it allows them to be reproduced.
Almost all your choices in a RTwP system are meaningless. In most TBs they are as well, but not the good ones. The difference being RTwP games will never be as tactical. The bar is set significantly lower because you will never be as precise.
Indeed. That is the point. Manoeuvering is not precise. Usually, most people get their tactical decision right but they fail to execute them properly because manoeuvering is usually what goes wrong.
Turn by turn barely can support the hazard tied to manoeuvering. Turn by turn is precise. It is running through data and connect.
And somehow, even though combat is far more hands-off and far more meaningless in RTwP, they decided to add three times the bad guys, three times the barrel smashing, three times the potion chugging (which just screams TACTICS!!!), three times the meaningless. Most of the time you are fighting the AI more than the enemy. I hate wading through endless hordes of enemies to finally get to a boss fight and I issue commands and hit unpause and…my second melee fighter is stuttering on terrain doing nothing, my mage starts running out of the room for some reason, and my archer is way the fuck somewhere else he shouldn’t be. So pause again, issue new orders, and see them fall to shit again. I guess that is tactical in a realistic sense if I tried to clear an evil dungeon with a small bus full of fucking retards.
Matter of taste. It states nothing about the quality of the representation of tactics.
Good TB combat is like the 2v2 arena in WoW. It boils down to which team makes the best use of the GCDs. You have umpteenth choices every GCD, if you make the better choices you usually will win (within a reasonable gear limitation). So many people who have better gearscores than me get so mad when I destroy them but they do everything wrong. They use cc at the wrong times, they apply pressure at the wrong time, they peel at the wrong time. In general they are not able to handle a certain level of tactics and thinking. It brings me great pleasure to destroy these people because most people who play MMOs annoy the shit out of me and killing them keeps me sane. I know there is a tier above me with people who I cannot hang with; who just destroy me pretty easily. They make better use of GCDs and work extremely well with their partners.
That is right. As manoeuvering is so abstracted in TbT games, it is compensated by providing a mountain of alternative options.
But tactics exist no matter the importance of the gear.
You can have tactics with eleven guys in one team, eleven guys in the other team, shirts,shoes and shorts and a footie. And the decisions made at each step are not numerous: pass the ball, run with ball…
The bottom line is that tactics is hard to bring to video games because manoeuvering is tied to the skills of the player and one's committment to learning the ropes.
TbT removes the mandatory skills. By doing so, it also removes the substance of manoeuvering.