Torment: Tides of Numenera - Post-Funding Update #25

Voted for Turn Based.

Originally Posted by Kostas
There's actually an option for that

Ain't having that option stupid? Okay, whatever, I've voted:

Voted for RTwP. There are already great titles with turn based combat in the making. Also I want this title as close as Planescape: Torment. So in my opinion it's successor must have RTwP combat.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
Camp TB represent


altough I don't care much either way. Torment isn't about combat.

And that is the only reason why I "accept" when the result is RTwP: I would even play this game if the fights are crappy and I can accept it if the majority prefers to focus on the story and wants the fights "to go away" without much effort.

My reasoning for TB:
I like to get "most out of combats" and play as effective as possible and set the game diffuculty as hard as possible.
That works absolutely fine with turn based combat. There it is:
Difficulty of the fight < = > Skill needed

It does not work with pausable Real time combat however. It adds the additional component of "how often do I pause the game?" The more often you pause it, the easier it gets. The equasion becomes basically:
Difficulty of the Fight - Pause Frequency < = > Skill needed

And the only way to play it for me is to pause whenever it makes sense as I want to play as good as possible. And that is normally each 0.2-0.5 seconds (e.g. in Dragon Age 1) when a spell went through, when you need to reposition your characters, when you need to react to the opponent. That makes the flow of the combat much more "unfluent" than a turn based combat can ever make a game.

The only advantage of pausable real time combat is: If you don't want a challenge, you don't care about strategies much and just want it to be over fast because you think it's boring.

And I don't want to have boring, unchallenging combat in the first place.

But as said in the beginning, in the case of Torment I'd accept it and could understand the decision.

I hope the combat is good, whatever they do. I'm surprised at how close the voting is, either is fine by me.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
The only advantage of pausable real time combat is: If you don't want a challenge, you don't care about strategies much and just want it to be over fast because you think it's boring.

And I don't want to have boring, unchallenging combat in the first place.

Exactly! And the way I understood it, there will be no trash mobs and hopefully only deep, meaningful combat encounters. Assuming this is true, TB would work way better for creating some tense moments imo.

RTwP - I already have several TB (incl Deathfire) backed - I do not want my Torment experience changed by TB combat. Yes, it can be good, but it depends on the mechanics - I loved TB in ToEE, but that was a different game. I supported Tides of Numenera because of my nostalgic longing for the old IE games and Planscape: torment in particular.

Originally Posted by booboo
RTwP - I already have several TB (incl Deathfire) backed - I do not want my Torment experience changed by TB combat. Yes, it can be good, but it depends on the mechanics - I loved TB in ToEE, but that was a different game. I supported Tides of Numenera because of my nostalgic longing for the old IE games and Planscape: torment in particular.

While I do agree with the nostalgic part, I do not think PS:T is remembered because of the combat, which was not a very strong point of the game.

IF they go with RTwP I would go with a system like the one in Fallout:Tactics, I actually felt that was so good I never played it in turn based.

I tried out Fallout Tactics back then because I loved Fallout 1 and 2 (and Jagged Alliance).
I only played it in turnbased, but it somehow felt worse than the older games.

So the reason why you prefered it in RTwP might have been that the TB mode was actually badly implemented.
I also played X-Com Apocalypse which also had both modes and which I played in TB most of the time. While I loved that game, I think this hybrid model made it feel less polished/smooth.

TB combat automatically puts more emphasize on combat, because in that case every combat has to be "meaningful". Meaningful automatically means you have to put more time on it. Because if it is less engaging, it would be boring and crappy TB combat. I also don't like their Crisis example, because it means, that even non-combat quest solutions are outplayed in turnbased mode. That does not sound like a narrative-driven game but like masking a dungeon-crawler with non-violent options. Or like a board game. I think the result will be tedious. I'm not impressed.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
The only advantage of pausable real time combat is: If you don't want a challenge, you don't care about strategies much and just want it to be over fast because you think it's boring.

And I don't want to have boring, unchallenging combat in the first place.

An RPG without "trash" fights has never existed and never will. Most of the combat will always be filler combat, and will not be very challenging. Why? That's how you build up bosses, villains and so on to be interesting fights. There must be a significant difference in difficulty between Sarevok and kobolds, and that's exactly why I prefer RTwP - I can steamroll the kobolds, and be tactical with Sarevok.

Most turn based games I enjoyed over the years have some sort of "quick combat" option that lets you flatten your enemies automatically if they're too far behind in terms of power or levels. The Fallout games, for example, does not have this option and they bore me out of my mind. In fact, I actually don't think I've completed any of the Fallouts prior to Fallout 3, which makes it by far the biggest black hole in my list of completed RPGs.

RTwP FTW!!

Originally Posted by Maylander
An RPG without "trash" fights has never existed and never will. Most of the combat will always be filler combat, and will not be very challenging. Why? That's how you build up bosses, villains and so on to be interesting fights. There must be a significant difference in difficulty between Sarevok and kobolds, and that's exactly why I prefer RTwP - I can steamroll the kobolds, and be tactical with Sarevok.

Well you can also make trash fights hard by making big groups of weaker enemies which make harder fights (instead of several small groups running into suicide, which is also more logical). But in the end every trash fight can be a "challenge" in a way if you win something by optimizing it. And if it's just take no damage so that you don't need to drink or need food for resting.
But besides of that, the trick is the implementation of course. While I don't think that auto battles are a good solution, I think smooth and fast controls, fast animations and so on help a lot, so that a fight which is not very challenging doesn't feel like torture.

Let's take Jagged Alliance 2 for example: Whether you fight against 6 black shirts (the elite guys) or against 3 yellow shirts (fresh recruits) makes a big difference.
But in both cases you enjoy the fight, all your actions are meaningful, fun and feel good. And even when fighting against weak enemies you try to avoid big damage so that you have breathing space in these easy fights but they are still meaningful.

A game where it works not so well: The Realms of Arkania games. Because the fights are too long, and killing a weak enemy can take quite long. The remake also adds some combat control and animation speed issues. While challenging fights were also fun in the old ROA games, very easy fights were quite boring and took too long (brings back memories about an enemy called "Riesenschröter", a beetle which had tons of hp and did nothing at all).

I'm voting turn-based.

Hmm, a lot of good points both ways. And since the vote is also pretty much a tie I guess we'll just have to trust the devs.

Still a lot of people who haven't voted, but my guess is if you don't vote when you get the e-mail, you probably wont vote at all.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Well you can also make trash fights hard by making big groups of weaker enemies which make harder fights (instead of several small groups running into suicide, which is also more logical).

I think you might have missed Maylander's point. He's saying the advantage of RTwP is that fights against weakers enemies won't take as long. Having larger groups of weaker enemies would only make combat longer and more drawn-out in turn-based mode.

It's a tough decision because we don't yet know how combat-heavy Tides of Numenera is going to be. If it's anything like the Infinity Engine games though, and I think it's logical to assume that it will be, then I think RTwP is the better choice.

Turn Based for me, but I can absolutely live with RTwP.

Whatever way this goes, it's going to be quite polarizing. The vote seems fairly evenly split. I don't think they expected it to be so even…

As for combat itself - I thought there was (as with all the IE games I played) a *lot* of it in PS:T - and I managed quite fine with RTwP. I also like exploration (caves, wilds, abandoned ruins etc) and the encounters that generates (which are not 'trash' - they make sense in the wilds, caves etc - they're ecosystems after all As long as they don't respawn stupidly). If every fight is "significant" and requires the precision of TB, then clearly there won't be that much free exploration, with the "random" encounters that generates.

It wouldn't let me vote at this time… snort.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I think you might have missed Maylander's point. He's saying the advantage of RTwP is that fights against weakers enemies won't take as long. Having larger groups of weaker enemies would only make combat longer and more drawn-out in turn-based mode.

That's why I said one big group instead of several small ones. If you enter combat each time and have to destroy 4 Rats again and again it's boring.
But if instead of fighting 4x 4 rats in boring fights, you could face one fight with 16 rats instead. They surround you, no safe spot for your mage anymore, more attacks per turn than your warriors can block each turn and so on. It becomes a fight for survival. But you can maybe use AOEs instead of just single target damage, which would also make this fight resolve faster than 4 single fights. The feeling of being more powerful compared to a rat would still be there.