Turn Based Combat

[John the Gamer]

Try Silent Storm/Silent Storm Sentinels. Those two games do it really well.

 

[x-machina]

A week ago I probably would have agreed that turn based combat sucks. But, I just discovered Persona 3 Portable, and have been playing almost endlessly. Turn based combat, can have depth and be very fun.

 

[veloper]

There's no problem with turn based combat. Plenty of games do it very well. I actually prefer it in certain games. But it really comes down to a case by case scenario. It wouldn't work in Call of Duty, but for games like Final Fantasy X, Legend of Legaia, or Suikoden II it works perfectly.

Incidentally, I think that was the biggest complaint about FFXIII's combat. It was too fast paced. Combat was moving at such a hectic rate that you couldn't select your actions fast enough. Especially when you had 6 or so slots and 20 different spells. As a result, you largely end up just selecting "auto-attack" to let the game select the most effective attacks itself. And at that point, you're not really playing your own game anymore. If you think turn based combat is boring, letting the game play itself is even more boring.

I thought it worked well in KotOR..

That wasn't really turn-based, though.

You just had the option to pause the game. It didn't really force you to.

OT: Yeah, I don't like turn-based games. I just don't enjoy them.

Um. I hate to break it to you, but KOTOR was a turn based combat system. I believe it works out that 2 seconds is one turn. If you're in combat and you don't select an action, your character just automatically chooses to use a basic attack. You could que up to three actions ahead of time. It was fast paced, yes. But it was fast paced turn based combat. And nothing you or anyone else say will change that. I think Bioware even described it as turn based combat.

Oh, and it actually plays like Dungeons and Dragons, you just don't see the "dice rolls" unless you check your combat log.

The combat abilities may have time delays, but all units can MOVE at the same time, which disqualifies KOTOR from boing turn-based = 1 move at a time.

I don't agree, why can't a turn-based game have everyones turn at the same time. Frozen Synapse is a great example of this.

To differentiate it from the original turn-based mechanic that plays very differently.
No point in mixing up STB, RTWP and TB.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Turn based combat allows many things that real time cannot even dream of.
First and foremost, it promotes tactical thinking and gives a player some breathing space.
Second, it makes the game much more based on your intellectual ability rather than your physical ability
Third, the turn based combat in final fantasy series is shit and a joke. If you would like to see some real turn based combat then play Frozen Synapse, Jagged Alliance or X-Com.
Calling some mechanic broken after only seeing the most horrible implementation of it is what ignorant people do.
What if I call the FPS genre shitty as whole after playing Daikatana?

Oh and turn based combat also makes it easier to manage units, cumbersome but easier

Listen to what sane person says.

I personally do not have the absurd reflexes needed to be really good at a game like CoD. I also find such games to be less enjoyable due to the complete lack of thought or strategy (please don't tell me there is strategy or complex thinking in CoD. If you think there is, you don't know what strategy is). It's not that I hate FPS, far from it. I own Crysis, Doom 3, two CoD games, and many others. I just recognize video games can be something more than a twitch reflex test.

I greatly enjoy Civilization and the older turn-based games: XCOM, Fallout, stuff like that. I think it's about time. FPS is about this moment, this instant. Turn-based is about the future. Understanding not just where you are, but where you're going to be on your next move, or three or four or even ten turns ahead, creates a challenge FPS can't offer.

I didn't realize people had such a hate on for turn-based. Is it that you FPS types haven't tried the right games, I wonder, or is it that you don't enjoy strategy or thinking at all? That sounds insulting, I know, but it's not meant to be. As I said, I own FPS games. Sometimes I don't want to think. Sometimes I just want to double tap dudes in the head. It's only that I like chocolate AND peanut butter and don't understand why everyone else doesn't.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Every style of play has its place. And realism != immersion. I found my self much more immersed in Late night 2E Ravenloft PnP sessions than in Oblivion. Meanwhile I felt like I had more control over my party in The Temple of Elemental Evil (post fan bugfixes) than in World of Warcraft. That said, I still enjoy Oblivion and at one point in time I could say the same for WoW, I just don't find them nearly as immersive.

 

[Something Amyss]

final fantasy is on the verge of playing itself

The last couple games, maybe. But if you're going to argue that prior, I'm just going to roll my eyes.

And for the love of God, make your posts legible.

 

[Something Amyss]

"Immersion" is the most annoyingly meaningless buzzword in video games today.
It gets tossed around so goddam much by anyone trying to prove/disprove that a game is good/bad.

I don't know, people are still harping on "innovation" when it basically means "add some minor superficial change to please the simple-minded."

Though "Immersion" really is useless. It's just a shame that we had a couple decades of games that featured immersion before someone started flinging it around like a monkey with feces. Now, it just means FPP, because you can't possibly be engaged by gameplay unless it's first person. And probably brown and sluggish, too.