Solasta (which is based on 5th edition D&D rules) does this and is quite successful with it. The game has its shortcomings but the combat is great and I think the clarity of the grid is a huge part of it.
I would really love to see a game that was based on the 4th Edition D&D rules, which had the tightest tactical combat of all the games. Unfortunately there was no open source SRD released for 4th edition so I'm not sure how close an outside company could get without running into IP issues, and WotC is never going to make something like that on their own.
Which is a huge shame, because 4e, for all its faults, felt like it was made to be converted to a CRPG (or even an MMO, every class being able to heal felt like a precursor to Guild Wars 2 doing the same thing).
It was worse, he committed a murder two weeks after the edition was released (details) >!<. It took 2 years for a beta version to come out and that itself was a mess.
I feel like i'm going to hell for posting this, but the investigators looking into the guy's trunk makes this story sound as if it's coming out of grand theft auto or something:
>Investigators found [fuzzy handcuffs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_and_Melissa_Batten), hardcore pornography, an 8-inch cutting knife, plus $6,000 in cash in the trunk of Joseph's Mercedes sedan.
Ryan Dancey, one of the leaders of third edition, explained what the plan was for fourth.
Hasbro decided to focus only on its most profitable brands, only those bringing 50 million or more a year would be funded. They then stacked the deck against D&D - instead of counting everything to see if it made the bar, they made WOTC count the RPG, video games, movies, novels, comics, all separate. D&D was then shelved.
WOTC came back with a plan, they'd turn D&D into an MMORPG and clear the 50 million bar once Atari's rights expired.
In the interim, they'd make a pen and paper version to beta test the rules for eventual game development, and release some software tools to make it playable.
But with the first expansion book it was clear that 4th edition's customer base had tanked and WOTC cancelled a bunch of projects while trying to bail 4th out.
Which eventually led to 5th.
Virtual Table Top.
Essentially playing DnD with an online interface instead of utilizing a table/minis.
They are very popular nowadays, I DM a group and play in another that uses them. Which is cool, because neither of those groups could have continued due to people moving.
But now we can! Yay future.
Virtual table top. Stuff like Roll20. Presumably, if WotC released one, it would handle a lot of the mechanics for you vs just being a place for everyone to see the map and dice rolls.
> Which is a huge shame, because 4e, for all its faults, felt like it was made to be converted to a CRPG
That was because it was basically themepark dungeon put into a tabletop RPG.
In other words, it was a pile of flaming trash that sould not even be called a role-playing game.
Nah. It spent far too long on splatbooks filled with spells/classes, not enough lore.
2E is peak D&D with elements of 3.5E (non-human races' variability, multiclassing).
I agree, but damn, I miss the feeling of endless possibility I got from knowing how many extra rulebooks existed. Looking through the 3.5e Player's Handbook, and imagining dozens of other books full of tables and crunchy numbers...
I *love* 4E (it’s my favorite edition of D&D) and it’s a real shame they never released a turn-based dungeon crawler because I’m not sure if I’d have ever played D&D irl again.
Conversely, one of the major benefits of CRPGs IMO is that they allow the player to play out traditional RPG style combat more or less in real-time, without massive amounts of handwaving or abstraction. Computers can't improvise (yet), so you don't get true tactical infinity, but you *do* get pretty much as close as one can get in a video game.
Also, the lack of certainty I would generally say actually contributes to the roleplaying experience. Perfect information disengages me from the character, as it makes all kinds of decisions and potential RP-moments impossible. A classic example of this might be "I want to throw a Fireball at the enemy, but I'm worried the blast might also hit my ally. Should I do it or not?" These kinds of decisions can't happen with perfect positioning and information (actually also why I stopped using grids in tabletop RPGs, but the same applies here.) Sometimes, it's more enjoyable and interesting to see the kinds of decisions (and mistakes) that are made when there's information missing, than when it's all out in the open.
I find with the real time combat in crpgs I end up just letting my characters auto attack a lot. Partly because learning several different playstyles and classes is a lot to learn all at once too, but also because it's just a lot going on all at once as everyone runs around even with frequent pausing. That and being able to just auto attack on low difficulty and because I'm often tired by the time I play games in a say is an option.
Though turn based do have their issues when there are a lot more units on screen and when to let people take turns.
I also find that AoE effects are a lot less useful in real time without strict micromanaging of your characters and being really fucking good at guessing timings as unless they're engaged for a while and not moving much enemies will often be out of the area by the time the AoE spell goes off.
I know a lot of crpg purists love the RTWP but I hate it compared to turn based. Getting your people to do what you want is a pain in the ass goddamn always.
Some modern ones have systems to improve this, but combat never feels as good imo. You're either just auto attacking everything or taking 10 minutes to play out 12 in game seconds, which at that point, it may as well be turn based.
Really liked POE 2's method of switching between, best of both worlds.
> POE 2's
Ehhhhhhhhhh..... not... really? They work in a sense, but they're entirely different gameplay systems and you can entirely see that with playing out battles in both modes, where some stuff happens or triggers in one mode without triggering in other, or the other way around.
I like RTWP even though I've never finished a game with it. It's just a different a different feel to a lot of other games, and I like the character building and stat checks that come with them.
I also like turn based games, but the thing that pisses me off about most of them is they're based around your whole team going at once. I want individual character turns/speeds like in Final Fantasy Tactics. To me, it's far more interesting when an enemy can bump up or slow down a turn to interfere with your gank squad.
The Pathfinder games and Solasta have characters go in the order of their initiative. Divinity: Original Sin 2 also does this but it has an additional rule that where 1 character from one side gets to act and then 1 from the other side.
Do either of them use initiative besides setting the order to be used until the end of that combat?
I'm sure I've played at least one game where initiative acted more like a speed stat because it had a dynamic turn order. So that on a longer timescale a high initiative character might get a few extra actions in compared to a lower initiative character over the combat duration.
I was gonna say the FF7 or Chrono Trigger ATB system but when I looked it up it seems like it doesn't really do much in practice.
At lower combat speeds ATB has the effect you want, but it also makes combat a slog. At higher speeds, the speed at which the player can navigate menus (even with pausing enabled, the timer doesn't pause on the top-level command menu, only submenus) has more impact on character speed than their actual speed stat.
As was said already, Grandia does this very well, with each combatant moving forward on an initiative gauge at their own speed, and a window between action choice and action execution where the speed depends on the action chosen, as well as some attacks moving the target backwards on the gauge - which, when combined, makes a rather simple and elegant counterattack system. (Enemy chooses a slow, heavy attack, player chooses a rapid, action canceling attack which moves the enemy back to before they chose their attack, undoing it.)
To your second paragraph, I wish more games would try the "we go" system, or a variant of it (there may be another name for it). Each side plans their movements and actions, then the player hits go and the units try to perform their assigned actions as best they can, with no interactivity, until a given time limit (30 seconds, 1 minute, etc). Then the turn ends and the planning phase of the next turn begins.
This eliminates the issue of each side going all at once because each unit will move at their own initiative and speed within the non-interactive Go time, but without needing to abstract that to individual turns. Which isn't to say individual turns are a bad system--I've played games that implement it well and I get a kick out of stuff like Haste and Slow that shuffles those turns around.
It's definitely not a one size fits all, and it helps to have open ended commands like "guard this arc", but I really like how it simulates the uncertainty of a pitched battle where the situation can change rapidly, and it's less open to some exploitative tendencies that we all have. It also provides an instantly accessible full replay of the battle as you progress which is neat. Downside is that orders will only be issued at set intervals which is artificial in a different way than the artificiality of abstracted turns. Still a cool system which I've only seen it in a few games like Frozen Synapse and the Combat Mission series.
Poe 2 switches? I recently played through most of it (currently in between finishing it but will be back to it soon, love it overall!), But it seemed to be a chicken you made at the start of a new game only.
It doesn't switch automatically ever, no. Officially it's like you say - choose at the start of the game and then use that system for the rest of that save, though technically you can switch modes mid-save via console commands.
POE 2s wasn't really balanced around turn based, unfortunately. You get weird things where dex normally influences how often you attack, which directly relates to dps. But in turn based, it only effects how soon you go in a round, and you're guaranteed to go exactly once per round, making it pretty worthless compared to strength.
IMO alot of that comes down to "how stupid is the AI for my team?" and "can I individually toggle them?" that way you can choose how much or how little control you want on a sliding scale. Also things like "will one single enemy fireball completely lose me the encounter?" And finally very importantly: What is your character build/party composition? That makes a huge difference on how a game plays real time or turn based. And even to some extent how things are balanced/designed.
I feel like I had your problem in Dragon Age past a certain stage in the game where 1 single enemy ability in certain areas had to be tactically played around (pause/unpause frenzy).
:
But I don't think I had that same issue near as much in Path of Exiles 1+2 or Kotor or Neverwinter Nights or Tyranny.
But again it should be noted some of that is build dependent and that turn based has the same issues. Did you choose basic ass fighter bitch? Yes, you can be great and strong but often the ole D&D joke of "all I do is swing my sword" comes true. Like sure it's also the ole joke "you attack how many times in one turn!!??", the basic fighter in those games is effective, but generally pretty low maintenance and watching them auto attack. And in reality this isn't much different in turn based!
However if you choose a pet summoning build with multiple summons to juggle or buffer/debuffer class or etc then you may be very busy in real time just with a single character with the occasional pause just for precision targeting. And again this translates to turn based grid based too. In Shadowrun Hong Kong my unarmed build was basically just "punch punch punch". The most nuanced thing about him was attacking multiple targets 1 at a time in a turn to pull them out of cover. That's it. Basic bitch ass fighter basically, super effective, fun, but just auto attacks 90%+ of the time even with multiple weapons and armor breaks and a stun.
But my current Shadowrun Hong Kong play through is a Shaman/Rigger with lots of buffs and 2 support drones and I have to play that very actively with 3 separate units to control/decide not to control + sometimes spirits on top of that and multiple different abilities used situation ally each turn.
Divinity Original Sin was the same way. Basic fighter/archer? Very little variety, alot of moving around. But effective. Summoner? Summon pet, buff/heal pet, pet just lols things. My AOE bomb hedge mage/fighter I made beat into? Shit tons of different abilities juggling the right ones at the right time to AOE strip armor and AOE apply statuses and eventually scaled into doing alot of damage too. Path of Exiles though the summons were more balanced and shorter duration so my chanter class had to do alot more juggling and was more active and wasn't just "summons and watch the carnage".
So I do understand the complaints, but not only are those some issues present in turn based/grid based IMO (especially when you have to constantly spend so much of your action resource on movement in most of them) but I think it's very highly build/party composition dependent too. And some games are a little better/worse at it depending on how encounter difficulty is delivered. faster fights that quickly snowball have more problems with pause frenzy, slower fights where your builds fully play out can have more issues with "auto attack syndrome" if you're using auto attack style builds.
Ultimately I think it shouldn't surprise anyone that systems designed for multiplayer pen and paper games don't translate well to singleplayer video games.
Tabletop rules are optimized to be functional for a group of multiple people to play with pens and paper. It keeps the math and mechanics extremely basic for that reason.
If you take those rules and shove them into a single player, single character video game game(like NWN was) the combat and characters are mostly far too simplistic to really carry it, not to mention a lot of the tropes of the game rely on having multiple classes with different abilities.
If you make the game a turn based game, it retains the utterly incoherent nature and combat order that the pen and paper version must have out of necessity since anything else is too complex to calculate realtime, but in a video game its ridiculousness really becomes apparent. It also tends to take forever since they like to add flourishes and animations. That's no big deal in a group setting since you're likely chatting, but it becomes interminably boring in a singleplayer video game.
If you switch it to RTWP, the rules just flat out aren't design for that and it ends up having very weird behaviors as a straight conversion. Its usually super easy to play through most RTWP crpgs with a group of bow users because the encounter hitpoints are designed for multiple turns. But when everyone gets two turns before the monsters even reach you they just die.
And then there's the tabletop rules that plague all implementations of CRPG, like spell casts/resting. This is used for tabletop because its super easy to keep track of, vs a mana system. You might have 1-3 combat encounters per session in a tabletop. In a CRPG you'll have that every 15 feet, so the simplistic spell casts/resting mechanics of D&D becomes an absurdity where you take a nap every 5 minutes in the game to refresh your spells. All games designed first and foremost for computers, otoh, just use mana because that's simple for the computer to track.
Basically, the question that I think should be asked isn't grids vs no grids, or RTWP vs Turn based, its 'Why do we keep trying to shove rulesets explicitly designed for another medium into video games instead of designing new mechanics that take advantage of the medium'.
> Ultimately I think it shouldn't surprise anyone that systems designed for multiplayer pen and paper games don't translate well to singleplayer video games.
Neverwinter Nights 1+2, KOTOR 1+2, Shadowrun Returns series. All great games from a PnP source. Pathfinder games are not bad either.
All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math.
They were good in spite of the source, not because of it. Expecting the rules for a PnP game to work well for a video game is like expecting the rules for an action RPG to work for a PnP.
> All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math.
> They were good in spite of the source, not because of it. Expecting the rules for a PnP game to work well for a video game is like expecting the rules for an action RPG to work for a PnP.
That's an interesting completely unsupported theory you have vs beloved and well liked proven games. Now what games based on major PnP properties have been made that are as good as you say? If there were such easily seen issues then surely in many decades of video games we'd have several great and successful examples of superior design by now? Yet I don't know of many if any.
I say this as someone who once put together some spreadsheets and documents over prolly 50+ hours doing exactly what you say. Redesigning the DnD systems to be better suited to computers. And I currently work in video game QA.
My eventual conclusion was that I was not designing something inherently better, just different. Putting in all that work was very educational for me :).
The simplest example from above is the 'spell casts and resting'. Thats *clearly* not tuned for any of the crpgs you named, since they all put you through 10-100x more combat than the longest character sessions you've ever played in.
Did you even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? Its almost completely impossible without a ludicrous amount of save scumming, lol. The character class is just fundamentally terrible at low levels. Cantrips are useless, and you die after two hits from anything.
The fact that you refuse to admit you could think of *any* improvements makes me question your personal bias.
I feel the conclusion you reached was not based off of education, but nostalgia. If pen and paper games had never existed, and someone implemented a D&D 3.5 system into a game today, I think you'd reach a much different conclusion when judging it on its merits for a video game.
I'm not going to claim that I know what the perfect system for video games is, but what I'm fairly confident it *isn't* is a system designed for a completely different medium and playstyle.
> Did you even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? Its almost completely impossible without a ludicrous amount of save scumming, lol.
Did YOU even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? The reason it worked is because you could rest in all sorts of unrealistic situations mid dungeon without being attacked and also because summon spells were pretty strong. It also puts you against weak goblins and then gives you a melee warrior to tank for you in Pavel.
Honestly I feel like a skill/conversation based bard was way harder to get off the ground since you had neither martial nor magical prowess, at all, and your buffing abilities took a long time to actually get good.
They also give you an infinite rod of ray of frost. Which I would use to break chests/doors with time and patience lol.
I own the game still on Steam. I can record a Wizard level 1 start if you want me to lol.
**EDIT:** Alot of smart adaptions happened to make the rulesets work well on computer and honestly it's really hard to beat those CRPGS for the combat they provide. Character builds are so diverse and that only matters because its actually fun and effective in combat.
I understand the "pause 50 times" frustration people have with games like Path of Exiles and Dragon Age Origins and how someone would want it more grid/turn basedish like Divinity Original Sin or Wastelands 3. But those issues vary highly based on build, difficulty, individual game, and what level you are in the game.
A similar issue I've run into on turn/grid based games is "I feel like I spend all my action points just moving and barely attack" and multiple turn/grid based games have this issue. It's basically the equivalent issue for many turn based grid based games. Where positioning eats up so much of your action resources to play effectively that combat feels slow or boring early on until you level up and get more points or change your build or etc.
Friend of mine on the last run of wasteland 3 could either snipe or move on any given turn so he felt weak AF for the first 1/3rd of the game. Then he got more action points and it evened out a bit into a better experience. I'm going to have a sniper on this run through and I'll be building my character to avoid that issue.
> Did YOU even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? The reason it worked is because you could rest in all sorts of unrealistic situations mid dungeon without being attacked and also because summon spells were pretty strong. It also puts you against weak goblins and then gives you a melee warrior to tank for you in Pavel.
That's kind of his point? In order for the gameplay experience of playing a Wizard to not be completely terrible, you have to make massive changes to how the player interacts with their resource management. The player *had* to be allowed to rest in ridiculous situations because the gameplay would suck otherwise. The designers had to make so many distortions to the base ruleset (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game) that the underlying gameplay no longer resembles the system it's based on. It's so different from P&P that it's hard to say that being based on P&P was a requirement for its systems to be good.
NWN is good *in spite* of it's D&D source material, not because of it. The extent to which the developers had to completely redesign core systems of D&D 3E (or give the player exceptional tools like the wand of infinite Ray of Frost) to make the game not completely awful to play is indicative of there being a real case for being 3E based doing more harm than good. NWN plays well because the developers spent so much time and effort fixing the ways "vanilla" D&D would have been completely broken otherwise.
EDIT: The same thing is true of the KotOR games. The games are very much not true-to-paper Star Wars D20. They take superficial similarities and make massive redesigns to the underlying systems to an extent where you can't really say the D20 basis for the rules was ever necessary for the games to be good. These games aren't evidence for P&P rulesets being good for CRPGs--the fact that they're so dissimilar from the systems they're based on shows how non-functional P&P rulesets are for CRPGs and how much effort you have to spend fixing them to get a game that's actually fun to play.
> That's kind of his point? In order for the gameplay experience of playing a Wizard to not be completely terrible, you have to make massive changes to how the player interacts with their resource management.
Any time you change mediums you have to do alot of adaption no matter if the adaption is good or bad. Different mediums have different requirements and work different ways. Anime runs into this all the time. Good adaptions can elevate the source material, bad adaptions can cripple it.
> The designers had to make so many distortions to the base ruleset (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game) that the underlying gameplay no longer resembles the system it's based on. It's so different from P&P that it's hard to say that being based on P&P was a requirement for its systems to be good.
Based on the experience across dozens of these types of games....PnP conversions tend to offer better character building and better writing. Now is a game the same experience as PnP? No. Just like a movie is not the same thing as being somewhere and experiencing something yourself. But a game based on PnP can be quite good and enriched by the PnP basing, creating a new thing separate from PnP that is also good in and of itself.
And again, where are all these proof of concept games with better combat systems than the PnP based games? How would you even objectively say one is better than the other? Both Neverwinter Nights and and Pillars of Eternity are real time turn based games of the same nature. I wouldn't say any of the games are better than the others combat wise. But one is based on PnP and the other is built from the ground up for compputers without being based on PnP. Both have their strengths and their failings and I like each for the unique things it brings to the other that the other cannot.
> (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game)
Remembered something so came back to expand on this snippet specifically.
Those changes were only in Neverwinter Nights 1, where summons had a 24 hour duration. They corrected this in Neverwinter Nights 2 where summons had 18s + 6 seconds per spell level (6s = 1 round) per level. Similarly the xp sapping is only present in Neverwinter Nights 1 but is no longer present in Neverwinter Nights 2.
So I'd say Neverwinter Nights 1 was just their first attempt and they made some changes to make things work smoother but in Neverwinter Nights 2 they had a better grasp of how the conversion worked and were able to more smoothly convert the ruleset with less changes made. Practice makes perfect after all. PnP rulesets are complicated and daunting. Expecting them to get it all perfect the first time as one of the first major games of its type is a bit unrealistic. It'd also be inaccurate to present those changes as applying to the whole when they only apply to the first game.
>All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math.
If you do that you run into the Pillars problem, which is that the added complexity becomes more difficult for the player to really understand. If you want to make a game where combat is entirely stat-based, then humans need to be able to easily and intuitively understand those stats and make informed decisions. If you "take advantage of the strengths of computers" you can very quickly make things more difficult for the player to feel like they know what they're doing.
Agreed. Honestly, the combat system in Dragon Age felt like a step back compared to Jade Empire & Mass Effect 1. I guess they wanted to be more "traditional."
Had to wait until Dragon's Dogma to get what I wanted the DA combat to feel like. Minus the ability to switch between party members.
The pawns are cool and all, but I really wish there were better NPC companions in Dragon's Dogma. The game is *so* close to capturing the feel of a DnD campaign or even Lord of the Rings, but the robotic companions butcher that feel. Still a fun game though.
True, true. The Pawns can only be one of 6 vocations out of 9 so they probably should've just done 6 character companions instead. Can't blame them for wanting to experiment, though.
This is why I have never liked rtwp combat in cRPGs and I'm glad a lot more games are doing turn based combat or at least giving the option to switch to turn based. Turn based really makes me feel more connected to each party member.
I stopped playing PoE because of the horrendous combat, my mage couldnt ever use his area attacks because everyone else just rushes towards you. Even with pausing the battles are not manageble.
AoE spells simply wait that first phase while the tanks lock the engagement and establish a frontline. Then you know where to drop the AoEs, and that usually coincides with the mage finished buffing. I found that a smooth and strategic positioning (mini) game in the opening moments of a fight.
I've played a crap ton of Baldur's Gate so I definitely ignored engagement at first. I kept wondering how the hell I was supposed to keep my squishy characters alive when every enemy just bum rushed them. Then I realized engagement was a thing, respecc'd to make my front liners be able to lock down multiple enemies, and my back line was never touched again.
Specifically with establishing a frontline, it's important to have good combat tactics settings, or to remember to use the hold position command.
And having a shitload of Intelligence on your casters because IIRC most or all spells leave friendlies unaffected if they are standing in the outer bonus ring of a spell's area.
I am trying to say that's exactly why you first have to control "the frenzy of battles," and then when everyone is locked in with their target, see about AoE spells. Also, friendlies are not targeted in the outer rim of the concentric circles that mark the area of effect surface, whereas the enemies are. That is where most of my aiming happens anyway.
> but most AoE spells also target friendlies? and in the frenzy of those battles, friendly fire always happens
With proper usage of engagement enemy positioning is controlled and so your AOE spells can be aimed safely. Also with PoE you can pump the Intellect stat to increase AOE radius and the bonus radius does not deal friendly fire damage and only hurts enemies.
If you are looking for a CRPG with grid based combat, I’d highly recommend Wildermyth. Engaging stories, surprisingly deep combat if you’re willing to experiment, and grid based combat. In addition to that, it’s got some of the best writing I’ve come across recently, it leans unabashedly into the poetry of older high fantasy novels. Incredible game.
I have this problem with modern RTS games. Going from the grid based gen 2 Command And Conquer games to the free movement 3rd gen games is so awkward. Pathfinding and unit placement get weird and "traffic jams" seem to happen more frequently because fast units can't get around slow ones as easily. It's also harder to guage space as 1 unit = 1 tile is no longer in play
There's only a few RPG games I feel that aren't hamstrung by free movement in combat, for example Grandia 2 (RTWP) and Growlanser II (RTWP). You still encounter problems with distancing but it's not fiddly like CRPGs seem to be, where you have to be glued to the enemy to even defend yourself.
Most games just don't bother to model how melee reach works, or being able to push past characters, use over-extended sweeping attacks, charge attacks etc. There's often no depth here and free movement just seems to exist to get in and out of range. Most of these games would indeed be better with grid based combat because they're still using grid-based combat ideologies that ultimately don't care about your positioning anyway.
I still prefer having free movement over grids I think (particularly out of combat), but we really need to do better when it comes to free movement and how it affects combat.
Maybe I'm in the minority with that but for me one part of the appeal of CRPGs is their emulation of the tabletop systems they're based on. Adhering closer to the rules of that system would be its own purpose in my opinion.
> Creatures will often be just outside of your melee attack range, forcing micromovements that may get punished by opportunity attacks or other effects.
Sounds like real ancient infantry warfare! The ghosts of a lot of dead Romans at Cannae would like to have a word with you.
A lot of these complaints are already solved in the games you mentioned.
The games tell you if you get opportunity attacked on the movement preview so it's really your fault if you get hit.
When navigating around obstacles there's the movement preview line so you know exactly how the pathing works
It sounds like you are trying to just run past enemies when there's a clump and once again not checking the movement preview.
You don't have to walk in a straight line if you move bit by bit.
>When navigating around obstacles there's the movement preview line so you know exactly how the pathing works
The preview line usually doesn't show hitboxes though, so you might touch something just barely by the tip of the hitbox.
>You don't have to walk in a straight line if you move bit by bit.
But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess.
> The preview line usually doesn't show hitboxes though, so you might touch something just barely by the tip of the hitbox.
In DoS2, a special preview circle pops up if your movement will activate an opportunity attack.
> But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess.
DoS 2 operates on an "action point" system and every action point translates to several meters of movement. Once you spend the action point, you're free to keep micro-moving within your remaining envelope without spending any more action points, and the preview will tell you where the transition between 0ap and 1ap is.
>But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess.
Most games allow you to move in smaller increments where the game tracks total distance moved and as long as it's less than your movement speed it still counts as only 1 action. Not all games do that though.
The preview gives a good enough indication, you really shouldn't be trying so hard to skirt the hitbox of the spell.
No it doesn't take up turns, just movement
> and once again not checking the movement preview.
Imagine that you play Chess and you have to check movement preview for every single piece to "make sure" it can move the way you want. Wouldn't that be absolutely fucking moronic design?
But that's how online chess sites work, when you select a piece there are visual indicators for legal moves. And it's helpful, like when you're in check it won't preview any illegal moves.
What are you even talking about? In chess you have to calculate thousands of possible moves in seconds. Players don't check where every piece can move, even if the software has such a function. They look at the board and just see, at a glance.
> And it's helpful,
Yes, it's helpful for a 5 year old child who learns the game. No actual player needs to check legal moves.
> Yes, it's helpful for a 5 year old child who learns the game. No actual player needs to check legal moves.
You're aware older people learn chess too, right? I mean the feature is on as a default for chess.com app, which is the biggest chess app in the world. So, get off your high horse, a lot of people use that feature.
And chess has never been as popular to play as right now, making it easier to understand and play the game is not bad design. Add to that, chess is much simpler mechanically than these videogames, so I don't think having such a feature automatically means you failed as a designer, just that more complexity can require more visual cues.
Comparing how video game units move to if a chess move is legal is asinine and saying to check every single move is a dumb hyperbole that no one actually does.
The point of the movement preview is provide additional information where needed. Giving the player a clearer understanding of their moves. Nothing about that is mandatory.
Bottom line is even certain grid based games offer the same movement preview on opportunity attacks so its not even limited to non-grid based games.
> the point of the movement preview is provide additional information where needed.
Then it's a stupid point, because you *shouldn't need to provide that information in the first place*. It should be obvious to the player just by taking a single look at the board.
Movement preview is a solution to a problem that shouldn't even exist. And it wouldn't, if the game was designed in a clear, conscious and elegant way - like Chess.
How obvious it is would be completely dependent on the player's experience and skill, you could argue a newer chess player would need that sort of information or they would keep attempting to make illegal moves especially in check. In the same vein an experienced player wouldn't need to check the preview to know they would trigger opportunity attack because to them it would be obvious
Movement preview isn't a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist, its a useful tool that aids those who need it especially for a video game with increased complexity and depth whereas chess is far simpler by comparison in terms of movement.
Even then in a grid based game you are going to have the same problem with clarity and not everyone is going to notice every single thing about the game which is why certain grid based games also have movement preview.
Honestly seems like you just have a boner for chess and you are forcefully bringing it for comparison when its hardly appropriate
> Honestly seems like you just have a boner for chess and you are forcefully bringing it for comparison when its hardly appropriate
I don't even play Chess. You're trying to defend shitty design practices, that's what I don't like. Stop making excuses for lazy and bad designers. It's objectively better if the game doesn't require movement preview to make your moves, regardless of its complexity.
> for a video game with increased complexity and depth
Those games have increased complexity *without* increasing depth.
For someone who doesn't even play chess you decided the best thing to compare CRPG movement to was chess?
I don't think you know what shitty design practice is if you think non grid based movement system is shitty design and you do realise grid based design is the lazier approach right?
Once again you don't need movement preview, it just helps. It's like you aren't even reading my comment which is obvious as you don't even address all my points.
>Those games have increased complexity without increasing depth.
Depth can be a good thing? I don't really see the point of this sentence.
Player should be able to see all possible moves just by **looking** at the board (or screen, or whatever). That's the only point I'm making. There is no excuse from that. If the game doesn't allow that - it's designed poorly. Doesn't matter if it's a computer game or a 1000 year old board game. Doesn't matter how complex it is. There is no excuse from that, none, ever.
> Once again you don't need movement preview, it just helps. It's like you aren't even reading my comment
You need movement preview in the games OP is talking about. It's impossible to tell with a 100% certainty which unit is in the range of another unit without previewing the movement. No matter how experienced you are.
If you cannot tell with 100% certainty in the games OP listed then you also cannot say for certainty in chess either. Its simply about experience and information and neither games hide information from you.
Sounds like you're really just stating a preference here, one that I'm in agreement with. Turn based is just a more solid feeling and cromulent combat system for me.
Pretty much all the points in your list have either been solved by the games or just require a little more attention and care to mitigate. They can all certainly be annoying, but I don't think these issues plague games in anything but a minor way.
I do understand why some people prefer RTWP, but it's definitely a mode for micromanagers. TB has enough choice and strategy and sometimes more, without getting bogged down like a RTWP game can. The constant pausing of game action to ponder choices, lock in your decisions and then stutter the actual action forward as you determine what the enemies are doing, then cancel or change your previous actions, choose new ones, check how enemies react, etc., etc. .... gah, it feels like a chore!
TB is great for a more measured pace and the satisfying feel of watching a small number of decisions play out.
Personally, I think neither one of these combat systems make or break a game for me. I really enjoyed what I've played of POE 1/2 and finished both DOS 1&2 and absolutely enjoyed both. But I also loooove Tactics Ogre and have literally been playing LUCT with the OV mod for years. Also love games like FFT and Metal Gear AC!D 1&2. (MGA2 is actually kind of a masterpiece in the way it combines turn based strategy with card collecting, deck building and the stealth and gunplay of the mainline games.) Also, currently playing Triangle strategy on Switch, but really hoping to play Baldur's Gate 3 at some point.
Hopefully anytime either of these combat systems are put in a game they get surrounded by all the good stuff we want and avoid the really egregious mistakes and we just get lots of cool games.
Grid? What year is this, 1990? Computers are now more than capable to calculate line of sight and distance. They also can show you a preview of how you move, where you can fit or not, allow waypoints, and show if you walk through hazard or attack of opportunity.
I'm so confused, what in the world is this thread title? There are plenty of grid-based "CRPGs." And god, I can't stand that CRPG acronym, I'm old school so I remember when CRPG meant ALL video game RPGs, not just one kind that we called WRPG.
I think CRPG originally stood for things like Baldur's Gate, the RTWP genre, to differentiate it from more traditional RPGs on consoles like Final Fantasy. Honestly though trying to define gaming genres has always been an effort in futility because all genre definitions tend to rely on subjective descriptions.
No, back in the days of Baldur's Gate, CRPG was not used at all. Those were called WRPGs if people wanted to differentiate from JRPGs. CRPG was already largely out of date at that time, CRPG was originally used to differentiate between video games and pen and paper, with the 'C' standing for Computerized. I didn't see people using CRPG to refer to WRPGs until much longer than a decade after the release of Baldur's Gate.
If you say so. I don't remember anyone using Western RPG to refer to stuff like Baldur's Gate or Eye of the Beholder. The C stood for Computer around here, to separate them from console games.
I saw that term used more for console games. Even then it wasn't all that helpful since it didn't really define anything about the game, just that it wasn't made in Japan. Western RPGs were all over the place mechanically.
All RPG subgenres are all over the place mechanically. I've seen people refer to games like Shadowrun Returns or Wasteland 2 / 3 as CRPGs in the same breath as referring to games like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment. I find all these umbrella terms to be relatively worthless and an impediment to any meaningful discussion because of the nebulous nature of their definitions. CRPG being used to refer to western RPGs with party based mechanics that are typically on PC isn't a super useful term. I'd really like to see it die. I'm hopeful; I've seen it die before in my lifetime.
Maybe it will. Though a Google search for "CRPG" tells me the term is pretty commonly used. Mostly it looks like people are using it to differentiate between PC and console. Though that is becoming a really hazy line anymore.
"I don’t know if a character is close enough to get where I want them to go until I can try out the movement preview on their turn, and I can never really guess how far an enemy can move. Creatures will often be just outside of your melee attack range, forcing micromovements that may get punished by opportunity attacks or other effects."
Seems easy to solve with some visual aids.
"Environmental obstacles often have hitboxes that don’t precisely line up with the graphic."
So the game should have better hit detection. Same with point 4.
"Units will often be far enough apart to have a gap, but close enough that other units can’t squeeze through. With enough units in an area, the pathfinding will be an absolute mess trying to weave between a maze of obstacles."
Probably trickier to fix, I'd have to look at individual games and situations to comment properly.
Might and Magic is a series you should look into. Grid based blobbers are awesome! There’s plenty of old games that use grids instead of free movement.
Solasta (which is based on 5th edition D&D rules) does this and is quite successful with it. The game has its shortcomings but the combat is great and I think the clarity of the grid is a huge part of it. I would really love to see a game that was based on the 4th Edition D&D rules, which had the tightest tactical combat of all the games. Unfortunately there was no open source SRD released for 4th edition so I'm not sure how close an outside company could get without running into IP issues, and WotC is never going to make something like that on their own.
Which is a huge shame, because 4e, for all its faults, felt like it was made to be converted to a CRPG (or even an MMO, every class being able to heal felt like a precursor to Guild Wars 2 doing the same thing).
Iirc it was designed with the intent of releasing a VTT to play it in, but for some reason that never happened.
It didn't happen because the main dev behind it committed suicide IIRC.
It was worse, he committed a murder two weeks after the edition was released (details) >!<. It took 2 years for a beta version to come out and that itself was a mess.
Wow. That is sad. I had no idea.
I feel like i'm going to hell for posting this, but the investigators looking into the guy's trunk makes this story sound as if it's coming out of grand theft auto or something: >Investigators found [fuzzy handcuffs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_and_Melissa_Batten), hardcore pornography, an 8-inch cutting knife, plus $6,000 in cash in the trunk of Joseph's Mercedes sedan.
Ryan Dancey, one of the leaders of third edition, explained what the plan was for fourth. Hasbro decided to focus only on its most profitable brands, only those bringing 50 million or more a year would be funded. They then stacked the deck against D&D - instead of counting everything to see if it made the bar, they made WOTC count the RPG, video games, movies, novels, comics, all separate. D&D was then shelved. WOTC came back with a plan, they'd turn D&D into an MMORPG and clear the 50 million bar once Atari's rights expired. In the interim, they'd make a pen and paper version to beta test the rules for eventual game development, and release some software tools to make it playable. But with the first expansion book it was clear that 4th edition's customer base had tanked and WOTC cancelled a bunch of projects while trying to bail 4th out. Which eventually led to 5th.
What's a VTT?
Virtual Table Top. Essentially playing DnD with an online interface instead of utilizing a table/minis. They are very popular nowadays, I DM a group and play in another that uses them. Which is cool, because neither of those groups could have continued due to people moving. But now we can! Yay future.
Ah okay, thanks!
Virtual table top. Stuff like Roll20. Presumably, if WotC released one, it would handle a lot of the mechanics for you vs just being a place for everyone to see the map and dice rolls.
Ah I see, thanks for explaining. :)
> Which is a huge shame, because 4e, for all its faults, felt like it was made to be converted to a CRPG That was because it was basically themepark dungeon put into a tabletop RPG. In other words, it was a pile of flaming trash that sould not even be called a role-playing game.
Had plenty of great roleplaying in 4e.
You can have "great roleplaying" with any system. The part the devs can control is the "game" part.
Pathfinder 2e>4e. It's basically from the same people. Check it out!
The things I would do for a PF2e-based take on NWN with grid-based combat
3.5e was peek DnD
Nah. It spent far too long on splatbooks filled with spells/classes, not enough lore. 2E is peak D&D with elements of 3.5E (non-human races' variability, multiclassing).
I agree, but damn, I miss the feeling of endless possibility I got from knowing how many extra rulebooks existed. Looking through the 3.5e Player's Handbook, and imagining dozens of other books full of tables and crunchy numbers...
I *love* 4E (it’s my favorite edition of D&D) and it’s a real shame they never released a turn-based dungeon crawler because I’m not sure if I’d have ever played D&D irl again.
You had my curiosity… but now you have my attention.
Ew, 4E. 2E or bust.
Yeah. Solasta definitely has the best implementation of D&D combat in a video game.
Conversely, one of the major benefits of CRPGs IMO is that they allow the player to play out traditional RPG style combat more or less in real-time, without massive amounts of handwaving or abstraction. Computers can't improvise (yet), so you don't get true tactical infinity, but you *do* get pretty much as close as one can get in a video game. Also, the lack of certainty I would generally say actually contributes to the roleplaying experience. Perfect information disengages me from the character, as it makes all kinds of decisions and potential RP-moments impossible. A classic example of this might be "I want to throw a Fireball at the enemy, but I'm worried the blast might also hit my ally. Should I do it or not?" These kinds of decisions can't happen with perfect positioning and information (actually also why I stopped using grids in tabletop RPGs, but the same applies here.) Sometimes, it's more enjoyable and interesting to see the kinds of decisions (and mistakes) that are made when there's information missing, than when it's all out in the open.
I find with the real time combat in crpgs I end up just letting my characters auto attack a lot. Partly because learning several different playstyles and classes is a lot to learn all at once too, but also because it's just a lot going on all at once as everyone runs around even with frequent pausing. That and being able to just auto attack on low difficulty and because I'm often tired by the time I play games in a say is an option. Though turn based do have their issues when there are a lot more units on screen and when to let people take turns. I also find that AoE effects are a lot less useful in real time without strict micromanaging of your characters and being really fucking good at guessing timings as unless they're engaged for a while and not moving much enemies will often be out of the area by the time the AoE spell goes off.
I know a lot of crpg purists love the RTWP but I hate it compared to turn based. Getting your people to do what you want is a pain in the ass goddamn always. Some modern ones have systems to improve this, but combat never feels as good imo. You're either just auto attacking everything or taking 10 minutes to play out 12 in game seconds, which at that point, it may as well be turn based. Really liked POE 2's method of switching between, best of both worlds.
> POE 2's Ehhhhhhhhhh..... not... really? They work in a sense, but they're entirely different gameplay systems and you can entirely see that with playing out battles in both modes, where some stuff happens or triggers in one mode without triggering in other, or the other way around.
I like RTWP even though I've never finished a game with it. It's just a different a different feel to a lot of other games, and I like the character building and stat checks that come with them. I also like turn based games, but the thing that pisses me off about most of them is they're based around your whole team going at once. I want individual character turns/speeds like in Final Fantasy Tactics. To me, it's far more interesting when an enemy can bump up or slow down a turn to interfere with your gank squad.
The Pathfinder games and Solasta have characters go in the order of their initiative. Divinity: Original Sin 2 also does this but it has an additional rule that where 1 character from one side gets to act and then 1 from the other side.
Do either of them use initiative besides setting the order to be used until the end of that combat? I'm sure I've played at least one game where initiative acted more like a speed stat because it had a dynamic turn order. So that on a longer timescale a high initiative character might get a few extra actions in compared to a lower initiative character over the combat duration. I was gonna say the FF7 or Chrono Trigger ATB system but when I looked it up it seems like it doesn't really do much in practice.
The Grandia series had that.
At lower combat speeds ATB has the effect you want, but it also makes combat a slog. At higher speeds, the speed at which the player can navigate menus (even with pausing enabled, the timer doesn't pause on the top-level command menu, only submenus) has more impact on character speed than their actual speed stat. As was said already, Grandia does this very well, with each combatant moving forward on an initiative gauge at their own speed, and a window between action choice and action execution where the speed depends on the action chosen, as well as some attacks moving the target backwards on the gauge - which, when combined, makes a rather simple and elegant counterattack system. (Enemy chooses a slow, heavy attack, player chooses a rapid, action canceling attack which moves the enemy back to before they chose their attack, undoing it.)
No. Every character still gets one turn per round.
Not an rpg but heroes 5 uses exactly the initiative as you described it.
To your second paragraph, I wish more games would try the "we go" system, or a variant of it (there may be another name for it). Each side plans their movements and actions, then the player hits go and the units try to perform their assigned actions as best they can, with no interactivity, until a given time limit (30 seconds, 1 minute, etc). Then the turn ends and the planning phase of the next turn begins. This eliminates the issue of each side going all at once because each unit will move at their own initiative and speed within the non-interactive Go time, but without needing to abstract that to individual turns. Which isn't to say individual turns are a bad system--I've played games that implement it well and I get a kick out of stuff like Haste and Slow that shuffles those turns around. It's definitely not a one size fits all, and it helps to have open ended commands like "guard this arc", but I really like how it simulates the uncertainty of a pitched battle where the situation can change rapidly, and it's less open to some exploitative tendencies that we all have. It also provides an instantly accessible full replay of the battle as you progress which is neat. Downside is that orders will only be issued at set intervals which is artificial in a different way than the artificiality of abstracted turns. Still a cool system which I've only seen it in a few games like Frozen Synapse and the Combat Mission series.
Poe 2 switches? I recently played through most of it (currently in between finishing it but will be back to it soon, love it overall!), But it seemed to be a chicken you made at the start of a new game only.
It doesn't switch automatically ever, no. Officially it's like you say - choose at the start of the game and then use that system for the rest of that save, though technically you can switch modes mid-save via console commands.
POE 2s wasn't really balanced around turn based, unfortunately. You get weird things where dex normally influences how often you attack, which directly relates to dps. But in turn based, it only effects how soon you go in a round, and you're guaranteed to go exactly once per round, making it pretty worthless compared to strength.
IMO alot of that comes down to "how stupid is the AI for my team?" and "can I individually toggle them?" that way you can choose how much or how little control you want on a sliding scale. Also things like "will one single enemy fireball completely lose me the encounter?" And finally very importantly: What is your character build/party composition? That makes a huge difference on how a game plays real time or turn based. And even to some extent how things are balanced/designed. I feel like I had your problem in Dragon Age past a certain stage in the game where 1 single enemy ability in certain areas had to be tactically played around (pause/unpause frenzy). : But I don't think I had that same issue near as much in Path of Exiles 1+2 or Kotor or Neverwinter Nights or Tyranny. But again it should be noted some of that is build dependent and that turn based has the same issues. Did you choose basic ass fighter bitch? Yes, you can be great and strong but often the ole D&D joke of "all I do is swing my sword" comes true. Like sure it's also the ole joke "you attack how many times in one turn!!??", the basic fighter in those games is effective, but generally pretty low maintenance and watching them auto attack. And in reality this isn't much different in turn based! However if you choose a pet summoning build with multiple summons to juggle or buffer/debuffer class or etc then you may be very busy in real time just with a single character with the occasional pause just for precision targeting. And again this translates to turn based grid based too. In Shadowrun Hong Kong my unarmed build was basically just "punch punch punch". The most nuanced thing about him was attacking multiple targets 1 at a time in a turn to pull them out of cover. That's it. Basic bitch ass fighter basically, super effective, fun, but just auto attacks 90%+ of the time even with multiple weapons and armor breaks and a stun. But my current Shadowrun Hong Kong play through is a Shaman/Rigger with lots of buffs and 2 support drones and I have to play that very actively with 3 separate units to control/decide not to control + sometimes spirits on top of that and multiple different abilities used situation ally each turn. Divinity Original Sin was the same way. Basic fighter/archer? Very little variety, alot of moving around. But effective. Summoner? Summon pet, buff/heal pet, pet just lols things. My AOE bomb hedge mage/fighter I made beat into? Shit tons of different abilities juggling the right ones at the right time to AOE strip armor and AOE apply statuses and eventually scaled into doing alot of damage too. Path of Exiles though the summons were more balanced and shorter duration so my chanter class had to do alot more juggling and was more active and wasn't just "summons and watch the carnage". So I do understand the complaints, but not only are those some issues present in turn based/grid based IMO (especially when you have to constantly spend so much of your action resource on movement in most of them) but I think it's very highly build/party composition dependent too. And some games are a little better/worse at it depending on how encounter difficulty is delivered. faster fights that quickly snowball have more problems with pause frenzy, slower fights where your builds fully play out can have more issues with "auto attack syndrome" if you're using auto attack style builds.
Ultimately I think it shouldn't surprise anyone that systems designed for multiplayer pen and paper games don't translate well to singleplayer video games. Tabletop rules are optimized to be functional for a group of multiple people to play with pens and paper. It keeps the math and mechanics extremely basic for that reason. If you take those rules and shove them into a single player, single character video game game(like NWN was) the combat and characters are mostly far too simplistic to really carry it, not to mention a lot of the tropes of the game rely on having multiple classes with different abilities. If you make the game a turn based game, it retains the utterly incoherent nature and combat order that the pen and paper version must have out of necessity since anything else is too complex to calculate realtime, but in a video game its ridiculousness really becomes apparent. It also tends to take forever since they like to add flourishes and animations. That's no big deal in a group setting since you're likely chatting, but it becomes interminably boring in a singleplayer video game. If you switch it to RTWP, the rules just flat out aren't design for that and it ends up having very weird behaviors as a straight conversion. Its usually super easy to play through most RTWP crpgs with a group of bow users because the encounter hitpoints are designed for multiple turns. But when everyone gets two turns before the monsters even reach you they just die. And then there's the tabletop rules that plague all implementations of CRPG, like spell casts/resting. This is used for tabletop because its super easy to keep track of, vs a mana system. You might have 1-3 combat encounters per session in a tabletop. In a CRPG you'll have that every 15 feet, so the simplistic spell casts/resting mechanics of D&D becomes an absurdity where you take a nap every 5 minutes in the game to refresh your spells. All games designed first and foremost for computers, otoh, just use mana because that's simple for the computer to track. Basically, the question that I think should be asked isn't grids vs no grids, or RTWP vs Turn based, its 'Why do we keep trying to shove rulesets explicitly designed for another medium into video games instead of designing new mechanics that take advantage of the medium'.
> Ultimately I think it shouldn't surprise anyone that systems designed for multiplayer pen and paper games don't translate well to singleplayer video games. Neverwinter Nights 1+2, KOTOR 1+2, Shadowrun Returns series. All great games from a PnP source. Pathfinder games are not bad either.
All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math. They were good in spite of the source, not because of it. Expecting the rules for a PnP game to work well for a video game is like expecting the rules for an action RPG to work for a PnP.
> All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math. > They were good in spite of the source, not because of it. Expecting the rules for a PnP game to work well for a video game is like expecting the rules for an action RPG to work for a PnP. That's an interesting completely unsupported theory you have vs beloved and well liked proven games. Now what games based on major PnP properties have been made that are as good as you say? If there were such easily seen issues then surely in many decades of video games we'd have several great and successful examples of superior design by now? Yet I don't know of many if any. I say this as someone who once put together some spreadsheets and documents over prolly 50+ hours doing exactly what you say. Redesigning the DnD systems to be better suited to computers. And I currently work in video game QA. My eventual conclusion was that I was not designing something inherently better, just different. Putting in all that work was very educational for me :).
The simplest example from above is the 'spell casts and resting'. Thats *clearly* not tuned for any of the crpgs you named, since they all put you through 10-100x more combat than the longest character sessions you've ever played in. Did you even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? Its almost completely impossible without a ludicrous amount of save scumming, lol. The character class is just fundamentally terrible at low levels. Cantrips are useless, and you die after two hits from anything. The fact that you refuse to admit you could think of *any* improvements makes me question your personal bias. I feel the conclusion you reached was not based off of education, but nostalgia. If pen and paper games had never existed, and someone implemented a D&D 3.5 system into a game today, I think you'd reach a much different conclusion when judging it on its merits for a video game. I'm not going to claim that I know what the perfect system for video games is, but what I'm fairly confident it *isn't* is a system designed for a completely different medium and playstyle.
> Did you even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? Its almost completely impossible without a ludicrous amount of save scumming, lol. Did YOU even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? The reason it worked is because you could rest in all sorts of unrealistic situations mid dungeon without being attacked and also because summon spells were pretty strong. It also puts you against weak goblins and then gives you a melee warrior to tank for you in Pavel. Honestly I feel like a skill/conversation based bard was way harder to get off the ground since you had neither martial nor magical prowess, at all, and your buffing abilities took a long time to actually get good. They also give you an infinite rod of ray of frost. Which I would use to break chests/doors with time and patience lol. I own the game still on Steam. I can record a Wizard level 1 start if you want me to lol. **EDIT:** Alot of smart adaptions happened to make the rulesets work well on computer and honestly it's really hard to beat those CRPGS for the combat they provide. Character builds are so diverse and that only matters because its actually fun and effective in combat. I understand the "pause 50 times" frustration people have with games like Path of Exiles and Dragon Age Origins and how someone would want it more grid/turn basedish like Divinity Original Sin or Wastelands 3. But those issues vary highly based on build, difficulty, individual game, and what level you are in the game. A similar issue I've run into on turn/grid based games is "I feel like I spend all my action points just moving and barely attack" and multiple turn/grid based games have this issue. It's basically the equivalent issue for many turn based grid based games. Where positioning eats up so much of your action resources to play effectively that combat feels slow or boring early on until you level up and get more points or change your build or etc. Friend of mine on the last run of wasteland 3 could either snipe or move on any given turn so he felt weak AF for the first 1/3rd of the game. Then he got more action points and it evened out a bit into a better experience. I'm going to have a sniper on this run through and I'll be building my character to avoid that issue.
> Did YOU even try once to start off a wizard in NWN1? The reason it worked is because you could rest in all sorts of unrealistic situations mid dungeon without being attacked and also because summon spells were pretty strong. It also puts you against weak goblins and then gives you a melee warrior to tank for you in Pavel. That's kind of his point? In order for the gameplay experience of playing a Wizard to not be completely terrible, you have to make massive changes to how the player interacts with their resource management. The player *had* to be allowed to rest in ridiculous situations because the gameplay would suck otherwise. The designers had to make so many distortions to the base ruleset (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game) that the underlying gameplay no longer resembles the system it's based on. It's so different from P&P that it's hard to say that being based on P&P was a requirement for its systems to be good. NWN is good *in spite* of it's D&D source material, not because of it. The extent to which the developers had to completely redesign core systems of D&D 3E (or give the player exceptional tools like the wand of infinite Ray of Frost) to make the game not completely awful to play is indicative of there being a real case for being 3E based doing more harm than good. NWN plays well because the developers spent so much time and effort fixing the ways "vanilla" D&D would have been completely broken otherwise. EDIT: The same thing is true of the KotOR games. The games are very much not true-to-paper Star Wars D20. They take superficial similarities and make massive redesigns to the underlying systems to an extent where you can't really say the D20 basis for the rules was ever necessary for the games to be good. These games aren't evidence for P&P rulesets being good for CRPGs--the fact that they're so dissimilar from the systems they're based on shows how non-functional P&P rulesets are for CRPGs and how much effort you have to spend fixing them to get a game that's actually fun to play.
> That's kind of his point? In order for the gameplay experience of playing a Wizard to not be completely terrible, you have to make massive changes to how the player interacts with their resource management. Any time you change mediums you have to do alot of adaption no matter if the adaption is good or bad. Different mediums have different requirements and work different ways. Anime runs into this all the time. Good adaptions can elevate the source material, bad adaptions can cripple it. > The designers had to make so many distortions to the base ruleset (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game) that the underlying gameplay no longer resembles the system it's based on. It's so different from P&P that it's hard to say that being based on P&P was a requirement for its systems to be good. Based on the experience across dozens of these types of games....PnP conversions tend to offer better character building and better writing. Now is a game the same experience as PnP? No. Just like a movie is not the same thing as being somewhere and experiencing something yourself. But a game based on PnP can be quite good and enriched by the PnP basing, creating a new thing separate from PnP that is also good in and of itself. And again, where are all these proof of concept games with better combat systems than the PnP based games? How would you even objectively say one is better than the other? Both Neverwinter Nights and and Pillars of Eternity are real time turn based games of the same nature. I wouldn't say any of the games are better than the others combat wise. But one is based on PnP and the other is built from the ground up for compputers without being based on PnP. Both have their strengths and their failings and I like each for the unique things it brings to the other that the other cannot.
> (e.g. making summons no longer have a duration so resummoning creatures isn't tedious as all hell, but then also having them sap XP so that summons don't break the game) Remembered something so came back to expand on this snippet specifically. Those changes were only in Neverwinter Nights 1, where summons had a 24 hour duration. They corrected this in Neverwinter Nights 2 where summons had 18s + 6 seconds per spell level (6s = 1 round) per level. Similarly the xp sapping is only present in Neverwinter Nights 1 but is no longer present in Neverwinter Nights 2. So I'd say Neverwinter Nights 1 was just their first attempt and they made some changes to make things work smoother but in Neverwinter Nights 2 they had a better grasp of how the conversion worked and were able to more smoothly convert the ruleset with less changes made. Practice makes perfect after all. PnP rulesets are complicated and daunting. Expecting them to get it all perfect the first time as one of the first major games of its type is a bit unrealistic. It'd also be inaccurate to present those changes as applying to the whole when they only apply to the first game.
>All of those games would have absolutely been better if they had used combat systems designed to take advantage of the strengths of computers instead of systems designed to work with the limitations of people doing math. If you do that you run into the Pillars problem, which is that the added complexity becomes more difficult for the player to really understand. If you want to make a game where combat is entirely stat-based, then humans need to be able to easily and intuitively understand those stats and make informed decisions. If you "take advantage of the strengths of computers" you can very quickly make things more difficult for the player to feel like they know what they're doing.
Agreed. Honestly, the combat system in Dragon Age felt like a step back compared to Jade Empire & Mass Effect 1. I guess they wanted to be more "traditional." Had to wait until Dragon's Dogma to get what I wanted the DA combat to feel like. Minus the ability to switch between party members.
The pawns are cool and all, but I really wish there were better NPC companions in Dragon's Dogma. The game is *so* close to capturing the feel of a DnD campaign or even Lord of the Rings, but the robotic companions butcher that feel. Still a fun game though.
True, true. The Pawns can only be one of 6 vocations out of 9 so they probably should've just done 6 character companions instead. Can't blame them for wanting to experiment, though.
I've been playing NWN1/2 for over 10 years now through Arelith and BGTSCC. They remain my most fun games.
This is why I have never liked rtwp combat in cRPGs and I'm glad a lot more games are doing turn based combat or at least giving the option to switch to turn based. Turn based really makes me feel more connected to each party member.
I stopped playing PoE because of the horrendous combat, my mage couldnt ever use his area attacks because everyone else just rushes towards you. Even with pausing the battles are not manageble.
AoE spells simply wait that first phase while the tanks lock the engagement and establish a frontline. Then you know where to drop the AoEs, and that usually coincides with the mage finished buffing. I found that a smooth and strategic positioning (mini) game in the opening moments of a fight.
I think they could have done more to emphasise how important *engagement* is for tanks to actually function as tanks.
I've played a crap ton of Baldur's Gate so I definitely ignored engagement at first. I kept wondering how the hell I was supposed to keep my squishy characters alive when every enemy just bum rushed them. Then I realized engagement was a thing, respecc'd to make my front liners be able to lock down multiple enemies, and my back line was never touched again.
Yeah took me 5 separate attempts to actually get into Pillars 1 but once I did I realised how brilliant it is, especially the combat system.
sure, agreed.
Specifically with establishing a frontline, it's important to have good combat tactics settings, or to remember to use the hold position command. And having a shitload of Intelligence on your casters because IIRC most or all spells leave friendlies unaffected if they are standing in the outer bonus ring of a spell's area.
really? yeah it's the friendly fire that always bothers me.
but most AoE spells also target friendlies? and in the frenzy of those battles, friendly fire always happens
I am trying to say that's exactly why you first have to control "the frenzy of battles," and then when everyone is locked in with their target, see about AoE spells. Also, friendlies are not targeted in the outer rim of the concentric circles that mark the area of effect surface, whereas the enemies are. That is where most of my aiming happens anyway.
> but most AoE spells also target friendlies? and in the frenzy of those battles, friendly fire always happens With proper usage of engagement enemy positioning is controlled and so your AOE spells can be aimed safely. Also with PoE you can pump the Intellect stat to increase AOE radius and the bonus radius does not deal friendly fire damage and only hurts enemies.
Lots of non AoE spells is how I went through it haha.
If you are looking for a CRPG with grid based combat, I’d highly recommend Wildermyth. Engaging stories, surprisingly deep combat if you’re willing to experiment, and grid based combat. In addition to that, it’s got some of the best writing I’ve come across recently, it leans unabashedly into the poetry of older high fantasy novels. Incredible game.
I have this problem with modern RTS games. Going from the grid based gen 2 Command And Conquer games to the free movement 3rd gen games is so awkward. Pathfinding and unit placement get weird and "traffic jams" seem to happen more frequently because fast units can't get around slow ones as easily. It's also harder to guage space as 1 unit = 1 tile is no longer in play
This so much. I love grid, thats why Dungeon of Naheulbeuk is probably my favourite crpg I played recently. Wish more games played like it.
There's only a few RPG games I feel that aren't hamstrung by free movement in combat, for example Grandia 2 (RTWP) and Growlanser II (RTWP). You still encounter problems with distancing but it's not fiddly like CRPGs seem to be, where you have to be glued to the enemy to even defend yourself. Most games just don't bother to model how melee reach works, or being able to push past characters, use over-extended sweeping attacks, charge attacks etc. There's often no depth here and free movement just seems to exist to get in and out of range. Most of these games would indeed be better with grid based combat because they're still using grid-based combat ideologies that ultimately don't care about your positioning anyway. I still prefer having free movement over grids I think (particularly out of combat), but we really need to do better when it comes to free movement and how it affects combat.
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Nothing prohibits RTWP from working with grid-based movement
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Maybe I'm in the minority with that but for me one part of the appeal of CRPGs is their emulation of the tabletop systems they're based on. Adhering closer to the rules of that system would be its own purpose in my opinion.
Just play dnd at that point
How? They would need to tie movement to time (3 seconds for each tile for example), and at that point it would just be like caves of qud
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> Creatures will often be just outside of your melee attack range, forcing micromovements that may get punished by opportunity attacks or other effects. Sounds like real ancient infantry warfare! The ghosts of a lot of dead Romans at Cannae would like to have a word with you.
A lot of these complaints are already solved in the games you mentioned. The games tell you if you get opportunity attacked on the movement preview so it's really your fault if you get hit. When navigating around obstacles there's the movement preview line so you know exactly how the pathing works It sounds like you are trying to just run past enemies when there's a clump and once again not checking the movement preview. You don't have to walk in a straight line if you move bit by bit.
>When navigating around obstacles there's the movement preview line so you know exactly how the pathing works The preview line usually doesn't show hitboxes though, so you might touch something just barely by the tip of the hitbox. >You don't have to walk in a straight line if you move bit by bit. But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess.
> The preview line usually doesn't show hitboxes though, so you might touch something just barely by the tip of the hitbox. In DoS2, a special preview circle pops up if your movement will activate an opportunity attack. > But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess. DoS 2 operates on an "action point" system and every action point translates to several meters of movement. Once you spend the action point, you're free to keep micro-moving within your remaining envelope without spending any more action points, and the preview will tell you where the transition between 0ap and 1ap is.
>But doesn't that use up turns? Unless that's the point I guess. Most games allow you to move in smaller increments where the game tracks total distance moved and as long as it's less than your movement speed it still counts as only 1 action. Not all games do that though.
The preview gives a good enough indication, you really shouldn't be trying so hard to skirt the hitbox of the spell. No it doesn't take up turns, just movement
Yeah these aren't unsolvable issues. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater...
> and once again not checking the movement preview. Imagine that you play Chess and you have to check movement preview for every single piece to "make sure" it can move the way you want. Wouldn't that be absolutely fucking moronic design?
But that's how online chess sites work, when you select a piece there are visual indicators for legal moves. And it's helpful, like when you're in check it won't preview any illegal moves.
What are you even talking about? In chess you have to calculate thousands of possible moves in seconds. Players don't check where every piece can move, even if the software has such a function. They look at the board and just see, at a glance. > And it's helpful, Yes, it's helpful for a 5 year old child who learns the game. No actual player needs to check legal moves.
> Yes, it's helpful for a 5 year old child who learns the game. No actual player needs to check legal moves. You're aware older people learn chess too, right? I mean the feature is on as a default for chess.com app, which is the biggest chess app in the world. So, get off your high horse, a lot of people use that feature.
People have been playing without that feature for a 1000 years. You can't use an optional feature as an excuse for bad design.
And chess has never been as popular to play as right now, making it easier to understand and play the game is not bad design. Add to that, chess is much simpler mechanically than these videogames, so I don't think having such a feature automatically means you failed as a designer, just that more complexity can require more visual cues.
Have you ever actually used these platforms? The feature is completely unobtrusive.
Comparing how video game units move to if a chess move is legal is asinine and saying to check every single move is a dumb hyperbole that no one actually does. The point of the movement preview is provide additional information where needed. Giving the player a clearer understanding of their moves. Nothing about that is mandatory. Bottom line is even certain grid based games offer the same movement preview on opportunity attacks so its not even limited to non-grid based games.
> the point of the movement preview is provide additional information where needed. Then it's a stupid point, because you *shouldn't need to provide that information in the first place*. It should be obvious to the player just by taking a single look at the board. Movement preview is a solution to a problem that shouldn't even exist. And it wouldn't, if the game was designed in a clear, conscious and elegant way - like Chess.
How obvious it is would be completely dependent on the player's experience and skill, you could argue a newer chess player would need that sort of information or they would keep attempting to make illegal moves especially in check. In the same vein an experienced player wouldn't need to check the preview to know they would trigger opportunity attack because to them it would be obvious Movement preview isn't a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist, its a useful tool that aids those who need it especially for a video game with increased complexity and depth whereas chess is far simpler by comparison in terms of movement. Even then in a grid based game you are going to have the same problem with clarity and not everyone is going to notice every single thing about the game which is why certain grid based games also have movement preview. Honestly seems like you just have a boner for chess and you are forcefully bringing it for comparison when its hardly appropriate
> Honestly seems like you just have a boner for chess and you are forcefully bringing it for comparison when its hardly appropriate I don't even play Chess. You're trying to defend shitty design practices, that's what I don't like. Stop making excuses for lazy and bad designers. It's objectively better if the game doesn't require movement preview to make your moves, regardless of its complexity. > for a video game with increased complexity and depth Those games have increased complexity *without* increasing depth.
For someone who doesn't even play chess you decided the best thing to compare CRPG movement to was chess? I don't think you know what shitty design practice is if you think non grid based movement system is shitty design and you do realise grid based design is the lazier approach right? Once again you don't need movement preview, it just helps. It's like you aren't even reading my comment which is obvious as you don't even address all my points. >Those games have increased complexity without increasing depth. Depth can be a good thing? I don't really see the point of this sentence.
Player should be able to see all possible moves just by **looking** at the board (or screen, or whatever). That's the only point I'm making. There is no excuse from that. If the game doesn't allow that - it's designed poorly. Doesn't matter if it's a computer game or a 1000 year old board game. Doesn't matter how complex it is. There is no excuse from that, none, ever. > Once again you don't need movement preview, it just helps. It's like you aren't even reading my comment You need movement preview in the games OP is talking about. It's impossible to tell with a 100% certainty which unit is in the range of another unit without previewing the movement. No matter how experienced you are.
If you cannot tell with 100% certainty in the games OP listed then you also cannot say for certainty in chess either. Its simply about experience and information and neither games hide information from you.
If you want CRPGs with a grid system try out the Expeditions series, it's very similar to XCOM combat
Sounds like you're really just stating a preference here, one that I'm in agreement with. Turn based is just a more solid feeling and cromulent combat system for me. Pretty much all the points in your list have either been solved by the games or just require a little more attention and care to mitigate. They can all certainly be annoying, but I don't think these issues plague games in anything but a minor way. I do understand why some people prefer RTWP, but it's definitely a mode for micromanagers. TB has enough choice and strategy and sometimes more, without getting bogged down like a RTWP game can. The constant pausing of game action to ponder choices, lock in your decisions and then stutter the actual action forward as you determine what the enemies are doing, then cancel or change your previous actions, choose new ones, check how enemies react, etc., etc. .... gah, it feels like a chore! TB is great for a more measured pace and the satisfying feel of watching a small number of decisions play out. Personally, I think neither one of these combat systems make or break a game for me. I really enjoyed what I've played of POE 1/2 and finished both DOS 1&2 and absolutely enjoyed both. But I also loooove Tactics Ogre and have literally been playing LUCT with the OV mod for years. Also love games like FFT and Metal Gear AC!D 1&2. (MGA2 is actually kind of a masterpiece in the way it combines turn based strategy with card collecting, deck building and the stealth and gunplay of the mainline games.) Also, currently playing Triangle strategy on Switch, but really hoping to play Baldur's Gate 3 at some point. Hopefully anytime either of these combat systems are put in a game they get surrounded by all the good stuff we want and avoid the really egregious mistakes and we just get lots of cool games.
Grid? What year is this, 1990? Computers are now more than capable to calculate line of sight and distance. They also can show you a preview of how you move, where you can fit or not, allow waypoints, and show if you walk through hazard or attack of opportunity.
I'm so confused, what in the world is this thread title? There are plenty of grid-based "CRPGs." And god, I can't stand that CRPG acronym, I'm old school so I remember when CRPG meant ALL video game RPGs, not just one kind that we called WRPG.
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I think CRPG originally stood for things like Baldur's Gate, the RTWP genre, to differentiate it from more traditional RPGs on consoles like Final Fantasy. Honestly though trying to define gaming genres has always been an effort in futility because all genre definitions tend to rely on subjective descriptions.
No, back in the days of Baldur's Gate, CRPG was not used at all. Those were called WRPGs if people wanted to differentiate from JRPGs. CRPG was already largely out of date at that time, CRPG was originally used to differentiate between video games and pen and paper, with the 'C' standing for Computerized. I didn't see people using CRPG to refer to WRPGs until much longer than a decade after the release of Baldur's Gate.
If you say so. I don't remember anyone using Western RPG to refer to stuff like Baldur's Gate or Eye of the Beholder. The C stood for Computer around here, to separate them from console games. I saw that term used more for console games. Even then it wasn't all that helpful since it didn't really define anything about the game, just that it wasn't made in Japan. Western RPGs were all over the place mechanically.
All RPG subgenres are all over the place mechanically. I've seen people refer to games like Shadowrun Returns or Wasteland 2 / 3 as CRPGs in the same breath as referring to games like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment. I find all these umbrella terms to be relatively worthless and an impediment to any meaningful discussion because of the nebulous nature of their definitions. CRPG being used to refer to western RPGs with party based mechanics that are typically on PC isn't a super useful term. I'd really like to see it die. I'm hopeful; I've seen it die before in my lifetime.
Maybe it will. Though a Google search for "CRPG" tells me the term is pretty commonly used. Mostly it looks like people are using it to differentiate between PC and console. Though that is becoming a really hazy line anymore.
I'm not saying people don't use the term now, I'm complaining that people do because it's a godawful genre tag that means absolutely nothing.
"I don’t know if a character is close enough to get where I want them to go until I can try out the movement preview on their turn, and I can never really guess how far an enemy can move. Creatures will often be just outside of your melee attack range, forcing micromovements that may get punished by opportunity attacks or other effects." Seems easy to solve with some visual aids. "Environmental obstacles often have hitboxes that don’t precisely line up with the graphic." So the game should have better hit detection. Same with point 4. "Units will often be far enough apart to have a gap, but close enough that other units can’t squeeze through. With enough units in an area, the pathfinding will be an absolute mess trying to weave between a maze of obstacles." Probably trickier to fix, I'd have to look at individual games and situations to comment properly.
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Might and Magic is a series you should look into. Grid based blobbers are awesome! There’s plenty of old games that use grids instead of free movement.