How cool that would be - to become a headliner of the freshly launched Stadia? To imagine Google would pick them, and not another game. That would say a few words about the game's quality.
How cool that would be - to become a headliner of the freshly launched Stadia? To imagine Google would pick them, and not another game. That would say a few words about the game's quality.
It can also say about how others publishers are steering clear of it. We’ll see when it launches.
You have to remember they are an independent studio (DOS games were launched via a Kickstarter), which means they don't have a bandwidth to pass on a good offer if it comes.
@ThacoBell and everyone who is afraid to jump into DOS because TB combat can be "slow". I was exactly of the same opinion several years ago and didn't want to try those games exactly because of that. But boy how I was proven wrong when I did them a chance. The battles don't feel slow at all. I don't know how they managed it - because Torment: Tides of Numenera and PoE 2 turn-based mode feel slow indeed.
Well I found the battles very tedious and silly and ended up turning the difficulty all the way down so I could breeze through them quickly just to be done with them.
But my issues with TB combat go way beyond just the slowness of things. For me TB is immersion-breaking. It is also way too restrictive of my freedom and agency as a player. And then, specific to D:OS, I found it rather silly that the battles were always set up, for both you and the enemy, with oil slicks/barrels and water puddles/barrels very conveniently placed so you can "interact" with the environment. That is fake environmental interaction to me.
For is it any more immersion breaking than bg or any other top down game where you actually art immersed but have a stereoscopic gods eye view of the world? Also what do you mean by "too restrictive"?
The second part isn't even a tb issue, that's a level design "issue". It's also no sillier then how in bg you can be in a forest, cast a massive fireball and none of the trees catches on fire or any real environmental damage actually happens at all or how we have spells that should do massive damage to not just npc but environments but they don't.
When I say immersion-breaking, I mean the mechanics of how TB combat plays out, the very idea that someone would politely wait for their turn to kill their enemy. Consider this example. Let's say one of my party members is getting hammered by multiple enemies. He's fighting back, but with multiple enemies on him he's taking a lot of hits and may even soon die. There's another party member standing right next to him. But he cannot help out in any way because, well, it's just not his turn yet and he has to wait for his turn. Now I can totally accept a character not being able to act because they don't have the necessary skills/attributes, they're out of spells to cast, they have a mallus on them such as being frozen or entangled or whatever, etc. But not being able to act because it's not yet your turn? That's just utterly bogus to me.
The 'too restrictive' part is based on my take of what an acceptable (to me) TB system would be. First, there should not be any game mechanic that restricts when any of my party members get to act. It should be entirely up to me, the player, to choose the order in which my party members will take their turn. Second, for each character within their turn, I should have complete freedom to choose the sequence of actions: move then attack; attack then move; move attack move; move then hold until later in the round to complete their turn, etc. The game can certainly limit how much in total I can do in a round, but how I set up my sequence of actions within that overall limit should be entirely up to me. RTwP gives me all of these things. So if TB is supposed to be at least as good as RTwP, then it should also allow me to have all of this freedom in how I play out the battle.
As for the last point re. D:OS's environmental reactivity, it is different from other games for the simple reason that Larian has made it a point of bragging rights that their game has all this awesome environmental reactivity. They actively push it as a core element of their games and a reason why we should want to play their games. So my expectations are justifiably higher.
Holy cow! TB combat means you're fighting like in Chess, or something. Of course, it will mean characters will wait for their turn. If it breaks immersion, then...
Both in DOS 1 and 2 you can affect when your characters take their turn - the higher their Initiative is, the sooner they'll take their turn. Eg. in DOS 1 you can increase it by putting points into Perception and using items giving you +Initiative. You can also postpone your turn to be able to make it at the end of the round.
Duly played, your DOS 1 party will make all their turns before an enemy (or the majority of enemies) starts.
And yes, unline in POE2, in DOS games you have full control over the sequence of actions during your turn. You can affect your action points.
DOS's environmental reactivity is one of the biggest innovations in tactical party rpgs, it comes directly as a sequel to DAO' spell combinations. This is one of the features that put DOS games above many others (to me). It's too bad you didn't like it, but I guess people are different.
As I said in my post, I am AGAINST something like initiative being part of the system. RTwP does not have initiative. The game should not have a (fake) mechanic that determines who goes when. Only such things as time needed for an action to happen should count. And postponing your action resulting in your action getting pushed to the end of the round is unfair. I also don't necessarily want to go before all the enemies.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
I agree that pure turn-based is a bit more unrealistic. For one thing it usually has no good concept of overconcentration and overkill.
E.g. consider a fight with guns of Team A & B vs Team X & Y. With real time with pause if both A & B shoot at X, they lose out if both A and B would have lethally hit X at the same time (one shot wasted). With turn-based A can shoot first and B can then allocate his attack based on the result.
That's not to say that there are not excellent turn-based combat games, i.e. I love XCOM. But it takes a bit of the confusion out of the fight, making it less realistic and therefore (all other things being the same) a bit less immersive... and if you put it together with the more or less standard of enemies being at full capacity until killed, it encourages concentrating all your fire power on one enemy.
As an aside, whenever the old debate of turn-based vs real-time starts again, I feel obliged to bring up phase-based, which in many ways combines the best of both worlds. It's basically turn-based, but every character has to decide upon their action before they are executed in the order of initiative. Wizardry used that system, as did a few other old RPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy). In that system you risk losing actions or even waste spells if you concentrate your attack overly on one enemy.
As I said in my post, I am AGAINST something like initiative being part of the system. RTwP does not have initiative. The game should not have a (fake) mechanic that determines who goes when. Only such things as time needed for an action to happen should count. And postponing your action resulting in your action getting pushed to the end of the round is unfair. I also don't necessarily want to go before all the enemies.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
Most of them do implement an initiative system of some sort, the BG games had it, NWN games had it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has it. The PoE games worked differently, since they didn't have the concept of a round, and it was all recovery time based off your action, but still had a mechanic dictating when you could go again.
Comparison to chess is a false comparison, much like the false claim that D&D is TB so any RPG derived from D&D should be TB.
D&D (or chess) is not TB. Any game in which people sit around a table and play the game is, by necessity, TB. Therefore, since pnp D&D (and chess) are such games, they are also, by necessity, TB. Thus, being TB is not an intrinsic characteristic or property of such games and certainly not a characteristic of choice. It is a necessary (no choice) requirement in ALL such games for them to be playable.
The computer medium removes this limitation and allows you to play games in real time. It is a benefit and an advantage of the computer medium. With a computer, you are no longer LIMITED to having to take turns. So, while for some games you may still want to limit yourself to taking turns (chess for example), you don't NEED to do so.
Real-time with pause is not that different from turn-based. They are basically first cousins. There are still turns, they are just on an internal timer. Hell, if you pause enough, RTwP can be considerably SLOWER than turn-based. Then again, I'm not someone who lets the AI of my party memebers run wild. I micromanage everyone. I wonder if the people who dislike turn-based are also those who play with a ton of scripts active for the majority of the party.
As I said in my post, I am AGAINST something like initiative being part of the system. RTwP does not have initiative. The game should not have a (fake) mechanic that determines who goes when. Only such things as time needed for an action to happen should count. And postponing your action resulting in your action getting pushed to the end of the round is unfair. I also don't necessarily want to go before all the enemies.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
Most of them do implement an initiative system of some sort, the BG games had it, NWN games had it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has it. The PoE games worked differently, since they didn't have the concept of a round, and it was all recovery time based off your action, but still had a mechanic dictating when you could go again.
Indeed, because it is a holdover from their pnp D&D/Pathfinder origins. My point was that RTwP generically speaking does not require anything like initiative and can give the player complete agency, as we see in PoE.
As I said in my post, I am AGAINST something like initiative being part of the system. RTwP does not have initiative. The game should not have a (fake) mechanic that determines who goes when. Only such things as time needed for an action to happen should count. And postponing your action resulting in your action getting pushed to the end of the round is unfair. I also don't necessarily want to go before all the enemies.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
Most of them do implement an initiative system of some sort, the BG games had it, NWN games had it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has it. The PoE games worked differently, since they didn't have the concept of a round, and it was all recovery time based off your action, but still had a mechanic dictating when you could go again.
Indeed, because it is a holdover from their pnp D&D/Pathfinder origins. My point was that RTwP generically speaking does not require anything like initiative and can give the player complete agency, as we see in PoE.
But they don't give complete agency. You're still waiting around for your recovery time until you can act again. While it's not exactly the same as initiative, you can't just go whenever you want. Also if you want to try and move someone away from an enemy that's beating on you, they're going to get an attack of opportunity, which is how it is in most newer CRPGs, but the old BG didn't have that. It's just as much a game balancing tactic as it is a hold over from PnP, limiting how often someone can do something. Swinging a big ass sword around, you'll go later or take longer to recover than someone with just a dagger.
Ohh, so PoE gives the player full freedom, aye? Like an option to retreat from an encounter or go out of the cave? Or maybe an option to set a trap for enemies? Or maybe an option to split a party?
I'm genuinely surprised. Initiative has been the core mechanic of the games I like, starting from Might & Magic games. Especially if the player gets full control on how to affect it.
You get full freedom in action games. The less tactic the more freedom you get.
As I said in my post, I am AGAINST something like initiative being part of the system. RTwP does not have initiative. The game should not have a (fake) mechanic that determines who goes when. Only such things as time needed for an action to happen should count. And postponing your action resulting in your action getting pushed to the end of the round is unfair. I also don't necessarily want to go before all the enemies.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
Most of them do implement an initiative system of some sort, the BG games had it, NWN games had it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has it. The PoE games worked differently, since they didn't have the concept of a round, and it was all recovery time based off your action, but still had a mechanic dictating when you could go again.
Indeed, because it is a holdover from their pnp D&D/Pathfinder origins. My point was that RTwP generically speaking does not require anything like initiative and can give the player complete agency, as we see in PoE.
But they don't give complete agency. You're still waiting around for your recovery time until you can act again. While it's not exactly the same as initiative, you can't just go whenever you want. Also if you want to try and move someone away from an enemy that's beating on you, they're going to get an attack of opportunity, which is how it is in most newer CRPGs, but the old BG didn't have that. It's just as much a game balancing tactic as it is a hold over from PnP, limiting how often someone can do something. Swinging a big ass sword around, you'll go later or take longer to recover than someone with just a dagger.
And I did say in an earlier post this was ok. I fully agree with a mechanic that says sticking someone with your sword will happen sooner/faster than reloading your blunderbuss. This is logical to me. Initiative, on the other hand, is arbitrary and therefore not logical.
I don't think it is fair to take my desire for complete player agency within the combat system of a game to somehow mean "anything goes" or "no limits." Seems rather strawman-y. That is clearly not what I am arguing. Having AOOs and other similar restricting mechanics are fine because there is a logic to them. An "initiative" way of dictating to me who goes when is fundamentally different.
Comparison to chess is a false comparison, much like the false claim that D&D is TB so any RPG derived from D&D should be TB.
D&D (or chess) is not TB. Any game in which people sit around a table and play the game is, by necessity, TB. Therefore, since pnp D&D (and chess) are such games, they are also, by necessity, TB. Thus, being TB is not an intrinsic characteristic or property of such games and certainly not a characteristic of choice. It is a necessary (no choice) requirement in ALL such games for them to be playable.
The computer medium removes this limitation and allows you to play games in real time. It is a benefit and an advantage of the computer medium. With a computer, you are no longer LIMITED to having to take turns. So, while for some games you may still want to limit yourself to taking turns (chess for example), you don't NEED to do so.
Holy *beep* the mental gymnastics you just used just to contradict your own argument.
All you literally just said is, this board/tabletop/card game that is turn-based is not turned based because it has to be turn based!
Then followed by arguing a computer, a medium that is MORE RESTRICTIVE than a table top game due to the limitation of what code can do is less restrictive than the turn based tablet top game...
@kanisatha , I think you are confusing an abstract as some kind of direct translation. Turn-based combat doesn't mean in universe, characters are literally just standing in front of each other and taking turns smacking each other. Its an abstraction, a way to slow combat down to give the player more time to plan their tactics mid combat. Its not any more or less "realistic" than any other combat system.
A lot of initiative systems were based off the weapon you were wielding or spell being cast. There was a random element where you'd add a die roll to the cast time or initiative rating of the weapon, or base initiative off a stat of some sort, so they weren't completely arbitrary. Some were totally random, though, but not all of them, and I'm not aware of anybody still using the just roll a d10 and go when your number comes up, anymore.
By the way, I regard calling any argument a straw man argument, a straw man argument in of itself most of the time. It seems completely hollow to try and dismiss something someone says and hand wave it away by trying to stick a label (that's generally outright wrong) on it, instead of expanding on their argument and reasoning. We've made valid points, that are not hollow. My 2 cents on "straw man arguments."
I think he has created (I'm assuming this isn't a normal argument in the pnp/tabletop communities) equivalence of; "anime are not cartoons", and " manga are not comic books."
I think he has created (I'm assuming this isn't a normal argument in the pnp/tabletop communities) equivalence of; "anime are not cartoons", and " manga are not comic books."
They're different systems, and I don't see as much difference between them. But it's perfectly valid to have a preference for one and make for and against arguments for it. Personally I wouldn't say I would never play a game just because of it's initiative system, though. I actually didn't like D:OS2's initiative system, but still thought it was a great game.
By the way, I regard calling any argument a straw man argument, a straw man argument in of itself most of the time. It seems completely hollow to try and dismiss something someone says and hand wave it away by trying to stick a label (that's generally outright wrong) on it, instead of expanding on their argument and reasoning. We've made valid points, that are not hollow. My 2 cents on "straw man arguments."
Exactly who's doing the dismissing and the handwaving? From where I'm standing, it's what's being done to me.
I think he has created (I'm assuming this isn't a normal argument in the pnp/tabletop communities) equivalence of; "anime are not cartoons", and " manga are not comic books."
They're different systems, and I don't see as much difference between them. But it's perfectly valid to have a preference for one and make for and against arguments for it. Personally I wouldn't say I would never play a game just because of it's initiative system, though. I actually didn't like D:OS2's initiative system, but still thought it was a great game.
I'm confused on what you're talking about? My response was to how he's claiming board games and table top games which are turn-based, many built with the idea of turns taken in their systems, not turn-based because the turn base of the games are a necessity compared to computer games where they aren't, despite many games can be argued to be coded that way for the similar reason.
I said nothing about anyone preferences being invalid. @DrHappyAngry
@kanisatha I'm sorry if you feel that way. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not trying to dismiss your opinion. I'm only trying to get you to give some other systems a shot and arguing that they're more similar to what you like, than not. The games based off initiative systems can still be lots of fun. The fact that @JuliusBorisov and I read your posts and took the time to respond shows we're not just dismissing your opinions. I only took issue with you calling the arguments straw man arguments.
If a development team has a cool game and they designed it around a certain game style then that is how they feel the game is the most fun so that is the way it should be made. However, dev teams bend over backwards for their corporate pay masters who produce their games as well as IP holders like WOTSC. I've seen development teams turn their creations into mediocrity in order to move units off the shelf time and time again. The bottom line is that consoles do not have accurate pointing devices and even if they get them in the future, a large portion of gamers refuse to use anything but a controller. Turn based combat allows the game to auto select each unit as it's turn becomes available so that the controller user can simply input commands. That is why it's more and more popular these days.
The rush of sending 6 fire balls at the same time in a game like Baldur's Gate is destroyed. Hiding behind doorways and ambushing a party is not as exciting. Turn based turns the chaos of open battle into a slog so that it won't overwhelm the peanut minded player that doesn't get games like Baldur's Gate or popular RTS games. Can you imagine having to wait for each unit on a battle field to take it's turn in something like Command & Conquer? There is a reason why these genre's of games have died while Call of duty 48, Zombie edition sells over and over each year.
Google will pay a development team more then they would get from game sales just to sell a name brand that will attract a base of people to their hardware. WOTSC would love to spread their product to the masses at any cost. Read between the lines. I know I was disappointed after paying $200 to help fund TTON just to find out that they decided to make it turn based and sold it in console land. TTON had great art and a neat story but they forgot to include a game in the package lol.
Turn based is just a gameplay style. Its not somehow lazyier nor does it make people who enjoy it less intelligent. Its just one of many different gameplay styles.
I can't even begin to understand where this hostility to turn-based CRPGs is coming from. Until Dungeon Master and Diablo (respectively) nearly every one in existence was turn-based. Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic, the entire Gold Box series etc etc etc.
I can't even begin to understand where this hostility to turn-based CRPGs is coming from. Until Dungeon Master and Diablo (respectively) nearly every one in existence was turn-based. Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic, the entire Gold Box series etc etc etc.
There was a turning point where game design evolved to the next level. Since then, games have become stale and devolved back to more simplistic times. Like I said, if that is what the game developer actually had in mind instead of selling more units to controller users then great. My problem is when a game that is clearly better in real time gets the axe in order to appeal to a broader audience. I'm not saying all turn based games suck. I liked the old final fantasy games that were turn based but I moved on when games like Baldur's Gate came out. There is a reason why no RPG has matched or surpassed Baldur's Gate after 20 years and it has nothing to do with creativity, or hardware.
I am certain that Baldur's Gate 3 will garner attention, IGN will give it high scores and it will sell to it's maximum market penetration. Two years later, nobody will care about it. It's just like going to the movies to see the next comic book hero movie. When people look back they will continue to talk about 2001 a space odyssey, apocalypse now, and the matrix. Nobody will ever talk about the uninspired trash that is there to milk. With the same perfectly balanced cast and activist message over and over again. They might as well call this new game the generic forgotten Realms adventure # 20 but they just can't resist the temptation to drag another IP through the mud. If there was any chance of a real Baldur's Gate title to ever see the light of day, it would have to be done in the indie world. That's my opinion on this.
I feel sorry for Beamdog and what WOTSC did to their project. I feel bad for Phillip and Mr. G too. They have a small team and the work was slow but their hearts were in the right place. It's sad that people with real inspiration get ripped apart by this machine of an industry. Most developers are forced to do things they don't want to in order to survive in this industry and it sucks.
Comments
It can also say about how others publishers are steering clear of it. We’ll see when it launches.
When I say immersion-breaking, I mean the mechanics of how TB combat plays out, the very idea that someone would politely wait for their turn to kill their enemy. Consider this example. Let's say one of my party members is getting hammered by multiple enemies. He's fighting back, but with multiple enemies on him he's taking a lot of hits and may even soon die. There's another party member standing right next to him. But he cannot help out in any way because, well, it's just not his turn yet and he has to wait for his turn. Now I can totally accept a character not being able to act because they don't have the necessary skills/attributes, they're out of spells to cast, they have a mallus on them such as being frozen or entangled or whatever, etc. But not being able to act because it's not yet your turn? That's just utterly bogus to me.
The 'too restrictive' part is based on my take of what an acceptable (to me) TB system would be. First, there should not be any game mechanic that restricts when any of my party members get to act. It should be entirely up to me, the player, to choose the order in which my party members will take their turn. Second, for each character within their turn, I should have complete freedom to choose the sequence of actions: move then attack; attack then move; move attack move; move then hold until later in the round to complete their turn, etc. The game can certainly limit how much in total I can do in a round, but how I set up my sequence of actions within that overall limit should be entirely up to me. RTwP gives me all of these things. So if TB is supposed to be at least as good as RTwP, then it should also allow me to have all of this freedom in how I play out the battle.
As for the last point re. D:OS's environmental reactivity, it is different from other games for the simple reason that Larian has made it a point of bragging rights that their game has all this awesome environmental reactivity. They actively push it as a core element of their games and a reason why we should want to play their games. So my expectations are justifiably higher.
Both in DOS 1 and 2 you can affect when your characters take their turn - the higher their Initiative is, the sooner they'll take their turn. Eg. in DOS 1 you can increase it by putting points into Perception and using items giving you +Initiative. You can also postpone your turn to be able to make it at the end of the round.
Duly played, your DOS 1 party will make all their turns before an enemy (or the majority of enemies) starts.
And yes, unline in POE2, in DOS games you have full control over the sequence of actions during your turn. You can affect your action points.
DOS's environmental reactivity is one of the biggest innovations in tactical party rpgs, it comes directly as a sequel to DAO' spell combinations. This is one of the features that put DOS games above many others (to me). It's too bad you didn't like it, but I guess people are different.
D:OS's TB system does NOT have the kind of freedom of action I want. It is rather restrictive. By contrast, RTwP gives me, the player, complete freedom of action and complete control of how the battle will play out (which is not the same as control over the battle's outcome). Therefore, it is superior.
Like literally the only game I've seen that even come close to environmental reactivity like DOS was magika and from dust.
They were both specifically design to be that way.
E.g. consider a fight with guns of Team A & B vs Team X & Y. With real time with pause if both A & B shoot at X, they lose out if both A and B would have lethally hit X at the same time (one shot wasted). With turn-based A can shoot first and B can then allocate his attack based on the result.
That's not to say that there are not excellent turn-based combat games, i.e. I love XCOM. But it takes a bit of the confusion out of the fight, making it less realistic and therefore (all other things being the same) a bit less immersive... and if you put it together with the more or less standard of enemies being at full capacity until killed, it encourages concentrating all your fire power on one enemy.
As an aside, whenever the old debate of turn-based vs real-time starts again, I feel obliged to bring up phase-based, which in many ways combines the best of both worlds. It's basically turn-based, but every character has to decide upon their action before they are executed in the order of initiative. Wizardry used that system, as did a few other old RPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy). In that system you risk losing actions or even waste spells if you concentrate your attack overly on one enemy.
Most of them do implement an initiative system of some sort, the BG games had it, NWN games had it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has it. The PoE games worked differently, since they didn't have the concept of a round, and it was all recovery time based off your action, but still had a mechanic dictating when you could go again.
D&D (or chess) is not TB. Any game in which people sit around a table and play the game is, by necessity, TB. Therefore, since pnp D&D (and chess) are such games, they are also, by necessity, TB. Thus, being TB is not an intrinsic characteristic or property of such games and certainly not a characteristic of choice. It is a necessary (no choice) requirement in ALL such games for them to be playable.
The computer medium removes this limitation and allows you to play games in real time. It is a benefit and an advantage of the computer medium. With a computer, you are no longer LIMITED to having to take turns. So, while for some games you may still want to limit yourself to taking turns (chess for example), you don't NEED to do so.
Indeed, because it is a holdover from their pnp D&D/Pathfinder origins. My point was that RTwP generically speaking does not require anything like initiative and can give the player complete agency, as we see in PoE.
But they don't give complete agency. You're still waiting around for your recovery time until you can act again. While it's not exactly the same as initiative, you can't just go whenever you want. Also if you want to try and move someone away from an enemy that's beating on you, they're going to get an attack of opportunity, which is how it is in most newer CRPGs, but the old BG didn't have that. It's just as much a game balancing tactic as it is a hold over from PnP, limiting how often someone can do something. Swinging a big ass sword around, you'll go later or take longer to recover than someone with just a dagger.
I'm genuinely surprised. Initiative has been the core mechanic of the games I like, starting from Might & Magic games. Especially if the player gets full control on how to affect it.
You get full freedom in action games. The less tactic the more freedom you get.
And I did say in an earlier post this was ok. I fully agree with a mechanic that says sticking someone with your sword will happen sooner/faster than reloading your blunderbuss. This is logical to me. Initiative, on the other hand, is arbitrary and therefore not logical.
I don't think it is fair to take my desire for complete player agency within the combat system of a game to somehow mean "anything goes" or "no limits." Seems rather strawman-y. That is clearly not what I am arguing. Having AOOs and other similar restricting mechanics are fine because there is a logic to them. An "initiative" way of dictating to me who goes when is fundamentally different.
All you literally just said is, this board/tabletop/card game that is turn-based is not turned based because it has to be turn based!
Then followed by arguing a computer, a medium that is MORE RESTRICTIVE than a table top game due to the limitation of what code can do is less restrictive than the turn based tablet top game...
By the way, I regard calling any argument a straw man argument, a straw man argument in of itself most of the time. It seems completely hollow to try and dismiss something someone says and hand wave it away by trying to stick a label (that's generally outright wrong) on it, instead of expanding on their argument and reasoning. We've made valid points, that are not hollow. My 2 cents on "straw man arguments."
I think he has created (I'm assuming this isn't a normal argument in the pnp/tabletop communities) equivalence of; "anime are not cartoons", and " manga are not comic books."
They're different systems, and I don't see as much difference between them. But it's perfectly valid to have a preference for one and make for and against arguments for it. Personally I wouldn't say I would never play a game just because of it's initiative system, though. I actually didn't like D:OS2's initiative system, but still thought it was a great game.
Exactly who's doing the dismissing and the handwaving? From where I'm standing, it's what's being done to me.
I said nothing about anyone preferences being invalid. @DrHappyAngry
The rush of sending 6 fire balls at the same time in a game like Baldur's Gate is destroyed. Hiding behind doorways and ambushing a party is not as exciting. Turn based turns the chaos of open battle into a slog so that it won't overwhelm the peanut minded player that doesn't get games like Baldur's Gate or popular RTS games. Can you imagine having to wait for each unit on a battle field to take it's turn in something like Command & Conquer? There is a reason why these genre's of games have died while Call of duty 48, Zombie edition sells over and over each year.
Google will pay a development team more then they would get from game sales just to sell a name brand that will attract a base of people to their hardware. WOTSC would love to spread their product to the masses at any cost. Read between the lines. I know I was disappointed after paying $200 to help fund TTON just to find out that they decided to make it turn based and sold it in console land. TTON had great art and a neat story but they forgot to include a game in the package lol.
There was a turning point where game design evolved to the next level. Since then, games have become stale and devolved back to more simplistic times. Like I said, if that is what the game developer actually had in mind instead of selling more units to controller users then great. My problem is when a game that is clearly better in real time gets the axe in order to appeal to a broader audience. I'm not saying all turn based games suck. I liked the old final fantasy games that were turn based but I moved on when games like Baldur's Gate came out. There is a reason why no RPG has matched or surpassed Baldur's Gate after 20 years and it has nothing to do with creativity, or hardware.
I am certain that Baldur's Gate 3 will garner attention, IGN will give it high scores and it will sell to it's maximum market penetration. Two years later, nobody will care about it. It's just like going to the movies to see the next comic book hero movie. When people look back they will continue to talk about 2001 a space odyssey, apocalypse now, and the matrix. Nobody will ever talk about the uninspired trash that is there to milk. With the same perfectly balanced cast and activist message over and over again. They might as well call this new game the generic forgotten Realms adventure # 20 but they just can't resist the temptation to drag another IP through the mud. If there was any chance of a real Baldur's Gate title to ever see the light of day, it would have to be done in the indie world. That's my opinion on this.
I feel sorry for Beamdog and what WOTSC did to their project. I feel bad for Phillip and Mr. G too. They have a small team and the work was slow but their hearts were in the right place. It's sad that people with real inspiration get ripped apart by this machine of an industry. Most developers are forced to do things they don't want to in order to survive in this industry and it sucks.