Was RTwP just a fad?

[Eyestabber]

Real time with pause was quite big a couple decades ago. We had the Infinity engine games, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, the After series and probably a bunch of others I forgot. And then cRPGs went into a drought until the "great RPG renaissance" brought them back via Kikestarter. But when they did come back we got Pillows of Boredom and...that was it? One game from people directly involved in making RTwP a thing in the first place and the system was just set aside and forgotten about. While I don't miss the clusterfuck combat, it is strange that something as big could just vanish without much discussion. Thoughts?

[GhostCow]

I liked Baldur's Gate 2 when it first came out, but these days I really don't like rtwp and would rather play a turn based game. This makes me think it was probably a fad due to the average age of gamers at the time

[Oyster Sauce]

But when they did come back we got Pillows of Boredom and...that was it? One game from people directly involved in making RTwP a thing in the first place and the system was just set aside and forgotten about.

pathfinder

[rusty_shackleford]

Never quite understood why action RPGs with pause aren't considered RTwP, technically they're closer than the IE games or NWN

Mass Effect is probably the most popular RTwP game of all time

[GhostCow]

I never paused in Mass Effect

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It makes more sense to either go full turn based if you want a focus on making the correct decisions and graphical presentation, or to go full real time if your characters are taking too many actions that you don't want or need to micromanage all of them.

[rusty_shackleford]

I never paused in Mass Effect

You never paused to give your squadmates orders?

[Norfleet]

RTWP is basically an unhappy medium where you're admitting your game is too complicated to actually be controlled effectively in real time, but also too boring to be interesting in a turn-based format. And that multiplayer is effectively dead, so your justification for making this into a live-service title is absent.

[rusty_shackleford]

It makes more sense to either go full turn based if you want a focus on making the correct decisions and graphical presentation, or to go full real time if your characters are taking too many actions that you don't want or need to micromanage all of them.

turn-based removes all momentum from the combat, just doesn't feel the same

[GhostCow]

I never paused in Mass Effect

You never paused to give your squadmates orders?

Nope. I just did my thing and let the AI take care of the rest. It wasn't a hard enough game to bother with any kind of tactical gameplay

[rusty_shackleford]

This makes me think it was probably a fad due to the average age of gamers at the time

It was cashing in on the popularity of RTS at first, then Diablo after.
IE games were often directly compared to Diablo in reviews at the time.

[rusty_shackleford]

Another reason to prefer RTwP: it presents a higher barrier of entry to foids, and we need all we can get.

[Vergil]

I love it. EDIT: makes me heterosexualy erect for the purposes of procreation only

[J1M]

RTWP is basically an unhappy medium where you're admitting your game is too complicated to actually be controlled effectively in real time, but also too boring to be interesting in a turn-based format. And that multiplayer is effectively dead, so your justification for making this into a live-service title is absent.

Correct! Also, most modern games are RTwP because they pause when you bring up a ****** radial menu to switch items in the middle of being attacked.

[J1M]

I think RTwP RPGs can work, but they should use character building systems that assume the genre. They feel bad when they bolt a turn-based PnP system onto them.

Example: Stances instead of 15 different spells, many of which ask for secondary decisions like the shape of a wall or the type of creature to summon.

[Valter]

Has Obsidian given up on RTWP party-based RPGs? Those guys and Owlcat are the only big names still pumping them out... And I guess Bioware too...

[rusty_shackleford]

Has Obsidian given up on RTWP party-based RPGs? Those guys and Owlcat are the only big names still pumping them out... And I guess Bioware too...

Obsidian is long dead.

[Vergil]

Has Obsidian given up

Lord knows they need to

[Lord of Riva]

Yes, it's also ***.

You can do either Real-time or Turn based, both can be great Turn based is better but RTwP is just a design hiccup when it comes to implementing complex rulesets into a Real time setting.

[Stack of Turtles]

Real time with pause is the only actually fun way to play a game.

[rusty_shackleford]

turn-based lovers have turn-based brains, can't think concurrently

[Lord of Riva]

I never paused in Mass Effect

You never paused to give your squadmates orders?

Can you do that? What is the point anyways. The whole series is increibly easy.

[rusty_shackleford]

I never paused in Mass Effect

You never paused to give your squadmates orders?

Can you do that? What is the point anyways. The whole series is increibly easy.

Yes. You can also queue up abilities while paused.
ME3 on insanity is rather difficult, fwiw. AI also uses tactics to flush you out if you try to hide behind cover — either flanking or throwing grenades.

[Vergil]

I wasn't being flippant by the way I really do genuinely like it. I like setting up all of my little action figures and watching them execute.

[rusty_shackleford]

I like ones that let me give tactics to my allies while I play in real-time, and sometimes pause if needed. That's how I played dragon age origins. Need more of these.

[Stack of Turtles]

My favorite video games as a kid were RTSes. RTwP is like being a lion, you kill a gazelle in a flurry of activity once a week or so and then you laze under a tree for the next few days. It's a good life.

[Valter]

RTWP is basically an unhappy medium where you're admitting your game is too complicated to actually be controlled effectively in real time, but also too boring to be interesting in a turn-based format. And that multiplayer is effectively dead, so your justification for making this into a live-service title is absent.

I prefer action combat and I don't trust AI to order my teammates around. RTWP has 0 downsides.

[rusty_shackleford]

Back to the original topic at hand, turn-based is easier for developers to do.
So many things that it would be hard to list, in fact. Anything relating to feedback doesn't have to be as tight as an action game, enemy AI doesn't have to be believable(albeit it's expected to be overall 'smarter'), so on and so forth.

On one end of the spectrum, the pseudo-RTwP(they're phase-based that auto-advances turns) IE games/NWN/KotOR(especially so) had a ton of fake visuals to make the combat seem more alive otherwise it just doesn't feel right. You don't need that for turn-based because the same expectation just isn't there.
On the other end, you have full on action games that allow you to pause and issue commands… and these require significantly tighter controls, animations, reactions, so on and so forth.


Larian did it because Sven just prefers turn-based. But most other developers? I'd wager that's why.

[Humbaba]

Turn based is en vogue currently because gamers have become a lot stupider on average and cannot handle many things happening at once. Owlcat adding turn based mode to wrathfinder post release is a betrayal I'll never forgive.

[rusty_shackleford]

Turn based is en vogue currently because gamers have become a lot stupider on average and cannot handle many things happening at once. Owlcat adding turn based mode to wrathfinder post release is a betrayal I'll never forgive.

It was in WotR pre-launch