Turn order: Speed vs round based

[Val the Moofia Boss]

One thing that has struck me odd about WRPGs is how unnatural the turn order is.

In JRPG ATB games (ie FF4 through 9, 11, 13, Chrono Trigger, etc) and CTB games (ie FF10, Trails series, Monochrome Mobius, Honkai Star Rail, etc), each character has a speed stat that determines how soon their next turn will arrive. This works naturally with higher speed characters getting turns more often than slower speed characters, and there are ways to manipulate speed even further during combat. Ie trying to super buff characters so they can get turns very often, or trying to debuff/slow enemies to minimize the number of turns that they get.


All of these guys have different speeds, some people act more or less often than others.


But it seems that WRPGs prefer an unnatural round based system where every character gets the same amount of turns just as often as everybody else. Sometimes you can perform more actions in a single turn than other characters, but once your turn ends you still have to wait just as long to act again as everyone else.


So many guys but everybody gets a turn just as often as each other.


For how "simulationist" and "realistic" WRPGs are often touted, which do they hang on to such an artificial speed system? Is it a hanger on from when WRPGs were based on tabletop D&D where the turns went around the table to every player?

[Tangerine]

But it seems that WRPGs prefer an unnatural round based system

The ATB system is no more natural than round-based systems. In a round-based system, each round represents a fixed unit of real time (e.g. 6 seconds) and actors perform their actions within this time frame. ATB does not have a time frame because it operates on ticks. In both systems, faster characters can do more actions, the presentation is just different; in Atom RPG, a character with higher dex has more AP which means he can do more stuff than a character who has less AP.

[asf]

i clicked this thread and the massive weebery damaged my retina

[Norfleet]

"Speed-based" turns tend to turn action economy into meta, and thus the stats that govern speed become most important stats in the game for any character. When you can take 2 turns for every 1 of your opponent's, you're effectively dominating him by that +100% in every field: 2x more damage, 2x more healing, 2x more movement, everything. Even if the tradeoffs to achieve it result in a "balance" of being only half as good at something, I can do it twice as much to achieve the same result, and I have more flexibility on top. Throw in the ability to stagger- or stunlock enemies and this just becomes even more glaring. Pretty much every game with speed-based turn order that offers you the ability to build has this turn into the meta.

i clicked this thread and the massive weebery damaged my retina

This is nowhere close to the most weebish thread Moofia has posted. Hell, I actually understood what he was saying, even though I know practically none of his weebgames. By Moofia standards, this is quite possibly the least weebish thing he has posted.

The ATB system is no more natural than round-based systems. In a round-based system, each round represents a fixed unit of real time (e.g. 6 seconds) and actors perform their actions within this time frame. ATB does not have a time frame because it operates on ticks. In both systems, faster characters can do more actions, the presentation is just different; in Atom RPG, a character with higher dex has more AP which means he can do more stuff than a character who has less AP.

AP is a speed-based mechanic, though, and suffers EXACTLY the issues I mentioned above. High-AP builds pretty much entirely dominate meta of AP-based games.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

"Speed-based" turns tend to turn action economy into meta, and thus the stats that govern speed become most important stats in the game for any character. When you can take 2 turns for every 1 of your opponent's, you're effectively dominating him by that +100% in every field: 2x more damage, 2x more healing, 2x more movement, everything. Even if the tradeoffs to achieve it result in a "balance" of being only half as good at something, I can do it twice as much to achieve the same result, and I have more flexibility on top. Throw in the ability to stagger- or stunlock enemies and this just becomes even more glaring. Pretty much every game with speed-based turn order that offers you the ability to build has this turn into the meta.

A generalization yes, but it does not have to be this way. It is possible to design speed based gameplay where speed minmaxxing is not the end-all-be-all.

Falcom's designers for Trails has each ability, spell, and item that you use incur a different delay (meaning how far back your next turn gets set). And popping your S-craft (a character's ultimate ability or limit break) will set a character to the back of the turn order behind everyone else (though there are rare equipment that allows you to reduce S-craft delay by 50%). S-crafts can also be popped at any time even when it is not your turn (and human boss enemies can do the same too). S-craft damage also scaled with the amount of craft points you stored up, and in some games there is equipment that allows you to regen craft points for every turn that passes, not just on the character's turn, which makes slow speed characters viable since that character is still building CP while other characters are taking action. And then there are master quartz you can equip like Tauros that double your damage but also double your action delay, and builds around that were popular. It is also possible to increase your evasion rate and your defense so that it isn't too bad if the enemy gets a lot more turns than you, since you'll be able to live through it.

HSR also has experimented with boss mechanics where the damage window of the boss is how many times it can be attacked before that window evaporates, so instead of trying to maximize the number of actions you do you are instead trying to make each action hit as hard as possible.

[Tangerine]

AP is a speed-based mechanic

Since Val's point was about actor speed, I used AP specifically because it's a speed-based mechanic to make an apples to apples comparison. The issues of speed-based systems wasn't the point.

[Norfleet]

weeb weeb weeb

I take back what I said about the weebery earlier.