- Official Post
Kilovh and I were starting to go pretty off topic in "What was the first game you played," so I'm splitting the thread off.
Original thread is here: http://forums.zeldacavern.com/index.php?thre…ed.30/#post-934
RPGs have come a long way since then though. Playing FFXII makes me wonder if the turn-based rpg is dead. I suppose the question is - was the turn-based system just a limit of the technology of the time, or does it have its own merit? Because Mass Effect for example is to my mind perhaps the most immersive RPG experience I have ever had and they're third-person shooters. (I suppose the modern competitor against Mass Effect would be the Elder Scrolls games which despite many hours of Skyrim I never felt as attached to. I really don't jive well with Bethesda games, despite the many things they do well. Only game of theirs I've played recently that feels polished is Dishonored. No, I'm not a big fallout fan; fallout seems to suffer from the same insane "We can build an entire detailed universe but we can't make a decent HUD or interface" problems as TES. I always feel like they need more designers on their team. Not imaginative worldbuilders. More nuts-and-bolts type people. Because BioWare games just work and look absolutely gorgeous for their time, whenever they come out. They're smooth as butter. Whereas with Bethesda there's always these flaws that need overlooking, imo.)
You and I could not disagree more on this. I've yet to play a Bioware game that could hold my attention for more than an hour or two. They're clunky, plodding, and dull.
And while I've never enjoyed the thoroughly generic Elder Scrolls games (if Bethesda wants to make a game that focuses so heavily on melee combat, they really might want to build a good melee combat system), I'm a huge fan of the recent Fallout games. New Vegas in particular is a masterpiece. And despite running into a few, fairly minor bugs in the two recent Fallout games, it was never a serious issue, because Bethesda gives the player the power to just...fix it. 30 seconds to enter a console command, and you're back on track.
Regarding turn based battles, I think there's a lot of room for them to remain relevant. in modern gaming. Just look at the VATS system in Fallout for one modern example of how a turn based system can work. (I just hope in 4 they make it work a little bit more like it did in Fallout 1 and 2. Not exactly, mind you. Just a little more).
I think the reason someone might think turn based battles are a relic of the past is because 99% of games with turn based battle systems suck. I mean, I love Final Fantasies 1-10 as much as anybody. But the battle systems in those games are awful. It's all about finding the dominant strategy, and mashing that repeatedly.
If you're a fighter, click "attack" every time it's your turn.
If your a mage, use your most powerful spell each turn. Don't use status spells, they never work.
For each character in your party, a dominant strategy emerges, and the smart player will simply use that ability every single turn. It's boring. And honestly, it was just as boring back when we played those games for the first time. But we were wrapped up in the fantasy and the narrative, and the fact that battles were dull just sorta washed over us. It didn't matter.
So of course, any game that tries to emulate those old terrible systems is going to seem to suffer. But that's a flaw in the individual design of the game, not the fundamental concept of turn based combat.
The way I see it, there are three things that could be done with turn based combat to really bring it into the modern era.
1. More player facing information.
2. More player engagement.
3. More relevant choices.
Break it down:
1. More Player Facing Information.
One of the best features of Final Fantasy 10 was the little bar that showed turn order. They did away with the stupid Active Time Battle system, and used an calculated turn order based on each character's speed. And THEY SHOWED IT TO YOU.
This was a huge deal. You could look ahead and determine which monster was going to be the next to act, which meant you could prioritize your attacks against that target, because if you could kill him before his turn, then you'd avoid some damage.
Too many games manufacture part of their challenge by keeping the player in the dark about what their choices mean. Consider every time you've selected a dialogue option in a game that read "Leave me alone," and then once you selected it, your character said "Get the fuck away from me you disgusting subhuman freak!"
Turn based battles should be about strategy, and strategy should be about information. Lots and lots of information. And that doesn't mean there can't be surprises. Lets say you use a "sleep" attack against an elf. The game pops up with a message that says "IMMUNE!"
For the rest of the combat, and if you ever encounter an elf again, the sleep attack should have the word "Elves are immune" next to it.
2. More Player Engagement.
This is probably the least important of the three points, but I think it's a valuable one. Just because players are selecting actions from menus does not mean that they should simply sit there and watch
Final Fantasy 8 did a bit of this, but in my heart the game that really nailed it for me was Paper Mario. (Forgive me if Super Mario RPG also did this. I never played that game).
Almost every attack was accompanied by some kind of timed button pressing the player could attempt to make their attack more effective. When they jumped on an enemy's head, pressing "A" juuuuuuuust as they landed would allow them to double-jump on the enemy. When they hit the enemy with a hammer, they had to hold the "A" button to charge up, and release it juuuuuuuuust as it hit its max charge.
These are minor things. And, really, they don't even need to have that much of an impact on gameplay. But they prevent attack animations from becoming gameplay dead space.
3. More Relevant choices.
There are so many possibilities for choice in turn based games. For magic users, of course, there's an endless spell list. For fighters, instead of a simple "fight" button, there could be a list of maneuvers. Or they could attack different areas of the target, causing debilitating status effects. Or, their list of weapons could function a little like a list of spells. Do they attack the monster with a sword, or a mace?
Then of course there are things like terrain, and positioning, and elevation, and footing. Tons and tons and tons of interesting factors that could come into play.
But it all has to be relevant.
Consider the original Final Fantasy 4. Back when we called it Final Fantasy 2 and it was on an SNES. Do you remember how immense the spell lists were? There were like...three spells that turned enemies into harmless animals, with minor differences between them. How fucking cool is that?
Except you never used any of them because they were useless. You just used whichever spell did the most damage at the moment because anything else was a waste of time and MP.
A good turn based battle system needs an array of choices for each character in each situation. (7 is a good target number here.) And the system and enemies need to be delicately tuned and balanced so that you need to be aware of all of your options, because every option you have is relevant.
For example, maybe the enemies are too tough to take on all at once. Maybe the only way to survive is for your wizard to turn one of the enemies into a pig, and your judo master to wrestle the other enemy to prevent it from attacking anyone but the judo master.
This turned into a huge rant about game design, sorry about that. I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
