J.E. SAWYER (DESIGNER: FALLOUT, ICEWIND DALE, PILLARS OF ETERNITY) ON TURN BASED COMBAT

author=Sailerius
Like kentona said earlier, why hasn't there been a turn-based fighting game? Everyone I know who's big into fighting games insists that it's not about button mashing or reflexes, so why not remove that aspect altogether and get to the core of what they're about?

I haven't played it, but isn't that what Yomi is supposed to be in some sense (but also a card game)? It's creator (David Sirlin) certainly seems to talk of it that way on his blog. I think at one point he even bragged about how well balanced it was compared to other fighting games, even though at that point it'd only been playtested for like, three months + the comparison of a turn-based sort-card-game to an action game makes very little sense, but w/e.

Anyways, all I'll really say about this topic is that while turn-based games have theoretically no limit to their complexity (except maybe the limit of the player's patience in regards to the number of things to consider and input each turn), a real-time environment forces you to be more intimate with the game's rules and be able to effectively strategize on the fly. It's pretty rewarding to make a split-second decision that's actually right.

e: Sailerius' point about "continuous gameplay"

Aren't there already turn-based games that do this by just having a pausable real-time environment?

ps: this topic is kinda hard to follow because it seems people can't decide if they want to talk about games that could be or games that already are.

i want to respond to some sentiments

There is a place for randomness and variation, but it's important to recognize where the original ideas come from. It's been mentioned that tabletop games' dice rolling influenced early RPGs to have RNG, which is almost certainly true. There's a huge difference, though. TT games have players interacting, a GM that can tweak stuff, and a generally more dramatic nature. When you build up for the final swing at a big enemy and miss, your character can respond, whether that's with anger, or laughter, or whatever. Alternatively, when you hit that 25% chance to hit and kill, the excitement can surge and be encouraged by the multiple people around.

When you fail a 71% chance to hit in X-COM, it's usually just you staring at your screen without other participants around. Feels bad, man, even if you knew that there's a significant chance to miss.

I like to alleviate this in a few particular ways, because I greatly enjoy utilizing evasion and critical hits in my games. My biggest method is to not make most abilities all-or-nothing. Many physical attacks have multiple hits, encouraging some damage even with imperfect accuracy. I also only allow critical hits as an overflow of accuracy in most games -- it's a reward for building around accuracy over raw damage. There are arguments for letting you strike a vital organ even if you sometimes miss, of course, but I'm not much for reality.

It's important to have ways the player can interact with it (in most cases), like I believe Ratty mentioned. (Obviously, if the variation is meant to feel oppressive or irrational, leave it be.) Between equipment and abilities, I like interaction with the RNG. A few examples of RNG interactions from my current project:

>Ox's Bull Rush ability can Stun, but it's based on his current Health. At full Health, it has a 60% chance. As Health falls, so does that rate in equal measure.
>All Pugilists have a chance to perform an extra hit after their attacks. This chance is doubled for their basic attack.
>Gwendolyn's presence makes Unknown nodes far more likely to be Casino, Black Market or Sacrifice nodes.
>Rucian and Anastasia have a 25% chance to increase the rarity of a chest's contents (Rucian for weapons, Anastasia for armors). (Chests are already RNG, for clarification, given that it's a roguelike game.)
>Marlowe's presence makes all Arcane-type critical hits deal bonus damage to Barrier, on top of the normal crit multiplier.

I also think that RNG should be transparent when it's player choice. For example, your chance to hit in my project is Speed. If you have 24 Speed, you have a 124% chance to hit (minus the opponent's Speed as evasion, but the point that 1 point = 1% flat still applies). Even mechanics like Hate ("aggro") are somewhat visible. We didn't want to bog down the player entirely with numbers, but enemies' nameplates shows the two targets it is most likely to target based on healing, damage and hate manipulation. Some things aren't transparent, because they're not the player's choice to build into them. There's no point in explaining the method used to generate the levels, for example.

SUDDEN SEGUE

I design for turn-based games because I like having fine control over every step of the player's journey and their interactions. Obviously a real-time game can be scripted, but a turn-based, menu-based game has only so many possible permutations of what can happen. Granted, those possibilities are effectively infinite, but at least they're big enough granules for me to manipulate. As a dev, I guess I take more of a directorial role, as opposed to being the... entertainer? Lost the metaphor. Both roles are fine, just my preference. (And no, they're not innately tied to turn-based or real-time, either, although I think it's far easier to be directorial mechanically with turn-based gameplay.)

I guess in the end I have no strong feelings about either style. I personally prefer building experiences in turn-based, but I definitely enjoy real-time games to play as well.

Actually it has been tried, just not so much in video game form. The two I know of are Yomi (although that apparently now does have a video game version) and BattleCon. I've only tried each a couple times, so I can't particularly speak to how good they are, just that they have a fairly steep learning curve.

I found this: http://turn2fight.com/

But I think the gimmick here is resuming the fight at your leisure

@Sail- That makes sense, but related to turn based combat which isn't as in depth as a boardgame or as long(obviously) how are we to learn what makes a TB battle more interesting? I can see how boardgame mechanics can be applied to video games, but what about turn based specifically? I guess that's the area I'm having a hard time visualizing

As Sal said and expanded on, a lot of board games are light years ahead of video games on certain mechanics; the depth that board games had even in the 80s haven't yet been replicated in even AAA games.

But it's a different medium. I think boardgames work because you're playing with other people alongside cool or original mechanics and ideas. I'm having a hard time seeing how you implement that same feel into a video game that uses turn based combat or even real time. Because it feels like elements more for a mini game or a boardgame video game. I guess I could see a game built off a system that a more complex boardgame uses like Settlers of Catan. Instead of like Mousetrap or Monopoly.

edit: And I trust what you guys are saying, I didn't know a lot about the boardgames being ahead of video games. I'm just having a hard time thinking about how it can be implemented or replicated if it hasn't been done yet even in AAA games or even what would make turn based games better by studying boardgames.
Specifically turn based battles v real time fighting/shooting/etc

author=InfectionFiles
A turn based fighting game is no longer a fighting game, it's just a Street Fighter RPG now. Unless you add buttons or keys to snap hit to do more damage or a sensitivity bar that if you nail at the right moment you do a combo. But even adding those "fast reflex" things doesn't make it a fighting game, some RPGs have that in their combat already.
I think if you tried to make a fighting game into a turn based it wouldn't make sense, and really I see now reason why because again, it would just become a RPG game.
Some stuff works best as it is and has no reason to try to be something else because it's already "perfected" in its field.

I'd be cool to see someone try, I guess? It would be different but not necessarily good or fun.

Define "RPG". Because sure, making a Street Fighter RPG is one way to try to make a turn-based fighting game. But it's not the only way. I haven't thought about it deeply, but it would boil down to trying to emulate the key components to a street brawl as a series of discrete steps.

As for boardgames, I don't see what we could learn from them that we haven't already learned from RPGs or turn based games.
Considering most boardgames require two or more players, that's what makes them fun. You'll either being implementing a multiplayer option or have AI which just isn't fun to play against.
What do you think we could learn from boardgames? Because I don't see how they translate to turn based games beyond what we already know and what's been done.

They focus and focus very hard on turns - what a turn is, what one can do during a turn, what limiting factors there are to actions, the effect of a turn on the pace of the game, etc... It seems naive to me not consider boardgame design when it comes to thinking about turn-based gameplay.

Or are you just thinking of games like Monopoly and Clue?

You should really try playing Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, or Puerto Rico. They're all classics with a lot of interesting ideas, and you can play most (all?) of them online. I was skeptical too until I was forced to play them in college, and I wound up being pretty amazed.

author=Sooz
It occurs to me that I have played something that might qualify as a turn-based fighting game. (It was closer to active time, in that player and opponent had initiative bars that filled up at different speeds depending on stats.) It had some mildly interesting mechanics to it, revolving around attacks doing different amounts of damage and also varying the amount of time it took for your turn to come again.

I don't think I can link to it because 1) it's a porn game and 2) I've totally forgotten what the heck it was even called. It, uh, involved some martial art dude who for whatever ridiculous reason decided to go hunt a vampire (and then creepy porn ensues) if anyone really feels like trying to track it down. I was hoping for some hot Dracula action and then got caught up in the gameplay OK DON'T JUDGE ME

There's a few other turn-based fighting games I can think of you might wanna talk about:
-Yomi Card Game
-Toribash
-Hexagong
-Kombat Fighters

Interesting how the latter two are small flash games available for free (trust me, they're awesome).