WheresMyD20
First Post
D&D Tactics was ok. It was turn-based and used a grid for combat. It also highlighted why high-level 3e was broken. Once your party hit the mid-teen levels, all you had to do was spam save-or-die spells.FadedC said:
D&D 4E 4e and Computer Games
- Thread starter Kaodi
- Start date
bowbe
First Post
It will be interesting to see what they do with Fallout 3. It's a "3d shooter" that has turned base elements where you can pause and change your action/activity in mid stride.
Lost Oddyssey uses a turn based mechanic for combat. I like the graphics and feel overall of the game, and the story is interesting but the turned based moments really drive me nuts. It feels like old "Dragon Warrior" on nintendo. I'm of a generation that thinks thats ok, but it isn't for everyone and after about 4 hours of the "oldschool" style of play i find myself thinking I may exchange the game for something with a little bit more oompha, which is too bad because I really wanted to like it. I am afraid a turn based version of 4e D&D would have a similar (negative) impact overall.
I liked the original Baldur's Gate and even enjoyed the console games for original xbox. They certainly changed a lot of the "mechanics" of 3e... you know they had spells you could use all the time...and spells you could use if you had enough spell juice... and feats you had to select thru to be able to use (that also used spell juice) but they were kind of mindlessly fun.
Basically they used the D&D flavor. The monsters we like, the settings we like, the character archtypes we identify as being "definitely D&D" in nature, and yeah they "changed the way the game worked" away from the table top model while still claiming the name and trappings.
I don't see how "marking" a target couldnt work well. Click to cycle thru foes or set it to auto target a favored enemy, racial emnity or most deadly foe. I don't see how the "move and shift" rules couldnt work in a knockback manner that has been efficiently used in video games since way back in Double Dragon WITHOUT needing to travel back in time to a turn based theme.
It isn't that table top developers haven't attempted to emulate this sort of fast paced action element into pen and paper games for years. Surely dozens of others have done so prior to WOTC adopting it in 4e. Scarred Lands setting for 3ed had "ground pound" powers by some clerics that would flatten opponents and grant an advantage to allies. 3ed itself had Spring attack that was basically a full move drive by attack that was about manouvering on the battlefield without taking AOOs. All that stuff to me is an evolution of fairly basic video game powers translated to the Pen and Paper realm.
In fact, I have to say a LOT of what I see out of 4e would totally work better as a video game, since the processor would handle all of those knockback and move, mark and buff, bloodied, stunned, and healing wave factors instantaneously or at least record the indicators on screen to tell you when you have the option of hitting x y a or b. I know that when running high level 3.x I never remembered to use half the powers/feats/spells that an NPC at my disposal had on hand. I would glance around the table and see my players having the same fits when it was their turn. I doubt 4e will be much different whe it comes to that aspect of the game. Appears the real difference will be in the adjustment to the "power curve" but who really knows till June eh?
Seriously Hasbro/Atari... Call me
Laters.
Case
Lost Oddyssey uses a turn based mechanic for combat. I like the graphics and feel overall of the game, and the story is interesting but the turned based moments really drive me nuts. It feels like old "Dragon Warrior" on nintendo. I'm of a generation that thinks thats ok, but it isn't for everyone and after about 4 hours of the "oldschool" style of play i find myself thinking I may exchange the game for something with a little bit more oompha, which is too bad because I really wanted to like it. I am afraid a turn based version of 4e D&D would have a similar (negative) impact overall.
I liked the original Baldur's Gate and even enjoyed the console games for original xbox. They certainly changed a lot of the "mechanics" of 3e... you know they had spells you could use all the time...and spells you could use if you had enough spell juice... and feats you had to select thru to be able to use (that also used spell juice) but they were kind of mindlessly fun.
Basically they used the D&D flavor. The monsters we like, the settings we like, the character archtypes we identify as being "definitely D&D" in nature, and yeah they "changed the way the game worked" away from the table top model while still claiming the name and trappings.
I don't see how "marking" a target couldnt work well. Click to cycle thru foes or set it to auto target a favored enemy, racial emnity or most deadly foe. I don't see how the "move and shift" rules couldnt work in a knockback manner that has been efficiently used in video games since way back in Double Dragon WITHOUT needing to travel back in time to a turn based theme.
It isn't that table top developers haven't attempted to emulate this sort of fast paced action element into pen and paper games for years. Surely dozens of others have done so prior to WOTC adopting it in 4e. Scarred Lands setting for 3ed had "ground pound" powers by some clerics that would flatten opponents and grant an advantage to allies. 3ed itself had Spring attack that was basically a full move drive by attack that was about manouvering on the battlefield without taking AOOs. All that stuff to me is an evolution of fairly basic video game powers translated to the Pen and Paper realm.
In fact, I have to say a LOT of what I see out of 4e would totally work better as a video game, since the processor would handle all of those knockback and move, mark and buff, bloodied, stunned, and healing wave factors instantaneously or at least record the indicators on screen to tell you when you have the option of hitting x y a or b. I know that when running high level 3.x I never remembered to use half the powers/feats/spells that an NPC at my disposal had on hand. I would glance around the table and see my players having the same fits when it was their turn. I doubt 4e will be much different whe it comes to that aspect of the game. Appears the real difference will be in the adjustment to the "power curve" but who really knows till June eh?
Seriously Hasbro/Atari... Call me
Laters.
Case
It is mostly going to be a matter of money I think. The last fully fledged turn based isometric dnd game was Temple Of Elemental Evil and well.. I think it killed the genera for quite a while. (probably forever).
I played a lot of nwn and I like it, nwn2 as well. Bioware obviously never wants to do another game with WOTC so I am not holding my breath on them restarting the brand with 4th but some less sterling company might do it with, I would guess, mixed results that stem from smaller budgets combined with a complicated game system that must be just so.
And there there is DND Online which I also played and liked for a little while. It seems to have the subscriber base to limp along but it is always a ghost town when I have tried it again. I would guess someone at Hasbro is still trying to figure out why they are not getting dumptrucks full of money from it like WoW so who knows if it will be tried again.
But yeah I think it is very possible to do a real time or turn based 4e and I would bet money that WOTC has been talking about it for almost as long as they have been considering a new edition.
Weither it will be good or will sell, that is another matter.
I played a lot of nwn and I like it, nwn2 as well. Bioware obviously never wants to do another game with WOTC so I am not holding my breath on them restarting the brand with 4th but some less sterling company might do it with, I would guess, mixed results that stem from smaller budgets combined with a complicated game system that must be just so.
And there there is DND Online which I also played and liked for a little while. It seems to have the subscriber base to limp along but it is always a ghost town when I have tried it again. I would guess someone at Hasbro is still trying to figure out why they are not getting dumptrucks full of money from it like WoW so who knows if it will be tried again.
But yeah I think it is very possible to do a real time or turn based 4e and I would bet money that WOTC has been talking about it for almost as long as they have been considering a new edition.
Weither it will be good or will sell, that is another matter.
My biggest problem with NWN 1 was that you couldn't control the NPCs in your party, you could only have one NPC with you and the NPCs were uninteresting.
My main problem with NWN 2 was the interface. With many characters involved, a good birds-eye perspective is imperative, which that game lacked. Other problems was that the AI was dumb as a box of rocks, monsters leveled with your character and the story was boring (especially the farmer-boy beginning; I hate starting as a villager, learning the game in lame "contests").
EDIT: For a 4e game, I think the developers should focus on the story, AI and interface. NWN and NWN 2 showed that D&D rules are a solid foundation for the mechanical parts of a CRPG, they also showed that mechanics can't save you from a weak story.
My main problem with NWN 2 was the interface. With many characters involved, a good birds-eye perspective is imperative, which that game lacked. Other problems was that the AI was dumb as a box of rocks, monsters leveled with your character and the story was boring (especially the farmer-boy beginning; I hate starting as a villager, learning the game in lame "contests").
EDIT: For a 4e game, I think the developers should focus on the story, AI and interface. NWN and NWN 2 showed that D&D rules are a solid foundation for the mechanical parts of a CRPG, they also showed that mechanics can't save you from a weak story.
EATherrian
First Post
Lord Xtheth said:
My goodness! I'm not a huge fan of the tactical road 4 e is taking but I would so buy that. The Tactics games, especially FFT, are so awesome it's crazy. 4 E would be perfect for that and even as a doubter I would buy it in a minute.
Kaodi
Legend
I sincerely hope that a turn-based 4e D&D computer game is given the go ahead, and that real time takes a back seat. I doubt that there are many people out there that would turn away a good D&D CRPG based on whether it had real time combat. Turn-based combat did not kill PoR and ToEE, a lack of quality or a lack of polish did.
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