D&D 4E Is there any D&D 4th computer game?

[keterys]

Yep, but at a certain point you're not clicking enough to maintain interest. But you don't want it to be button mashing and you want time for people to do reactives, toggles, check on items. So, it might be fine at the normal 6 seconds.

It would be pretty amusing having 30 second combats that would take an hour tabletop. Pretty par for the course, though. That was one thing I noted about D&D Online - felt like I crit _all_ the time, but it's just that I'm making so many more attacks than in a normal night of play.

 

[Garthanos]

Yep, but at a certain point you're not clicking enough to maintain interest. But you don't want it to be button mashing and you want time for people to do reactives, toggles, check on items. So, it might be fine at the normal 6 seconds.

Animation can still be elaborate even without the mashem smashem...
do a slow motion shot when you do a finishing shot on a creature... a few things of that sort could be fun. All combat involves more feints and ripostes and actions during the middle... hey I want to hear and see blades clash.... can a video game give me more than one animation for my cleave?

If player choices dont seem sufficient? for 6 seconds then then maybe that is a sign about something ;0 maybe more choices need to be involved? There are a lot of people saying that more at-wills would feel better.. though for me I want situation-ally balanced useful at-wills....

Perhaps some choices that arent which button to smash... maybe how long I hold down a key could be how long I am prepping for the culmination strike. Round length are a little more your choice.

Shrug a computer game can be more complicated than a p&p
without it causing problems but you have to maintain the connect so you don't loose its recognize-ability and that is something worth shooting for really a balancing act I think....

DDO is certainly 3.X feeling, goofy boom now you are as good a wizard as one that went through apprenticehip and is now a hero... and all... but it also feels like they are using a chunk of the Unearthed Arcana ie it isnt limiting itself where it can improve game play to being exactly the p&p rules.

 

[kolpo]

If they make a real time game do I think that it is very important to resist the urge to make it very fast paced. In NWN felt 6s round right for casting classes, but for classes who just did autoattack was it too slow until they got more attacks/round. But in D&D4 has everyone powers, so I think that 6 seconds would work fine.

Also remember that 6s is not the time needed for one player to use his power, but it is the time needed for all players and monsters to use there powers in initiative order. Some powers also require more then one click and tactial decisions(like who shall I give a boost to attack)

If combat becomes too fast to use tactics for most people, then can you just as well no longer have tactics, then you basically have diablo like power spamming. This is not the type of game people expect from a D&D game I think.

 

[Kneecleaver]

Well to those that don't say a Turn-based game can sell well, check out FF tactics, approx. 2.25 million units (at least). Not bad at all.

Also, The Shining Force series did great on Genesis and now on the VC

The HoMM series also is decent (I think so, they made 5 games + expansions)

Let's not forget King's Bounty which is more HoMM than HoMM V is.

 

[Kneecleaver]

I desprately want any D&D CRPG I purchase to be turn-based. This was true for 3.x and it is true for 4e. Despite it's bugs(though the CoE patches addressed a lot of those), ToEE was a far more satisfying game for me than the pause repeatedly bioware/obsidian products. That said, I'm playing the OC in NWN2 with a buddy right now. I'd much prefer a turn based product however.

4e is structured to port to cRPG quite well, I think. It should be far easier to do so than 3.x. Just look at what they have accomplished in Fantasy Grounds with basically 2 people (Moon Wizard on the ruleset and Tenian on the parser).

 

[renau1g]

Let's not forget King's Bounty which is more HoMM than HoMM V is.

Forgot about that one. I had it on my 'puter but after a virus force a harddrive wipe I lost all my saved games. I'll be going back now and playing.

Thanks for the reminder!

 

[Blackbrrd]

But Warblades and Swordmages aren't included in NWN, and Wizards, Clerics and druids only worked because the game was pausable - for exactly the reason that there's too much clicking and busywork involved in casting spells from a big list.

Actually, I played it "online" with 10-20 people doing rpg and leaving the combats to the NWN engine. I got my Cleric up to level 7 and it was perfectly manageable. Pausing wasn't an options, since that pauses the whole server for all the people on it. We played it like a mini-mmorpg, but with a DM like in a regular PnP game.

 

[Tyrion]

Where are you guys getting the idea that turn-based games don't sell, exactly?

I doubt there ever will be a (mainstream) 4th edition CRPG. Licensing costs for D&D are very expensive (I read that on some Bioware developer's blog) and turn-based games don't sell very well. I think it would be near impossible to make a 4th edition CRPG that isn't turn-based.

Final Fantasy? Dragon Quest/Shin Megami Tensei? Dozens of successful web-based/social network games? Pokemon, which is about as mainstream as you can get?

Lots of the top-selling RPGs are turn-based.

Let's be absolutely clear. A real-time D&D 4 game would have to be designed from the ground up to be at all decent, and even with that, it will lose all of the depth and fine-tuning of the system.

Look, 2nd edition was simplistic enough that it worked well with real-time (see the Infinity Engine games). But look at the real-time 3rd edition games. Without exception, their combat was mediocre at best. Movement and positioning more or less disappeared as a tactical consideration, strategic subtleties and player feedback were lost under the frantic pace of real-time, and at best you could sort of use some vague tactics if you paused a lot and slowed the game down to a crawl. NWN2 was incredibly faithful to D&D 3.5, but its combat sucked because it missed the critical element of turn-based gameplay.

If a D&D4 RPG is turn-based and faithful to the rules, it'll have the best RPG combat of all time, and properly-marketed, it'll draw a sizeable audience. If it's real-time, it'll join the mass of failed RPGs with lukewarm critical reception and sales. If it's an MMORPG, it'll be a flop. It's really that simple.

 

[Zaran]

Actually I think it's a fallacy to say that people don't like turn based games. Master of Orion 2, Pool of Radiance, Civillization, X-Com, Chess. Conflict. All turn based games.

I have to agree that 4e is the best edition out there for making a turn based game. They don't have a good AI out there to make a real time strategy game.

I really want to see a turn-based dnd game but above all I want them to give us the Online Gaming Table that they hung out like a carrot to us over 2 years ago!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure 4e would make a great turn-based game. There are 2 issues. One is that every single square of movement of the enemy would require a pause to let you potentially respond with OAs etc. Secondly no AI is going to play the monster side with any competence, its just too tactical a game.

As for VTTs, forget about WotC and there software incompetence, just use MapTool, the thing is brilliant. With a decent macro set (of which there are several) you can play 4e online and it is actually almost better than playing on the table top since you can track most stuff automatically. It kicks butt.