D&D General Should Baldur's Gate 3 be turnbased or Real Time With Pause?

[MarkB]

I like turn based. But I think real time is more popular, and it probably makes sense to cater to the majority if you want the game to be successful.

There have been some pretty popular turn-based games in recent years. Aside from traditional RPGs like Larian's existing Divinity Original Sin games, there are tactical combat games like XCOM, and a whole host of successful JRPGs.

WotC chose to work with Larian due to their RPG pedigree, and it seems very likely that their successful implementation of turn-based combat was part of that.

 

[gyor]

I like turn based. But I think real time is more popular, and it probably makes sense to cater to the majority if you want the game to be successful.

Well so far Turn Based is beating RTwP 2 to 1, with 3 people saying hybrid. Small number of votes so far admitted.

But the last two games of Larian's, were turn based and they made way more money then Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pillars of Eternity 2 (not that these did bad at all, great games).

Divinity: Original Sin 2 made so much money it's shocking, 85 million dollars in 2017 alone (if the game made even half as much in 2018 then it made well over a hundred million dollars) to become one of the most profitable games of that year. And the 2 original sin games and the upcoming divinity: fallen heroes are all turn based. It was so successful, that seeing Larian's success lead to Pillar's of Eternity 2 was made to be playable in turnbased mode as well.

So yeah Larian has already lead to expectations that RTwP vs turn-based will have RTwP doing better turned on it's head.

 

[jaelis]

Cool that would be great.

 

[gyor]

There have been some pretty popular turn-based games in recent years. Aside from traditional RPGs like Larian's existing Divinity Original Sin games, there are tactical combat games like XCOM, and a whole host of successful JRPGs.

WotC chose to work with Larian due to their RPG pedigree, and it seems very likely that their successful implementation of turn-based combat was part of that.

There is also Subverse, which has tactical JRPG style elements mixed with other sorts of game play like mass effect style exploration and shoot'm ups (not at.the same time of course).

And upcoming Age of Wonders Planetfall is primarily a 4x game, but with solid CRPG elements, turned based combat (with environmental interactions).

 

[Shiroiken]

If the target market is primarily (only) D&D players, then Turn Based is the way to go. However, it will have a much broader market appeal (and make more money) if it is real time, because that is the common style of play these days.

 

[Azzy]

There is also Subverse, which has tactical JRPG style elements mixed with other sorts of game play like mass effect style exploration and shoot'm ups (not at.the same time of course).

Thought that sounded interesting, so I decided to Google it. Then I was like, "oh".

 

[Horwath]

If the target market is primarily (only) D&D players, then Turn Based is the way to go. However, it will have a much broader market appeal (and make more money) if it is real time, because that is the common style of play these days.

I know that is is a small sample, but from people that I have played D&D a lot in last 20 years, about 15 of them, all hate turn based games except Heroes of M&M 3&5.

real time with pause just flows and plays better than constant start-stop-start-stop.

Turn based is mandatory for tabletop, or it turns into LARP and then we get real swords and then survivors end up in an asylum.

 

[Gradine]

Larian's games have really great turn-based combat, not sure why anyone would want them to fix what isn't broken.

 

[Xaelvaen]

Both (thus why I voted Other).

Pillars of Eternity 2 made it so that when you start the game, you can choose action, or turn-based. It works -phenomenally- with both. This should definitely be the direction so that all preferences can be enjoyed.

Barring that, I definitely agree with keeping it turn-based; as others have said, at Larian, they are masters of Turn-Based.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Turn-based, with the option for each character to execute macros for the fights where you don't want/need to manage yourself.