What videogames are you playing in 2026?

Problem with turn-based in the Pillars games is that the encounter design and frequency are still geared toward RTwP, which really aggravates the pacing problems in those games (which were bad enough in RTwP). And unlike Wrath of the Righteous, where you can at least keep it in RTwP for those filler trash mobs (which that game STILL has way too many of, mind) and then change to turn-based for the actual battles that are worth anything, in Pillars you can't even change between the two on the fly.
The mode they're adding to the first game does allow changing between the two on your own.

Anyway, if a game is going to have trash mobs I actually even more prefer a turn-based mode than RTwP, because then I can still have fun playing them out tactically even if they don't pose any real difficulty. Meanwhile, dealing with trash mobs with RTwP is basically a speed bump to your exploration. Boring.

Of course, ideally your game shouldn't have trash mobs at all, but if you're going to make me fight them at least let me make a few interesting decisions while I'm doing it.
 

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Anyway, if a game is going to have trash mobs I actually even more prefer a turn-based mode than RTwP, because then I can still have fun playing them out tactically even if they don't pose any real difficulty.
I would politely suggest that like, the vast majority of RPG players do not feel that way after they've been playing a very encounter-heavy game on a turn-based mode for say, 20+ hours. That you are quite unusual in this. I mean, it's not only not posing "any real difficulty", it's that fundamentally they are designed to be dealt with with RtwP, so they're not tactically interesting - enemies tend not to have powerful attacks that must be stopped or avoided with the appropriate actions, nuanced defences that need to be defeated, nor complex abilities you might want to think about how to deal with - all lynchpins of actual turn-based game design.

I think a lot of gamers say "I want turn-based", and sure, they mean it, but just retrofitting turn-based on to a basically RtwP game doesn't make it good, and PoE2, and both Owlcat D&D games show that very clearly. I mean, sure, Wrath of the Righteous launched with turn-based, but it has RtwP encounter frequency, size, and design, which mean it increasingly sucked on turn-based the further you got into it.

Of course, ideally your game shouldn't have trash mobs at all, but if you're going to make me fight them at least let me make a few interesting decisions while I'm doing it.
That's what RtwP is designed to do - allow you to pause and make "a few interesting decisions". Whereas turn-based forces you to make every single tiny decision, no matter how completely meaningless or repetitive, so warrants a fundamentally different design style, where each choice is more impactful, fights are shorter and deadlier, and enemies have more significant and complex abilities, not just Big Numbers like RtwP tends to favour.

And let's be clear, it's not a slight increase in time consumed. I've played PoE2 on RtwP and turn-based, and I would say, conservatively, the game took 2-3x as long to get through on turn-based, and that was basically giving up.

Better to design for the mode you actually want the game to be played in, I would strongly suggest. And that means turn-based these days because it sells multiple times more copies (according to various industry people, including JE Sawyer) now.

(I feel like there might well be a kind of in-between mode that would be better than either for a lot of genres and styles, but I've not seen that attempted much. Whoever nails it will do well though.)

EDIT - Thinking about a hybrid, you could do something with side-based initiative, where every character you controlled came up with their own course of action (using basic game logic, maybe you could modify that logic like DAO/2, FFXII, PoE1/2, etc.), and then you could choose to just press a big GO button to make them all act, or you could go in and modify each course of action manually.
 
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For those of us who aren't really big into video games, would it be too much to ask people not to use acronyms for games? I tried reading the last two posts here and have absolutely no idea what it's about.

I mean, sure, I can talk about BTA 3062 until the cows come home, but, I wouldn't expect anyone to actually know what that is.
 

For those of us who aren't really big into video games, would it be too much to ask people not to use acronyms for games? I tried reading the last two posts here and have absolutely no idea what it's about.

I mean, sure, I can talk about BTA 3062 until the cows come home, but, I wouldn't expect anyone to actually know what that is.
A primer of acronyms used in the thread for this page:

BotW: Breath of the Wild
PS2/PS5: Playstation. The numbers indicate which generation of Playstation console
RTwP: Real Time with Pause. An Infinity Engine staple; combat plays out in real time (much like a Real Time Strategy game) but you're given the option to pause at any time to consider tactics and issue specific orders to specific units
PoE: Pillars of Eternity*. Two games in the franchise so far (not counting Avowed), Infinity Engine games designed/released with RTwP combat but having turn-based combat ported in (PoE2 might've had it at the start? I don't know, I haven't played it). PoE1's turn-based mode is still in Beta and not available on all platforms yet, but will coming with the next patch (and I am hyped for it)
DAO/2: Dragon Age Origins & Dragon Age 2
FFXII: Final Fantasy XII. @Ruin Explorer brings this set of games up because they are ostensibly RTwP games (albeit primarily 3rd person and not isometric) but have systems for programming how characters act in combat on their own using if->then statements. I actually wasn't aware/had forgotten this was an option of the PoE games.


*In fairness, this could also be referring to Path of Exile, which is a completely different two-game series of fantasy role-playing games from the past decade-ish that are spiritual successors of two different popular two-game series of fantasy role-playing games from the 90's.
 

For those of us who aren't really big into video games, would it be too much to ask people not to use acronyms for games? I tried reading the last two posts here and have absolutely no idea what it's about.

I mean, sure, I can talk about BTA 3062 until the cows come home, but, I wouldn't expect anyone to actually know what that is.
That’s fair because I have the same issue sometimes but the problem is that when you get to a phrase like Real Time with Pause (RTwP), you get why people start abbreviating it. It’s ultimately easier to Google - which is what I ended up doing with RTwP. 😉
 

That’s fair because I have the same issue sometimes but the problem is that when you get to a phrase like Real Time with Pause (RTwP), you get why people start abbreviating it. It’s ultimately easier to Google - which is what I ended up doing with RTwP. 😉
Yes, I had to look that up too. I think I see how that would work (I’ve never played such a game) and I can see it’s close to how FF12 works (I have played that and hated the game system; it’s the last FF game I played).
 

Yes, I had to look that up too. I think I see how that would work (I’ve never played such a game) and I can see it’s close to how FF12 works (I have played that and hated the game system; it’s the last FF game I played).
I am generally not a fan of RTwP combat, but ironically, FF12 is one of the very few examples of an RTwP system that actually works because it has a detailed way of modeling a significant number of specific and situational character actions that most other RTwP games simply do not have or even bother to attempt.
 

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