The End. Of TB?

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action has proved...proved what? A German company can gain the rights of this stellar game (past tense) and butcher it beyond recognition? Fail. HoMM6 "Black Hole Entertainment is a Budapest-based video game developer, founded in 2001 by seven young game enthusiasts." HA. Fail. X-COM, the last chance at TB to prove to me this genre has life, it it fails..where does the fall blame?

[NKF]

I don't really see turn based gaming ever dying out (real-time chess?). It's just ignorant developers throwing meaningless blanket statements around ("turn based is old hat!") and proceeding to do what they are familiar with rather than try to understand or try to think of ways to improve a system they know nothing about.

 

- NKF

[silencer_pl]

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action has proved...proved what? A German company can gain the rights of this stellar game (past tense) and butcher it beyond recognition? Fail. HoMM6 "Black Hole Entertainment is a Budapest-based video game developer, founded in 2001 by seven young game enthusiasts." HA. Fail. X-COM, the last chance at TB to prove to me this genre has life, it it fails..where does the fall blame?

 

 

1. I like JA very much and I say that JA BiA is not such a fail that people bitch about. Things change and their should otherwise we would have stagnation. The P&G mechanism makes this game more dynamic. Of course there are few things that should be there, but don't be such a stick in the mud.

 

2. My only complaint for HoMM6 is that their plenty of bugs. Nothing else. Everyone is praising HoMM3 yet it also had it flaws and was unbalanced.

 

3. XCOM is also as you say butchered. No more TU's - why no one bitch about it. Predefined soldiers (classes), only 1 tactical base, new aliens, yet everyone is so excited and they didn't even show how interception works.

 

Why is that that MoH and CoD are repetitive over and over yet billions of people buy it nonetheless. Same with NFS, FIFA, etc.

 

Also why suddenly this topic. TB games never were common. There are only few games in history that were TB that broke through and became legends.

[Pete]

On point 3, I'm still reserving judgement until I see it, but from what I read it actually looks like it could be better than original TB, instead giving you choices on various actions to take, from suppressive fire to sniper shots and dashing from cover to cover to make a unit less easy to hit (as long as people stop reading it as "move-move" and "move-shoot" as there's more to it than that if you read through the articles).

 

Still, the proof of how good it will be is always going to depend on the first video depicting a tactical battle. We know TUs have worked on a console before (UFO: EU and TFTD were both available on PS2) so I'm not convinced at present that their removal is about dumbing down more than it is about trying something new.

 

Even leaving XCOM:EU for a second, Battle Academy, Frozen Synapse and many others would disagree with the title of this thread. They're both alive and being done well, but it depends upon whether we're talking turn based in general or just "squad-based tactical turn based". In fact, isn't Civ turn-based? There are many other titles too but my brain isn't working at present.

 

Turn-based squad-level games have always been created by smaller developers - the original X-COM games developed by Mythos Games, the UFO series by ALTAR Games, Silent Storm by Nival (actually a larger company, but not in the big leagues), Battle Academy by Slitherine, Frozen Synapse by Mode7, Jagged Alliance by Sir Tech... the list goes on and they're all small devs.

 

If the new XCOM does become an amazing hit, it will hopefully serve to prove once and for all that larger studios can make a viable, cerebral game. Until then, it's no bad thing that smaller companies, indie devs and modders are carrying the torch for now.

[Space Voyager]

Thank you Pete, saved me a lot of typing. Turn based games, especially strategy games, are VERY alive and kicking. TB tactical has evolved and is evolving still, which is IMO a great thing.

[FullAuto]

TB gaming is still going, it might be reduced from its former glory when it was the only kind of strategy game around, but there are still plenty of games out there, across several formats. A rather good TB Ghost Recon game was a release title on the 3DS, for instance. Disgaea 4 recently came out on PS3. Frozen Synapse and Solium Infernum are two totally fantastic examples of TB gaming.

 

3. XCOM is also as you say butchered. No more TU's - why no one bitch about it.

 

Because it doesn't matter. If you think about it, you're only sacrificing a tiny portion of efficiency/control for a much more streamlined system. The results are much the same, e.g. it could be implemented in the original without changing the game. Yes, it doesn't offer 100% of the control the TU system does, but it gives you, I'd say, 90-95% and is much much less fiddly.

 

Predefined soldiers (classes)

 

This happened anyway, except it was informal. You knew who would be carrying the rocket launcher, who would be going in the UFO first, who was sniping from long range.

 

only 1 tactical base

 

This isn't particularly good, no.

 

new aliens

 

That's a plus, not a minus, in my eyes.

 

they didn't even show how interception works.

 

Because it's a minor part of the game? Why are you worried about how interception works, when in the original it was essentially a shallow minigame? Stay at the longest range, shoot UFO. Research new weapons and ships, stay at longest range, shoot UFO. I think I spent more time buying electroflares than I did actually shooting down UFOs. :/

[Charlie]

"Cognitive scientists at Simon Fraser University and UCSD are beginning to use StarCraft 2 replays to study the development of expertise and the cognitive mechanisms of multitasking. Unlike similar expertise studies in chess that consider roughly a dozen players, these studies include thousands of players of all skill levels — providing an unprecedented amount of data on how players move from 'chumps to champions."

 

So no I don't think RTS will be dying any time soon... if the scientists have anything to say about it haha.

 

But seriously, the only reason why you don't see many turn based strategy games outside of indie titles is that they are hard to make into flashy AAA experiences. They are relatively slow and thoughtful games. Bioware even changed the mechanics of their Dragon Age series because they thought the strategic Baldur's Gate type gameplay was 'too hard' for the average gamer. The Final Fantasy series has also been 'dumbed down' considerably because they considered it 'too slow'

 

However, indie games are making a big comeback and fans are responding to 'dumbing down' of games. The success of Mojang, the humble indie bundle and Doublefine's recent fund raising has shown that a lot of gamers have faith in indie developers and the intelligent games they produce.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that RTS games are like the artistic movies that come out in the winter while triple AAA tiles tend to be the summer blockbusters.

 

There's room for both in the industry.

[FullAuto]

So no I don't think RTS will be dying any time soon... if the scientists have anything to say about it haha.

 

Conflating TB and RTS? Sacrilege!

 

Welcome to the forum.

[Space Voyager]

Firstly, welcome, Charlie. I agree. Reading your post again... welcome home.

 

Because it doesn't matter. If you think about it, you're only sacrificing a tiny portion of efficiency/control for a much more streamlined system. The results are much the same, e.g. it could be implemented in the original without changing the game. Yes, it doesn't offer 100% of the control the TU system does, but it gives you, I'd say, 90-95% and is much much less fiddly.

 

It is my opinion only but having 100% control over your soldiers is not only incredibly time consuming, it is also unrealistic. My "ideal game" would limit player's control to squad commands and perhaps really having more control over the commanding officer, who is "your representation in the field". This would demand far more soldiers, far more advanced AI and expected casualties.

 

I've lamented over this in SotS forums quite enough - in a spaceship fleet version naturally - but nope, the approach is more and more player dependant. Far more micromanagement, far less AI development.

[Charlie]

Conflating TB and RTS? Sacrilege!

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

I'll be sure to sacrifice a small 2D goat to make it up to you.

 

And Hi there Full Auto and Space!

 

But seriously my conflation says a lot, I don't think of them as separate at all to an extent almost as an option toggle. Though I can understand why, gameplay wise they are a lot different. That would suggest that rather than TB going down the tubes it's just evolved into something else, if that makes sense.

[silencer_pl]

I think I might it wrote wrongly.

 

Giving RT gameplay with pause button and order issuing while under it doesn't make the game automatically a fail game. Take an example of X-Com Apocalypse - yes it had both modes but really I think MOST players skipped to RT mode because there was more action and instead of 30 minutes missions you had 1.30 minute missions and the dynamic of the game didn't change. I myself played TB mode only when I had to capture alien orin Alien Dimension or when having teleports.

 

And about new X-Com - I am anxious to get the game and no I am not worried about interceptions. It was my mere reference to 'butchering' JA because some parts of the game were changed.

[FullAuto]

I...I played Apocalypse in TB mode. I'll go and stand over this side of the room. You can call it Freakland, if you like. I won't hear you because I'll be so far away.

 

/a lonely tear

[Pete]

I...I played Apocalypse in TB mode. I'll go and stand over this side of the room. You can call it Freakland, if you like. I won't hear you because I'll be so far away.

 

/a lonely tear

 

I played it in TB mode in Apoc. Once. Then I saw the future and it was real-time

 

Okay, well the future of my playing Apoc was real-time. UFO: Enemy Unknown in all its 18 year old wonder is still my most-played game, but I appreciate the other various systems that have appeared over the years like in Silent Storm and the UFO series that made larger maps more bearable

[Thorondor]

Now you've gone and hurt his feelings, you insensitive lot.

 

I guess I'll just have to go stand in FA's corner too then because I played Apoc in vanilla TB as well.

 

Anyway, I can perfectly identify with the enjoyment there is to be had in both types of approach. Real-time games tend to be more forgiving, certainly in terms of time expenditure, and easier to jump into whereas turn-based games tend to be more deliberate and make taking action more about taking discrete steps towards a mentally projected goal (premeditation) and less about flow and reacting on your feet.

 

So a certain difference in self-investment undeniably exists, in most cases at least.

 

Correspondingly, the degree of punishment for mistakes is also potentially more pronounced in a TB scenario than in a RT one (even if you can always ultimately reload and retry).

 

This is an even more significant factor when playing against someone else instead of the computer since in faster-paced games victories and defeats are attributed much less intrinsic value given rather quick turnover/succession of matches and lesser personal attachment is so involved, whereas turn-by-turn things tend to progress towards an outcome in a more prolongued fashion, and if that outcome is predictably, or even unavoidably negative, dragging things can be detrimental, in several ways.

 

The potential for one to be intrinsically more forgettable and the other more memorable exists, even if this isn't forcefully always the case at either end of the spectrum.

 

Overall, and with regards to the overarching theme of this thread, I would say turn-based games will always exist in some form or another combined with real-time elements or in their more plain, undiluted form. Board-games are a good example of this, and there are all kinds of implementations, in an assortment of settings and flavours, meeting with very nice reception in either digital or physical mediums, by hardcore wargamers and families with casual tastes alike.

 

Turn-based strategy gaming is alive and well, and the considerable growth of companies in that segment, such as Paradox Interactive, is solid testament to that effect.

 

Your turn!

 

::

 

And, by the way, welcome aboard Charlie.

[NoXTheRoXStaR]

Perhaps I wasn't clear on my initial statement (I was actually quite drunk when I typed it). What I meant to say was, we have these classic TB games like; X-COM, Jagged Alliance, Homm, Fallout, MOOetc ( I know there's tons more) that are being remade in this "game generation" who have recently and in the past omitted or changed features of these classics that were fine to begin with! I'm looking at YOU MOO 3. I'm aware there are decent games out there that are TB; Indie and mainstream, I'll be sure to read gamespot's review of this game. I'm just hoping these recent remakes don't mar the TB genre to the extent of it becoming extinct.

 

 

-NoX

[FullAuto]

I think in some respects the remakes have done TB games a favour because very few of them have stuck with the TB system. Most have moved onto RT or RTWP, where they can't besmirch the reputation of my beloved snookums.

 

Ahem.

 

The TB genre itself has made advances, best displayed by Frozen Synapse, recently. The simultaneous turn system has had some awful moments (Vandal Hearts 2, for instance, with simultaneous individual unit turns, was shite) but it's working out well.

 

It's strange that we perceive ourselves as having less and less time, and TB, a system that could have been made with frequent interruptions/being able to only snatch a few minutes of gaming time in mind, is perceived as old fashioned and unsuitable for the hectic lifestyle of today. TB games are perfect for the modern human who has places to go, nothing to do, and social media to update.

 

Hence me having "a couple of turns" on Advance Wars on my DS during my visit to the toilet, and playing until my legs went numb.

 

(I was actually quite drunk when I typed it)

 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the standard I expect you to meet. Get to work.

[Matri]

Hey, I played Apoc in TB!

 

Tried Real-Time once. A seriously bad idea when you've split your squad into three 4-man teams in order to more efficiently hunt the alien scum.

 

Incidentally, that was also the mission where I found out that an agent in a full set of Disruptor Armor is no match for a Brainsucker (you idiots were supposed to cover each other!!) and yet can take a Dimension Missile in the face at point-blank range without so much as a bloodied nose.

 

*grumbles*

 

On the other hand, RT mode is the only way you can dual-wield Toxiguns.

[silencer_pl]

Actually you can dual wield in TB. At least I could with stun grapple - just hold RMB not one click it and the agent will use second gun. Obviously your TU will drain fast.

[Matri]

Actually you can dual wield in TB. At least I could with stun grapple - just hold RMB not one click it and the agent will use second gun. Obviously your TU will drain fast.

 

That's just spending TUs to fire one after the other, with a drop in accuracy and no gain in effective fire rate. That's completely missing the point of dual-wielding.

[Grognard]

It takes longer to make TB game on 3D engine. Realtime makes it much easier due to how they work, and they require less AI. So it comes down to cheapening more than anything else. It's not like people are begging for 3rd person cover shooters and health regen, they just make it cheaper to produce the games.