What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[GloatingSwine]

I think pause options on RTSs is generally a good thing though, because a strategy game should be based on strategy, rather than memorizing everything and micromanaging every combat.

The counterpoint is that if the pace of the game is too slow or you use pause too much then you get punished less for a bad strategy because you have much more scope to recover from the errors by pausing and using your now godlike micro ability.

Most RTS games are designed around not being paused to issue orders, even if you *can* it's not the intended mode of play. That's why they tend to have fewer active abilities per unit which are generally easy and immediate to activate, usually on hotkeys.

[Rodin]

The difference between FTL and the more classic RTWP is how often you have to pause, along with how complex the instructions are.

In FTL you'll typically watch the fight go for 30+ seconds. Simple things like targeting weapons or reassigning a crew member will typically be done in real time because the pace of the game is not high. Eventually an important event will happen (fire in the engine room!) and you pause briefly to assess your strategy, assign orders, and then go back to real time for another 30+ seconds. A more routine fight may not have you pause at all.

The RTWP RPGs I've played don't allow that. If you don't pause every round of combat, you're doing something wrong. You're not pausing to tell a single unit to do something different while the rest carry on - you're assigning orders to your entire team. You're pausing every 10 seconds or less and giving complex orders instead of "go here and do what the game contextually tells you."

It quickly becomes either overwhelming (if you don't pause) or incredibly choppy (if you do). The games are unsuited to the free-flowing rythym of a game that uses the pause feature as a panic button or as a "sometimes" tool used to do something with precision.

[Bohandas]

Chiming in on this tangential point: I definitely like that the Paradox grand strategy games are RTWP, real-time makes them flow more smoothly, but you can still pause at any time to plan your actions (and give new orders to your armies).

Personally, the only Paradox games I like are the Warlock games

[Erloas]

The counterpoint is that if the pace of the game is too slow or you use pause too much then you get punished less for a bad strategy because you have much more scope to recover from the errors by pausing and using your now godlike micro ability.

Most RTS games are designed around not being paused to issue orders, even if you *can* it's not the intended mode of play. That's why they tend to have fewer active abilities per unit which are generally easy and immediate to activate, usually on hotkeys.

Ideally an RTS wouldn't be designed so that micromanaging would be able to grant you god like abilities, especially not a game that you can pause. Just like a turn based or pausable RPG wouldn't give you unlimited actions just because you've paused it.
In the majority of cases what you're doing is fighting against really poor AI on your own side, troops that wander off to weird places, run off randomly and get themselves killed, stand there and get shot at because someone is just the right distance away, take a really weird route from point A to B, etc.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Ideally an RTS wouldn't be designed so that micromanaging would be able to grant you god like abilities, especially not a game that you can pause. Just like a turn based or pausable RPG wouldn't give you unlimited actions just because you've paused it.

I think most competitive Starcraft 2 players would disagree with that statement as presented. APM is not strictly necessary above a certain minimum bar, but it sure as heck doesn't hurt, especially not when you're trying to keep your macro flowing while also dealing with a micro situation. Although SC2 doesn't have a pause button, so there's that.

In the majority of cases what you're doing is fighting against really poor AI on your own side, troops that wander off to weird places, run off randomly and get themselves killed, stand there and get shot at because someone is just the right distance away, take a really weird route from point A to B, etc.

That's a criticism of the AI, not the ability to pause to fix the problem. It's a legitimate gripe about many games in the genre, but it's not a problem inherent in the ability to pause every few seconds, merely a reason why it is necessary in games with bad AI.

Personally, I feel that if you have to pause the game every time you issue a command, you may as well make it a turn-based game and lean into the strengths that format provides. However, if the majority of the time you can permit time to flow smoothly, but need to pause to deal with crisis moments, that's where it is acceptable to have RTWP.

As an example, since someone mentioned Paradox, let's use Stellaris as a game I have hundreds of hours enjoying, including weekly multiplayer with my friends where pausing unless something is really critical is a faux pas because it annoys the rest of the players. For the most part, you can keep up with the game. If you have trouble keeping up, you can set the speed to a more moderate pace so you can keep up and still flow smoothly. However, something happens like you suddenly have your neighbor declaring war, or the crisis faction just appeared one system out from a major piece of your infrastructure, or you just *finished* a war and now have to manage all those planets you just took... it's really dang handy to have that pause button available. You can go for over an hour of consistent gameplay without ever touching that pause button once. But when you do need it... hooooo boy do you need it.

Now, certainly some people might use the pause button as a crutch in Stellaris, and use it far more often than they probably should. And granted, when you're just starting off the game can be a bit overwhelming so you'll be pausing every so often to go 'what the heck was that' until you get the hang of things. But on the whole, the game flows smoothly. Time doesn't pause except for specific events and when you hit the button. If you're managing a colony, time keeps flowing. And this is good, because basically everything relevant from resource generation to research is on a timer, so you don't want that timer pausing unless you absolutely need time to think. Which means the less you use the pause button, the smoother the experience you get and the faster your game progresses. Which sounds intuitively obvious, but let me put it another way: The fastest way to steamroll is to tech up, you tech up by the timer running, therefore to steamroll faster you need to minimize the amount of pausing you do. As opposed to some of the other examples where you need to pause constantly to steamroll. One gives you a pause button but discourages you from using it frequently if you want to finish a game in a reasonable amount of time. The other encourages you to pause frequently to min/max the game because you aren't capable of winning without it.

Ideally, in my opinion, a game would allow the pause button to be used, but not to rely on it as a crutch for either bad AI coding, bad game design (requiring complex inputs in a real-time scenario unless that was the entire challenge of the game in which case the pause button is intrinsically antithetical), or just poor game performance.

[Bohandas]

That's a criticism of the AI, not the ability to pause to fix the problem. It's a legitimate gripe about many games in the genre, but it's not a problem inherent in the ability to pause every few seconds, merely a reason why it is necessary in games with bad AI.

In a turn-based game it simply doesn't happen. The worst case scenario for bad pathfinding AI in a turnbased game is that you manually move the character one square at a time to force the path you want them to take

[ShneekeyTheLost]

In a turn-based game it simply doesn't happen. The worst case scenario for bad pathfinding AI in a turnbased game is that you manually move the character one square at a time to force the path you want them to take

X-COM strongly disagrees with you

[Anonymouswizard]

X-COM strongly disagrees with you

This is the difference between an AP-esque system and a set number of actions system. You totally could do XCOM while allowing square by square movement, but at least the modern version doesn't. Probably to simplify things for inexperienced players.

[Batcathat]

This is the difference between an AP-esque system and a set number of actions system. You totally could do XCOM while allowing square by square movement, but at least the modern version doesn't. Probably to simplify things for inexperienced players.

While the original X-COM games did allow for this sort of thing, I don't think I ever used it (and I can't imagine a lot of people did) since continuously guiding every character square by square would get very frustrating very fast. So in regards to bad pathfinding, it's a band-aid at best. That said, I did prefer the AP system of the old games to the action one of the new games.

On a completely different note, the discussions in this thread inspired me to start a new game of Pillars of Eternity. Let's see if I actually finish it this time.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've discovered something with a quest in Pillars of Eternity. I've gone all the way to the final bit of the darn quest and I just don't care enough to finish it.

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Oh, your lion and bear are refusing to fight because both of you want the home turf advantage? Well they can starve to death for all that matters to me, this is a meaningless dispute about the rules of a meaningless competition. Maybe before the next fight you'll hammer out actual freaking regulations.

Instead I'm taking the simpler bloody path and killing a dragon.

[GloatingSwine]

I've discovered something with a quest in Pillars of Eternity. I've gone all the way to the final bit of the darn quest and I just don't care enough to finish it.

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Oh, your lion and bear are refusing to fight because both of you want the home turf advantage? Well they can starve to death for all that matters to me, this is a meaningless dispute about the rules of a meaningless competition. Maybe before the next fight you'll hammer out actual freaking regulations.

Instead I'm taking the simpler bloody path and killing a dragon.

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Kill them both, tell Galawain they both sucked.

[Anonymouswizard]

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Kill them both, tell Galawain they both sucked.

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I just didn't care enough to do that, and the combat had pushed me into 'getting this done as fast as possible' mode.

Anyway, finished Pillars of Eternity and started a little bit of Deadfire. My Watcher's response to the ending of the last game and the five years in between has been to go from mildly religious to being very much anti-god. I've also stayed single class Monk and kept Edér as a single class Fighter, just so I can get used to the new character building and combat systems.

Speaking of which, I'm glad they completely swapped to turn based combat the turn based combat might be slower, but it feels a lot more controllable.

[Taevyr]

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I just didn't care enough to do that, and the combat had pushed me into 'getting this done as fast as possible' mode.

Anyway, finished Pillars of Eternity and started a little bit of Deadfire. My Watcher's response to the ending of the last game and the five years in between has been to go from mildly religious to being very much anti-god. I've also stayed single class Monk and kept Edér as a single class Fighter, just so I can get used to the new character building and combat systems.

Speaking of which, I'm glad they completely swapped to turn based combat the turn based combat might be slower, but it feels a lot more controllable.

I stuck to RTwP for Deadfire, but that also was streamlined a lot compared to the first game. Combat flowed far better, but I also tend to prefer how RTwP plays quicker than turn-based: I tried to play WotR on turn-based, and it just felt like a slog. When the turn-based update hit Deadfire, I tried it, but it just didn't feel right.

Can I ask what final choice you made at the end of PoE? My two playthroughs ended with

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My ranger making a deal with Galawain and distributing the souls among the Dyrwood, as they seemed the most willing of the factions to be "hands-off" and let kith grow on their own. Ended up giving the Dyrwoodan companions some additional HP in Deadfire, and Galawain aiding in a few big monster fights, which she ironically hated as it removes the challenge.

My Chanter->chanter/fighter did all the god quests in the tribal city, jumped down without making a deal and tying himself to a certain outcome, survived somehow, and ended up going with Wael's later offer to scatter the souls across the unknown beyond: he didn't want to aid possible plots of any of the god factions, found it pretty funny to just remove the souls from the equation, and he honestly took a minor shine to Wael during the few interactions with them.

Anyway, enjoy the Deadfire! It's beautifully designed, very well written (aside from the main quest being a bit bare: factions are the real main quest imo), and a beautiful swashbuckling adventure in which every faction's a different kind of messed up, and not choosing is a valid option that likely solves exactly nothing. I'd even say it beats New Vegas in terms of how well-developed the factions are to create a real grey-and-gray morality.

[Anonymouswizard]

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I did Hyleh' quest, refused to make a deal, and jumped down. Then at the end I was torn between sending the souls back to the hollowborn and just letting them go back to the Wheel. I ended up picking the latter because it kind of fit with how I had been roleplaying, the number of dead hollowborn means it was probably what would have happened anyway, and I did not want to see what happens when a Wicht got their originally intended soul.

Sending them to parts unknown was tempting, but I don't think it's what my character would have done.

As I get more into Deadfire I find myself getting more and more annoyed at the concept of Avowed. I don't want Pillars of Eternity: The Elder Scrolls, I want more isometric RPGs. I guess Obsidian and Microsoft just think that first person will sell more.

[Rynjin]

I'll certainly buy and play it, where I have zero interest in PoE.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

As I get more into Deadfire I find myself getting more and more annoyed at the concept of Avowed. I don't want Pillars of Eternity: The Elder Scrolls, I want more isometric RPGs. I guess Obsidian and Microsoft just think that first person will sell more.

I've been complaining about this since the N64 launched, to no avail.

[Lord Raziere]

As I get more into Deadfire I find myself getting more and more annoyed at the concept of Avowed. I don't want Pillars of Eternity: The Elder Scrolls, I want more isometric RPGs. I guess Obsidian and Microsoft just think that first person will sell more.

I've tried to play isometric! I just don't like it as much as first person! let people have different genres. you have a lot of isometric stuff on steam now, while I'm feeling starved for content, apparently they take eons just to make one Elder Scrolls-like.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'll certainly buy and play it, where I have zero interest in PoE.

Which is the risk they're running. Will they attract enough Rynjins to make up for the lack of Anonymouswizards?

I've been complaining about this since the N64 launched, to no avail.

To be fair, massive RPGs are one of the genres where I kind of get the trend chasing. They're a lot of work.

I've tried to play isometric! I just don't like it as much as first person! let people have different genres. you have a lot of isometric stuff on steam now, while I'm feeling starved for content, apparently they take eons just to make one Elder Scrolls-like.

This is where we get into indie Vs AAA stuff, and how isometric is going to trend towards the former but first person towards the latter. But honestly, it also takes a ton of work to make a game like Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate 3. But it was intended more as a statement of personal opinion, 'Deadfire is the kind of game I love, I wish the developers hadn't abandoned it to appeal to a different crowd'.

It also sucks because Pillars of Eternity 2 is amazing, as is Tyranny. They're both the kind of mature fantasy that Dragon Age wants to be, they play very well, and the writing is just enjoyable. But I suppose we're out of that nostalgia cycle and into the one for Morrowind and Oblivion.

Plus like, I'm sure TES6 would have been out half a decade ago if it wasn't for the MMO taking up resources. But I have many reasons I dislike the series, including that it tells me to do what I want and I quickly get bored of the lack of solid structure under me. Most people head off in the opposite direction to the main quest, I try to head towards it

[Mx.Silver]

As I get more into Deadfire I find myself getting more and more annoyed at the concept of Avowed. I don't want Pillars of Eternity: The Elder Scrolls, I want more isometric RPGs. I guess Obsidian and Microsoft just think that first person will sell more.

Yeah, from what I've heard it's that Deadfire underperformed in terms of sales while The Outer Worlds didn't, so that's pretty much where the funding is now. It's a shame, although to be fair, you can't really say 'under a decade of isometric RPGs then pivoting towards increasingly action-focussed games' isn't kind of accurate to the Infinity Engine days

[Rynjin]

Which is the risk they're running. Will they attract enough Rynjins to make up for the lack of Anonymouswizards?

I don't think it's a risk, because the answer is almost assuredly yes. No offense, but isometric RPGs have always been a niche genre, it's why they died out the first time.

Reliable digital distribution is gonna give them more longevity this time around, but they're never going to become a dominant genre on the market.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, from what I've heard it's that Deadfire underperformed in terms of sales while The Outer Worlds didn't, so that's pretty much where the funding is now. It's a shame, although to be fair, you can't really say 'under a decade of isometric RPGs then pivoting towards increasingly action-focussed games' isn't kind of accurate to the Infinity Engine days

Deadfire had a really good crowdfunding campaign, which meant that almost everyone who would have bought it at launch already had it.

[Taevyr]

Aside from it simply being the safer business choice (obviously, just look at Outer Worlds), Avowed is also the result of Deadfire's lack of sales, which can (disputably) be attributed to a few things:

- Compared to PoE1's, it actually didn't have that good of a crowdfunding campaign. The switch to Fig over Kickstarter for crowdfunding, which was kind of dubious to begin with due to Obsidian's CEO being involved indirectly with Fig's creation, also made the campaign less visible for people outside of the Obsidian Forum: I didn't even find out a sequel was being made until the campaign was almost over. PoE1 was pretty high among kickstarter campaigns for a while, while Fig did notably worse despite (theoretically) having said existent fanbase to draw from.

- Additionally, the main fanbase bought it by way of the kickstarter, and lacking marketing (which mostly depicted it as "generic pirate rpg") meant there were few new sales. It's comparable to Tyranny in that it's become a bit of a sleeper success with sales over time, but that's generally not what you want out of a game.

But even taking that into account: besides Original Sin's lightning in a bottle, isometrics are rather niche. I love them, I love obsidians work in general, but even I can see why microsoft wouldn't want them to take too big a risk. It's just unfortunate 'cause Tyranny and Deadfire are two of my favourite games out there.

OTOH, they're also the creators of New Vegas and Alpha Protocol, so I don't doubt their credentials when it comes to creating first-person rpg's. Maybe a bit when it comes to creating ones that aren't ridiculously buggy at launch

EDIT: I also just remembered that Josh Sawyer at one point made a post/video about why Deadfire failed to be the commercial success that was expected: one point I recall was the ship combat minigame being a far bigger money-sink than they ever expected and kind of a mistake in hindsight. There were a few small things like that if I remember correctly, that essentially combined into a pretty big money hole.

EDIT 2: think it might be this video, listened to it a long time ago and it was interesting but I really have no time for a rewatch/listen atm

[warty goblin]

It's also probably easier to sell Nostalgia Bait: The Game than it is Nostalgia Bait: The Game: The Sequel. That's not an infinitely deep well, and there's gonna be a lot of irritating stuff about isometric CRPGs that people forgot, got hyped for the return, and then remembered very, very quickly upon contact with Pillars 1. Stuff like the entire game being either talking to people (i.e. reading pages and pages of dialog) and walking into a 20x30 room, killing four dudes, then walking into a 50x80 room and killing eight dudes, and repeat until you need to read some more stuff. Particularly since the isometric RPG market wasn't super crowded when Pillars 1 launched, but it was by Pillars 2, and the competition had really upped the bar. And the bar has continued to raise since then.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't think it's a risk, because the answer is almost assuredly yes. No offense, but isometric RPGs have always been a niche genre, it's why they died out the first time.

Reliable digital distribution is gonna give them more longevity this time around, but they're never going to become a dominant genre on the market.

Isometric RPG's a niche genre? Pardon, have you ever heard of a 'niche' game called Final Fantasy? Or the first six iterations of it? Hell, despite using 3d models, FF7 generally either used isometric or fixed camera angles, and I seem to recall that one sold decently. Does Legend of Zelda ring any bells? Literally every single RPG prior to the release of the N64/PS1?

Agree or disagree with your original statement about it being a risk or not, labeling isometric RPG's 'niche' is simply untrue.

[Rynjin]

Isometric RPG's a niche genre? Pardon, have you ever heard of a 'niche' game called Final Fantasy? Or the first six iterations of it? Hell, despite using 3d models, FF7 generally either used isometric or fixed camera angles, and I seem to recall that one sold decently. Does Legend of Zelda ring any bells? Literally every single RPG prior to the release of the N64/PS1?

Agree or disagree with your original statement about it being a risk or not, labeling isometric RPG's 'niche' is simply untrue.

Nobody in the history of this Earth has ever referred to Final Fantasy as an isometric RPG.

[warty goblin]

Isometric RPG's a niche genre? Pardon, have you ever heard of a 'niche' game called Final Fantasy? Or the first six iterations of it? Hell, despite using 3d models, FF7 generally either used isometric or fixed camera angles, and I seem to recall that one sold decently. Does Legend of Zelda ring any bells? Literally every single RPG prior to the release of the N64/PS1?

Agree or disagree with your original statement about it being a risk or not, labeling isometric RPG's 'niche' is simply untrue.

The PS1 came out in 1995, 27 years ago. Whatever was true before it is extremely not relevant to the games market in 2022. Or even 2015, when Pillars 1 came out.

[Zevox]

Nobody in the history of this Earth has ever referred to Final Fantasy as an isometric RPG.

Aye, top-down viewpoint and isometric are not the same thing. The only Final Fantasies that would count as isometric are the Tactics games.

Also, The Legend of Zelda is neither isometric nor an RPG, so doubly wrong there. It's an Action-Adventure series.

[Taevyr]

Isometric RPG's a niche genre? Pardon, have you ever heard of a 'niche' game called Final Fantasy?

Nobody in the history of this Earth has ever referred to Final Fantasy as an isometric RPG.

While I agree that it's ludicrous to refer to FF as such, I'm more surprised that we apparently have at least 1 alien on this forum

[Erloas]

Isometric view is not a genre, the same way that first person isn't a genre. There was a long time when almost the only first person games were shooters, and there were a lot of RPGs that were isometric, but in neither case was the view the definition of the genre. The early FF games were clearly isometric views, but you wouldn't group them with X-COM, and neither would be grouped with Diablo.
I would also say that what most people that think of when they think "isometric games" never went away, they just started varying a lot more in looks, and they just went from being very prevalent to developers having a lot more good options to build a game around. Many of your 3rd person games still have a lot of those designs around them, even if the technology used to make them has changed drastically.

The early Zelda games were somewhat before Isometric was possible, and then later went to 3rd person full 3D, but they hit Isometric too.

In an interview about the evolution of the Zelda series, Aonuma called Link's Awakening the "quintessential isometric Zelda game"

A quick search on isometric games and the list I found of the "best" ranged from Fallout 2, Civilization 6, Disco Elysium, POE II, Hades, and Divinity: OS2. Among others, but gameplay wise there is almost nothing those games have in common besides the view point they use.

[Rynjin]

Isometric view is not a genre, the same way that first person isn't a genre. There was a long time when almost the only first person games were shooters, and there were a lot of RPGs that were isometric, but in neither case was the view the definition of the genre. The early FF games were clearly isometric views, but you wouldn't group them with X-COM, and neither would be grouped with Diablo.
I would also say that what most people that think of when they think "isometric games" never went away, they just started varying a lot more in looks, and they just went from being very prevalent to developers having a lot more good options to build a game around. Many of your 3rd person games still have a lot of those designs around them, even if the technology used to make them has changed drastically.

The early Zelda games were somewhat before Isometric was possible, and then later went to 3rd person full 3D, but they hit Isometric too.


A quick search on isometric games and the list I found of the "best" ranged from Fallout 2, Civilization 6, Disco Elysium, POE II, Hades, and Divinity: OS2. Among others, but gameplay wise there is almost nothing those games have in common besides the view point they use.

Nobody said "isometric view" was a genre, but "isometric RPG" is, just like "first person shooter" is.