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Deci

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No, it wouldn't.

To clarify, I've nothing against real time games, but you do lose a lot of the tension, plus it can get far too hectic to actually manage the team properly. Even with a real-time-pause feature you still lose the tactical tension from turn based games.

After many years of playing games, I don't think real time works very well for small squad based games. Individuals or big groups yes, but not for small squads.

Edited by Buzzles
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well i think it worked very well in xcom apoc and in other games like the UFO series aftermath, aftershock and so..

i liked them alot..:)

what i think is cool With RT is when u line up Squad, all weapons on full auto and just unleash hell..

thats just awsome...

Edited by Deci
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After many years of playing games, I don't think real time works very well for small squad based games. Individuals or big groups yes, but not for small squads.

I disagree.

While TB does have more tension (purely becuase you are helpless during the AI turn), I do feel that TB does allow for very cheap strategies.

I'm kinda torn between both RT and TB.

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It's a little more obvious, unless you take steps to deliberately address them. (And most don't.) Such as when there is the huge difference between waiting at a corner at the end of your turn to get AP back, so that you can flank an enemy and blast them repeatedly at point blank range before they can even turn to face you.

The whole "reaction fire" thing is one such deliberate pseudo-simultaneous turn nod.

I also rather liked Battletech's use of recording the distance a target moved, and using it as an accuracy penalty against the firing party.

There's also the fact that turn-based games can rather deflate tension with its more languid pacing, especially during the points that are supposed to be quite tense. In Silent Storm and Hammer & Sickle, I remember a few scenes where I had to fight off a guy with a melee weapon at point blank range using a guy with a pistol - but the pistol-firing animation took about 2 seconds per shot, and involved the "random aiming" moving the gun from clipping through the head of the target down to inside the target's leg between a shot that rolled a head shot, and the next one that rolled the leg. Then the character fired directly up into the air to get an actual angle that would "miss" because that's what I rolled. Maybe if it were in the middle of a tense melee struggle for control of the gun, that might have made sense, but as it stood, I could barely keep myself from rolling out of my chair laughing at how ridiculous it was.

I still do love turn-based games more than real-time games, don't get me wrong, but there are certainly flaws to the system, especially if you're trying to talk about tension.

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It's fascinating to see how people think, or perhaps don't think... there are similar topics in the Might & Magic Legacy forums requesting a FPS style game instead of a grid based one.

Do these people go to soccer matches and say "you know what would be a good idea? Tennis!"

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Do these people go to soccer matches and say "you know what would be a good idea? Tennis!"

You know what would be a good idea? Having soccer games play turn-based!

First half time one team plays, then the other team is up. That would be awesome!

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Real time doesn't?

Not really. You can take advantage of TU's and turns to use tactics impossible in real time.

You can quite literally walk up to the enemy (all the tiem in LoS) and punch him to death because he ran out of TU's doing reaction-shots on some other guy in the distance. That wouldn't work in real time because (assuming all "turns" take place at once) the enemy would spot the guy heading right for him and fill him full of lead.

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Not really. You can take advantage of TU's and turns to use tactics impossible in real time.

You can quite literally walk up to the enemy (all the tiem in LoS) and punch him to death because he ran out of TU's doing reaction-shots on some other guy in the distance. That wouldn't work in real time because (assuming all "turns" take place at once) the enemy would spot the guy heading right for him and fill him full of lead.

Making the practice of "camping" less cheap/advantagious to the point of abusal in TBS games than in real time games :P
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Making the practice of "camping" less cheap/advantagious to the point of abusal in TBS games than in real time games :P

Camping gives you, at most, one shot at an opponent before they know where you are. (And experienced players know the most likely camping spots, and often just chuck a grenade into them to be sure, depending on the game.) A game like Xenonauts lets you open up one or two burst fires or half a clip of pistol rounds into someone's face when a Seb gets stupid and bull-rush charges you and ends their turn with 0 TUs at 1 tile away.

But aren't games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance considered some of the most tense strategy games out there? I don't know any RTS games that are particularly known for the tension they induce.

Maybe it's just the way that people try to describe the games that is giving you that impression?

I mean, I don't really like the sub-genre, but I'm pretty sure Starcraft players are getting pretty tense, wondering what, exactly, it is they are up against.

Games like Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation even more so, as they are even more heavily geared towards trying to hide what it is you have from your opponents. (A nuclear submarine, for example, is a massive gamble that your opponent won't get wise to your ploy, and build a counter-nuke for 1/20th the price that nullifies the offensive power you would have gained... but it gets you an overwhelming offensive advantage if the gambit works. I'd say I'd have butterflies in my stomach making that gamble.)

Speaking more towards games like Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age, there's nothing particularly stopping them from incorporating the same depth of gameplay or the dangers that ramp up tension that are in games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance, but it just seems as though the games like that tend more towards a "classical RPG feel" (which focus upon player agency and power trips than caution and feeling like you are distinctly not that powerful) than towards trying to create the same kind of tension that are in games like X-Com. (Although, at least for me, Baldur's Gate II sure did with that beholder labyrinth - facing up against a wall of SoDs sure didn't give me the impression of a stroll through a field of daisies.)

In fact, if anything does a good job of creating a "tension" like X-Com in real-time, it's actually FPS-style stealth games like Thief. (Although there are real-time games coming out now from the indie scene over Steam that are basically top-down real-time stealth games, as well.)

I'd point to this Extra Credits video on stealth games, and why most games fail so spectacularly on stealth.

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Camping gives you, at most, one shot at an opponent before they know where you are. (And experienced players know the most likely camping spots, and often just chuck a grenade into them to be sure, depending on the game.) A game like Xenonauts lets you open up one or two burst fires or half a clip of pistol rounds into someone's face when a Seb gets stupid and bull-rush charges you and ends their turn with 0 TUs at 1 tile away.

It is still considered cheap, no? especially if it hampers the play because the only other guy still alive can't find you.

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It is still considered cheap, no? especially if it hampers the play because the only other guy still alive can't find you.

That depends an awful lot on the game in question - many games that have sniper classes usually outright assume you will have people camping, and even give specific obvious camping spots. (And that's not even starting on things like Team Fortress sentry guns, which are definitionally camping.)

In any game where camping is not encouraged, it's often actually to the detriment of the team and the player themselves to camp. It means you're not advancing team objectives, if nothing else, or just wasting most of your time waiting if it's battle royal.

If anything, it's a FOO (First-Order Optimal) strategy used by "teh noobz" who can't do anything better, and is complained about most by those who aren't that much better, themselves. (Both videos to extra-credits.) Advanced players often just eat the campers for lunch, unless there's some serious flaw in the game's design that actually benefits campers. Otherwise, it often comes down to campers getting knifed or something from behind, because players will always know the obvious camping spots, and how to go around them.

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That depends an awful lot on the game in question - many games that have sniper classes usually outright assume you will have people camping, and even give specific obvious camping spots. (And that's not even starting on things like Team Fortress sentry guns, which are definitionally camping.)

In any game where camping is not encouraged, it's often actually to the detriment of the team and the player themselves to camp. It means you're not advancing team objectives, if nothing else, or just wasting most of your time waiting if it's battle royal.

If anything, it's a FOO (First-Order Optimal) strategy used by "teh noobz" who can't do anything better, and is complained about most by those who aren't that much better, themselves. (Both videos to extra-credits.) Advanced players often just eat the campers for lunch, unless there's some serious flaw in the game's design that actually benefits campers. Otherwise, it often comes down to campers getting knifed or something from behind, because players will always know the obvious camping spots, and how to go around them.

The thing I got out of that was that "yes, there are cheap tactics in real time games too.. not just in TBS games, but I'm trying to downplay them as much as possible because I either did not see or forgot about the original question"

Is that right? "Yes" or "no" will suffice as an answer. (infact I will ignore the answer if it not in the formentioned format and ask the question again until it is.)

...I do feel that TB does allow for very cheap strategies.
Real time doesn't?
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The thing I got out of that was that "yes, there are cheap tactics in real time games too.. not just in TBS games, but I'm trying to downplay them as much as possible because I either did not see or forgot about the original question"

Is that right? "Yes" or "no" will suffice as an answer. (infact I will ignore the answer if it not in the formentioned format and ask the question again until it is.)

So, your "strategy" to "win" this discussion is to refuse to consider what other people write until you blackmail them into saying what you want them to say?

What a perfectly wonderful use of a forum. Have you considered becoming a politician?

Edited by Wraith_Magus
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Win? How the **** do you win an internet discussion? No, I was merely trying to extort (or blackmail) a straight enough answer since you seem to be dodging for the sake of dodging.

You don't have to give the answer I want. You just have to give a straight answer, so I know what your point is and can discuss it with you.

Preferebly one that keeps the original point in mind.

Just say No and then you can make your point after I ask why you feel there are no cheap strategies/tactics/moves in real time games.

It can't be that hard to say a single onesyllable word.

Edited by Gorlom
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dunno, might be a personal thing, but i find turn based games much more enjoyable than real time ones, sortof becomes a semi puzzle game that way. plenty of rts out there, let us keep one turn based game as it is ^^

i dont care if it allows for cheap tactics, it allows them for both sides. and to the previous pages turn based football. not really that but i do enjoy blood bowl too ^^

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Win? How the **** do you win an internet discussion? No, I was merely trying to extort (or blackmail) a straight enough answer since you seem to be dodging for the sake of dodging.

You don't have to give the answer I want. You just have to give a straight answer, so I know what your point is and can discuss it with you.

Preferebly one that keeps the original point in mind.

Just say No and then you can make your point after I ask why you feel there are no cheap strategies/tactics/moves in real time games.

It can't be that hard to say a single onesyllable word.

(Technically, the term you are looking for is "monosyllabic".)

To say that I am "dodging" an issue implies that we are on oppositional "sides", and very much brings up the notion of "winning". If what you were saying wasn't an "attack", why would I need to be "dodging"?

To say that any answer must be reduced to a yes or no answer completely defeats any purpose in a forum debate, as there is utterly no point or worth in a statement without accompanying reasoning. If it's worth the time to you to read what someone else has to say, it's worth the time to read why they said it. It never ceases to amaze me that someone will be willing to read 200 pages of one-sentence pure-opinion "this sux" responses, but not consider reading a 20-sentence response that involves actual objective statements.

If you want a single, short answer to your question, then, my answer is thus:

Kumquat.

Any such short answer would be meaningless, anyway.

And anyway, my point was that one cannot categorically paint entire genres of games as having "cheap" tactics across-the-board. To begin with, "cheap" is an entirely subjective term most of the time it is used. (And almost always refers to FOO strategies.) I can assure you that turn-based games are almost entirely filled with easily-exploited flaws, as well.

In fact, if you really want to compare the two on a broad, categorical scale, turn-based games are more easily predisposed towards simple, mathematical calculations, which are easily mathematically reduced down to simple, optimal strategies that will work every time.

At the most reduced, think of the game of Tic-Tac-Toe. ("The only way to win is not to play.") The number of choices are so slim, and so easily reduced towards a single, simple objective that games become reflexively easy to calculate every possible outcome.

It is, in fact, very difficult to make a turn-based strategy game with rules complex enough that everything doesn't become either easily foreseeable, or an utter game of chance. Comparatively, even a simple FPS (which is an utterly rudimentary game when you get right down to it, consisting almost entirely of moving and hitscan shooting in most cases,) is capable of such a fantastic number of possible decision points (taking place at basically 60 possible choice points per second,) that makes optimal play nearly impossible.

Even playing a more advanced game like Xenonauts, I doubt you are using that many seriously different strategies each time you take a mission. You will use smoke when advancing through an open field under fire because there is basically no other serious alternative.

To use Extra-Credits again, this is the problem covered in the depth-versus-complexity episode. A game needs complexity based upon the amount of decisions a player will make per unit of time. A turn-based game is much slower, and hence, often demands more complexity. (Although variable-time-scale games can often mix that up by making infrequent complex choices. This is actually what X-Com itself does on the geoscape, and what pausable real-time games do.) This is especially the case because tile-based, turn-based games often, again, become mathematical calculations with obvious optimal strategies. (And if anything is "cheap", it's finding that the game has turned into just following the same "only right answer" every single turn. Many lousy 4X-style games fall into this trap.)

That, however, isn't to say that turn-based games are categorically worse by any measure. (I prefer turn-based games as a rule, and anything I might say that makes you think the contrary is simply because I'm capable of criticizing even those things I favor.) It does, however, mean that there needs to be a much more serious look at the meaning of choice in such games. Real-time games get the crutch of a faster pace to allow simpler games to be more fulfilling to the player, and make optimal choices less game-breaking. (If you include some sort of dodge-roll out of any damage type of mechanic, it may be an optimal strategy to use it to avoid damage, but that doesn't necessarily mean the player can always use it perfectly. A player in a turn-based game can always take the time to make the best choices they are capable of making.)

In fact, to get back to the idea of a "cheap" strategy, just keep in mind it's much less viable in a real-time game to save just before the enemy's turn and reload until all the enemy's shots miss. I know of few players actually willing to slap the quicksave key in a firefight in a FPS and reload between each burst of fire until they get one "right", only to go on to play each second-by-second move over and over again. It's part of the baseline problem of a turn-based game that such optimal outcomes are even attainable in the first place.

For that matter, turn-based games that include enough complexity of choice to really challenge people who have played those games for years, such as Chess or Go, (to take obvious ancient examples everyone would know,) have the problem of such a massive learning curve that few people are willing to actually get to the level of mastery it takes to really experience the game at a point beyond the "learning the basics" level.

Those games that are capable of getting to those levels, incidentally, are often ones that involve very little weight on individual turns, and rely upon having to foresee things multiple turns in advance, for that matter. (Which would be something more on the level of a roguelike game.) The larger and more foreseeable every turn is, the more one can reduce such games to their simple, mathematical optimal strategies. (I.E. what combination of gear and skills gets me the most DPS/DPT?)

The reason why a game like chess can become so much more strategic is because any given sub-goal you have, thanks to taking multiple turns, allows the opponent multiple chances to interrupt and counter any plan you have, forcing a player to take those counter-moves into account. (It then becomes a game of out-predicting your opponent.) It also helps that a game like that relies upon basically no luck at all, so that foresight is unimpeded by just having to take the strategy with the best probability, and spamming it relentlessly. (I.E. high-level 3rd ed D&D, where you just spam SoD spells until one side dies, or the sheer damage-per-turn calculating.)

In fact, if there's any sort of major type of choice that X-Com/Xenonauts relies upon, it is making Incomplete Information Decisions. And that, again, really just comes down to making informed guesses about where the enemy is, and taking the optimal strategies that give the optimal odds of not being reduced to paste. The fact that you rely upon gear that you select ahead of time basically is a choice involving guessing with incomplete information what situations you will need to be capable of handling. The "tension" in the game comes from the incomplete information about the enemy's position. Winning often gets reduced down to taking the choices that maximize your accuracy and damage rolls while forcing the opposition to either have very low-odds rolls, or no rolls at all by manipulating terrain, cover, or AI quirks.

This is all something that it is fully possible to do in a pausable real-time environment.

What the decision between turn-based, real-time, and variable-real-time (including pausable-real-time) really comes down to, then, is about that complexity-and-depth choice. A strategy game can be much more complex, because it spaces its decisions out so much, but it then needs to be more complex in order to prevent those choices from becoming trivially easy. (And in a pausable real-time game, you still basically get the best of both worlds.)

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(Technically, the term you are looking for is "monosyllabic".)
Well, it's a more correct term than the typo where I missed the space key between "one" and "syllable". I'll give you that yes I was looking for that word. thank you.
To say that I am "dodging" an issue implies that we are on oppositional "sides", and very much brings up the notion of "winning". If what you were saying wasn't an "attack", why would I need to be "dodging"?
I don't know premptive measures? You started dodging before I started attacking, so I have no clue what you are doing. I find your logic regarding my intent based on your action/response to be somewhat questionable.
To say that any answer must be reduced to a yes or no answer completely defeats any purpose in a forum debate, as there is utterly no point or worth in a statement without accompanying reasoning. If it's worth the time to you to read what someone else has to say, it's worth the time to read why they said it. It never ceases to amaze me that someone will be willing to read 200 pages of one-sentence pure-opinion "this sux" responses, but not consider reading a 20-sentence response that involves actual objective statements.
You had already provided the reasoning but left out the answer... did you really not spot that one? Really? Maybe both of us has problems expressing ourselves clearly and to the point.
If you want a single, short answer to your question, then, my answer is thus:

Kumquat.

Any such short answer would be meaningless, anyway.

Depends on the purpose, you know you could elaborate after I ask the followup question. The reason I wanted a short answer was because you seemed to have missed my point, and I wanted clarification. Also because the original question was phrased in such a way that the answer was binary. Either there exists cheap tactics in real time games (does not require ALL real time games to have cheap tactics for the answer to be yes) or they don't.
And anyway, my point was that one cannot categorically paint entire genres of games as having "cheap" tactics across-the-board. To begin with, "cheap" is an entirely subjective term most of the time it is used. (And almost always refers to FOO strategies.) I can assure you that turn-based games are almost entirely filled with easily-exploited flaws, as well.

Great that was the whole argument over right there. Congratulations you won. Although your long winded and evasive answers might have muddled the "debate" (wasn't it just a simple yes or no question? when did it turn into a debate?) a bit to much that it is hard to decern that it was actually settled.

In fact, if you really want to compare the two on a broad, categorical scale, turn-based games are more easily predisposed towards simple, mathematical calculations, which are easily mathematically reduced down to simple, optimal strategies that will work every time.
Fine argument. Don't object to that in the slightest. Was not part of my original objection.
At the most reduced, think of the game of Tic-Tac-Toe. ("The only way to win is not to play.") The number of choices are so slim, and so easily reduced towards a single, simple objective that games become reflexively easy to calculate every possible outcome.

It is, in fact, very difficult to make a turn-based strategy game with rules complex enough that everything doesn't become either easily foreseeable, or an utter game of chance. Comparatively, even a simple FPS (which is an utterly rudimentary game when you get right down to it, consisting almost entirely of moving and hitscan shooting in most cases,) is capable of such a fantastic number of possible decision points (taking place at basically 60 possible choice points per second,) that makes optimal play nearly impossible.

Even playing a more advanced game like Xenonauts, I doubt you are using that many seriously different strategies each time you take a mission. You will use smoke when advancing through an open field under fire because there is basically no other serious alternative.

To use Extra-Credits again, this is the problem covered in the depth-versus-complexity episode. A game needs complexity based upon the amount of decisions a player will make per unit of time. A turn-based game is much slower, and hence, often demands more complexity. (Although variable-time-scale games can often mix that up by making infrequent complex choices. This is actually what X-Com itself does on the geoscape, and what pausable real-time games do.) This is especially the case because tile-based, turn-based games often, again, become mathematical calculations with obvious optimal strategies. (And if anything is "cheap", it's finding that the game has turned into just following the same "only right answer" every single turn. Many lousy 4X-style games fall into this trap.)

That, however, isn't to say that turn-based games are categorically worse by any measure. (I prefer turn-based games as a rule, and anything I might say that makes you think the contrary is simply because I'm capable of criticizing even those things I favor.) It does, however, mean that there needs to be a much more serious look at the meaning of choice in such games. Real-time games get the crutch of a faster pace to allow simpler games to be more fulfilling to the player, and make optimal choices less game-breaking. (If you include some sort of dodge-roll out of any damage type of mechanic, it may be an optimal strategy to use it to avoid damage, but that doesn't necessarily mean the player can always use it perfectly. A player in a turn-based game can always take the time to make the best choices they are capable of making.)

I'm not disagreeing with any of this. But from my point of view all this seems to be besides the point.

In fact, to get back to the idea of a "cheap" strategy, just keep in mind it's much less viable in a real-time game to save just before the enemy's turn and reload until all the enemy's shots miss. I know of few players actually willing to slap the quicksave key in a firefight in a FPS and reload between each burst of fire until they get one "right", only to go on to play each second-by-second move over and over again. It's part of the baseline problem of a turn-based game that such optimal outcomes are even attainable in the first place.
Viable point but your focusing on how cheap tactics in TBS games would work in FPSes (not any type of real time games but specifically FPS for some reason?) Why?
For that matter, turn-based games that include enough complexity of choice to really challenge people who have played those games for years, such as Chess or Go, (to take obvious ancient examples everyone would know,) have the problem of such a massive learning curve that few people are willing to actually get to the level of mastery it takes to really experience the game at a point beyond the "learning the basics" level.

Those games that are capable of getting to those levels, incidentally, are often ones that involve very little weight on individual turns, and rely upon having to foresee things multiple turns in advance, for that matter. (Which would be something more on the level of a roguelike game.) The larger and more foreseeable every turn is, the more one can reduce such games to their simple, mathematical optimal strategies. (I.E. what combination of gear and skills gets me the most DPS/DPT?)

The reason why a game like chess can become so much more strategic is because any given sub-goal you have, thanks to taking multiple turns, allows the opponent multiple chances to interrupt and counter any plan you have, forcing a player to take those counter-moves into account. (It then becomes a game of out-predicting your opponent.) It also helps that a game like that relies upon basically no luck at all, so that foresight is unimpeded by just having to take the strategy with the best probability, and spamming it relentlessly. (I.E. high-level 3rd ed D&D, where you just spam SoD spells until one side dies, or the sheer damage-per-turn calculating.)

In fact, if there's any sort of major type of choice that X-Com/Xenonauts relies upon, it is making Incomplete Information Decisions. And that, again, really just comes down to making informed guesses about where the enemy is, and taking the optimal strategies that give the optimal odds of not being reduced to paste. The fact that you rely upon gear that you select ahead of time basically is a choice involving guessing with incomplete information what situations you will need to be capable of handling. The "tension" in the game comes from the incomplete information about the enemy's position. Winning often gets reduced down to taking the choices that maximize your accuracy and damage rolls while forcing the opposition to either have very low-odds rolls, or no rolls at all by manipulating terrain, cover, or AI quirks.

This is all something that it is fully possible to do in a pausable real-time environment.

What the decision between turn-based, real-time, and variable-real-time (including pausable-real-time) really comes down to, then, is about that complexity-and-depth choice. A strategy game can be much more complex, because it spaces its decisions out so much, but it then needs to be more complex in order to prevent those choices from becoming trivially easy. (And in a pausable real-time game, you still basically get the best of both worlds.)

I conceed to the wealth of your knowledge.

Did you read the original question by Jean-Luc? Did you answer it?

Edited by Gorlom
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When posts become individual response snippets to quotes, I try to consolidate things, since it otherwise becomes like 20 individual posts being fired off in succession.

Great that was the whole argument over right there. Congratulations you won. Although your long winded and evasive answers might have muddled the "debate" (wasn't it just a simple yes or no question? when did it turn into a debate?) a bit to much that it is hard to decern that it was actually settled.

The thing is, I think you are asking the wrong question to start with.

If all you're talking about is whether or not one genre is filled with players that use "cheap tactics" or not, then all the discussion will ever be is a "Call of Duty Sux" thread. We can all say what games we like, and what games we don't like, but it doesn't give us any better understanding of the actually important questions of why we like these things, and how they can be made better unless we take the time to actually analyze what it is we're actually enjoying.

And a large part of why I tend to write so much is because I'm trying to think my through the problem by discussing it with myself, as much as anything. All angles need to be considered to have a proper answer to any question, after all.

Viable point but your focusing on how cheap tactics in TBS games would work in FPSes (not any type of real time games but specifically FPS for some reason?) Why?

Mostly just because I was already in the mindset of comparing games to an FPS from what was already said regarding camping. An FPS game also makes an amusing counter-point to a TBS game just because they're basically some of the most radically different any two genres might possibly be, besides maybe the Street Fighter-style fighting game. One is as focused upon the immediate as possible, while the other focuses as far back upon deliberation as possible.

If the comparison is over the difference between real-time and turn-based, then the most critical component to examine is exactly in that length of decision-making process.

To point back to that depth-versus-complexity video I pointed to earlier, the complexity of choice is always related to how much time a player is expected to spend pouring over their options. An FPS is the type of game that often has the simplest choices because it has the least time in which you are expected to make them. (It's basically no more than where you move, what you're pointing at, and whether or not you are shooting.)

Did you read the original question by Jean-Luc? Did you answer it?

I answered it in the back half of the post that triggered this whole exchange:

But aren't games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance considered some of the most tense strategy games out there? I don't know any RTS games that are particularly known for the tension they induce.
Maybe it's just the way that people try to describe the games that is giving you that impression?

I mean, I don't really like the sub-genre, but I'm pretty sure Starcraft players are getting pretty tense, wondering what, exactly, it is they are up against.

Games like Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation even more so, as they are even more heavily geared towards trying to hide what it is you have from your opponents. (A nuclear submarine, for example, is a massive gamble that your opponent won't get wise to your ploy, and build a counter-nuke for 1/20th the price that nullifies the offensive power you would have gained... but it gets you an overwhelming offensive advantage if the gambit works. I'd say I'd have butterflies in my stomach making that gamble.)

Speaking more towards games like Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age, there's nothing particularly stopping them from incorporating the same depth of gameplay or the dangers that ramp up tension that are in games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance, but it just seems as though the games like that tend more towards a "classical RPG feel" (which focus upon player agency and power trips than caution and feeling like you are distinctly not that powerful) than towards trying to create the same kind of tension that are in games like X-Com. (Although, at least for me, Baldur's Gate II sure did with that beholder labyrinth - facing up against a wall of SoDs sure didn't give me the impression of a stroll through a field of daisies.)

In fact, if anything does a good job of creating a "tension" like X-Com in real-time, it's actually FPS-style stealth games like Thief. (Although there are real-time games coming out now from the indie scene over Steam that are basically top-down real-time stealth games, as well.)

I'd point to this Extra Credits video on stealth games, and why most games fail so spectacularly on stealth.

If I were to further that argument a little:

The reason that RTS games or real-time RPGs (or even most turn-based RPGs, including those D&D games where people just play kick-in-the-door, all-combat-all-the-time) rarely have tension, while X-Com does, is because of that critical difference in what makes a good stealth game: Making waiting exciting.

Exciting waiting is just another name for tension.

The trick about real survival horror games (many of which are FPS or TPS/Third Person Shooter) is that they focus on not having combat, because combat is empowering. Horror revolves entirely around not being in total control.

Much like with a survival horror game, Xenonauts is at its most tense when you don't see the aliens, or, at least, when you aren't shooting at them. When you're shooting at them on a fair footing, the choices you make are oftentimes just calculations for the highest possible DPS - what gives me the most amount of chance to deal the most damage in a given turn? Solve for X. It's just a simple math problem where you can know a right answer, no real tension there.

The tension is in the not knowing, in the thing you can't shoot, in the thing you're worried you might be powerless to stop.

In short, the real heart of the game's best asset, the tension, takes place in the points between the shooting, because the shooting is just a calculation that resolves the setup. It's that setup that is so critical.

This is why a game like a roguelike is actually a much better game for generating tension than most other RPGs - they have much more complexity in the spaces between combat where your chances for success or failure hinge on what you do outside of combat, not in it, or in maximizing your DPS on a character build.

If we are seriously going to compare whether a hypothetical game about tension works best on a turn-based game or on a real-time (or variable-time) basis, then we have to go into a real understanding of what it is we actually want out of the game, and how it delivers that experience to us. As I've said, the tension of these sorts of games comes from the lack of knowledge about what's around that corner, and what the alien can do to us. It also then comes from the sense of accomplishment of having actually done something quite clever to overcome this unfair fight.

It also has to be complex enough to be a real challenge - those straight fights are boring, barring the "tension" of waiting for the RNG to determine the fate of your troops. But if this game were nothing but a crapshoot, we might as well actually play craps. The trick is in making the in-between-combat parts more tense.

And really, the point about how the game becomes much more complex when an opponent can actually interrupt your tactics in a game like chess becomes a strong one, here. The less you can accomplish in a single turn, the more you rely upon multiple turns for your short-term plans to be carried out, the more the enemy can interrupt what you are doing, the closer you're actually getting to a real-time game.

A game of Thief is often so tense because it's as much a game of trying to figure out where the enemy is, and where they are going as it is to make sure they don't figure out where you are. It's the stealth game that is so tense and enjoyable. (And that is, again, a relatively simple FPS-like game.)

Hence, we need to focus our question down to the stealth-and-detection portion of the game. (Which is part of why I really wish the game had more complex stealth mechanics than just seeing everything within 18 tiles in a 90-degree-arc, but that's for another thread.)

And while I'm on the topic, I have remembered a game that did RTS-style tension quite well: Commandos. You play with multiple specialist units trying to stealth your way past those wacky Nazis with vision cones that swivel around as they look left and right, and the player having the capacity to lay things like poisoned bear traps that Nazis are somehow incapable of seeing until they have a dead body inside them. Or the sniper that can take out an enemy from very long range, but generally only has some frustratingly small amount of ammo (like 4 bullets) to use per mission, forcing you to really chose which ones you take out from a range, and which ones you go in close to kill silently. Making noise brings out the guards, but then, if you've set up the escape plan ahead of time, you can make a messy getaway before they can really catch up to you. (On its negatives, Commandos was a game that often had formulaic answers to its problems, and if it were made more along the lines of the pseudo-procedural map layouts of this game, may have been more interesting.)

Hence, I'd have to say, yes, it's certainly possible to make a tense top-down real-time tactical game. You just have to reconsider what the real point of the game is, and how to really deliver upon it.

Edited by Wraith_Magus
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