Opinions differ. Haven't played most of the games in your group 2 but Soulcalibur bores me in a few hours. Bioshock was fun because of it's amazing setting and unique way of telling a story. The combat was meh.
Combat in turn-based games is more then the actual turns. It's about gathering options for your turns. It's about planning in advance. In turn-based games combat is often already decided before the combat starts.
Let's take EvE as an example. The actual combat is horrible. You basically activate your modules and wait for either one of you to blow. There's some minor management in what direction you're flying, how fast you're going and some modules that you must manage but there's not a whole lot of involvement going on.
Yet while EvE may not be to everyone's taste you can't deny that it gets the blood of thousands of players running. That's because EvE's combat isn't about the actual shooting. It's about your fit. About the ship you chose. About the allies you gathered. About the enemy you engaged etc.
EvE's combat would be the worse if you made it some sort of real-time shooter. It would greatly decrease the influence of all those factors that make EvE fun. EvE's combat is great because you can't compensate for poor choices in fit, ship and allies by having a high speed connection and great twitch skills. It's a numbers game.
Numbers combat is great fun to some of us. And games that use it well are fun because of it, not despite of it.
Much of the thrill in Eve's combat comes from the gambler's rush caused by the death penalty and metagame. The combat itself is rather lacking like you said.
I usually love theorycrafting and making builds but vast majority of the builds are unviable in Eve. And some builds are simply better than others. It is not a matter of choice but a matter of SP and money. It really eats up the different build choices to a point that under all the different ships and modules, the builds are very simple and based on very simple concepts, and there aren't many of them. You can do things differently but those are usually less efficient ways to do the same thing.
I didn't get the same kick out of it as I got from Guild Wars or Magic the Gathering. But that may be in part because all the builds had already been invented, tried and discarded/used (the game has been out for years).
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Well, MMOs need to compensate for ping, thats why actions in the game cannot be "realtime".
Even from pure physics its impossible to make a true realtime MMO. Electrons cannot move faster than light (and they are usually much slower), and network traffic overhead cost even much more time.
In Vanguard, I played with a guy from South Africa, and he never had a better ping than about 500 ms. Now imagine you want to design a MMO that still makes him as efficient as I am with my not very good connection (at least about 200 ms ping at any time) or people who live near the MMO server and have a truely good internet connection (which translates to 100 ms and less for those lucky bastards).
If real time combat is done WELL then I think it's about 28937289374x more fun than turn based done well...
The problem I think we're encountering is that most MMORPGs as a rule have shoddy combat PERIOD. If you take that as a given then I think I've found (and apparently most other people have as well judging on player base sizes) that MMORPGs have come much closer to getting semi-turn-based "right" (IE marginally playable) than they are real-time.
If you take it out of MMO context though I think you'll find that the comparison between turn based and action is real simple.
Let's take a list of some really fun, highly rated games and partition them up.
When you think of group 2 what would you say all of these games have in common? They're all games who's "fun" is derived almost explicitly through their COMBAT SYSTEMS. I would argue not only that "group 1 games" are NOT defined this way but in fact they can rather accurately be described as games which "are fun in spite of their combat systems".
For the record, up until today Baldurs Gate had the second best combat system I ever encountered.
Especially no other game ever had the "mages are fearful opponents" factor down so well.
In pretty much all other games, fighting mages can be limited to "hit the mage hard, hit the mage harder, use an even bigger sword". Not in BG. There a mage really required thinking.
The Temple of Elemental Evil had an even better combat system, but sadly that was pretty much all that was great about that game.
I dont even bother touching stuff like Quake any more. Its just boring as hell.
You know, up until recently I would say Real-time all the way, but if Dragon Age 2 has shown me anything it is that it can go horribly wrong if not done correctly.
(I'm talking about console DA2, where there is no autoattack at all, so you are left with an endless and very clunky 1 button spam, with the occasional press of another button for a skill.)
It really depends on what I happen to be looking for at the time and ofc whether you prefer one of the other will always come down to personal opinion. For me both are great if done well, but then that is where the problem lies.
Some people seem to automatically (pardon the pun) equate game/mmo's with auto attacks and more of a lean towards semi turn based action, to be combat strategy masterpieces, when in fact many of them are far, far from that.
I'd be more than happy with a more strategic and slower turn of combat, should the game actually involve some real modicum of strategy and skill above and beyond pressing the usual attacks and making sure you have decent itemization. Most sadly do not offer much above and beyond that.
PS, i'm sure many do flail randomly in more real time games but then that is not exactly a factor of the system, more of the inept player using the system.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
IMO, after playing the newer games with real-time combat, it doesn't feel like I'm playing an mmo. For years I've heard people complaining that click and auto-attack sucks and that they want real-time combat so that it's more realistic. But guess what, it's not more realistic. It feels like an arcade game, and after 4 -5 sets of mobs, buttom mashing your mouse to death, it's not very ergonomically pleasing.
That's because they dont make it well. I never felt tired in oblivion or mount and blade warband battles,even after playing them 8 hours in a row...
Although i recall clearly my self get tired after performing combos after 1 hour of playing aoc..
If they deside to make real time combat in an mmorpg with a more tactical approach /formula and less with button smashing and spamming attacks mindlessly then we are talking about a completely different gameplay expirience. In that case, i think yes real time combat is more fun than auto-attack tab tab targeting styles we ve seen in most games.
I play both semi-turn based and real-time based mmo's,but if I have to choose I will choose real time combat,why?
My reasons is:
Firstly,in my opinion it's more realistic!
(For example in real life you can actually dodge when someone is trying to hit you with a hammer or throwing something at you if your reaction is quick enough to dodge it that is,instead of just standing there like "I am loading my dodge move,it's taking 3seconds to load",then you can't dodge it that way UNLESS you actually can predict what-happens-next,or else I am sure you are pretty screwed.)
Secondly,if being strategical,why don't I just go play some chess instead of sitting in front of a PC just to study some fixed NPC's AI in order to defeat it in a slow pace?I'd rather facing a real human in chess!
And Finally,semi-turn based mmo's are usually very dependent on level and equipments instead of your actual performance,which is what I don't really like,when you're low level you couldn't deal much damages,and when you're high level without much money to buy good equipments,you deal less damages either,even though I must admit that in most semi-turn-based MMORPG you still die in a few hits,which is what I like.But on the other hand,in real time combat,you can actually win a extremely high level boss even if you're like lv1,all you need to do is know when to dodge and when to attack when he/she/it is open,it's all about skills,not relying on your level,equipments as they don't change things much at all.
So yes,that makes me like real-time based over than semi-turn based,realistic,exciting,I don't like how levels and equipments control almost everything,I'd like to compete my skills instead of how much I grinded for my level and equipments.
Button mashing is annoying. Modern MMOs prefer to give players zillion of simial abilites, so they have to use 4-5 toolbars of buttons.
I prefer limited abilites approach. Like in old EQ, where you had a limit of 10 buttons. Or GW, or LoL (league of legends).
I suppose game design that make players to use "rotations" and smash buttons non stop in some sequence just to do DPS (i.e. damage mobs) is bad. But is much easier to design and implement.
Games, where you do not forced to mush buttons, are better. Like EVE. To damage target you switch weapons and they do shooting. So it's like autoattack. Having like 3 buttons in MMO for a mage 1- do standard attacks, 2- do alpha strike, 3- do more powerful attacks that deplete mana fast, whould be enough for single target damaging abilites. Thats somewhat simplified but gives general idea.
Comments
Much of the thrill in Eve's combat comes from the gambler's rush caused by the death penalty and metagame. The combat itself is rather lacking like you said.
I usually love theorycrafting and making builds but vast majority of the builds are unviable in Eve. And some builds are simply better than others. It is not a matter of choice but a matter of SP and money. It really eats up the different build choices to a point that under all the different ships and modules, the builds are very simple and based on very simple concepts, and there aren't many of them. You can do things differently but those are usually less efficient ways to do the same thing.
I didn't get the same kick out of it as I got from Guild Wars or Magic the Gathering. But that may be in part because all the builds had already been invented, tried and discarded/used (the game has been out for years).
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Well, MMOs need to compensate for ping, thats why actions in the game cannot be "realtime".
Even from pure physics its impossible to make a true realtime MMO. Electrons cannot move faster than light (and they are usually much slower), and network traffic overhead cost even much more time.
In Vanguard, I played with a guy from South Africa, and he never had a better ping than about 500 ms. Now imagine you want to design a MMO that still makes him as efficient as I am with my not very good connection (at least about 200 ms ping at any time) or people who live near the MMO server and have a truely good internet connection (which translates to 100 ms and less for those lucky bastards).
So yeah, quasi turnbased is a must.
For the record, up until today Baldurs Gate had the second best combat system I ever encountered.
Especially no other game ever had the "mages are fearful opponents" factor down so well.
In pretty much all other games, fighting mages can be limited to "hit the mage hard, hit the mage harder, use an even bigger sword". Not in BG. There a mage really required thinking.
The Temple of Elemental Evil had an even better combat system, but sadly that was pretty much all that was great about that game.
I dont even bother touching stuff like Quake any more. Its just boring as hell.
You know, up until recently I would say Real-time all the way, but if Dragon Age 2 has shown me anything it is that it can go horribly wrong if not done correctly.
(I'm talking about console DA2, where there is no autoattack at all, so you are left with an endless and very clunky 1 button spam, with the occasional press of another button for a skill.)
It really depends on what I happen to be looking for at the time and ofc whether you prefer one of the other will always come down to personal opinion. For me both are great if done well, but then that is where the problem lies.
Some people seem to automatically (pardon the pun) equate game/mmo's with auto attacks and more of a lean towards semi turn based action, to be combat strategy masterpieces, when in fact many of them are far, far from that.
I'd be more than happy with a more strategic and slower turn of combat, should the game actually involve some real modicum of strategy and skill above and beyond pressing the usual attacks and making sure you have decent itemization. Most sadly do not offer much above and beyond that.
PS, i'm sure many do flail randomly in more real time games but then that is not exactly a factor of the system, more of the inept player using the system.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
That's because they dont make it well. I never felt tired in oblivion or mount and blade warband battles,even after playing them 8 hours in a row...
Although i recall clearly my self get tired after performing combos after 1 hour of playing aoc..
If they deside to make real time combat in an mmorpg with a more tactical approach /formula and less with button smashing and spamming attacks mindlessly then we are talking about a completely different gameplay expirience. In that case, i think yes real time combat is more fun than auto-attack tab tab targeting styles we ve seen in most games.
I play both semi-turn based and real-time based mmo's,but if I have to choose I will choose real time combat,why?
My reasons is:
Firstly,in my opinion it's more realistic!
(For example in real life you can actually dodge when someone is trying to hit you with a hammer or throwing something at you if your reaction is quick enough to dodge it that is,instead of just standing there like "I am loading my dodge move,it's taking 3seconds to load",then you can't dodge it that way UNLESS you actually can predict what-happens-next,or else I am sure you are pretty screwed.)
Secondly,if being strategical,why don't I just go play some chess instead of sitting in front of a PC just to study some fixed NPC's AI in order to defeat it in a slow pace?I'd rather facing a real human in chess!
And Finally,semi-turn based mmo's are usually very dependent on level and equipments instead of your actual performance,which is what I don't really like,when you're low level you couldn't deal much damages,and when you're high level without much money to buy good equipments,you deal less damages either,even though I must admit that in most semi-turn-based MMORPG you still die in a few hits,which is what I like.But on the other hand,in real time combat,you can actually win a extremely high level boss even if you're like lv1,all you need to do is know when to dodge and when to attack when he/she/it is open,it's all about skills,not relying on your level,equipments as they don't change things much at all.
So yes,that makes me like real-time based over than semi-turn based,realistic,exciting,I don't like how levels and equipments control almost everything,I'd like to compete my skills instead of how much I grinded for my level and equipments.
Button mashing is annoying. Modern MMOs prefer to give players zillion of simial abilites, so they have to use 4-5 toolbars of buttons.
I prefer limited abilites approach. Like in old EQ, where you had a limit of 10 buttons. Or GW, or LoL (league of legends).
I suppose game design that make players to use "rotations" and smash buttons non stop in some sequence just to do DPS (i.e. damage mobs) is bad. But is much easier to design and implement.
Games, where you do not forced to mush buttons, are better. Like EVE. To damage target you switch weapons and they do shooting. So it's like autoattack. Having like 3 buttons in MMO for a mage 1- do standard attacks, 2- do alpha strike, 3- do more powerful attacks that deplete mana fast, whould be enough for single target damaging abilites. Thats somewhat simplified but gives general idea.