Quote Originally Posted by MustangCobraSVT View Post
I actually miss the turn-based combat. Not sure if it is just for nostalgic reasons or if it is something that i prefer mechanic wise. I understand there is strategy to live combat in RPGs, I feel most of it boils down to button mashing. Where as, in turn-based if the enemy did something unexpected you were forced to counter with a move of your own. I think turn-based invites more thought into the combat and strategy.
Turn based does allow for far more strategy than real time.

If you need evidence of this, look to any grand strategy game, such as Civilization. They're turn-based. Why? Because it is the only format they can take. Imagine how much simpler the game would have to be in order to run in real time. How many features would have to be either reduced to bare bones, or eliminated completely, in order to accommodate such a change? The larger your empire, the worse off you are, since smaller players have less to focus on and greater control over their units and territories. Diplomacy would have to be abandoned completely, lest two players spend time talking things out while a third goes and slaughters them both.

Now look at real time strategy games, like StarCraft. There is a far smaller scope, to narrow your focus, and far fewer options available. Even then, button mashing dominates player tiers far more than strategy, and everyone knows it, even Blizzard. That's why StarCraft II can track your commands per minute, and why "Hard" difficulty's biggest factor is the fact that the game is locked to the fastest play speed. By reducing the time you have to make and execute decisions, the game is made harder. There is certainly strategy in the game, but the player who can "button mash" fast enough to get units out of trouble, or run the closest to ideal economy, is generally going to win. Admittedly, there is skill and strategy in knowing how to set up said economy, or when to grab a unit to get it out of trouble, but the ability to execute that strategy is far more important than conceptualizing it, and implementation is ruled by the speed.



Now take League of Legends. Gameplay here is entirely real-time, and each Champion has a very limited number of activities that they can perform. A handful of abilities, a few places to move to, and which enemy to attack. That's about it. Does that mean that there is no strategy? The planning and strategies in this game play out on a larger scale than the basic gameplay. Which lane goes to which hero, when to make a push, when you need to fall back and defend, which items you upgrade, and when to go back to upgrade them. There is a great deal of thought and planning to the game, it is just paced to take place over a far larger scale, to give you time to think these things over and choose which you want to do, and plan them out.

Most First Person Shooters operate on a similar system, with actual tactics taking place over a larger scale, while the combat itself is dominated almost completely by twitch reflexes and aiming talent.


Turn based gives you the option to have strategies on multiple levels of the game, because you do not run into the time troubles. Compare Final Fantasy X to Final Fantasy XIII. Both share the strategic level of raising your characters, equipping them, and setting up your team for ideal combat. Both have the strategic layer of changing the team layout mid-combat to best suit the situation at hand. But Final Fantasy XIII, due to its fast paced nature, and corresponding lack of reasonable choices, lacks strategy in the individual turns, and boils everything down to Auto-Attack, while you can make a number of very important strategic decisions during your turns in Final Fantasy X.

What strategies can be implemented, what actions can be taken, are directly tied to how much information you can process, and what actions you can execute. Turn based systems allow you much more time to process more information, and more time to successfully execute commands that you have planned. Thus, turn based games have a greater depth of available strategy. Which is not to say that a turn-based game will be more strategic, since there are tons of really poorly designed turn-based games that don't use thought or strategy at all, just that they have greater strategic potential, by the nature of their format.