For a start---
I wasn't laughing AT anybody, I thought I was laughing WITH, as when someone is being ribbed. sigh
OK, wasn't being ribbed (not that I would be offended).

Phew, now on to some more clarification re the topic.


I said earlier-- Role-Playing-Game is just a broad category description of what the game content predominantly is like, so that people know the type of game it is. Early Fallouts fit into RPG even with having turn base elements. The game might be also sub-categorised as having TB elements ... and so on.
...................

Even with, and with, whatever... shrug
The predominance is a game of the broad category of RPG.(as a game general description) As I stated.

A turn-base type board game would be categorised as a board game even with having role play elements. (as a game general description)



Next. To clarify this hopefully.
I said before:..............
It is a turn-base play as opposed to other play, such as the "role-play" continuous movement of walking, or similar. There is a break in that continuous flow of movement that non turn-base role-play games have ... there is some loss to that role-play aspect. And that was my point really.
....................
Turn base, a character does not have continuous movement. Yes?
TB, there is a pause while the other character takes a turn. Yes?
TB, is different from a character playing the role of making continuous movement. Yes?
TB, there is no character continuous movement. Yes?
TB. Playing the role of continuous movement cannot be done for longer than a turn. Yes?
TB. There is a loss to continuous movement that a character would "normally" be able to do. So, if wanting to play the role of a "normally animated" character with movements longer than "a turn", you can't. That is the loss of that particular bit of role-play with TB. Yes?

As I said before and above.

Let me know which bit anybody disagrees with.

As for role playing game (RPG) being bracketed as such, a RPG ... and with following descriptions further describing content, I wouldn't find a RPG in the Board Game section in of shops I've been in. Enough said on that.





Close enough I guess.

It depends on what role-play realism you want. Hoping to play the role of a person, I would want it to as close to a real person as possible, as real as a person would be.

Can I accept a different role of say taking turns, I can do. Can I accept a different role of taking turns in a board game, I can do, but it's even further removed from "real person role play" that was in Fallout3, the - imagine you really are in that post apocalyptic scenario "PC iris" role-play - .. that would be less with TB, it seems to me. Though Some wouldn't mind that.

Back to the topic. Is turn base still viable. Given that games have so much more content and are bigger in the number of hours mostly, as it seems to me, TB is less viable for those large games, unless you have either an off-switch or are prepared to play a lot more hours in that one game. I would think that most would also be wanting to play other games, and just wouldn't have the time.

I may have missed replying to some. But for the time being...

:foodndrink:

:thumbsdown: Not so though...
I understand exactly what you mean, and would recommend a http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arx_fatalis as one that you might really like. Role Playing, has nothing whatsoever to do with a First or third person view or with realtime exploration/ or RT combat ~or with a turnbased system. Neither choice directly affects the quality of an RPG, only the implementation of the choice does. You can have both good and bad RPG's that use either system, but neither is made good or made bad due to the choice of the system itself.

Ahhh! This the crux of it. Not every developer or player considers this of paramount importance in an RPG. Not every player strives ~or even wants to imagine that they are personally there, in the fictional setting. Many RPG players place far more importance upon the PC as an individual ~not as an Avatar to inhabit. When I play Fallout 1, 2, or 3, (or any other RPG), I almost never do this (its actually a serious peeve with FO3 that it seeks to impose this on me). Why build a character at all, why give it a name if as soon as one enters the game it is cast off ~irrelevant? The Role, is the PC, not the class of PC.

Did you look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uhcd85uCms&feature=related? That's a modern (on the shelves now) Turn Based tactical RPG. :shrug:
(I suppose you could consider the Disciples series the polar opposite of the Diablo series :rolleyes:)

**And the truly cynical would be quick to say that of sales as well :chaos:; but this doesn't matter to me. I think there is a reasonable parallel to niche games and prescription drugs \
That being that they do actually make those drugs to fill the niche; and do not claim that the majority of the world doesn't need them ~and then decide to make only aspirin because that's what's popular.

But your fault is that you disregard a TB from being an RPG element, when it is whether or not you liked about it. You can not dictate it, you have no power over it. You go to great lenghts in describing why it just can't be, and you fail at every step. Not because of what you think, but because of what you think is the fact. I could do a list of similiar things describing why TB is the crux of RPGs, but I don't because it isn't. I could easily form a post where I state that "realtimers" are wrong because their games do not resolve from character statistics. but I won't- Because that ain't true.

TB is as much about RPing as every other method, and in fact it offers a much wider approach to things than RT. But that's just my opinion. ------------ (and to be to give an example, it is the best form of roleplaying the character, because the charater does what it is supposed to do in any given situation - but that's just my own view on this - and by its title this isn't a thread about what is an RPG and what's not).

:rofl:

Sigged.

(I'll just reply on this because it hit me, and I'll read the rest of the thread.... later :whistling: )


I guess you haven't been in the 'right' shops?
I admit I've never had the chance to play one, but I understand pen & paper RPGs were called RPGs before people even could conceive the possibility of the existence of a real time first person computer game with awesome smooth animation!
- Note that I am against judging cRPGs depending on how they compare to their good old p&p 'cousins' but... they obviously have enough in common to share the same name.
Or we could of course pull an 'interactive literature' maneuver and rename P&P RPGs to something else, like Pumpkin Pie Games or something to avoid confusing them with the currently popular 'F(or T)PS with dialog' kind.



Also... "Playing the role of continuous movement"? come on!...
(non-continuous movement sounds like a good role to me...)

With the whole "continuous movement, 'real person role play'" thing, my guess (and I could be wrong, here, of course) is that he's talking about that sort of "seeing through the eyes of, embodying your character, in many ways being that character" approach to roleplaying games. What I find a lot of people define as "immersive" these days. And as far as all that goes, I think that's a fine approach. Just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there is no single "right" way to approach a role-playing game (heck, we don't even really know what we're saying when we use that word anymore, anyway...) Or even videogames as a whole.

I think so long as we can all accept that some people like things that others don't, but that there's nothing wrong with that - and that neither has the "right" or "wrong" way of preferring things - we'll all be just fine.

Yeah, but I think that's another mistaken assumption. Sure, if you just lumped a turn-based system on top of Fallout 3, for example, with a nail-gun - you'd probably end up spending a bit more time. (Though, of course, that depends on what sort of system we're using and all that - by now I think we can just all assume that everyone entering this discussion from now on understands that there's more than the "Fallout 1" way of doing turn-based combat, and that the genre itself is capable of much more (just as real-time is) than what we currently imagine as it's illusory boundaries.)

But if you made a roleplaying game with turn-based combat, then obviously you'd be balancing that from the ground up when designing not only the system, but also in deciding where and how often combat would be initiated.

What you're describing is a design problem - something that's to be overcome. Not an intrinsically impossible brick wall. Sure, it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but plenty of absolutely wonderful games out there aren't. (Heck, even Fallout 3 itself is a bit of a "niche" game, when you get right down to it - as we're on the Bethesda forum, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that not everyone who calls themselves a "gamer" is particularly interested in their games, either...)

We may be talking about different things that qualify as being role-play.

Some may not accept, realistic video animation as being part of role-play. I do, such as in a theatre play on stage where the actors are all playing their roles and moving about normally, not moving with stages of movements as in TB.

That would, in terms of role-play, make realistic video animation redundant in a video game, and mean that the game, in terms of role-play, it is no different from a text base role-play game. (sorry Bethesda)

Apart from the above aspect of realistic video animation, turn-base is not quite as good regarding the Sneaking aspect, if you accept that Sneak qualifies as being a part of role-play.

In real-time play where you are NOT locked in a TB movement or series of movements, there is more flexibility of going in and out of Sneak mode, more quickly and at will.

My reply to "I can do Sneak in TB with no problem" is:- Yes but it's a bit more flexible in real-time. In that sense TB is less of a role-playing game.
.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........


As do I. Which do I prefer depends on what I feel like doing.

True

True.

That could also depend on the medium that it was played in. Text based medium, it wouldn't make a difference, true.

In a video based medium, I think I've demonstrated that it makes a difference. More or less, depending what you accept as being role-play.

########## ########## ########## ########## ##########


Playing a role of a person in a scenario, I would want to role-play that person realistically as possible.



However that is the player's own choice of imaginative role-play of the game scenario that the developer has presented. As said in the fallout3 intro, "There is no right or wrong way to play the game, it is the player's choice". I made my choice.

########## ########## ########## ########## ##########


Yes I would agree with that, character development would be what I desired also.

Also when playing a character role, for the character to have movement action realism whether "donning specific articles of clothing and actually doing the movements yourself" or visually seeing the movement actions on screen, the character is better when believable and making realistic movements.

Can anybody disagree with that.

########## ########## ########## ########## ##########


TB is a RPG element where the animated actions are not continuous ... only continuous within a turn. (I'm sure I said that before or something along those lines)

If playing the role of a person, if the actions are realistic then the role-play is realistic, if the actions are NOT realistic then the role-play is LESS realistic.

The VISUAL experience reinforcing the experience.

Simple as that.

In TB, the visual experience, is not reinforcing your mind's experience of a real person's animated actions.

Preferences are ok sure. Turn base and real time bringing different types of play and aspects of play, most certainly. Turn base is down to micro management which can be just as fun but in a different way, as it was when I played Fallout 2 way back, and who here would deny that.



More then just a bit more time I think,



As they probably did in Fallout2.



Fallout Tactics seemed to manage a viable way of doing something like it. Something along those lines would be ok with me.


As to turn base play, I've said before:--
Many considerations of TB are also done in RT play...
...Becoming more automatic and the same, the more you get into the game.
I have made the same actions in TB as I would have in RT...
...But took longer to do it.
It is very satisfying to see your TB calculations play out to a win...
...As it is with the mental calculations of RT (not said previously).
Exploration would suffer because of the increased content nowadays (usually) of combatants that would snag you into combat. You just need to imagine Fallout3 in TB.
Anyway, TB viable question. Yes with an off switch.
Could have it in newer games, but with an off switch.
Would I buy it, yes.
Number crunching can be fun to do, but the numbers once crunched can become somewhat repetitive. (Same with RT).

Since you brought up Fallout Tactics... having been playing the game for a couple of days now, I can say with a bit of bitterness that neither the real-time or turn-based modes were particularly well executed. TB mode suffers enormously from the lack of a hexagonal grid and how agonizingly slow progress in missions can be if even one enemy is sniping you at a distance you can't fire back at. Real time mode is extremely difficult to control, moving enemies are near impossible to target, and the inability to use VATS effectively does not help matters at all. If Bethesda were to make a turn based Fallout game in the future, I hope they follow the Fallout 2 model (while speeding up the painfully slow enemy combat turns) and focus entirely on building around a turn based system. Some sort of hybrid will just end up having the worst of both worlds.

[quote name='Sitruc' date='15 August 2010 - 02:37 PM' timestamp='1281901032' post='16280982']
We may be talking about different things that qualify as being role-play.
[/quote]It looks this way.

Rather than micro-quote your entire post (which make it hard for everyone to read); I will set down a few concepts and assertions as I understand them.

I would say off the top that 'Yes' Turn Based is till viable as there are many TB games on the market (not the least is the one I linked to previously).
I still maintain that TB mechanics have no relationship to Role Playing; They neither add nor detract to it in any way as far as I'm concerned (though, as I 'll explain below, I can see how some would think otherwise)
[spoiler]Role Playing can be done in an empty room in the dark.
It can also be done with pens and dice (and a rule book)
And on a computer.
If its a good text interpreter, made by a clever developer...a very decent RPG can be made as a text only game;
can also include still pictures... can also include 2d animation; and 3d animations... Its all entirely optional.

Playing a role requires no immersion-what-so-ever. Jackie Gleason did it every week on live TV. He read the script, knew what Ralph the Bus driver would encounter and how he'd react.
He knew his lines for the role, but I suspect he could have done the entire show cold, completely ad-libbed and had a pretty close idea of exactly how Ralph would have reacted to the other characters in every single situation.
Role playing is knowing the role; Knowing that your Cleric PC is phobic of mice and helpless around them; Knowing that your thief PC will break under temptation and pocket the easy bauble on the way out (causing the party to get caught, and into a fight). Role Playing could even be reduced to a printed multiple choice test asking "What would Mister Grumpy do here" a, b, c, or d "and there?" a, b, c, or d :shrug:

Alternatively... there is Larping. Larping is when friends enact the imagined actions of their characters. Even imagine that they are in their character's world, seeing what their character might see. Serious Larpers like Civil War Re-enactors may actually follow historical scripts, or merely base their actions on what is plausible of their character in the situation (you see this at Renaissance shows).

cRPG players come in all types. (I don't know all of the types... but here are a few). In Oblivion, some will stand guard at a door in a town for a shift, that being what their Guard character should be doing at the time. They may play in third person to watch their Guard character doing it. Others seek to "live" in Oblivion as a native of the world ~The PC is their avatar; They might eyeball passers by and speak to them at the gate they are guarding. Still others will just simply roam the world as an escape from their own giving no heed to their PC's identity at all; I would suspect that players of these three types would all greatly appreciate enhanced graphics, where as players that are only concerned with the outcomes [of choices] would be indifferent to the visuals, so long as they were understandable. (Good graphics are always a plus, but they don't change the outcomes in any way. :shrug:)[/spoiler]
Fallout though... was implicitly designed to mimic the PnP role playing experience...

Case study: I find myself in a big room with a dozen or so armed baddies that were after my blood. Such a situation can be pretty tough: I've got a very limited number of bullets - so I have to make sure that every one of them will count - and, more importantly, very limited time to act before I'm minced meat.

I remember in FO2 it took me a while to get myself out of such a situation once. I checked the weapons of all the enemies first, to locate the most dangerous ones and get the general picture. Once I did, I positioned myself in such a way so that not all of them could get a clear shot of me, hoping that they will shoot each other. Then I ignored the closer one and I instead decided to shoot the most dangerous of the lot. Seeing that I couldn't possibly kill him in one hit, and with the chances of a successful eye shot being too slim to risk, I decided to go for the hands instead, therefore making him drop his weapon. After everyone moved and I was somehow still alive, I shot the ones closer to me on the foot, to slow them down and turn them into human shields. Then the battle went for a while with me counting bullets and calculating my odds, switching weapons, healing up, taking cover, risking eye shots etc. etc. whatever the situation required and allowed.

When I found myself in such a situation in FO3 I started running around shooting everything that moved without discrimination while feeling awesome about being such an unstoppable killing machine. Maybe I could do something like the above in a purely real time environment, but the thing is, I don't have enough time to do the calculations, I don't have fingers nimble enough to make it work and, very important, I don't have enough time to observe the outcome: I can't tell if shooting one guy on the foot slowed him down when I have three more running towards me screaming bloody murder, no chance of me understanding what's going on when they are twenty of them!

I suppose the second case was more immersive because I was roleplaying the continuous movement and what have you... The truth is that as the freak that I am I find the first case more immersive because I get to control and get feedback for every muscle spasm of my character while in real time I get to feel awesome about him being able to absorb so many bullets. Then again I probably just svck at that kind of thing but that's not my point... My point is: RT is awesome, RT can not substitute TB, FO3 is not in any meaningful way TB (nor does it need to be) and TB is awesome.

Ditto.

In my case, I'm just not very "good" at real-time content in many cases. I get overwhelmed when there's lots of enemies on-screen to a certain extent. It's hard for me to roleplay someone who's a level 30 veteran of the Wasteland - a trained killer by that point, when I'm madly backpedalling and spraying bullets everywhere.

My character should be able to stay cool, calm, and collected; and be able to rationally plan the engagement - but it's my own limitations that holding that back and causing my PC to go "oh bloody hell!!!"

[=Sitruc"I'll interject to the spoiler(?) thus so"]

SPOILER>
Role Playing can be done in an empty room in the dark.
It can also be done with pens and dice (and a rule book)
And on a computer.
If its a good text interpreter, made by a clever developer...a very decent RPG can be made as a text only game;
can also include still pictures... can also include 2d animation; and 3d animations... Its all entirely optional.

[=Sitruc "Got that bit right, role-play can be in many mediums"]

Playing a role requires no immersion-what-so-ever. Jackie Gleason did it every week on live TV. He read the script, knew what Ralph the Bus driver would encounter and how he'd react.

[=Sitruc "He read the script and/or learned his lines. So what. He read or learned the script with no involvement of his brain/mind what-so-ever {yes, we've seen his acting}, with no immersion {deep involvement in an activity} "]

He knew his lines for the role, but I suspect he could have done the entire show cold, completely ad-libbed and had a pretty close idea of exactly how Ralph would have reacted to the other characters in every single situation.
Role playing is knowing the role;
[=Sitruc "A scripted role that player/s might have taken it upon themselves to ad-lib - nothing new there"]

Knowing that your Cleric PC is phobic of mice and helpless around them; Knowing that your thief PC will break under temptation and pocket the easy bauble on the way out (causing the party to get caught, and into a fight). Role Playing could even be reduced to a printed multiple choice test asking "What would Mister Grumpy do here" a, b, c, or d "and there?" a, b, c, or d :shrug:

[=Sitruc "Yes ok so?"]

This is actually what's going on in RPG's when the NPC asks a question and the player selects a response. The idea is not, "What response do I feel like picking", but rather, "What would this particular PC say to this person (or creature)".
[=Sitruc "Er no. Not really. In Fallout3 RPG it is EXACTLY-What response do I feel like picking. The choice in Fallout3 is to play it any way you want"]

The visuals are completely irrelevant. The questions may be asked by an animated video game character, or by a wall of text, over the phone, or by a guy drinking Mountain Dew across the table behind an RPG manual.

[=Sitruc "The visuals are irrelevant to THE QUESTIONS
The visuals are relevant to scenario setting, also:-
The visuals are relevant to REALISTIC MOVEMENT

Ralph above, staggering about the stage with unrealistic movements (playing his role badly) would have got the boot.

The visuals are relevant to the likes of aiming a gun and hitting a target. Or are we going to say that is not role-play either?

We have been given a visual setting senario to play a role in Fallout3. It could have been described by text, but each person would have seen different views in their minds, and would be told by text in TB that your shot was a hit, whoopee!
But in real-time .. Er, real-time? ... YES, learn to read faster!!


That was fun, ."]
END SPOILER

Sure you CAN pick what ever you want, but are you staying in character? No.

Err whut? Gleason had the incredible ability to commit the entire script to memory, and just spout his lines on cue. I thought it was an impressive involvement of his mind.

I've not seen that definition of immersion, though I understand it. There is quite a distinction uncovered here with that wording... If immersion simply means "deep involvement in an activity", then nearly every turn based game ever made fully qualifies as immersive. Most TB players would attest that any TB game worth playing in one where you get deeply involved in the activity.

I'm not sure that I understand you here... That seems to contradict itself.
What I was describing was that Gleason knew the heart & soul of his Ralph character enough to slip into the role without a script; proposing that he could likely have been able to adlib the responses and reactions as Ralph live on tv, having never seen that night's script... :shrug: This is just a guess.
Though performance is a highly involved activity, it is not one where you forget where you are and believe that the props are real (barring occasional mistakes with potato ice cream. :icecream: )

It means that a role playing game need not afford low level simulation of every event in the character's experience. :shrug:

I'll gladly conceded this point when you convincingly apply it to Zork.

That was uncalled for :thumbsdown:
I've read every one of your posts and thoughtfully replied without derision of any kind. If I've not understood you I've said so, and where I think I have understood, I've replied with honest examples to illustrate my meaning.

The essence of it all (so far), appears to me that you believe that an RPG must put you on the field in the thick of it in real time to allow you the most realistic synthetic view of the setting and character; and that Turn Based combat detracts from this.
Where as I believe that there is no such requirement at all, and would ask you this... How would you role play a king?



QFT :thumbsup:

Just to say that when playing the role of a person shooting a rifle ... saying that aiming the rifle is NOT part of the role-play ... I find very strange in a video role play game.

One has to ask, what the is role-play then, just dialogue ... equally strange in my view when in a video game.
I see role-play in a video role play game as an extension of what would be capable in a text only game.


Absolutely. Before seeing your last reply, I re wrote the post after re reading it... assertaining that it was actually your opinions, not a quote from sombody else, which I thought initially. Otherwise I would not have been so impolite. I couldn't get into the post, it was refused at the time. Frig frig and double frig! Seems I'm saying all the wrong things lately ... I will try again to get the edits in, and clear off. All points have been made anyway and we don't see role play the same way.

Apologies for the unintended upset, I thought it was sombody else's outside quote and was free to say anything. I don't deride your views, they are valid views and opinions which I respect. Who is to say that mine are the only right ones, but my opinion is that they are of course, it's my opinion and it's interesting to argue the case.
EDIT Yeah managed to get in this time, don't think I missed anything. Bye.

How would you role play a king?

Tell me why, or rather... What, is the difference between pointing the rifle and killing the target (RT) ~and having eliminated the target/threat during your turn?
In the end, are both situations not that the threat was removed? Consider increasing the scope from low level simulation to high level abstraction where your action was not to eliminate one guard, but to eliminate an entire camp; and then again... Tell me what, is the difference between pointing the rifle and killing the targets (FPP/RT) ~and having eliminated the camp/threat during your turns?
Does the game really have to patiently depict the grizzly deaths of every member of the camp? (:rolleyes: :fallout: )...
Isn't it simpler (perhaps even faster :laugh: ) to just determine if the camp lost the battle?
Now if your PC was a king, and his in-character motivation was to eliminate a threat to his kingdom, what then is the difference from his perspective?

In the end [either way] it can be said that your king succeeded in destroying the camp, and his kingdom was made safer ~for a while. The king acted in character. :shrug:

*Basically the higher the scope of the RPG, the more viable turn based combat becomes; but it remains viable even at the lowest scope.

Do you mean ~What is "just dialog", as in with text RPG's? Have you ever played a MUD?
MUDs are multiplayer online dungeons where you make and play a (usually fantasy elf & dwarf kind of) character, and explore the labyrinth.
Inside you encounter NPC's and Player characters alike. You can talk and trade, and fight same as Diablo :shrug: (but its all text only).

Text based RPG's are equally valid, and (potentially) equally immersive as full motion FPP RPG's.
It is exactly (to the letter :rolleyes:) the same relationship that a movie has to a book. In fact...
They actually have books where you play the main character and make choices mid chapter that affect the turns (I mean twists) of the plot.
Some of these actually have combat in them where you may or may not survive the chapter ~serious.

This is exactly the type of involment I enjoy from Turn-Based games; and though I happen to be very good at shooter type games, that is not always what I want to play. Many moons ago I used to play a submarine game, I don’t remember the name, that was entirely text based. It was basically press R to get a report or C to issue a command and then the number keys were to specify which section (1-Sonar,2- Engine Room,3-Helm, ect …) you were talking to. I saw at the store that there is a brand new submarine game out and while I’m sure the company making it could use cutting edge 3D graphics, it’s probably not necessary as the game takes place within a windowless metal tube. I love this type of game because it challenges my intellect rather than my reflex. I spent a lot of time playing BattleMech games, not because I had a particular love for Mechs, but because it was more of what I wanted in a turn based game than what I got from Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy. Later on I would discover Wasteland and Fallout. I also thoroughly enjoyed the original Rainbow Six game because I would spend hours planning each aspect of the mission, which was always over in about 10 minutes. The Ghost Recon game took this idea to the next level by letting you make up the squad movements and way points on the fly, though you could still treat it as a FPS if you wanted. (I actually had a nightmare once that I was being arrested for war crimes and had to face a Court Marshal for some of my actions in Ghost Recon mission; now that my friends is immersion!) All this leads me to my next question. So much has been said about what makes an RPG; does a Turn-Based combat game have to also be Role-Play? I'm going to assume that most people will say no so what I'm really looking for is what else would you want to see dipicted as turn based. However you you think that Turn-Based games are intrinsically RPGs then I would like to hear those thoughts as well.

What exactly does RPing have anything to do with a discussion on turn based combat? The basic structure of quests in Fallout games has remained almost entirely unchanged throughout the series. Certainly it's evolved somewhat over time, but the combat system is almost entirely disjointed from NPC conversation.

But honestly, trying to decide which combat system is better is a bit of a pointless discussion. It's like trying to compare Command and Conquer and Advance Wars- they both work well in their own environments, but neither is intrinsically superior to the other. I'm sure if Bethesda wanted to make a killer turn based spinoff to Fallout on handhelds or something they could pull it off.

Well, as Gizmo has already pointed out, we already have a turn-based fighting game (which I think shows a lot of promise as something to be expanded upon over the years - I think there's a lot more you could do with a game like that than we've seen so far from them.) And I can't remember the name of it off-hand, but I remember a fun little browser-based game that was essentially a turn-based WWII dogfighting game that was kind of neat.

Honestly, I don't think there's really any particular genre that couldn't be given an interesting twist as a turn-based game. Obviously, I don't think every game on the market should be a turn-based one, but there are interesting things you could probably do with it - where it would be notable specifically as a change of pace from the tried and true formulas of a lot of the game types we take for granted. I mean, I've been totally hooked on Puzzle Quest 2, lately; and while there probably only needs to be one of that sort of game out at any time - it's still neat to see someone kind of turn the genre on it's head and give us something that's really quite original and yet works on so many levels.

I've been playing a lot of Blood Bowl, lately (big fan of the table top game since way back in my youth - so naturally I was stoked to see someone make a faithful conversion to PC for it,) so there's already a turn-based football game (or sorts) out there. Probably, if we looked hard enough, we could probably find a turn-based example of just about any genre under the sun already. I do know that the one thing I've been waiting for all my life (but seems like it will never become a reality) is a PC version of Car Wars - that could easily fill the role of a turn-based racing game quite easily (as many of the Autoduel tracks take the form of track-based racing, but with guns.)

So like I said, I don't think that all games out there could be made better by changing them to turn-based, but I do think there's potentially room for seeing in what ways that game mode could illuminate and revitalize just about any genre I could think of.

Not quite... but perhaps good enough for the interim... http://www.dark-wind.com/ ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=votjVfDK_OA

(:hehe:... and I officially stand corrected on the notion of Turn Based combat racing games.)

I think the inverse actually : Considering the importance of character skill over player skill in RPGs I believe that, in their 'purest' form, RPGs are intrinsically Turn-Based.

Too bad Interplay didn’t have something like this a decade ago. That would have made getting the Highwayman even more awesome than it already was!

You encounter a group of Road Raiders trying to hijack a truck load of energy cells.

or

Mr. Bishop don’t see no one without an appointment. And no one gets an appointment who ain’t a champion Death Racer

followed by

Mr. Salvatore believes that he can make a lot of money by betting on you in the next race. I say it would be more profitable, for both you and me, if I bet against you.

I'll give you an indisputable FACT.
Real time video RPG better represents the visual role play of a natural person than turn-base RPG does.

The understanding of role-play is very relevant to the question of viability of turn base play.

Video turn base play CANNOT represent properly, the natural visual role-play of the split-second reactions and counter reactions that occur during the visual combat engagement between two parties. Split-second reactions and counter reactions are constant occurrences during visual combat engagement.

It is not feasible to turn-base split second movement/actions. Real-time will be the only proper visual role-play representation. You only need to observe what is really happening in real-time play to understand that, and in real-time there are even random changes to contend with.

Real-time, with strategic and sensible play, the situation of being seemingly overwhelmed by a bunch of enemies can be easily resolved by tactically changing the situation to one of attrition, or just don't get in that situation in the first place.

Attrition is a far more fun alternative to turn-base play, it actually has some of the planned movement/action objectives of turn-base play but with better execution. However as will any military person tell you, "at first contact, plans will often go out of the window as you react to the situation".

Attrition by using ones brains and wits, really is so much more fun than turn-base play, admittedly turn-base play can be fun but in a drawn out less realistic way. There are some great turn-base board games out there. Turn-base role-play will probably, in time, become more a relic of the past similar to how text-base role-play did.

Video turn base play is in fact a role-play/puzzle-combat-action-movement game, a more descriptive title, a semi full role-play game that doesn't quite adopt the full extent of the visual role-play representations that the medium is capable of.

There will always be the few that will always prefer the video turn-base role play as of old, and there will always be video turn-base games along the lines of a board game, grid or no grid.

Is video turn base still viable? Not as viable as real-time for the more natural visual role-play representation of a natural person, such as during the likes of a visual combat engagement. Indisputable FACT.

It's what I've been saying all alone, to spell it out, shrug .

I believe that some who were involved in the making of the early turn-base Fallouts were also involved in the making of New Vegas, and as I understand it, New Vegas is NOT turn-base play ... which says it all.

That was fun.

That's true, but that's again delving to the land of "what is roleplaying?"

About reaction... To you Doom or Duke Nukem 3D (for example) might well be good cRPGs because they offer exactly what you're looking for (fluid movent and split-second reactions) - not saying that you do consider them as such, but the way you present your point, that could well be the case. But to some computer roleplaying is defined not by how fast the player reacts, but how fast the character can react - and the way I see it, that can be presented through turn based combat just fine through relating stats. As can natural movement through relating animations. It is just a question of design.

You prefer realtime twitching and that's fine. But it doesn't - by any means - make turnbased combat a less viable solution.