Chairman Yang
if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
Fair enough. Let me expand my definition of "meaningful" to include combat encounters that aren't tactically interesting, but help with verisimilitude or a range of other things (character development in Torment, maybe). In that case, doesn't TB still work better than RTWP? You have the strengths of TB for the tactical fights. For the non-tactical fights, I'd say the combat system doesn't particularly matter, as long as it's quick. RTWP or a fast implementation of TB (even an Earthbound-style auto-kill) could both work.Chairman Yang, I won't dissect your post into individual points (partly because I'm on a business trip and shouldn't really spend too much of my time discussing RPG mechanics), but I thought it was an interesting read. However, a major thrust of your argument (and one that I often see in relation to combat systems) is that -- in essence -- every encounter should be meaningful, and thus, tactically challenging.
This seems obviously true at first glance (why have it otherwise?), but I do in fact disagree with it. Why? Just like leveled enemies in games like Skyrim, I feel not having "throwaway" encounters would negatively impact the cohesion of the presented world. Which is something I personally value more in an RPG than consistently challenging and tactical battles. Basically, it seems terribly unlikely for your party to never encounter an enemy or group of enemies significantly "weaker" than them. (Admittedly, the same is true in reverse, which is one thing that makes believable RPG stories so hard to construct)
And this is where I think comparisons to purely tactical or strategy games fail: in those games, battles that don't require constant tactical attention are a design flaw, so there is no need for a system which accommodates such battles.
A game with auto-pause, like Baldur's Gate 2, has to accommodate players who will play without that auto-pause. That means diluting the tactical thinking needed for most of the encounters, and that's indeed the case in Baldur's Gate 2. You don't need full control except in a few rare fights. So now you have the option to use auto-pause for a game where it's rarely required. You have lots of pausing metagame overhead with little benefit. That's my fundamental problem with over-pausing.
You're right that a turn-based system is, in essence, a forced auto-pause for every round. That's great, though! The designers can now assume that every player is going to be making a deliberate decision for every character in every round of combat, with all relevant information up-front and easily available. Encounters can be designed around that.
That's the crux of my argument for Torment being TB instead of RTWP. You get the full potential depth afforded by a TB system, without any extra pausing work by the player.
