maybe you say its a very childish question but its important to me. untill last few days i thought there are just indie turn based games that have simple idea.

i had never played any final fantasy game before. some day ago a firnd said the new ff game is awsome and....(lots of suggestions)

when i bought the game and i ran the game i saw lots of high quality aimations and ninja fights and..... it was obvious that there was lots of work on game visuals but after i was just getting sleepy, the game play started and i saw a monster is waiting for my attack :D and there is just a menu to choose and option. there is no dynamics no complex interaction. not sophisticated a.i at all. there are many anticipated games like this. like child of light, south park: stick of truth or divinity.

the big question is: these game are not like chess that needs thinking and tactics. just choose a magic or move. what is hidden and deep in these games that attracts many peoples specially critics. as a shooter fan and devlopper i find nothing important and exciting in these games. i like to know your answer and idea about thes games.

thanks

maybe you say its a very childish question but its important to me. untill last few days i thought there are just indie turn based games that have simple idea.

i had never played any final fantasy game before. some day ago a firnd said the new ff game is awsome and....(lots of suggestions)

when i bought the game and i ran the game i saw lots of high quality aimations and ninja fights and..... it was obvious that there was lots of work on game visuals but after i was just getting sleepy, the game play started and i saw a monster is waiting for my attack and there is just a menu to choose and option. there is no dynamics no complex interaction. not sophisticated a.i at all. there are many anticipated games like this. like child of light, south park: stick of truth or divinity.

the big question is: these game are not like chess that needs thinking and tactics. just choose a magic or move. what is hidden and deep in these games that attracts many peoples specially critics. as a shooter fan and devlopper i find nothing important and exciting in these games. i like to know your answer and idea about thes games.

thanks

Because it removes the skill barrier from enjoying the stories, I'd think.

If it was an action game, people might feel pressured to perform better with their play.

I have fond memories of turn based RPG's like that, but they're just not enough for me anymore. Child of light has some great reviews, but I find it boring. I'd love to see a come-back of that kind of game, but with the deep strategy and tactics you mentioned. I'm imagining a game that would have the interesting decision making you get in a tactics game like Final Fantasy Tactics, or XCOM Enemy Unknown, but without positioning your units on a map.

the big question is: these game are not like chess that needs thinking and tactics. just choose a magic or move. what is hidden and deep in these games that attracts many peoples specially critics. as a shooter fan and devlopper i find nothing important and exciting in these games. i like to know your answer and idea about thes games.
thanks

Generally, difficulty in turn-based rpgs scales up considerably in time. Your arsenal of abilities/moves grows rather complex as does the enemy's as the game progresses. Obviously, there's room for disagreement whether certain games become tactics-based enough, but their complexity does usually grow. Early on, the battles can sometimes feel like a boring game of checkers, where you have one move. But, I think the good games usually expand into more of a chess-like experience.

Also, all that said, these types of games usually are heavily story-driven. The gameplay is just how the story is delivered. I agree that it should be fun, but these games don't rely entirely on gameplay, and often times people love the games despite misgivings about the way they've handled the battles.

*User experience may vary and all that. Not everyone has to like turn-based combat

Turn based combat is a problem solving exercise like solving a puzzle.

You have a wizard 80HP and a warrior 120HP, the enemy 500HP is immune to all kinds of melee damage.

Your spells do 100 damage per turn, the enemy does 40 damage per turn.

The above is a simple battle, animations and effects are just eye candy.

as a shooter fan and devlopper i find nothing important and exciting in these games.

As a shooter fan think of it like this. When you run around a corner and suddenly find a enemy, you then face a problem.

You are equipped with a sniper it can kill with single head shot or two body shots, reloading takes a full second.

Your enemy has a AK47 and spotted you first. What do you do?

As you can derive from the above, the only difference between a shooter and turn based combat is time.

Turn based combat takes those fourteen milliseconds and expands it over infinity, removing variables like reaction time and turning it into a pure intellectual problem.

Just because you remove a single element from a game won't make it less fun, for some players it would even be better.

I thought about this some more. As Scouting Ninja mentioned, the puzzle of a turn based game is what makes it fun. I like having a variety of abilities to choose from, and the puzzle of trying to figure out what abilities will work best for the situation. It's about trying to optimize your damage, while reducing the damage you take from opponents, and you have all the time you want to pick over the details. Tactical turn based games with a map work well with this, because in addition to a variety of abilities, you also have a wide variety of places you can move your characters, which can put different enemies in and out of range.

The trouble I find with many simple rpg's like you described, when you feel like you're just selecting attack over and over, is when the different attack options aren't that different. Maybe you have a few attacks, but do they do anything tactically different? Or do they just do an amount of damage, and it's obvious what you should do every turn? And if the game gets more advanced eventually, how many hours must I trudge through the boring stuff before I get to the good part?

well. you said very well my friends but there are something that i disagree. first you said a shooter and a turn based game are mostly the same but the time factor is deleted in turn based. i think most of turn based game give you time limitations just to prevent the game to be very slow. and you said in a shooter still you have to choice factor and im agree with it but a very important thing that makes it a shooter much better is skill factor. you should be able to aim faster, move faster and...

you said in most of turn based games, gameplay is not the main factor. its very important to tell the story. well i think in shooter games like call of duty, max payne, red dead, bioshock and half life you get much much better story rather than these turn based games.

im not completely against turn based but there is one game that gives you highest level of choce and tactics in turn based and that is rome:total war. in every turn you can send an spy to any country, you can choose to fight to each of them, you can rethreat, you can higher or lower taxes, you can upgrade your culture and so much more. but most of simple turn based games just looking for best choice for most damage i believe its not so much gameplay and even not so much story. sometimes i see critics admire these group games that i think i cant understand these games and they say call of duty is just a dull repetitive game.

It's kinda funny how you mention the story in shooters being good. I actually won't even buy shooters anymore because multiplayer feels repetitive and I always feel that thes story is just too short and is never even that good (Not to say that it's empirically bad, it's just funny because that's my main reason for hating them XD) I also never loved the FF series for gameplay, (they are a terrible example of Turn-Based mechanics imo, though I will admit to not having played them all, I have played older ones and more recent ones.) I think FF sells based on visuals and soke story elements.

However, as to what makes turn-based games so popular. There are different types:

-Menu-based combat: This can be a lot of fun late-game because you end up having to think several moves ahead as well as adjust based on each turn. Usually the full compexity of these systems is not revealed until the middle of the game when move-types and such come into play. Pokemon is a great example of menu-vased combat dons right. There are a lot of complex interactions between the pokemon, items, moveset, types and even their attitudes.

-Turn-based: Some games are turn based in the actions that can be performed. These games are usually popular because the user has a limited number of actions that they can perform in a set amount of time. Usually one action per one turn. They can have ridculous complexity (Nethack) or managable Complexity (FTL). Nethack has an insane number of interactions possible between different items and monster and I would highly reccomend you learn to play (mastering the controls is a skill by itself) or at least read some spoilers for it.

Turn-based games just allow ghe player to think more about their next move and weigh all the possibilities, while shooters allow this to a limited extent. I think people look down on shooters because they don't require the same level of planning, though shootersdo require a high information processig speed and can achieve the same high-level play as a turn-based gsme. Though I think turn-based games tend to more complex (and again, FF is a horrible example of this imo) and thus can get a higher depth easier but at the expense of a high playerbase.

I think this also needs to be clarified: Some games are about mechanics, some are about story. Chess is about mastering the mechanics with zero story, whereas point-and-click adevtures are about story with zero mechanics. Some.of your examples are mismatched in this degree: Bioshock was mostly about story with very little mechanical mastery needed (as I recall, though I did not play the entire game), while games like Half-Life have a very good mix. Other real-time games like League of Legends have little story and a LOT of mechanical depth to them. Whereas Nethack has little story and tons of mechanics, and Dragon Quest is light on mechanics but heavy on story. (To some degree at least).

It is true that the FF games don't very well demonstrate the possible depth and complexity that turn-based allows. I recommend you pick up something like Divinity: Original Sin. The interactions between elements, environmental conditions, etc can get deep. Break a barrel of oil to create an oil slick so your enemies slip and stumble. Light it on fire with a fireball spell to incinerate the confused foes. Extinguish the flames with a conjured rain storm and create a bank of fog to hide within. Cast lightning at the water they are now standing in to electrocute the whole group.

Once you've played a "good" turn based game, it's hard to go back to the basic FF-type.

The basic and most important difference between a turn-based game and an action game is, that turn-based games are all about decision making (tactically or strategically) and action games are more about re-action and less decision making (during the action part of the game). The difference between reaction and decision is, that you don't think about your options you have when reacting. The following is something you do almost everytime in a turn-based game, but seldomly in an action game, at least if you want to win:

Should I take my pistol to shoot the opponent jumping around the corner or take the knife to safe some bullets

or shall I switch to a grenade because there's an ammo box around the corner.

A turn based game, regardless if it is a shooter or not, is about choosing an optimized decision path, whereas in a action game you need to choose the best time/effect combo. Therefor you can increase the challenge of an encounter in a turn-based games which would be almost impossible in an action game.