JA2 Reloaded - No TB Combat!

[DArtagnan]

I came to turn-based games quite late - in fact I only played my 1st turn-based game after playing BG. It was a revelation - and I loved it! I loved ToEE because it had a workable turn-based system that did not really slow combat thatmuch and mapped so well to table top DnD - so good TB combat can be done. I really don't see why so many people find it distateful - I also know quite a few younger gamers who enjoy turn-based games (of all sorts). I'm not sure how representative they are though.

It's not really a question of age, but a question of the level of interest.

Most mainstream gamers are not into games for the same reasons enthusiasts are. They're (generally) looking for something that doesn't require a big investment, and which is more like an interactive movie or a cute puzzler, than a complex and demanding game.

Not because they're stupid, but because they just don't care. I can't blame them.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Strange how many devs seems to neglect old fans for new players, that they don't even know exists..

Because there's sooooo many newer players … The "newer generation(s)", as I call them.

They are heading for them, not for the "older gamers".

Obviously, the "modern" audience won't appreciate the advantages of a traditional turn-based combat system. They're not used to that, and they don't have the history of such games to "teach them" why it can be great fun with a little patience.

This reminds me of the "Ultima = Unplayable" thing we had recently here.

People are no more used to invest time into games ...

 

[screeg]

Opinion: the developer never intended to create a turn-based game. They put up a thread inviting people to gripe about JA2's combat system and suggest changes. Die-hard fans said it worked fine the way it was, with a few tiny suggestions here and there (like field of view).

Result: After careful deliberation and consulting with fans, we've decided to go real-time-with-pause.

What's sad is that developers constantly try to cast this huge net and catch all the casual gamers, when if somebody actually took a little risk and created something unusual, like... I don't know... a turn-based strategy game based on a wildly popular franchise, they might have a surprise hit on their hands, instead of an unsurprising mediocrity.

 

[JemyM]

I'm talking about JA2's interface which is the whole point of this damn thread.

I thought you spoke about the "world" interface, not the local one.

So TOEE wasn't turnbased? I wasn't talking about co-op. I was talking about improving the TB games.

Can't read what you quoted on the mobile but of course ToEE is turnbased and I wasn't talking about co-op.

TOEE got rid of so much of the bordom associated with TB games, by making it so you can keymap almost any key on your keyboard and by having all enemies that are grouped together to take their turn instead of having to wait for them one by one. Then it's your next characters turn. That saved so much time.

Granted that there are lesser and better tb.

Have you played JA2. Just curious because you keep referencing games that have almost nothing in common with that game.

One of my favorite games of all time.

Except for UFO……thank you for reminding me of the UFO series So you prefer UFO over X-com then because of it's quasi-turnbased/real-time mode? I like the UFO series, but they needed to make it turnbased.

I never bothered about the third. The things I enjoyed the most wasn't related to TB. They could have made UFO rt/pauseable without loosing what I liked about the game. Moving each character one by one in turns was a nightmare on some maps, like the trawlers in UFO2.
I also skipped Fallout Tactics.

As for being completely unaware to them, you are in a sense. You know they are there, but you do not know where. Unless the player is so stupid as to think that attacking a hostile area will be completely free of enemies. Even in the real world I do believe that soldiers would be aware that they are in hostile territory and that there are enemies all around them.

Actually, all you need is the atmosphere. You can have zero enemies in an area and still hold the player on his/her toes without knowing if they are going to be attacked out of nowhere or not.

With this new JA2R BS you will know where everyone is on the field. It strips the game of one basic element I enjoyed. Then it stripped it again with making it realtime.

I put my reputation at risk for questioning turnbased, just as I accepted first-person in Fallout 3. I can accept non-turnbased if it's possible to micro-manage tactics. Pause isn't realtime. This is more BG than Starcraft. I can accept that. And if the game is craptastic, hey it's one less game I have to play. I already beated JA2 anyway.

 

[blatantninja]

They're trying to catch new customers with it.
Probably due to the bad image turn-based combat has - "uh, so boring" and such stuff.

I don't find turn-based boring, but unless the entire game functions like that, I find it to be a bit disjointing. So Eschelon was turn based the entire time and that was fine (though I didn't like the game overall, the combat was fine), but I could never get into ToEE because it would switch all of the sudden from this real time environment to complete turn based when you entered combat. It was kind of a shock.

 

[booboo]

I Wish someone had taken the ToEE engine, fixed it up a little and placed it into a more intetesting module than ToEE - but I lobed the engine - 5-foot steps, the works. But I suppose I really enjoy table-top DnD so it was pretty much a no brainer. I did play the Co8 extensions - but i want an entire, unrelated module - like "against the giants", or "vault of the drow" - that would be bloody amazing! The drow are always excellent villains....

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I knew TOEE would be turn-based, so this was not a shock for me.
And I bought it because of that.

 

[LuckyCarbon]

I don't get. I really don't. I said the same thing with Fallout 3. Why buy the license to game so old that the only people who remember it are the people who are going to want the same gameplay and then completely change it? The same people who like Fallout 3 would have liked it even if it had been called "DC went Boom!" or some silly generic name. They certainly didn't use any of the Fallout cannon effectively, so why bother?

The Jagged Alliance series wasn't nearly as big a name or as popular as the Fallout name. Why buy the license if you're not going to make a JA game? All your press is going to be negative. Calling this JA3 would have been bad enough but JA2 "Reloaded", implies it's the same game with a fresh paint job.

Do they really expect to sell more copies with another badly done RTS competing with the Starcrafts of the world than with a niche game that would guarantee you a sale to every fan of the genre?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

[blatantninja]

I knew TOEE would be turn-based, so this was not a shock for me.
And I bought it because of that.

Yeah, when I bought it, I don't think I really knew the difference between turn based and real time turn based because I hadn't played a turn based game since Ultima VI (I mean I knew the difference playing them, but not in the terms), so I assumed it was functionally the same as the IE games.

 

[tolknaz]

What is the point of taking a relatively obscure franchise and "reimagining" it, so that the original target audience vilifies it? These idiots have absolutely zero chance to turn this into a mainstream success and seeing that they piss off their target audience like that, also zero chance to achieve niche success. I guess they'll blame piracy in the end.

 

[screeg]

I Wish someone had taken the ToEE engine, fixed it up a little and placed it into a more intetesting module than ToEE - but I lobed the engine - 5-foot steps, the works. But I suppose I really enjoy table-top DnD so it was pretty much a no brainer. I did play the Co8 extensions - but i want an entire, unrelated module - like "against the giants", or "vault of the drow" - that would be bloody amazing! The drow are always excellent villains….

Somebody did do this. It,s called Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[BillSeurer]

(all IMO of course)

There's a subtle but important difference in FO1/2 >> FO3/NV and JA2 >> JA2Reloaded.

What made FO 1/2 so great was the plot and setting. The whole game is based around that. The combat system (and SPECIAL for that matter) were OK but flawed. In fact, FO works great if you use GURPS for the game system, probably better than SPECIAL.

JA2 *is* the combat. The whole game is based around it. The setting and story are frankly both pretty "Meh". If you ran a different game system in Arulco using the same "liberate the country" scenario it just wouldn't be right.

 

[LuckyCarbon]

There's a subtle but important difference in FO1/2 >> FO3/NV and JA2 >> JA2Reloaded.

What made FO 1/2 so great was the plot and setting. The whole game is based around that. The combat system (and SPECIAL for that matter) were OK but flawed.

Fair enough Bill, fair enough. But I'd argue that quality writing and dark humor were also integral to Fallout 1 & 2 and Bethesda completely abandoned those. It's not like Fallout is the only fiction or even game to use the post-nuclear wasteland setting. Fallout was special from the 50s future vision of that world, and from what I've read, Bethesda totally didn't get that.

Tangent aside though, we agree, JA without TBS isn't JA.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

What is the point of taking a relatively obscure franchise and "reimagining" it, so that the original target audience vilifies it?

Brand name. It's nothing but about the brand name.

Now EVERYONE has heard about it. "They say. it's a CLASSIC !" - This is what branding is imho essentially about. Like Shakespeare. Everyone knows him, but few people (compared to the overall masses) actually read his works.

 

[BillSeurer]

Fair enough Bill, fair enough. But I'd argue that quality writing and dark humor were also integral to Fallout 1 & 2 and Bethesda completely abandoned those.

I include the writing in the plot so yeah.

 

[booboo]

Somebody did do this. It,s called Keep on the Borderlands.

Really? I vaguely recall seeing something, but I thought that project had died. Did it just reuse the assets of the original game, or was there a lot of new content?

EDIT: I see there was a demo, but the actual mod seems to be quite far from completion. sadly.

 

[tolknaz]

Brand name. It's nothing but about the brand name.

Now EVERYONE has heard about it. "They say. it's a CLASSIC !" - This is what branding is imho essentially about. Like Shakespeare. Everyone knows him, but few people (compared to the overall masses) actually read his works.

Yeah, but like i said JA is a very obscure brand compared to most recent and future franchise resurrections like Fallout, Thief, Deus Ex or X-COM. JA is the kind of brand, that has a very specific target market. If you as a developer fail to excite that target niche, that comes with the brand, you are essentially risking creating a submarine with sails, because creating a new target market from scratch is an extremely tricky business in this industry.

 

[BillSeurer]

Really? I vaguely recall seeing something, but I thought that project had died. Did it just reuse the assets of the original game, or was there a lot of new content?

EDIT: I see there was a demo, but the actual mod seems to be quite far from completion. sadly.

And Keep from the Borderlands is another piss poor module to adapt for the same reasons that ToEE was a bad choice.

 

[skavenhorde]

I put my reputation at risk for questioning turnbased, just as I accepted first-person in Fallout 3. I can accept non-turnbased if it's possible to micro-manage tactics. Pause isn't realtime. This is more BG than Starcraft. I can accept that. And if the game is craptastic, hey it's one less game I have to play. I already beated JA2 anyway.

Jemym, are you kidding me? Reputation at risk? You are not a reporter or even a politician and if you are wrong people will still read your comments without thinking "He's such a dumbass because he was wrong about JA2R."

Dartagnan may enjoy these debates that go on forever, but I do not. Suffice it to say I strongly disagree with you. I've given you enough reasons why. If that is not enough for you then go read the other forums where this game is being discussed. Almost every post is similar to mine because I, like them, loved the gameplay of Jagged Alliance 2. The story and characters were fine, but the TB combat was second to none out there. If they had mixed in some of the elements from TOEE's system it would have been perfect, but they didn't and went with this "Plan & Go" craziness.

All I can say is if you buy it then I hope you enjoy what you get.

 

[JemyM]

JA2 *is* the combat. The whole game is based around it. The setting and story are frankly both pretty "Meh". If you ran a different game system in Arulco using the same "liberate the country" scenario it just wouldn't be right.

What I enjoyed the most with JA2 is that it's the only partybased rpg-style game I know that is set in the real modern world. The guns and equipment you loot and use, and the combat etc, is thus quite different from a traditional fantasy or sci-fi setting. The setting is different by being normal.