According to etc. I haven't picked this up yet but I was considering doing so when it hits a bigger sale.

You might suddenly realise that knockback abilities are perfect for pushing enemies into the range of AOE fireballs, for instance, or that the rogue’s ability to switch places with another character can change the course of a fight. You might even – whisper it – find yourself caring about armour ratings for the first time in your life.

“Not a lot of players slow down and look at all the armour ratings on enemies in real-time,” Sawyer says. “But in turn-based, if you’re a ninth-level wizard and have every element to cast from and the time to look around the battlefield, there’s a lot more deliberation.”

I admit that I didn't get very far in Pillars of Eternity just due to the sheer unfamiliarity of the rules system phasing me out after a certain point of time, and the real-time-with-pause combat system which worked well enough for me in D&D games just seemed to be a bit more confusing than I could deal with in PoE. So I wasn't super enthusiastic about jumping into PoE2...and I never did! Considering I still need to get through Divinity 2, I just haven't been bothered to make the time for it, but maybe I'll give it a whirl after this patch comes out. But that sounds like a pretty huge change to throw into a game almost a year after it comes out.

I'll give it a try when the patch hits, but I'm pretty unconvinced it's a good idea. Pillars has a lot of encounters that will likely be extremely tedious in turn-based mode. To do this right, I think you'd have to redesign a good bit of the game.

That's pretty cool. I never realized how many people really don't like RTwP. A lot of people I know won't play these games specifically because they think the combat sucks, yet they enjoy Divinity 2 and other turn-based RPGs. If this is as fleshed out as it sounds, it could get a lot of new players which is great.

I love this idea! It would be fantastic if they patched it into the first game as well! Having it turn based makes it feel more like a tabletop game and you can get more involved in the combat.

This doesn’t sound any fun at all but alright.

@frytup said:

Yep, this was my knee-jerk reaction. Part of what makes the Pillars combat at least bearable is how insanely fast you can shred through the MASS of encounters. It's what made Icewind Dale bearable too! That's not even to mention the really unbearable Pillars bonus/malus system that just feels like a badly designed ARPG. I'm wary of this but if it causes them to actually redesign some of the encounters then hell, I might play it again!

I wish there were more actually difficult encounters that required more than Select All - > Attack - > Buff if you want, without having to play on PoTD and just not have fun.

From what Josh Sawyer said, it sounds like you need to start a totally new game to play in turn-based, and you cannot switch between the two combat styles. That hopefully suggests they're going to tweak the encounters to make more sense for turn-based combat. I can't imagine going through the game as-is with combat slowed down that much.

I think this is great. I've come to seriously dislike real time with pausing in these games. Most recently, Pathfinder: Kingmaker was the game that made me realize this is just a bad system. I'm really liking Divinity: Original Sin 2 and that style of turn-based combat. My issue with real time with pause combat is that characters are moving and attacking at the same time, which makes setting up AoE spells and flanking maneuvers extremely difficult--so difficult, in some cases, as to make those tactics useless.

If they've done the work to rebalance the game while giving the player the choice of gameplay systems, that is an awesome way to support player choice.

I am all for turn-based systems for different reasons than most folks - I like to play with a magnifier on or ready to be kicked on for small fonts. So this is neat for me in a wildly unusual way and I'm all for it.

I assume this will come to the console versions as well? I've been holding out on either the Switch version or Xbox if it comes to game pass (which seems likely considering they're now an MS-owned studio).

That is a real strange way to go just for kicks, because of the way their core attack speed system is designed and like several dozen mechanics around it to boot.

For example every spell, action, attack has it's own base speed like say a 1.5s for a dagger or a 3.5 for a two handed sword. Then you have armor that adds a separate buffer of +x.x seconds between attacks on top of that. Spells have shorter or longer recovery times. Agility modifies your action speed by 10% for each points, but not the delay. Skills and perks that alter armor penalties. Dual wielding, perks, spells, etc, all affect the pace of actions constantly and usually by fractions of seconds.

They would have to do a LOT of rework to the underlying systems and progression of the game to fit this gimmick in. Never mind weapons, encounters, balance etc. No wonder you won't be able to switch on the fly, it'll be a very different game at the core combat wise. Neat I guess, i'm just not sure all that work will be justified financially wise.

If the combat encounters are truly rebalanced around the change (big IF), this could be the thing that gets me to finally get past Act I of the game. I find RTwP to be such a chore and have vastly preferred the games like D:OS 1 & 2, Wasteland 2, the Shadowrun games, etc. that are turn-based instead.

Still waiting for the console release!

I'm more interested in when it's getting a console release (switch?). But I played Pillars 1 basically turn based anyway with how often I paused.

Deadfire console ports (Xbox, PS4, Switch) were announced quite awhile ago. Still being developed as far as anyone knows, but no release date.

Generally speaking I actually prefer RTwP for these types of games, but on console turn-based would be significantly better. Doing all that on-the-fly party management without a mouse is not a good experience.