while some people would like to have it turn based, other say that continual is the way to go,

I pick continual, because in life, you cant stop somthing from growing, just because you wish it to

Foomer wrote:

This is one of those questions I just have to ask everyone's opinion of. If you were playing a game that consisted mostly of managing something, would you rather have that something able to grow on it's own, as in, you just watch it go while you go off and make lunch, and assuming there aren't any disasters, they'll have kept growing when you get back. The only competition would be to get yours to grow faster than everyone else's. OR, would you prefer to be able to monitor everything that happens to your creation?

I'm just curious what people prefer.

As anyone who's taken a look at my own games' turn structures (even though I only have two), I prefer automatic but not realtime games.

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A simple solution might be just having a turn based system that, rather than just moving each turn then the other players move, you simply build up "turn points" which you can use at any time. This would make it so that you aren't forced to stay on the game, but you are also able to micromanage your creation whenever you feel like spending those turn points.

I've never liked those games. The turn points just become an exploitable commodity as players figure out exactly how many turns you should have built up and exactly how many you should spend doing what in whatever task you might be pursuing. (Of course, ridiculously simple games notwithstanding, they won't find exact amounts, but they'll get too close for comfort, in my opinion). I think a better option would be a powerful, flexible system for assigning delayed orders and prioritizing common tasks, so that you can write up a guideline for how your creation should grow, then go off and do other things while it does so.

I disagree, well at least in one case. For certain games that require a lot of people to be playing, turn based simply takes to long for you to be able to take your turn. A good solution to this problem is to use turn points. Some games actually turn out really well with this system, such as the old BBS Trade Wars game.

Yes, and as we all know, the only two possible alternatives are traditional one-at-a-time turns or turn points, and there's no way to possibly handle the matter in any other way. Simultaneous turns eliminate the issue of time at least as well as turn points do--the problem which turn points are best at solving is the fact that in a large game which runs continuously 24/7, almost no one can be around to take their turn at all hours of the day, and so simply hanging around the most gives a tremendous advantage. With turn points, theoretically this isn't the case, because everyone gets a certain number of actions which they can spend on their own time. However, of the games that I have played using this system, ludicrous discrepencies tend to pop up: someone can lay stagnant for a couple days and then spontaneously octuple their power by spending a couple hundred turns at once. You can shake off this tendency by severely limiting the number of turns you can stockpile, but that cripplingly penalizes players who have to spend a few days off. Sure, that only really matters in really really long-term games that can last for months... but those are exactly the games that tend to use turn point systems!

Now, of course it all comes down to designer preference... I don't like turn points because I don't like the way players so often can manipulate the turn system. Of course, in most of the turn-point-based games I've seen, manipulating the turn system is one of the players' favorite features. If you want playing turn points to be a significant element of the strategy beyond basic planning, then there's not a problem. My main beef with turn point systems is that their purpose is (in my understanding) supposed to be reducing the importance of timing and having 24/7 access to the game--they do reduce it in comparison to a standard turn-based system, but not as much as a good automated turn system potentially could.

Foomer wrote:

They also give you a chance to get up and use the bathroom in fast-paced turn-based games... (Sometimes, that's important!)

Bah! A true power gamer uses a bedpan! You can't waste precious time in the can when you could be clicking pbags.

Any thoughts on that concept?

Here's two free massive-multiplayer browser-based games that operate on very differenct concepts:

http://www.shadowmere.com
-- Players earn one turn every 30 minutes. Once you acquire a pool of turns, you spend them. All actions can use one turn point only, so there is nothing that prevents you from playing either on a once-per-day basis, or on an hour-by-hour basis.

http://games.swirve.com/utopia/
-- Players input orders for the next 24-hour period, and the server updates itself in real time every hour, which recalculates the user's finances and otherwise.

Both of these games are extremely popular, and I've tried each in turn before becoming bored with the tedium. It was fun, but there were too many disrespectful players who loved to abuse the system. Also, if you started playing the game, the instant you started to gain in rank or whatever someone more powerful than you would cowardly knock you back down, saving their own position, rather than challenging someone of more equal status.

While you might be looking on a smaller scale of time, as in five minutes per turn, or otherwise, those two methods have both been tried and they both draw in lots of people.


(I preferred Shadowmere, myself, because I had more control over my country. In Utopia you were forced to get along with the people of your kingdom (as you command a province in an already existing arbitrarily-grouped kingdom) or the entire outside world could defeat you in an instant, which they were trying to do most of the time anyway.)