Bruceswar wrote:If you will read my post on city mogul I have motioned that map to be removed over and over again. And even with freestyle you have the same simple rules.
1: Takes 3 Cards to make a set
2: Bonus cards still work the same way as seq.
3: You still roll the dice.
4: The only thing changed is the play order. And for an online game it works great since many people prefer the speed of freestyle rather than seq. With freestyle you are sure to have a turn every 24 hours. With seq it could take 6 or 7 days before you get another turn. It is not like you are all sitting around a table taking turns one after another. People have 24 hours to make a move(and rightly so) so with that said Freestyle offers a bit more real time feel that seq most times.
From a game design perspective, choosing sequential versus freestyle has no small difference in outcome. It goes well beyond the convenience of timely turns. It affects how you play down to some amazing minutia. Some examples...
In the realm of strategy computer games, you have two distinct categories. RTS vs TBS. RTS, or Real-Time Strategy, is you basic Command & Conquer or Warcraft. As fast as resources allow, you may act. There's no time to plan excessively and carefully once a game has begun, and the difference between winning and losing can come down to a fraction of a second it takes to click the mouse. TBS, or Turn-Based Strategy, is a different beast. Games like Heroes of Might and Magic or the very excellent Civilization series. You can plan with the utmost detail, and the outcome of a game hinges on making the correct decisions.
Real-time versus turn-based is also a large distinction among the RPG category. Compare Fallout 2 to Fallout 3. The mechanisms of playing are totally different. (Even discounting Fallout 3's FPS aspects, which are kind of necessary for the real-time aspect.) Or compare Fallout 2 to Diablo 2. One is a paced game of chess with time for consideration, the other is a click-fest of do-or-die hotkeys, respectively.
No, real-time versus turn-based is no small consideration for a game. It affects everything. If I played Risk in the same manner that I played a freestyle on Conquer Club, the game would resemble less the organized rules of baseball and more the chaos of Calvinball. Realistically, to play freestyle on a board game with the same results as Conquer Club is impossible.
Furthermore, fog of war is a huge change. Knowing exactly where and how strong your enemy stands will affect your style of play. Image playing laser tag, knowing one person guarded the entrance and two were inside. You knew exactly where they stood and where they faced. You'd have a decent shot of storming the place. Now imagine you could see the one guarding the door, but had no idea how many or where, if any, they stood inside. Suddenly any plan goes out the window.