I am agree with Axsyrus and Mogura - it would be a bad preparation and design for such a big game, if the devs make this decision at such a late moment.
But anyway, the thread is up, and there are not few people, who come up with different opinions. Of course, I DO NOT KNOW THE RIGHT SOLUTION. But i am interested in the way, player like to fight. So i will bring in some questions/statements and everybody is free to talk about and hopefully correct me, where i am wrong.
1) Is true turnbased fighting really an option for a multiplayer rpg? That means, that every player involved in the same fight have to wait, until all other made their decisions. When your party sorcerer thinks 30 minutes about the question, if he should heal you or touch the undead opponent, and you wait on your monitor with a cup of coffee... can this be an option?
And that brings me to the real question:
2) Should there be a fixed combat round time or only a time pause for striking the weapon? So the question is, should i wait 6 second, until i am again on my way - like the introducer of this concept \"final fantasy 2\" till the newest one \"KotoR\". Or should it be like in Morrowind or Arx Fatalis - after my strike I am ready for the next one.
And one last thing to mentioned:
3) Has the fight to be more tactical and therefore dependent on your IG skills or should your personal reaction and keyboard+mouse skill come into play? To make this statement clearer: Should a simple click on the opponent start the complete fighting animation - like NWN for example? Or should it be like the Ultima Underworlds, where you can control the strength of the damage with the time pressing down the mouse button and the direction of the sword stroke is dependent of the direction of the screen mouse movement?
br, Winterheaven.
p.s. During writing this article i saw that whemyfield already come up with my doubts about this TB question... hopefully nobody will be disgruntled about this double post. ;)