That's where you're wrong. Why the hell should the dev make an autoplay feature for the person who doesn't even want to touch the core gameplay in the first place? They're the ones who chose to skip it, so missing some in-battle dialogue is only a matter of course. Plus, not many dialogue take place during the poker game anyway, one or two missed lines isn't going to kill your whole experience. Also, what if the auto play Poker game drags on to 30 minutes because the AIs on both sides are a dumbass? Even ten minutes is a pain already because the player is required to do NOTHING during that period! That in my opinion is what truly ruins the experience!
Seriously, it's the dev's choice but making an auto play feature is ridiculous in my opinion.
The auto-play functionality was thankfully simple enough to make; one thing I do need to do is guard optional dialog from the allies (for example, Dylan will reference undead dogs the first time you use him.... that would be bad if the player autoplays / doesn't click him, and the next time you're facing a defiler. So I need that system anyway.
I can't just *skip* the dialog, unfortunately (well, I could, but we'd end up with all kinds of continuity issues down the road). For example, on the first combat, Emily speaks to you three times (one on round 2, one when you drop below 1/2 health, one when youi win). If I just auto-advanced, those dialog segments would either have to be discarded somehow, or they'd play back-to-back once the combat ended, which would sound/look weird.
One thing the AI doesn't (currently) do is use the allies. Since they become an increasingly central part of the game in Act II, I need a way around that. I could make "do something" be a button you pressed, which would allow you to use your allied powers as well. I could try to auto-use allies, but while Dylan and Katie are trivial (heal ME, fireball THE OTHER DUDE) once you start adding sorcery into the mix, the logic required will become non-trivial fast.
It's been a common refrain that a substantial portion of the userbase hates subgames... it makes me a little sad, since I obviously spent hours and hours making the poker minigame, but I also don't want people to just turn off the game because they hate poker. Maybe one easy solution is to have a "help me" button somewhere that , if clicked, will just do whatever the AI thinks the best move will be.
