[DESIGN] EFFECTIVE BATTLE MECHANICS FOR MY GAME

Alright guys!

So the objective of this thread is to discuss the combat mechanics of my game. I’ve reached a creative block and I think getting a fresh look at things from other people will allow me to see things differently and find a solution.

First things first:
So basically, following the first technical demo (the one available right now), one recurrent criticism was the lack of dynamism. This was because the game was a traditional, hardcore turn-based battle.

Since then (a few months ago) we’ve been working on making the game more dynamic. This resulted in losing the strategic aspect in favor for something action oriented, which is not what I wanted. So, as for now, I’m trying to find a middle ground between action and strategy.

Active Time Battle Alternative:
In older, FF games, ATB was the idea to have your ball fill up before you could act.

In my game, it’s a derivative from that.

Your energy bar fills up over time, just like an ATB would. The difference is that different actions have different energy costs. More potent actions take longer to charge up while the minor ones require less energy.

I like this mechanic and thin it will work wonderfully. But it's also part of the problem.

What’s the problem then?
The first problem is the energy regeneration rate. Basically, it needs to charge fast enough so that the player doesn’t have to wait idly to act in battle but it shouldn’t be so fast that every action is always available right away because you always have energy on hand. This one will be fixed via tweaking and beta testing.

The second problem is movement.
I like to have distance and range as part of battles. I think it’s fun and to use terrain to your advantage, using long-range abilities and so on. The implantation of this is more of a headache however.

The penalty for moving at the moment is that your energy doesn’t regenerate when you do.This means that you have to sacrifice energy regeneration time when you move in for a melee. You can of course wait until the enemy is nearby to use melee which would be more strategic. This again, can be tweaked with beta testing so I can see this getting resolved from player feedback an in-house testing.

The third problem is the offense/defense mechanic of things.
In Super Mario RPG, you know when the attack is coming because it uses an underlying turn based mechanics. You can then basically react and dodge and defend against assaults.

In my game, you don’t as there are not turns per se.

The problem I was facing is that I had no chance to dodge attacks as they were happening right in the middle of battle and were happening too fast, without warning.

The solution we found for this was Vagrant Story. It’s also a mechanic in
Batman and Mad Max I believe.

In these games, an exclamation mark appears when an attack is about to happen, so you can react to it. So when the player is about to be attacked, an exclamation mark appears on top of the foe.

The problem is that is went the other way so to speak. Attacks went from being unavoidable to easily parried because you know they’re coming. This is the one problem I have the most trouble with really.

So the question is:
How can I have a system in place which gives the player a chance to actively participate in battle in the offense/defense phases of things without making things too hard (attacks come too fast), too easy (attacks are telegraphed and easy to defend against) and without resorting to hard turn-based and sticking to the ATB derivative I have set in motion at this point in time?
That’s what I’d like to read about. How would you go about it? Have you played games that had similar mechanics and pulled off things well in that aspect?

Thanks for reading!

TT.