BATTLE SYSTEM IDEA

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Howdy ho y'all! Been a long while. Lately I've been thinking about battle systems, specifically a variation of the ATB system which incorporates more active elements, like a cross between an ATB system and the systems of Xenosaga, Legaia or SRW OG.

This system's base is the active bar which rises with time (can be modified through spells and the character's speed stat) which when full allows the selection of moves (as normal), the difference is that the moves will be mapped to different buttons and they can be chained. Now instead of a hard cap limited by AP or an arbitrary number I was thinking of a softcap. This cap would come in the form of a decay of the active bar, which would be slower than it fills up (also modified by spells/speed stat) allowing faster characters more attacks per turn.

As far as how chained attacks could work it could be a synergistic system whereby attacks of certain attributes buff the next attack in the combo with complimentary attributes (for a magic example chaining a water than a wind/lightning spell), with combos contributing to slowing active bar decay as well.

The one balance problem would be how to keep track of AB decay without making the player feel rushed, or as if they have two much time with one character. Anyway, looking for suggestions, people to tell me the idea is dumb, whatever. Let's talk about it.
booya->punch rush->booya->punch rush->booya->punch rush->booya->...
Yeah, there should be incentive not to spam attacks as well of course. Maybe something like combos lose their effectiveness the more you use them, so that you're encouraged to use a variety of moves per turn.
Faster characters have their ATB bar fill up faster, but also get more moves per turn as well? If I got that right, it means speed stacks with itself. Let's for simplicity's sake say that double speed = bar fills up twice as fast and gives twice as many moves. Then the character gets to act twice as often and each turn gets twice the moves for an end result of four times the moves due to double speed.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If you want to completely and utterly defeat the point of menu-based combat, and make your game unbelievably boring, one absolute sure-fire way to do that is to only give each character four skills and make them all just do different amounts and elements of damage.

Honestly, at the point you're at, just make your battles play like a fighting game, instead of having menu-based ATB battles.
author=Crystalgate
Faster characters have their ATB bar fill up faster, but also get more moves per turn as well? If I got that right, it means speed stacks with itself. Let's for simplicity's sake say that double speed = bar fills up twice as fast and gives twice as many moves. Then the character gets to act twice as often and each turn gets twice the moves for an end result of four times the moves due to double speed.


To be fair it could work better being speed independent. Altho I think it could work in a game where stats are allocated by the player, rather than one where they are automatically allocated.

author=LockeZ
If you want to completely and utterly defeat the point of menu-based combat, and make your game unbelievably boring, one absolute sure-fire way to do that is to only give each character four skills and make them all just do different amounts and elements of damage.


For you, I for one love the system's of Xenosaga, Legaia and SRW OG and think a faster version of those could work. Of course the actual amounts and types of attacks could be varied and the goal would be to make a faster paced system that still has a lot of thought put into how characters are built and play.
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