CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

The rule manipulation idea requires that different situations occurs where different rule manipulations are useful. In the Divinity: Original Sin example, the trick with creating electrified mist would quickly lose it's novelty if it were useful and usable in every single fight. Generally, manipulating rules must interact with the action of the enemies and not only with the player. Rule manipulating that interact with player actions only leads to the player just repeating the same rule manipulation for every battle.

Cap_H's Mace Blue Arena: This looked more like a joke than a serious entry. That or it's an experiment in how basic you can go. If it's the latter, it's too basic to do anything with.

Marrend's Oracle of Askigaga Duel test: Works as a minigame type of battle, but not as a main mean of combat, just like Suikoden handles it. There's no room for depth, either battles are random or the player is guaranteed to pick the right choice. It's also an unbalanced rock, paper and scissors type of system, defense is clearly the strongest option. You take half damage if you lose and deal twice if you win, or something like that.

In general, a rock, paper and scissors type of system is only meaningful if there a way to coerce the enemies into choosing or not choosing a certain type of option and doing so is a challenge. Alternatively, matching choices by itself is a challenge such as a tactical battle system where you may need clever positioning to be able to both hit the enemies with advantageous units and stop them from doing the same to you. Either way, by itself rock, paper and scissors doesn't leave any room for depth.

NeverSilent's The Campaign: I can see the idea working. I didn't go far, the game crashed and I didn't try again, but from what I've seen, the idea seems viable.

I would drop the whole "everyone has their unique system for determining what skills are available" idea. It's added complexity with no added yield in depth. One or two well thought trough different resource systems is better than five half assed ones. The idea with three front row characters fighting one on one with the enemies and two support looks really flexible though. The main advantage it has over the vanilla JRPG battle is that since you can't single out enemies one after another, you have to in a greater extent actually deal with the threat they poses. That and the no easy healing. I can see a lot of potential from it.

If you were to make a full game out of it, then either battles need to be shorter or you need to make sure it's very reactive. The latter means that even if you're fighting the same set of enemies round six as you did the previous five rounds, you are forced to react to different threats since the enemies choose different actions. Pulling something like that off does seem easier with your battle system than the vanilla JRPG battle system.

I've given a few entries a go. There's some interesting ideas here.

AegixDrakan's Delusions of Duty: It's a very good entry on it's own. It better captured the feeling of two (fictional) swordsmen fighting each other than any other turn based system I've seen. I am however questioning the flexibility of this system. Can you use it to create multiple different battles? Will it amount to more than finding a strong order of skills and trying to repeat them as often as possible? Is there also a good way to scale the number of skills down and then gradually unlocking more and more as the game goes on so to not overwhelm the player?

azalathemad's entry: So far the one who shows the most depth. It's a simple idea with many possible options. I can't tell for certain, but I think you could get it to work with many different setup of friendly and hostile monsters. I also think it's possible to create battles with multiple different strategies. It's all speculation though.

caparo's entry: Many different options, but I felt it just boiled down to finding whatever causes the most damage. You have a huge skill list, but very little depth.

Cap_H's Mace Blue Arena: Clicking the link gave me only jargon. 7z��'����'�u�����%�������!]�+�����x�����/!@qz_s�~�W��$�ї��Gx�bOCv��ď�p�F$м���?���/I��jn$���

Karin's soulkeeper's entry: I'm not a big fan of clicking wait until cooldowns goes down. The skill selection also seems too small. You win or lose entirely based on what you do between the battles, once a battle starts, the best tactic is obvious. I'm thinking that the cooldown system may have worked better with a bigger skill pool and multiple party members.

I think I'll cover the other entries later.

Why not give a piece of equipment that's not available until the next town? That's the easiest way to ensure it will be useful.

As for the question asked, the problem with letting the player choose is that it makes no sense. It also makes them sameish although that's certainly not worse than useless loot.

I have no problem with games with low tech graphics, like earlier Ultima games, but I can't stand it if the visuals are actually bad. Basically, I tolerate bad graphics, but not bad visuals.