CAPARO'S PROFILE

I think Divinity: Original Sin has a good example of 'changing the rules'.

During one of the battles where my party is fighting against fire-based enemies, my main characters were in trouble as they had been inflicted with the burning status effect, which not only damages them every turn, but also lowers their resist against further fire damage.

Luckily I had a rain scroll in my inventory, which I used. The rain subtly altered the battlefield terrain with puddles forming on the ground. But more importantly the rain had put out the burning status effects, which was downgraded to warm instead. Further burns my characters received only lasted for the immediate turn instead of the normal duration of 2 turns. This had changed the rules quite significantly.

Not only that, whenever the enemy used a fire skill targeting an area near a puddle, the fire interacted with the puddle and it became a cloud of mist. That mist cloud can easily be electrified (via thunder magic, stun arrow, etc) which stuns anyone that comes into contact with it. But that didn't stop my characters when I used the air shield scrolls that I had saved up, which granted protection against stun, which allowed my characters free movement whereas the enemies were often stunned as they tried to navigate through the static cloud.

Through the use of a few scrolls (scrolls are expensive though!), what was once an area filled with burning terrain and random fires everywhere (which benefited fire creatures as they healed while on fire) quickly became an environment that was hostile to the fire creatures.

Yes, I highly praise the deep level of environmental interaction in Divinity: Original Sin and how it has a significant, sometimes critical, effect on the battlefield.

author=Treason89
I see that the most appreciated systems are not only the most simple ones, but also the most similar ones to already existent and accepted systems.

Thanks to Treason for the insight. I was unaware of my subconscious thoughts until I read your comment; that when designing my battle system, it needed to be accessible to players - which ultimately resulted in a simple but similar system. Which still needs balancing and more diverse party members, probably with more restricted skill sets...

author=karins_soulkeeper

author=Hasvers
But clearly - anticipating a bit on my eventual blog post here - a system with soulkeeper's minimalistic pre-battle combinatorics, an environmental mechanism like your lens, azala's elegant way of making each action count on multiple planes, aegix' play of counterattacks and anticipations, and neversilent's game of substitution (among other interesting ideas seen here) would be much closer to my dream battle system than any single...

I don't think this was possible to do within a month, especially considering that 3/4 of that month is spent on procrastinating ;p

Haha, Hasvers, you expect too much ;p

Or conversely, all that together would result in a bloated and overcomplicated battle system

Divinity: Original Sin is a good tactical game to look at. It would fit into the spirit of the contest. Except for the part about enemies having pre-determined strengths and weaknesses, but weather effects (and other spell effects) can change all that to some degree.

@Hasvers: I can see my uploaded files in the event locker (when I click on the manage button)

@Kylaila: Thanks!

The AI is fairly competent, but not optimal. At least that's my experience during testing (biased assessment of own product :P ).

**Edit: Is it not enough to submit it via the 'submit' button on the contest page?

Gah, the AI. Oh the AI.

Its such a pain.

Default AI is too random. But scripted AI is too predictable.