Design Question concerning Battles

[Sinzygy]

here's the current plan for doing battle:

Player can chose one of the following option: Attack (select skill), rest (gains stamina/mana), use item (whatever item that may be) or flee.

Now, vs. a monster this is a really nice system. But how can I implement it so that 2 players can fight each other.

My idea was to get away from the one-hit battle for player vs. player combat and do something like the following:

Each player can chose a set of actions while defending. This set has 6 slots, each of which can hold a different action. By default this is simply attack 6 times over.
The player can now alter this set with the following options: attack (he can put in a certain skill), use item (he can put in the item to use) or rest (to gain, once again, stamina and mana).
The player can also specify a certain set for attacking.
Now these two sets are ran agains each other for 2 repetitions, unless one of the combatants dies before the end of the 2 repetitions. The winner is the player who could inflict more damage than he took.

Now, has anyone a better suggestion that the above or maybe some additions to make this more fun?

[Shapulin]

maybe something mixed wit this?

http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,445.msg2753.html#msg2753

 

[Sinzygy]

no, I won't use something like this.

[Zeggy]

So, each player chooses a series of actions that will be performed and you see what happens?
Sounds good
I dunno how that would work out for the player selecting the actions though. It might not be too flexible, as in the player is limited in what he does.

[Sinzygy]

Combat will mostly consist of chosing a good strategy.

Each attack costs either stamina or mana, rest replenishes this and the player can heal himself with items.
So he has to calculate how many hits of one attack he can do before he needs to rest for one round (or more sometimes).

But yes, felxibility will be reduced. And I'm trying to find a way around this.

[Shapulin]

thats exactly what I was trying to say when I post the "Han Ken Pon battle system"..

maybe a 5 or 6 steps strategy..

a cycle of that estrategy that cost energy to attack or can repair the player by a defense...or maybe a evading movement with less energy lost...

and of course under that a formula with the cost and damage inflicted by the players...

if I attack and the defenses of the adversary are good...then my attack doesnt do 100% damage...

if a evade and my "evading skills" arent good anough....my evading move maybe isnt too efective...

a combination of battle formulas and a initial strategy can be a powerfull revolution in the battle system in the BB games...

[Sinzygy]

...

truegamepimp: I have looked at each of your 10 responses, here's a brief summary:

• Not a single answer is written in correct English. Is this some poor attempt at trying to be cool? If so: you failed. Miserably.
  
• You asked questions which were answered on the same page of the topic you posted in
• Not one single answer contained more than 1 line of text. Do you seriously believe that this will be helpful to anyone?
• You posted answers completely unrelated to anything said in the topics you answered in

In the future:
a) Write complete sentences. In proper English!
b) Don't post anything at all unless you have something of value to say.
c) Think about what you want to post.
d) Read what the others have already written.
e) Read it again.
f) Use the search engine.

[Chris]

As a side note, to my experience players do not care how the battle is handled. What they care about is the reward they can get. Take a look at Final Fantasy with its super advanced battle system with cool effects but laughable reward after victory and compare it with Diablo's one click system and random spoils of war. Which one is more appealing?

What you wrote would be OK for a duel game, where you just fight, but I'm not sure if it would be so cool for RPG. I mean, if you are talking about RPG around 95% of battles are one click/one slay type. Would you really find it attractive to click so many times fighting a mere rat or goblin?

[Zeggy]

Well, actually, I think turn-based battles are fun, as long as it allows you to actually use the turns to your advantage. You should be able to change equipment, heal using items, and make other tactical decisions to help you win a battle. And you could always add an 'auto-fight' feature for the lazier players

[Chris]

And you could always add an 'auto-fight' feature for the lazier players

Yeah, like me, I usually refuse to play games that do not have auto-fight

[Boozerbear]

Each player can chose a set of actions while defending. This set has 6 slots, each of which can hold a different action. By default this is simply attack 6 times over.
The player can now alter this set with the following options: attack (he can put in a certain skill), use item (he can put in the item to use) or rest (to gain, once again, stamina and mana).
The player can also specify a certain set for attacking.
Now these two sets are ran agains each other for 2 repetitions, unless one of the combatants dies before the end of the 2 repetitions. The winner is the player who could inflict more damage than he took.

I was considering something like this (except 3 banks of 10 action slots that triggered depending on range), and instead came up with a Beserker-style random PvP action format, mainly because I wanted to push out a PvP module quickly. I was going to go back and implement the more complex system later, but it turned out my users actually liked the more random style.

It's a single-click system, where if you enter a space sector and another player of a differing alignment than you is there, you have the choice to PvP or Sex0r them. if you choose PvP, a battle starts with the 2 players at a random distance away from each other. From there, a series of rounds begins.

for each round, the distance is measured, and an initiative roll happens based on one of your 8 basic stats (chosen at random). the player that wins the initiative roll takes action that round. The player that wins the initiative roll also accrues a 25% penalty against winning the next initiative roll, so even a very strong player attacking a very weak one will win no more than 4 initiative rolls in a row.

The player that wins the initiative roll for the round then has an attack randomly chosen from the options Right Hand (if weapon equipped), Left Hand (if weapon equipped) and DoppelPet (if you happen to have a little buddy). If none of these 3 options has sufficient range to cross the distance gap, then you Move Forward instead, attempting to close the gap to get within range of your weapons. Then the round ends and a new round begins.

This continues until either one combatant wins, both combatants die (vanishingly rare occurance), or the fight reaches 80 rounds and both combatants break off and go buy each other drinks.

Yes, very simple - and the tactical choices a player can make are limited to weapon choice, armor choice (also limited to the few suits that are spaceworthy), the 3 stats that can be micromanaged (fullness, drunkenness and horniness), and location/wingman (some weaker players travel in packs or keep a stronger society mate nearby while they're mining or trading, to protect them). In our game at least, this Beserker style PvP system has proven to be quite popular and is perceived as giving fair results by the players. While strong players win a lot, quite often weaker players win against stronger players if they get very lucky or make wiser preparation choices than the stronger players do.

I'm definately not saying that a complex PvP system is a bad thing, but I am saying that a simple one can prove more popular than you might expect, if you give it a chance (: