Help Design an Action Combat System

[Tsukitsune]

Hey guys, so I'm currently designing a new combat system for Spectrum Seeker and was wondering if you could help me out with it.  I plan on putting up the request to have the system coded but I need to figure out everything that I want for it first.


A few things about my game that's important for the combat system:


Opposite colors oppose eachother (Yellow<>Purple, Red<>Green, and Orange<>Blue).


Red=Fire, Blue=Water, Green=Wind, Yellow=Lightning, Purple=Void, Orange=Earth.


Most of the enemies in my game are beings known as "Faded" (Enemy in the example below) and they all have cores inside them.  They have 3 phases:

• Null - Immune to color skills, any color used against it will be absorbed and then transform it into that color type. They can take physical damage.
  
• Color - Their color/element is representative of their core/s. They can take damage by physical attacks and elemental/color attacks except for their color type. So if you use a purple skill when the Faded is purple, it'll take reduced damage, some will reflect, some absorb, basically bad things, don't do it. You do however want to use the opposing color as it does extra damage and can shatter the faded if enough damage is dealt.  Also during this phase, if they expend all their PE they'll go back into the Null phase.
  
• Shattered -  Only with the opposing color will you be able to shatter the core. Shattering the core does several things, from stunning it, making it weaker, aswell as giving you PE. They also lose their color property, can be hit with any skill, and in general you just do more damage.
  

There are other regular monsters too. They will still have elements/colors however, just no cores. There are less of these that you'll encounter compared to Faded.


There's also Cultists/Humans that will have cores too, they'll function similar to Faded.


Basically Color and these Cores are main elements of the combat.

(Icons are just placeholder for the design mockup).


My current system has some things that are different but the core mechanics are still mainly the same boring front view based combat with a color gimmick thrown in. There wasn't a whole lot of depth, so while working on the UI design, I started getting different ideas and figure I'd completely change my combat system.  The above mockup are my ideas for the "new" system and I'll be referencing parts of it.


---

Ideas for the new system
​

Action based - not active timed battles, or turn battles, I mean you the player and the enemy will be actively attacking eachother using your skills. There'll be skill cooldowns, cast times, blocking, and more.  Why action based? I wanted to implement the a certain defend mechanic (I'll explain below), and it wouldn't work well with turn based due to the player just being able to spam block on all characters to have near 0 risk. With action however they'd have to time their defense.  I also just wanted to make an action front view system controlling 3 characters at once while casting spells and abilities, switching stances and defending with colors because I haven't seen anyone do this.


Character Switching - Since the combat is always active, you can switch between each character at any time with the arrow keys. So if one person is casting a spell, or mid attack animation you can switch to another character and have him attack too, or if someone is being attacked switch to defend. You'll have to manage up to 3 characters, all their skills, and defense.


ATK & DEF Stance - You start combat in attack stance (Z), and you can hit (Z) again to perform a regular attack.  Hit C and you can switch to defense.


In attack stance you have 6 skill hotkeys.


Skill Hotkeys - Each player will have 6 slots they can assign skills to (QWEASD), one for each color. Each color will have skills representative of that color/element aswell as being character specific. Players will have to be strategic in their selection of skills that they bring into battle. Not all are damage spells, some skills are buffs, debuffs, CC, etc. Remember that Faded cores can only be shattered with the opposing element. Skills also consume PE. So do you pick all attack skills or some buffs for auto attack that lasts multiple turns? There's potentially a lot of depth here.

• I'm still considering if I want it to be 6 or 12 skills per character, but I think 12 might be too much and be less strategy when building your skill set. With 6 per char, you'd have 18 total during battle already.  Not to mention there's ultimates too which I'll describe below.
  

Defense - In this stance you can't use your attack skills but you pick what color you're defending against (Ex. Hit (S) if they cast a purple skill) to mitigate damage. They're the same rules that apply as if you were attacking the enemy that I described at the top of the post. Successfully defending against a color attack builds PE (Prism Energy). 


Same controls as the attack stance (QWEASD). When you pick your color, your character will defend more a short amount of time before the defense animation is over (1-2 seconds). It'll also be put on a small cooldown timer (a few seconds) so you can't just spam defend and will have to time it.  Also you can do a normal physical defense by hitting (C) again, this only defends against physical attacks however.


Telegraphs - Enemies will have a telegraph when they're attacking or using a skill so you know who they're going to hit and you can prepare for it (It'll be in a form of an arrow at the bottom of the enemy battler to whatever they're attacking). The timing will vary depending on the difficulty of the enemy. So switch between characters and defend!


I decided on telegraphs right now because my battlers aren't animated..and I don't think I can afford to animate all of them.


No Mana!  The new combat doesn't use mana, but instead uses PE for all skills and Ultimates. You gain PE by shattering the enemies core or by successfully defending against the enemies color attack.  All players start each round with a certain amount of PE depending on their stats (It'll be a small pool to start the battle). PE doesn't carry over to other battles.


When you reach full PE, you have able to use your ultimate.


I'm also considering using counter attacks as another way to get PE, but not sure yet. Counter attacks would be using an opposing color skill against the enemy when they're casting their ability. So it'll be timing required. If I do add this, I'll probably make it so the enemy's attack gets interrupted too, or atleast a chance too.  Interrupt chance could also be a stat for the player?


Separate Ultimate Bar? - I also thought of separating the Ultimate from PE and letting it have it's own Bar off to the side that's global for all characters. So all players can contribute towards building it up and any could use it when it's full.


It would only fill by shattering the enemies core (which is like color going back into the world). Defending and Countering would only contribute to each individual characters PE bar and not the Ult bar in this case. If I go this route I may also let the player gain back PE just by doing damage to the core, since they wouldn't get any from shattering it.


Going this route also lets the player be more free in how he uses his PE... not sure if that's a good or bad thing.


Prism Break - At full PE gauge (or ultimate gauge) the Star HUD will glow and in the center will be a new button (X). Hit (X) and you will be prompted to input a color sequence (QWEASD). Input the right sequence for one of your ultimates and it will activate. ex. D>D>A (blue,blue,red) to use Flaming wave.  In the battle menu there is no skill list telling you what your combo is, so you'll have to remember it!  Each character will learn several ultimate skills. Two possible ways I'd want to design this.

1. Players have a multitude of ultimates 5+ towards mid game and beyond and can activate any of them as long as they remember the color combination. Sure they'd have to remember a lot but they have a much larger pool of skills.  They're also ultimates and they look really cool, Aesthetics enhancer. 
   
2. Players have a max of 1-3 ultimate skills they can use in combat.  The player will still learn a good number of ultimates they just can't bring more than 1-3 per character into battle. So they'll have to pick which ones are active. They'll still have to use the color combination, but there's less to remember and this way they'd have be strategic in what they bring with them. I don't know which is a good amount max between 1-3. Maybe increase the max amount depending on certain stages in the game? Upgrades?
   

Unlocking Skills - Tied to the combat system but separate as you can only access it outside of battle. You'll be able to unlock skills using Dust, a separate currency than gold. These are dropped by Faded and they're used to unlock and upgrade abilities. There'll be a menu for skills where it'll show the Spectrum Star and you pick a color that you want to view the skills to. You'll then see a number of skills, some are blank ??? that will be revealed upon hitting a certain level and the required level will be shown next to the icon. Once you hit the level and the skill is revealed, it's still inactive and not yet "learned". To learn the skill you have to use Dust. Skills can also be upgraded further using Dust. In this menu is also where you'd assign what skill goes into what skill color slot.

Other random thoughts
​

These ideas below are just random extra ideas I had that I'm not too sure if they'd be good to add or not.
​

Passives - I was thinking of having each character being able to have 1 passive skill that they can equip. Passive would be designed per character and still be unlocked via the above method.


Other Defense Utilities - Instead of just having Defense and picking a color only mitigating damage. I was thinking of maybe letting the player specialize what each color does.

• Reflect - If used successfully it will reflect the enemy's skill to a target of your choice. You do not gain PE and you take no damage. So you could reflect the enemy's attack to another Faded enemy of a different color. If you reflect it back though it won't do anything as mentioned before as they're the same color.
  
• Absorb - Same as original idea, character gains PE and mitigates damage.
  
• Counter - Instead of counter being tied to attack, I could tie it to defense. Player will take less damage or none? They'll also attack using a regular attack with the opposing color tied to it. 
  

This might just be adding too much at this point though so I'm really not planning on doing it. But it was a potential idea and I'd like your opinion if I should do it this way or not.


No Healing!? - That's crazy talk, go back to your corner evil dev! The plan for healing in the new system is to have healing spells on long cooldowns or cost high amounts of TP so they're not spammed because the player messes up. But I've also considered removing it entirely.


Health Fatigue - I was thinking of having the player regen their health after every battle but having a health fatigue thing too. That if a character dies, they'll have a small portion of their health that won't be restored for the next fight. It'll stack if they keep dying and the only way to regain the missing points is resting at an inn. 


Weapon color - Have some weapons deal color/elemental damage. It'll only affect the Basic Attack and not your actual color skills so there's no overlap.


Queue Multiple Skills - Let the player queue up multiple skills at a time on a character. Maybe max 3, so there's less downtime between casting and their characters can always be doing something. You can still Def, hitting defense will cancel all queued skills.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------


So those are my ideas for the new combat system. It's like a mix of modern RPG combat with the old frontview style aesthetics with mechanics related to my main theme of color.


I'd appreciate any and all input, what parts you liked, what you think doesn't work well together, anything new ideas you can think of to add, parts I should get rid of, anything at all!


After the design is finished I'll be able to post it up in classifieds. Would anyone be able to give me a price estimate on how much something like this would cost? I realize the system is rather complicated, it's also going to have animated backview battlers (character sprites), and something like that itself isn't cheap. I was thinking of around for $1,000-$1,500. Would that be a fair price or too much?


This is a very large post but I appreciate you taking your time to read and help me design this!

 

[LaFlibuste]

Sounds like a very interesting system! The color thing is a nice twist. The thing I'm mostly concerned about is the logic of the elements. Fire opposing wind? Lightning opposing void? What? It feels extremely unintuitive. A few ways you go could about this:


1) Drop the colors, but your game seems built around that, so not much of an option;


2) Dropping the classical greek-inpired elements altogether and replace them with something else. At it's base, it's a gameplay gimmick, anyway. If you want to add something aside from just the colors, maybe opposing virtues? Courage vs Prudence, Strength vs Tenacity, Passion vs Logic, that sort of thing.


3) Think of a different twist on elements. Red=energy (fire), blue=sky, green=land/ground/life/whatever, etc. Maybe there could be a way to make more sense of this.


4) Change the concept of opposing pairs and make it into a whole system. Two sub ideas:


   4.1) Technically, these color pairs are not so much opposing colors rather than complementary colors. Maybe wind & fire actually boost each other and their weaknesses are determined in some other way. Or the pairs just boost each other but each in different ways: red/green (fire/wind) is the power pair, blue/orange (water/earth) is the defence pair and yellow/purple (lightning/void) is the... I dunno, haha! Food for thought anyway.


   4.2) Have a triangular system: red & blue team up to smash/resist yellow, etc.


Anyway, I'll be brief on the conclusion 'cause I really gotta go, but just throwing some ideas out there because I think the lore is a bit off as is. Then again, feel free to disregard all of this

 

[Titanhex]

Sounds alright.

Here's what I'm thinking though. 


It's a rather new system. As any new system goes, you have to introduce your player into it. Unless you're good at proper mechanic introduction, which is an important part of game design, this will backfire.


Further, as design goes, any system can be good as long as the designer exercises the potential of that system. Scenarios in the game must support that system. The design of the battles and elements in this system must be supported by the gameplay. Not only should the core aesthetic support the battles, but the mechanics must also support it. When you create a battle, your battle should make you think about the system you have in place, and make you aware of the system, at least at the start. And it should be fun to think about.


Some systems are inherently easier to work with and have higher potential than others. Make sure this system is intuitive, and the player can do it.


One concern is the complexity of this system in terms of adding it to RPG Maker. I don't think you'll get it created. Not without money, and lots of it. However, consider using Yanfly's systems. The "Lunatic Mode" that he adds to his work gives a lot of versatility to his code. This can allow for more complex systems and calculations in battle, with minimal adjustment. You'll have access to more coding levels if a lot of the groundwork is already done.


Yanfly has a youtube channel that showcases all his scripts brilliantly. I suggest checking those out.



The rest is on you. Practice. Break things down into smaller parts, and organize them. Complete one task at a time. Use flowcharts, draw mock ups, and write down your ideas and save them all in a folder. (They don't have to all be in one document)

 

[Tsukitsune]

@LaFlibuste I figure Fire opposing wind on the basis that fires can grow and spread quicker with more oxygen/wind, fire tornado?  It's also a case where a strong enough wind can blow out a fire aswell.  That's my logic for that opposite combo. For Lightning and Void, lightning is practically light and void is essentially darkness but not entirely.  I wanted light to be all colors combined which is how it is in reality.  Darkness would be the absence of color.  Though I don't exactly have a mechanic for this or anything major in the story reflecting this either so I may just stick them into yellow and purple... Earth and Water because earth can absorb water into the ground and water over time can wittle away land.


1. Yup, that fact can't change unless I want to change the entire game completely.


2. Wouldn't that change nothing though? You're just renaming them to something else. It also doesn't reinforce the theme aswell as elements do, also makes it harder to create skills. What would a courage attack skill even look like?  I can think of possible buffs, but not an actual attack. 


3. I was sort of already planning to do this with the skills, I should of elaborated more. Red wouldn't only be fire attacks but will also be related to strength, fortitude, green=wind, agility, speed, Orange=Earth, defense, etc.


4. This would completely change the entire system, not only this new system but the way my Faded enemies cores work, plus other elements in the game. 


Thanks for your thoughts though! 


@Titanhex At the start the player will only be controlling one character and have 0 color skills. With only Z and C for them to press, they should be able to figure out how to basic attack and defend. 


Later I'll introduce them to the color mechanic and tell them about opposing colors.  By the time they're out of the intro area they should understand the basics via the other short tutorials.


The encounters/enemies I've thought of so far all have the core idea of opposing colors in mind. There was a big issue I was having with the Faded design though that I'll probably message you about later.


I realized this wouldn't be cheap, but I'm not sure how much it'd be either. Current budget is $1,500 but I'd be possibly willing to bump it up if needed.


---


Any thoughts on the separate Ult bar, max skills (6 or 12) per char, or the extra thoughts I've jotted down?

 

[Titanhex]

Well, the Ult Bar is something I saw on Yanfly's list of plugins. It functions similar to what you described, except it wasn't conditionally filled by destroying a core. I imagine a simple modification to the code would allow it though.


As far as it being a mechanic, it's fine. It comes with all the same caveats as any other addition.
My suggestion for any cool mechanic you want to implement is universal. Make it integral to the core mechanic it supports, to the point where it couldn't be removed with a major shift in game feel, or don't add it at all.


As it stands, I don't think it has enough substance within the games context. It either needs to be a bigger part of the game, or gone. Otherwise it takes away from other mechanics that do support the core gameplay far better.


Max Skills is both a balance mechanic and tactical mechanic. It falls under the universal suggestion I mentioned earlier. Big part, or chuck it.
Is your game about limitation? Is your game suppose to make the characters feel very cool, with access to power, or very human and limited? Does the narrative support limitation? Does the gameplay support limitation?


Is it about progress?


These are important questions to ask yourself. Does the design of the game support the narrative and theming of the game?


Does the mechanic enhance the gameplay itself?


Like I said, Yanfly has a lot of scripts that can easily be edited to fit your needs. There would be a lot of tweaking to do, but you could easily hit your goal with a 500$ budget or less using Yanfly's scripts and someone to modify them. However, be prepared to do research on what Yanfly plugins you need and setting them up.


Honestly, you can cut down on the budget if you know how to design technical systems and provide detailed documentation for implementation that would streamline the process for the coder, allowing them to simply write the code. (Bug fixing and testing, however, will always bloat the process)


By the way, I'm backing you up on renaming things as Virtues. It serves no other purpose than giving the game a new theme. It's largely pointless beyond that scope.


Keep the color theme going and make it a large part of the game.


Abstraction is a difficult concept to play with. It's why entertainment fields like writing, art, and movies have such a steep learning curve. The more you play with it, the better you'll get at it. Figuring out how to make colors a central part of your game, it's not an easy concept. Keep at it.


Unfortunately I can't offer you more than general advice. It's not my game. There are a lot of steps I took to get where I am, and I'm still a long way from being great. Those steps are essential, and I can't explain the way an abstract system should work without you having those same building blocks.

 

[Tsukitsune]

Well, the Ult Bar is something I saw on Yanfly's list of plugins. It functions similar to what you described, except it wasn't conditionally filled by destroying a core. I imagine a simple modification to the code would allow it though.


As far as it being a mechanic, it's fine. It comes with all the same caveats as any other addition.
My suggestion for any cool mechanic you want to implement is universal. Make it integral to the core mechanic it supports, to the point where it couldn't be removed with a major shift in game feel, or don't add it at all.


As it stands, I don't think it has enough substance within the games context. It either needs to be a bigger part of the game, or gone. Otherwise it takes away from other mechanics that do support the core gameplay far better.


Max Skills is both a balance mechanic and tactical mechanic. It falls under the universal suggestion I mentioned earlier. Big part, or chuck it.
Is your game about limitation? Is your game suppose to make the characters feel very cool, with access to power, or very human and limited? Does the narrative support limitation? Does the gameplay support limitation?


Is it about progress?


These are important questions to ask yourself. Does the design of the game support the narrative and theming of the game?


Does the mechanic enhance the gameplay itself?

For the combat I want the player to feel powerful but still having to be strategic in the abilities they choose and how they use them.  The purpose I have Ultimates is I want them to reinforce the Power aspect, so I guess I'll go with the 1st option of 5+ per char. Adding the Ultimate bar in the context of gameplay, it'd allow the player to access their ultimates more frequently since all 3 characters are contributing towards it. Going the route of tying Ultimates to max PE was to create more strategy in how they manage their resources and force them to not spam FireballX infinitum. If they did, they'd never get enough PE to Ultimate.  So I guess deciding which one to go with; Ultimate with PE or Ultimate with separate bar would just depend which aspect I want to reinforce more for the core gameplay. Power or Strategy?


Also the way Ultimates work, I created the color sequence part to reinforce the theme. Ultimates just like regular abilities will still be tied to a particular color aswell.


Did I understand you correctly with all of the above?  I'll be sure to keep those guidelines in mind.

Like I said, Yanfly has a lot of scripts that can easily be edited to fit your needs. There would be a lot of tweaking to do, but you could easily hit your goal with a 500$ budget or less using Yanfly's scripts and someone to modify them. However, be prepared to do research on what Yanfly plugins you need and setting them up.


Honestly, you can cut down on the budget if you know how to design technical systems and provide detailed documentation for implementation that would streamline the process for the coder, allowing them to simply write the code. (Bug fixing and testing, however, will always bloat the process)

I'll have to take a closer look at those others you mentioned. I have several of his currently, one of his combo combat systems I'm currently using for my Ultimates in my current setup. Design technical systems.. is that some part of code or just general game design stuff?

By the way, I'm backing you up on renaming things as Virtues. It serves no other purpose than giving the game a new theme. It's largely pointless beyond that scope.


Keep the color theme going and make it a large part of the game.


Abstraction is a difficult concept to play with. It's why entertainment fields like writing, art, and movies have such a steep learning curve. The more you play with it, the better you'll get at it. Figuring out how to make colors a central part of your game, it's not an easy concept. Keep at it.


Unfortunately I can't offer you more than general advice. It's not my game. There are a lot of steps I took to get where I am, and I'm still a long way from being great. Those steps are essential, and I can't explain the way an abstract system should work without you having those same building blocks.

Not at all, even your general advice is very helpful! Not only can I apply them to my combat system but for other parts of the game too. Thank you.

 

[Wavelength]

Alright, got a bit of time today to give this the thorough review I promised you.


I love the way you are connecting the battle mechanics to the motifs of your game - that's brilliant - and I think there are a lot of good ideas at play here that present a strong potential for a fun, fast, challenging combat system. As you refine the design, I feel a few of your most important goals to shoot for are:

• Allowing for a diversity of strategies
  
• Making everything as intuitive as possible
  
• Never leaving the player without resources or options
  
• Giving the player the best possible control over his characters' timing and actions
  

General thoughts about the Color and Core systems


I think this is a smart, intuitive set of mechanics, on the whole. It feels like it would be strongly coherent and consistent in-game, and I think it's smart that you're giving such obvious coloring to enemies that possess a certain element.


I'm assuming that the Faded (and enemies with Cores) will use different skills based on which Color they currently possess. Also assuming that most Faded will start in the "Null" state - some of my subsequent suggestions and concerns are contingent on this assumption.


It might not feel so good to expend a color skill cooldown (plus the PE cost) just to color a Null enemy. I think I understand the intent behind your idea here, but think about ways to make it a better experience for the player - for example, maybe color skills have a weakened effect on Null enemies (rather than no effect), or maybe they have no effect (except to change the enemy's color) but using your color skill in this way will refund most of the cooldown and PE used for the skill.


About the Shattered status – I would recommend having enemies with a shattered core eventually "repair" that core and move back into Null state - this will give a better sense of ebb and flow to battles once players have figured out the tricks to shattering enemies, instead of having the core shatter once and then you lose the cool Colors mechanic for the rest of battle. Bosses could repair their cores much faster than normal enemies (which might remain shattered for long enough to finish most of them).


The pattern you're setting up leads to a fairly obvious "basic optimal strategy" of using a color skill on an enemy, and then hitting it with the opposite color as soon as possible. This is not a bad thing on its own, but I feel it's important to make sure that it's not always the same pair of skills being used against enemies. You have six different colors, so consider ways to offer at least six different useful and situational options for a character so they don't fall into tired patterns. As an example, Lightning might contain a lot of disabling skills (Enervate, Paralyze, Blind) whereas Void might contain skills that make it easier to disable foes or take advantage of disables on foes (a skill that reduces an enemy's LUK to 0, a spell that deals more damage for each disable on the enemy, etc.). This means that against enemies you want to disable you can go Yellow -> Purple OR Purple -> Yellow, whereas another combination like Green -> Red might be good against enemies you want to directly damage instead of disable.


Perhaps some battle events or skills will change a creature's color to mix things up.


General thoughts about the action/real-time elements


Hoo boy. This has the potential to be really, really cool – a fast, furious, and visceral experience with a real element of skill – but this will undoubtedly be the hardest element of your system to design perfectly, not to mention probably the most expensive and time-consuming thing you will have to commission. So to be clear, I think I could love this system if you hit the right equation – it's right up my alley – and I understand how a lot of your other ideas are predicated on timing, but I would just say think twice about whether you're willing to take on this high level of risk and effort – if you decide it's not worth it, there are probably ways to implement most of what you're dreaming of into a turn-based system.


The way I understand your system (from bits and pieces scattered all over your post) is that real time passes as actions are taken or even as battlers remain idle. During this time, battlers charge and execute attacks, cooldowns tick down, and the player can give commands to any available character in any order. This all correct?


Your HUD and proposed control scheme sound very good for such a system. It looks like most actions only take one to two clicks, which is really useful for this kind of system. One thing I'd bring to your attention that could slow down the fast pace is the act of targeting enemies, assuming that the party is sometimes fighting more than a single enemy at once. Now you need to bring up the stance, choose the action via hotkey (good), move the cursor until it's on the enemy you want to hit, and confirm. That's a lot more clicks and I worry that players will lean toward skills that don't require targeting (especially if you make the pace fast enough that the characters can act as quickly as the player can give them commands). You could consider making every skill untargeted, perhaps – with skills either hitting an Area of Effect or choosing a target based on the skill and the battler's position (for example maybe a Fireball hits the closest enemy in a straight line in front of the battler). Or you can simply make sure players have enough “idle time” to be able to carefully choose their target in the normal way.


For the same reason, I recommend having only 6 (attack-stance) skills equipped to each actor at a given time. If you make it 12, you will force players to select the element and then the skill (or create an HUD with 12 skill hotkeys – probably too much), which means one to two extra clicks for each skill use.


Another interesting element to consider when you're making a system like this is the high variance in outcomes based on player skill. Some players are simply not going to be as good at managing multiple party members in a frenetic battle and blocking at the right times, whereas some will excel at it. In many genres (such as sports games, FPS, and competitive TBS) this reliance on skill is the whole point – in an RPG it's a riskier design decision because some players will be there because they want to experience a story of restoring color to a gray world. I personally love high skill dependency in my RPGs, but you should think about ways to relieve the pain for people who aren't good at it. Two initial ideas you could explore:

• Have difficulty levels that not only impact enemy stats, but also the pace of battle (at easier difficulty levels, enemies will attack less frequently, telegraph for longer, etc.)
  
• Avoid placing too much of your characters' “power budget” in skills and actions that require timing (that is, make sure a poor player could still do most of the damage that a great player can), but give better bonuses (e.g. more Dust) for players who use these advanced mechanics effectively.
  

Stances: Do attack/defense stances have any innate properties that make them different besides the actions that are available in each stance? Or put another way, if a character is not currently engaged in an action, will it ever matter which stance they're currently in?


Telegraphs: While it's asking way too much to animate the enemies entirely, you could consider a second model that's used when the enemy is charging a skill/attack and maybe even a third when they're actually using the skill. This isn't super-important, but might be a nice touch to increase the player's immersion and intuition if you can manage it without the transitions looking silly.


PE availability: I would strongly recommend having PE refill naturally over time during battle. Or if you don't want it to naturally refill, then restore it based on any damage dealt to enemies. Requiring the player to fulfill conditions like defending against a same-color attack in order to refill PE will create a miserable experience for people who don't develop a lot of skill in your combat system – they'll use a few skills at the beginning of battle and then they'll run out of PE and will be left doing less-cool things like repeated basic attacks. You can still give bonus PE (or Ultimate Points) for accomplishing these tasks, but make sure that even the worst players will be able to use an elemental skill for at least 50% of actions, if they're so inclined.


Counter-Attacks Interrupt Skill Use: I love this idea! I would say definitely include it if you can. I would advise against making it a chance to interrupt – doing everything right and watching the enemy unleash their skill will not feel good for the player. Make it a guaranteed interrupt, and let the enemies interrupt the player by doing this as well. If you find this is too powerful, then let a battler who has been interrupted re-cast the same skill with a somewhat shorter cast time or replace the interrupt with a “daze” that delays their cast momentarily then lets them continue. You could also have Critical Hits interrupt skill usage, which would be cool, though if you decide to go that route I recommend weighting the stats so that the actors are scoring far more criticals than enemies are.


Ultimate Bar: My advice would be to make it separate from PE. In games where the Ultimate uses a large amount of the character's main skill-casting resource, I find it's rare that I bother with the Ultimates (and in the cases where I do use Ultimates, I will forego ordinary skill use). Why deprive the player of either? Make it a separate resource! Now, you could still give each character a separate Ult bar, or you could have it be a party-wide thing... my instinct is that I foresee the separate Ult bars being more intuitive, but it's something you could probably go either way with.


Prism Breaks: To be honest, I don't like your approach here. Not only do the players have to memorize a list of somewhat arbitrary button combinations, but they have to remember which actor they're associated to and the combinations won't even work if the actor has different ultimates equipped. I think a lot of players won't want to make the effort to fully explore this system, and at best will just remember one ult for each character and stick with it. That's no fun. As an alternative approach, here's what I'd recommend: each character eventually learns one ult skill for each element. When a char activates Prism Break, any element for which they've learned an ult will “light up” and the actor can choose any one of those to use it. If you want to include an expression of skill for the player when they use an ult, have a random sequence of 6-10 buttons appear onscreen once they use an ult, starting with the button used to pick the skill (e.g. D for a Water ult). The player needs to hit those buttons in sequence in a short time to enhance the skill – so a water-element Prism Break called 'Freezing Mist' might deal some damage and slow all enemies, but if you nail the sequence, it will deal a lot more damage and freeze them solid instead! This allows for expression of skill without (what I believe is) a needlessly onerous requirement in remembering button sequences for each actor in each situation.


Dust: Sounds like a good system. Dust would be a great reward for little accomplishments in battle like shattering enemy cores, and would also be a cool one-time reward for little “battle missions” like defeating 3 enemies with a single skill or successfully nullifying 5 attacks in a row.


Passives: I like this sort of thing, but decide whether or not it's worth the effort to create. Remember, too, that you can implement passives through equipment (e.g. a helmet that restores PE every 3 basic attacks) rather than making them their own separate skill-like construct.


Defense Skills: There's a risk of overburdening a player's mind with so many skills, but I do think it would be cool to have different guard 'skills' that are used in Defense stance. For example you could choose a Red guard skill 'Rage' that unleashes an attack at the end of the guard period, or you could choose a different Red guard skill 'Firewall' that sets any enemy that physically attacks you during the guard period on fire. Alternatively I guess you could streamline it into non-color-specific moves like Absorb, Reflect, and Counter that the player could slot into each element.


No Healing: You know my thoughts on this. I think that most combat systems work best without a powerful, readily-available form of healing.


Fatigue: This kind of thing is a great balance/pace lever in the right game, but in the wrong game it can be catastrophic. Without knowing a lot about Spectrum Seeker's gameplay, dungeon structure, and challenge levers, it's hard to say whether it's appropriate for your game or not. What is the main reason you want to add this mechanic?


Buffering (Queuing) Skills: While it can be a nice interface convenience for the player, you also risk lowering the overall excitement by allowing the player to input a few skills at once, increasing the likelihood of having some idle time where the player is simply watching things play out. If you do implement this, I don't see the point in clearing the buffer of skills when a Defense is chosen – just activate the Defense and leave the skills in the buffer!


Commissions


I think your expectations of $1,000 to $1,500 are about right – my instinct is that you'll find scripters willing to create this closer to the low end of $1,000. Might be a little lower if you're using MV since I imagine only minor changes would need to be made from the sideview system to the backview animated battlers; might be a bit higher if using Ace and you want the battler animation logic to be constructed from scratch. Assuming that the commission would not include creating any actual artwork for the battlers.


If you already know of a good, reliable scripter who always completes their work on time, then you're probably fine offering this up as one entire commission – but in my experience I've found people who take my commissions often experience delays, have “real life” get in the way, etc., and they peter out when given big collections of tasks.  I do have one scripter on my project who has been fantastic and who I am confident could create this kind of system - I could put you in touch with him if you'd like, though I'd have to ask whether he has the time to take this on.


Therefore, if you're posting the commission publicly and accepting applicants that you don't personally know, you should consider offering up smaller commissions, such as $X for the Null/Color Change/State Application system and $Y for the Dust/Skill Learn menu. You can put it all in one thread if you want, but make them separate commissions so your scripters don't get in too far over their heads.  There are spots where elements of one script require elements of another script to work completely, but I still think this kind of modular approach will lower your risk of having the commission collapse on you – and if you find someone is doing a great job and banging out your commissions left and right, you can just give them the rest of the commissions privately.

 

[Tsukitsune]

I'm assuming that the Faded (and enemies with Cores) will use different skills based on which Color they currently possess. Also assuming that most Faded will start in the "Null" state - some of my subsequent suggestions and concerns are contingent on this assumption.

Yep, Faded will use different skills based on what color they are. I would say most start off already colored at the start of battle.

It might not feel so good to expend a color skill cooldown (plus the PE cost) just to color a Null enemy. I think I understand the intent behind your idea here, but think about ways to make it a better experience for the player - for example, maybe color skills have a weakened effect on Null enemies (rather than no effect), or maybe they have no effect (except to change the enemy's color) but using your color skill in this way will refund most of the cooldown and PE used for the skill.

This was actually a problem I was trying to find a way to fix. I may go with weakened effect.  Another idea I had in mind to potentially add was the Null Faded would absorb a color from the player as an attack. They'd transform into what color they stole, and they'd disable that player from using skills in that color slot until that particular Faded was killed.

About the Shattered status – I would recommend having enemies with a shattered core eventually "repair" that core and move back into Null state - this will give a better sense of ebb and flow to battles once players have figured out the tricks to shattering enemies, instead of having the core shatter once and then you lose the cool Colors mechanic for the rest of battle. Bosses could repair their cores much faster than normal enemies (which might remain shattered for long enough to finish most of them).


The pattern you're setting up leads to a fairly obvious "basic optimal strategy" of using a color skill on an enemy, and then hitting it with the opposite color as soon as possible. This is not a bad thing on its own, but I feel it's important to make sure that it's not always the same pair of skills being used against enemies. You have six different colors, so consider ways to offer at least six different useful and situational options for a character so they don't fall into tired patterns. As an example, Lightning might contain a lot of disabling skills (Enervate, Paralyze, Blind) whereas Void might contain skills that make it easier to disable foes or take advantage of disables on foes (a skill that reduces an enemy's LUK to 0, a spell that deals more damage for each disable on the enemy, etc.). This means that against enemies you want to disable you can go Yellow -> Purple OR Purple -> Yellow, whereas another combination like Green -> Red might be good against enemies you want to directly damage instead of disable.

I think I'll add that in, I was going to do that with Bosses already so having regular Faded act the same way makes sense. Though typically once their core is destroyed, they'll be easily killed before their core can even restore since plenty of damage has already been done.


Truthfully there was a major design flaw in Faded and Cores in general that I completely overlooked when I created them, and that is Variety. Typically RPGs have tons of enemies all with different skills and strategies... now imagine all those enemies having 6 different forms for each different color. How many Faded can you create before you start overlapping skills and strategies? With all of them having a core, I feel as if they'd all feel the same. I need to find a way to add more variety to them. Maybe change how a few cores function? Maybe some don't even have cores? I'm not sure. It's much easier designing for 1 instead of 1 and its 6 variations.

Hoo boy. This has the potential to be really, really cool – a fast, furious, and visceral experience with a real element of skill – but this will undoubtedly be the hardest element of your system to design perfectly, not to mention probably the most expensive and time-consuming thing you will have to commission. So to be clear, I think I could love this system if you hit the right equation – it's right up my alley – and I understand how a lot of your other ideas are predicated on timing, but I would just say think twice about whether you're willing to take on this high level of risk and effort – if you decide it's not worth it, there are probably ways to implement most of what you're dreaming of into a turn-based system.


The way I understand your system (from bits and pieces scattered all over your post) is that real time passes as actions are taken or even as battlers remain idle. During this time, battlers charge and execute attacks, cooldowns tick down, and the player can give commands to any available character in any order. This all correct?

Yess that's exactly what I'm hoping for. I want this combat to be a major selling point for the game. 


Yes that is all correct!

Your HUD and proposed control scheme sound very good for such a system. It looks like most actions only take one to two clicks, which is really useful for this kind of system. One thing I'd bring to your attention that could slow down the fast pace is the act of targeting enemies, assuming that the party is sometimes fighting more than a single enemy at once. Now you need to bring up the stance, choose the action via hotkey (good), move the cursor until it's on the enemy you want to hit, and confirm. That's a lot more clicks and I worry that players will lean toward skills that don't require targeting (especially if you make the pace fast enough that the characters can act as quickly as the player can give them commands). You could consider making every skill untargeted, perhaps – with skills either hitting an Area of Effect or choosing a target based on the skill and the battler's position (for example maybe a Fireball hits the closest enemy in a straight line in front of the battler). Or you can simply make sure players have enough “idle time” to be able to carefully choose their target in the normal way.

Very minimal clicks was the goal I was aiming for when I was designing it. As far as targeting goes, I'll probably go with default target the enemy that's infront of the active character and if the player wants they can switch targets via numbers 1-5. So they would start off in attack stance whenever they switch characters, they then would pick a target with the number keys or if they're fine with the default, they'd hit their attack and it'd activate without any additional clicks.


Switch Character Positions


You bringing up the targeting gave me another idea, and that'd be character positioning. If the default targeting is what's infront of the active character, what if you could switch the character's position? While you have an active character, you could hit (F) and the arrow keys would change to allow the character to move left or right bumping the other characters in the previous spot. 

Another interesting element to consider when you're making a system like this is the high variance in outcomes based on player skill. Some players are simply not going to be as good at managing multiple party members in a frenetic battle and blocking at the right times, whereas some will excel at it. In many genres (such as sports games, FPS, and competitive TBS) this reliance on skill is the whole point – in an RPG it's a riskier design decision because some players will be there because they want to experience a story of restoring color to a gray world. I personally love high skill dependency in my RPGs, but you should think about ways to relieve the pain for people who aren't good at it. Two initial ideas you could explore:

• Have difficulty levels that not only impact enemy stats, but also the pace of battle (at easier difficulty levels, enemies will attack less frequently, telegraph for longer, etc.)
  
• Avoid placing too much of your characters' “power budget” in skills and actions that require timing (that is, make sure a poor player could still do most of the damage that a great player can), but give better bonuses (e.g. more Dust) for players who use these advanced mechanics effectively.
  

That's true, I hadn't considered that. Having difficulty levels though seems like it'd be very difficult to implement. Wouldn't it be like 3x the amount of work (3 difficulty levels) for each battle? 

Stances: Do attack/defense stances have any innate properties that make them different besides the actions that are available in each stance? Or put another way, if a character is not currently engaged in an action, will it ever matter which stance they're currently in?

I didn't have any plans to have any innate properties. Characters would also always revert back to attack stance when you switched to them anyway.

PE availability: I would strongly recommend having PE refill naturally over time during battle. Or if you don't want it to naturally refill, then restore it based on any damage dealt to enemies. Requiring the player to fulfill conditions like defending against a same-color attack in order to refill PE will create a miserable experience for people who don't develop a lot of skill in your combat system – they'll use a few skills at the beginning of battle and then they'll run out of PE and will be left doing less-cool things like repeated basic attacks. You can still give bonus PE (or Ultimate Points) for accomplishing these tasks, but make sure that even the worst players will be able to use an elemental skill for at least 50% of actions, if they're so inclined.

Those are good points, I was thinking about adding PE regen anyway so I think I'll do that. Maybe also have skills or armor passives that can increase the recharge rate.

Counter-Attacks Interrupt Skill Use: I love this idea! I would say definitely include it if you can. I would advise against making it a chance to interrupt – doing everything right and watching the enemy unleash their skill will not feel good for the player. Make it a guaranteed interrupt, and let the enemies interrupt the player by doing this as well. If you find this is too powerful, then let a battler who has been interrupted re-cast the same skill with a somewhat shorter cast time or replace the interrupt with a “daze” that delays their cast momentarily then lets them continue. You could also have Critical Hits interrupt skill usage, which would be cool, though if you decide to go that route I recommend weighting the stats so that the actors are scoring far more criticals than enemies are.

Yeah my main concern is how powerful it'd be. If you can just keep chain interrupting enemies, then it'd feel way overpowered. Might go with adding something like diminishing returns like seen in some MMORPGs with crowd control. It'd work the 1st time and each time it'd be less effective till they're immune for a short window or something.  If I do critical hits, I think I'd only tie it with the physical default attacks.

Ultimate Bar: My advice would be to make it separate from PE. In games where the Ultimate uses a large amount of the character's main skill-casting resource, I find it's rare that I bother with the Ultimates (and in the cases where I do use Ultimates, I will forego ordinary skill use). Why deprive the player of either? Make it a separate resource! Now, you could still give each character a separate Ult bar, or you could have it be a party-wide thing... my instinct is that I foresee the separate Ult bars being more intuitive, but it's something you could probably go either way with.

I do see how having it combined that it'd turn out to be a choose one or the other strategy... and the player is limited enough with skills. Deciding which one, separate or party wide will probably be determined how I end up deciding how to charge it.

Prism Breaks: To be honest, I don't like your approach here. Not only do the players have to memorize a list of somewhat arbitrary button combinations, but they have to remember which actor they're associated to and the combinations won't even work if the actor has different ultimates equipped. I think a lot of players won't want to make the effort to fully explore this system, and at best will just remember one ult for each character and stick with it. That's no fun. As an alternative approach, here's what I'd recommend: each character eventually learns one ult skill for each element. When a char activates Prism Break, any element for which they've learned an ult will “light up” and the actor can choose any one of those to use it. If you want to include an expression of skill for the player when they use an ult, have a random sequence of 6-10 buttons appear onscreen once they use an ult, starting with the button used to pick the skill (e.g. D for a Water ult). The player needs to hit those buttons in sequence in a short time to enhance the skill – so a water-element Prism Break called 'Freezing Mist' might deal some damage and slow all enemies, but if you nail the sequence, it will deal a lot more damage and freeze them solid instead! This allows for expression of skill without (what I believe is) a needlessly onerous requirement in remembering button sequences for each actor in each situation.

As much as I'd like to disagree because I already had this part coded a long time ago... you make a good point and I do like your suggestion better. 


I may just forgo the skill aspect and just add a hit whatever color button it's bound too repeatedly to simulate charging up the attack. It'd be accompanied with an onscreen bust that's charging up tied to how fast you hit till you fill a bar. I think it'd feel cool. I'm also just not a fan of quick time events haha.

Defense Skills: There's a risk of overburdening a player's mind with so many skills, but I do think it would be cool to have different guard 'skills' that are used in Defense stance. For example you could choose a Red guard skill 'Rage' that unleashes an attack at the end of the guard period, or you could choose a different Red guard skill 'Firewall' that sets any enemy that physically attacks you during the guard period on fire. Alternatively I guess you could streamline it into non-color-specific moves like Absorb, Reflect, and Counter that the player could slot into each element.

Hmmm having a set of Defense skills and attack skills would be interesting but I think it'd be too much. Especially since I'm going the route with 6 ultimates per character now too. 

Fatigue: This kind of thing is a great balance/pace lever in the right game, but in the wrong game it can be catastrophic. Without knowing a lot about Spectrum Seeker's gameplay, dungeon structure, and challenge levers, it's hard to say whether it's appropriate for your game or not. What is the main reason you want to add this mechanic?

Was just an optional idea but I was thinking I may want it since I wanted players to fully regen their health after a battle is over. That's about the only reason... I threw it in the other ideas because it wasn't fully thought out hahaha.

Commissions

I shall PM you about this.


-------


Thank you so much for this hugeee in-depth review! That really helped a lot.  

 

[Wavelength]

As we talk more and more about this combat system, I become more convinced that it has the potential to be really great.  I also still feel there's a fairly high degree of risk of unintentionally creating consistent imbalances or unsatisfying strategies.  That comes with the territory when you are creating something original and don't have a lot of examples to work from, so we will have to be really careful about designing in a way that encourages the player to do a lot of the things that we think will be the most fun for them and rewards them for doing so.


Added numbering to your quoted post to make it easier to respond to specific points:

(1) Yep, Faded will use different skills based on what color they are. I would say most start off already colored at the start of battle.


(2) This was actually a problem I was trying to find a way to fix. I may go with weakened effect.  Another idea I had in mind to potentially add was the Null Faded would absorb a color from the player as an attack. They'd transform into what color they stole, and they'd disable that player from using skills in that color slot until that particular Faded was killed.


(3) I think I'll add that in, I was going to do that with Bosses already so having regular Faded act the same way makes sense. Though typically once their core is destroyed, they'll be easily killed before their core can even restore since plenty of damage has already been done.


(4) Truthfully there was a major design flaw in Faded and Cores in general that I completely overlooked when I created them, and that is Variety. Typically RPGs have tons of enemies all with different skills and strategies... now imagine all those enemies having 6 different forms for each different color. How many Faded can you create before you start overlapping skills and strategies? With all of them having a core, I feel as if they'd all feel the same. I need to find a way to add more variety to them. Maybe change how a few cores function? Maybe some don't even have cores? I'm not sure. It's much easier designing for 1 instead of 1 and its 6 variations.


(5) Yess that's exactly what I'm hoping for. I want this combat to be a major selling point for the game. 


Yes that is all correct!


Very minimal clicks was the goal I was aiming for when I was designing it. As far as targeting goes, I'll probably go with default target the enemy that's infront of the active character and if the player wants they can switch targets via numbers 1-5. So they would start off in attack stance whenever they switch characters, they then would pick a target with the number keys or if they're fine with the default, they'd hit their attack and it'd activate without any additional clicks.


(6) Switch Character Positions


You bringing up the targeting gave me another idea, and that'd be character positioning. If the default targeting is what's infront of the active character, what if you could switch the character's position? While you have an active character, you could hit (F) and the arrow keys would change to allow the character to move left or right bumping the other characters in the previous spot. 


(7) That's true, I hadn't considered that. Having difficulty levels though seems like it'd be very difficult to implement. Wouldn't it be like 3x the amount of work (3 difficulty levels) for each battle? 


(8) I didn't have any plans to have any innate properties. Characters would also always revert back to attack stance when you switched to them anyway.


(9) Those are good points, I was thinking about adding PE regen anyway so I think I'll do that. Maybe also have skills or armor passives that can increase the recharge rate.


(10) Yeah my main concern is how powerful it'd be. If you can just keep chain interrupting enemies, then it'd feel way overpowered. Might go with adding something like diminishing returns like seen in some MMORPGs with crowd control. It'd work the 1st time and each time it'd be less effective till they're immune for a short window or something.  If I do critical hits, I think I'd only tie it with the physical default attacks.


(11) I do see how having it combined that it'd turn out to be a choose one or the other strategy... and the player is limited enough with skills. Deciding which one, separate or party wide will probably be determined how I end up deciding how to charge it.


(12) As much as I'd like to disagree because I already had this part coded a long time ago... you make a good point and I do like your suggestion better. 


I may just forgo the skill aspect and just add a hit whatever color button it's bound too repeatedly to simulate charging up the attack. It'd be accompanied with an onscreen bust that's charging up tied to how fast you hit till you fill a bar. I think it'd feel cool. I'm also just not a fan of quick time events haha.


(13) Hmmm having a set of Defense skills and attack skills would be interesting but I think it'd be too much. Especially since I'm going the route with 6 ultimates per character now too. 


(14) Was just an optional idea but I was thinking I may want it since I wanted players to fully regen their health after a battle is over. That's about the only reason... I threw it in the other ideas because it wasn't fully thought out hahaha.

1) Sounds good!  While it's no problem to have most start colored at the start of battle, I think the "Null" mechanic (and the player's ability to force it into a color of her choice) is interesting enough that I'd recommend starting a sizable minority of the enemies in Null state!


2) The absorb color is a VERY cool idea for a skill to some Null-state Faded, in addition to making it rewarding for the player to change the state of the Null faded themselves using a color skill (weakened effect instead of no effect, PE refund, etc.).  I would lean toward recommending the color is locked out for a character until the Faded is killed or shattered, since Shattering a Faded will make it lose its color.  We will also need a good GUI element (or similar) to show the player which Faded has stolen which color from which character.  My initial idea would be to show a little colored ring with the character's face inside, right next to the sprite of the Faded that stole the character's color.


3) Yep, that makes sense.  I was also envisioning most enemies being easy kills before they can return to Null state - but for the reasons I mentioned before I still believe the mechanic should be there.


4) There are a lot of reasons that a game like this should have fewer unique enemies than most RPGs like it.  Among these reasons:

• 8 or more different possible states for each enemy with a Core (Null, Shattered, and one of the six Colors), each with their own sets of skills, means that the player will need to see the enemy more times before they can develop a solid strategy against it
  
• 7 or more different starting states for each enemy with a Core (Null or one of the six Colors, plus any special core types you want to create) means that once the player has a basic strategy developed against an enemy, subsequent encounters can still be unexpected and interesting
  
• The work involved in creating multiple versions of each enemy (artistic, design, implementation, and testing) is significant - with a small team, making 250 unique enemies would probably be quixotic
  

Definitely some interesting opportunities for different types of Cores, too - a couple initial (somewhat random) ideas that come to mind would be a Phosphorescent Core that grants you significant PE instead of shattering, or an Explosive Core that bursts by itself (dealing damage to everyone unless they're using the appropriate color defense) after a certain amount of time.


5) Interesting idea you've got to make the default target whoever is in front of the character.  It's something that could be scripted without too much of a problem, but I'll be curious to see what players think of it in a playtest.  My gut instinct - and I'm not too sure about this one - is that it could be confusing to players who would have to register which enemy is being targeted and then figure out how many times to hit the arrow keys to get to the target they want (whereas if it always defaults to the same target, e.g. the leftmost target, it would be very easy to know in advance how many times to hit the arrow keys before they even see the cursor).


6) If there are lots of Area of Effect skills that target enemies based on their position in relation to the actor, or skills that target actors based on their position, or any significant mechanics that relies on positioning, then this would be a nice feature to have.  If it's only going to who the cursor starts on by default (or little things like that), I would recommend against this feature - it's adding extra complexity to the mix without much extra depth.


7) I don't think difficulty levels would require 3x the work or even close to it.  For example, enemy action frequency.  This is not part of the default battle system (which uses the concept of turns rather than time), so while coding it, there could be a few lines inserted to make the enemy receive an action to make every (210/150/90) frames, based on the difficulty setting, rather than a static 150 frames.


8) Gotcha - so essentially the Stances are just a toggle between two different sets of moves (the "attacks"/skills and the "guards").  That's totally fine.


9) Sounds good!


10) One of my biggest problems with the initial idea of "interrupt chance", which I don't think I articulated well in my original response, was that (unless I'm misconstruing some element of your timing system) it could end up hurting the player by interrupting the attack of an enemy that was about to hit a character using the appropriate color's Guard.  The argument could be made that the player should not attack such an enemy with a possible interrupt, but taking for example a Yellow-Core enemy about to use a Yellow skill against all three members of your party, and two characters are using Yellow Guard... if the interrupt chance is 10% or even 30%, it's still likely the player's best move to have her third character use a Purple skill against the enemy to deal lots of damage.  In the "lucky" event that she achieves a Counter, it's actually going to hurt her because the two Guarding characters don't get their PE boost and whatever other benefits the successful block provides.  On the other hand, if the Counter effect is reliable (100% chance to do something), the intelligent player will know not to use a Purple skill just yet in such a situation.


I do totally understand your valid concern that a reliable interrupt - that is a 100% chance to cancel a charging skill - would have the capacity to be highly overpowered.  A happy medium could be not interrupting the skill completely, but setting it back a second or so in its charge time - essentially acting like a one-second "stun" on an enemy that doesn't cancel the charging skill.


Your idea of diminishing returns on interrupts is also good, with a couple of drawbacks (would need a separate enemy gauge to convey clearly to the player; would be hard for the player to estimate the effect on timing; could also be hard to balance well for boss enemies).


11) I think that individual Ult bars or a combined bar for the party are both good approaches - go with whatever your heart says is better.  My pick would be individual bars but that is a purely personal preference and not necessarily better or worse design.


12) You could forego any type of timed input entirely and have the player just choose the ult if you want to - it's still going to be remarkably satisfying to use at the right time if the ult itself is cool.  My "quick time event"-type suggestions were based on my impression that you wanted some sort of skill expression in your ults.  The important takeaway is that the player should never have to memorize button combinations before battle, because it has a very high risk of leading to stale gameplay where the player has a single go-to ult for each character that they leave equipped and always use (in order to minimize the mental "burden" of remembering specific key combinations while trying to improvise battle strategies).


Personally I do kind of like button mashing as a way to charge up a skill, but I do have one cautionary tale I could tell you here.  In timeblazer, the original mechanic for the game where you align panels to charge up the train (first action game in Neon City) was a simple "Mash Spacebar for as quickly as possible to charge up the train" game.  The intention was to include a few very mechanically and strategically simple minigames (in addition to ones that requires strategy, visual concentration, puzzle-solving, or movement) so that everyone would find something they like.  What actually happened was that players almost universally disliked the simplest minigames, with one tester noting that "this seemed more like an excuse to break my Spacebar than an enjoyable experience" and a majority of players agreeing with that sentiment.  I was really surprised!!  But it was clear that players did not enjoy doing this, so I reworked the entire mechanic for that minigame.  One mitigating factor is that this minigame was 20 seconds long, whereas your ultimates' button mash will probably be more like 2-3 seconds long.


13) I can definitely understand the feeling that individual defensive skills could be too much for the player to consider during battle.


14) This is certainly a defensible reason to include a Wounds system (Wounds being the name I'm giving to your concept of lowered Max HP), but I'm not so sure that it's a good enough reason that it will make the gameplay better - we could evaluate this as we develop the game's content.  One way to look at this is that you are trying to introduce an attrition mechanic into a system that gives the player a full restore of resources (full heal, PE resets, etc.) after each battle.  Attrition is usually best in games where individual encounters present little threat of defeat by themselves, with the challenge residing in being able to lose as few resources (health, mana, items) as possible as you progress through a level or dungeon.  If you lose too many resources along the way, you need to turn back to avoid the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts.


Your proposed battle system, on the other hand, is inevitably going to have a high amount of variance in battle based on the player's ability to properly time attacks and guards, and ability to manipulate colors, cooldowns, and cores.  Unless the player is massively overleveled, I imagine that any given battle could result in outright defeat if played poorly enough (and I love this).  The concept that battles present challenge without any attrition mechanics means that there is no need for attrition in your game, which is what I see the Wounds system as representing.


Just because there's no need doesn't mean that it's a bad idea, though.  One nice thing the Wounds system provides is a granularity in the outcome of battle.  Instead of only "Victory" (full heal) or "Defeat" (game over or whatever), there is now a middle outcome of "Victory with actors KO'ed" (receive Wounds), which is nifty and gives the player more incentive to watch their characters' health carefully.  You'll need to balance this against the drawback of forcing your player to trek back to an Inn when they're halfway through a dungeon (assuming your game has dungeons) because her characters have accumulated Wounds, and then run through the entire dungeon again to get to the end of it.  Do you want to allow the player to take on the boss with full resources if they've struggled their way through your dungeon but managed to eke out a victory in every battle?  That's up to you to decide.  Personally I think I would appreciate the ability to do so, if I were in the player's shoes.


As one alternate solution, if adding granularity is a concern, you could grant fewer rewards if characters have been KO'ed during a fight.  Maybe the KO'ed character receives no EXP (or reduced EXP if they've been revived) for that fight (and maybe give the full reward anyway in the case of boss battles), or maybe award extra Dust if all characters are still standing at the end of a fight.


===


Hope you like some of these suggestions!  None of this feedback is meant to trample on your very cool ideas for the system; I'm just trying to get inside of a player's head and find the few "pain points" where a well-intentioned mechanic could lead to frustration or stale play patterns.