Interesting Battles?

I'm making a game focused mostly on battles and the battle system. I'm wondering what makes a battle interesting to you? Any boss design suggestions? Any boss designs you've always wanted to see? If I'm inspired, I would do my best to replicate it and credit you for sure Tribute to you might even be there lol. Anyways, I just want to know: What would make a battle interesting to you? I want every random encounter to not be a boring grind fest, but boss battles, I pay special attention to.

Turn on's, turn off's?

Systems I have set up (open to suggestions as to how to expand any of these):
-Default Battle System
-Yanfly class/subclass-Free to hear opinions on classes and skills etc.
-NO NORMAL ATTACKS: Attacks are replaced by "attacks" which is another skill menu. Each attack costs a differing amount of Stamina (SP) which would recover through various methods.
      -Attacks have differing damage, accuracies, initiative (speed bonuses to going first), number of hits, and other factors like status inducing
-No 2 skills would be replicates. I do have quite a few skills mapped out so far, and none of them do the same thing. My base fire spell burns, my base ice spell slows, my base dark spell blinds, my base earth spell deals physical damage, things to consider.
-Battle items: Debuff, buff, damage, heal, recover MP/SP, kind of a low number of ideas but open to suggestions
-Set-Up attacks: Your enemies will give signs before you should defend or something
-Cast Time/Cooldowns: Some powerful skills have cast times and cooldowns. Some spells don't even take a turn to use.
-Stances: A separate stance menu is available in your battle options. Stances change your stats to better match a certain archtype. Offensive stances may increase speed and attack for example, but your defense suffers as a result of it. Some skills may only be available in certain stances. Changing stances does not take turns
-Aggro: Your tank actually is targeted more often than your caster, if you use the right skills
-Summons (purely evented for once): Summon different monsters to fight alongside you.


I'm open to more systems (preferably with less scripts) but this is what I'm using as of now; I think it allows for some pretty expansive battles. So, what ideas for enemies do you have to make things interesting? How would you like your party of characters to work out?

Well, I've always been one to criticize the battle system. What you have so far is good, if not too much. I'm going to pull a plug on my own script, PAC Battle Addons (requires the setup script), which is just a collection of things to make battles more interesting.
What you have is enough to make it interesting. But, just in case you need to make that one boss have something no other enemy has, or the monsters in this ancient temple are different to the ones in the one over there, you can make them more interesting.

your "attacks" system and its stamina points are something I've been wrestling with myself over the past couple of weeks with a design doc. Well, I should say, piece of journal paper inevitably crumpled and tossed in the garbage. PM me some time if you want to discuss / gain creative input on such things. I'd enjoy having a sounding board myself if nothing else.

Arrow loves sounding boards. He basically yelled at me about a script for half an hour over MSN.
And I'm the one making the bloody Stamina system, he's just telling me exactly what to do. And he's being very helpful and polite about it. Geez Arrow.

lol... A little tension here Considering that you're doing ME a favor >< lol

@Arrow, sure. Maybe if you have an AIM or MSN, we can bounce ideas/yell at each other about designs for attacks. Less than skills, strategy input, blah blah blah.

@Pacman: thanks I'll be sure to check it out. Might inspire me on some enemy designs.

EDIT: Except more scripts gahhh lol Compatibility and just slaving over minor edits, etc.

Sorry to step into the PacArrow love-hate relationship but I wanted to share my two cents. I think that the features of said battle system aren't really an issue; it's usually the pace. I enjoy fast paced battles where the player is always near death, while others enjoy battles of attrition. To keep it interesting, you should aim for the Hannah Montanna principle of getting the "best of both worlds". Battle systems and addons should be your tools in obtaining this goal, not the meat of it.

It's not love-hate on my end.

Sorry to step into the PacArrow love-hate relationship but I wanted to share my two cents. I think that the features of said battle system aren't really an issue; it's usually the pace. I enjoy fast paced battles where the player is always near death, while others enjoy battles of attrition. To keep it interesting, you should aim for the Hannah Montanna principle of getting the "best of both worlds". Battle systems and addons should be your tools in obtaining this goal, not the meat of it.

The features in of themself are to show the grounds of the battle. The setting, so to speak. What can be done, what there is to work with, what's already been done.

So the question is ultimately: We have the tools, what to do with it?

Hannah Montana should not be an example of anything. Ever. Unless you're describing a target for a sledgehammer.

But yeah no animosity between the pac and I, I believe he was just putzing around.

Hannah Montana should not be an example of anything. Ever. Unless you're describing a target for a sledgehammer.

But yeah no animosity between the pac and I, I believe he was just putzing around.

Q.E.D.

*putz putz putz*

Turn-offs:
Too complex. If a game offers a few hours of gameplay I don't want to have to spend a large part of that time just trying to figure out what the hell I need to do to be effective in combat. The longer the game, the more time I'm willing to put into trying to learn the combat system.
When if a somewhat different and complex combat system is included, spread out the information about it over the game. Not the complete explanation in one event... talk about information overload.
Being forced into random battles every few steps and then still having to fight well to do ok. Random encounters just shouldn't be too hard, unless they're above your party's level.
Monster recolours.
Sharp EXP curves.

Turn-ons:
Easy to learn, hard to master.
Every part of the combat system needs to be useful and balanced: normal attacks, magic attacks, weapon attacks, summons, whatever else you have. Not one of these must be the single superior choice over the others in every single situation in the game.
Seeing different kinds of monsters and monster formations in an area.
Making boss battles last a while, but have random encounters last no more than 30-60 seconds (depending on encounter rate and assuming the party isn't underlevelled of course...)
Bosses that do more than just a shitload of damage or dishing out every imaginable condition onto the player party. Give them interesting skills with unique effects.
Interesting gear choices. Don't just give out gear that has higher stats in everything than the previous set. Make the player choose between items, depending on which stats they think are more important.

Turn off:
I hope it's not too complex. I'm definitely going to spread out the info, and I suck too much at graphics to even be bothered to recolor xD (Yes i know it's an implemented function). There's also no random encounters. All on map events

Turn ons:
I'm hoping it'll be moderate to learn, hard to master

Definitely. Magic has cooldowns and high mana costs whereas stamina would be easy to recover. Normal attacks all have different effects so in some places, they can replace skills in some ways, in others, they're not as strong in damage so skills would still have uses (lots of testing to be done to perfect this, if I can. I'll probably release a completed version and just be open to advice)

Hmm shorter random encounters? I'll have to put that into consideration

Yeah, I'm here partially, to hear boss design ideas (as noted)

Yes, the interesting part is that, (if you're familiar with the YERD subclass script) I'm using JP only for class based passives that you can learn. Your equipment offers a variety of skills, attacks, and elements to consider. Weapon choices will probably be fairly basic due to limitations as to how much I can do with a weapon through skills but armor choices will give things like regeneration vs higher defense, elemental resistance, offensive stats, defensive stats, skills, and perhaps other ideas too.

As for a boss encounter, I loved the Star Magician in Golden Sun.

He summoned random orbs to aid him in battle. The orbs had their own skills, like one kind would self-destruct to hit for high damage, others would heal the mage etc. This kind of thing makes a boss stand out from just being another monster only with higher hits and more HP.

For random encounters. Since yours are located on map they're easier to avoid, so then I wouldn't mind them lasting a bit longer than I mentioned in my previous post. It just gets boring when a player spends more time in trash mob encounters than exploring the map.

i'd say look at some of the more interesting examples of turn based rpgs.

chrono trigger had one of the best more traditional ones ever imo, the fights with mooks were generally quick, the bossfights were always interesting and usually had multiple parts to attack leading to different strategies, mooks could be avoided occasionally, had unique battle animations and the characters moved around when fighting so it never looked totally static like the oldschool ff's and it's techs and combo techs made using different combos of characters worthwhile depending on the situation. also there were still unavoidable mobs so you couldn't get fucked over too badly if you just snuck around stuff. (a big problem with avoidable encounters is that avoiding too many can fuck you over later so some need to be unavoidable.)

Xenogears had two totally different battle systems, both of which were fun to use. (and one of which was fairly similar to the later chrono cross battle system, which is also up there on my "most fun to actually fight stuff tbrpg" list) on foot your characters could utilize and learn various combo's that relied on stamina points (or was it action points) the use of the face buttons on the dualshock made it somewhat similar to inputting combos on a fighting game which was certainly more interesting to play than just hitting attack. the gears themselves had a similar but different fighting system which was equally engaging while still being different enough to change things up enough that it avoided stale moments where you're sick of the same battle system all the time.

Legend of Dragoon had a bunch of cool features, though the timed button presses could get old after a while (but then there was the ultimate wargod equip that auto'd them for you if you got sick of it or it was too much of a bitch to do reliably(i'm looking at you guy who replaced lavitz's final regular attack.)) and then there was the addition of the dragoon transformations that changed the way you attacked and changed things up, if only for a few turns at a time.

There are tons of good ideas out there to make battle systems more interesting, I'm sure there's something that's never been used that would make a great combat system.

Well, I am just enhancing the DBS to make the best of it. I'd rather not input complex systems, since as was noted, high learning curves are annoying. I want you to think, not memorize button combos, you know?

I'm rather looking for: what can I do to make the best of what I got, you know?

T'was Albert, and yes he is kind of hard to get a handle on. He is the sole user of the U.W.G. on my team.