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[Lukas]

ACTIVE TIME FIGHTER

Final Fantasy IV and Street Fighter II made sweet love!

Hi.

I came up with a concept for a game and tried to sum it up in a relatively short design sketch.

Here is the sketch: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1048085/ATFsketch1.pdf

I can't believe this hasn't been done yet. (or has it?)

What the concept basically says:
Take a "Final Fantasy"-ish battle system, slightly modify it, apply a "better" (faster) control scheme, make it faster and more competitive.
The strategical component: Picking 4 characters before battle.
The tactical component: Using the right character abilities at the right time.


This concept would suit both a versus(1v1)- and a challenge(singleplayer)-mode in which players would have to beat ridiculously hard bosses as quickly as possible by choosing the right characters and tactics.

Some mockups:

1.) ASCII Graphics

2.) Courier New Graphics

(Basically, you can take any kind of graphical style... a Final Fantasy-ish look would suit it best, I guess...)

How do you like the concept?

[baconman]

Absofreakinglutely yes.

Bonus points for each character having a tactical "talent" ala FF VI, or Double Techs ala Chrono Trigger.

[Lukas]

Sure. The possibilities are endless.

Since a character is little more than a couple of images, a stat-sheet and a list of abilities, the player might even create new characters "from scratch" for all kinds of insane combination... I don't know if this would be suited for competitive play, though.

[Moczan]

While the PvP battles are nice bonus, I think it could really shine on challenging single player bosses and battles (with waves of enemies etc.), with a lot of unlockable characters and stuff. Or with "build your own hero" system, where you have 4 'blank' characters and through the game you unlock classes, traits, skills and items, so you can customize them to you liking.

[Tumetsu]

If I figured out what you meant, it definitely sounds interesting and could work depending how well you plan different moves and tactic aspects. It also sounds relatively simple to execute, so it might even be possible to finish This really set my thought moving and I think I might play around with this idea and look if I could develop something interesting for my next Flashpunk learning project, that's it if it's okay BaronCid

[kenesque]

This is actually something I've really wanted to do for a long time.

Though, I would have opted for making it use something similar to the FFX turn system. I don't think making the game super fast will do much for the game unless you want to put a heavy emphasis on specific timings, even then, I don't think RPGs lend themselves to that very well. It would also be way easier to code for online without adversely affecting the game. Both could work, but I think overall an actual turn system would just be better for people who want to play the game for fun unless the real time element is given some level of thought beyond "you do things in real time just because".

Edit: I think the most ridiculous thing about a real time game like this is the emphasis on the competitive aspect and requiring multiple button inputs for one action, that just sounds frustrating for anyone that might want to pick up the game and is bad at it (read: this is 98% of your audience). Making the game completely turn based would alleviate this to a large degree.

I think the fundamental flaw is you are assuming faster is better. Faster is not better unless faster adds an element. Do you think a true double-blind scenario is good for the strategy in the game? I think something like this could be tense and chaotic, which can be both a good and a bad thing. It would be very hard to nail correctly. When you make something like this real time, it also puts a huge emphasis on reaction. how would the system make reaction relevant? Reaction, input and reading are the most important elements when you introduce time as a resource. Do you think making the game arbitrarily harder is going to make it better? How? Note that this doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the wrong thing, I'm just wondering what the real time element will add.

Some problems that can arise:
Waiting until all four characters have a turn, then inputting all four characters to do as much damage as possible to an enemy character. You would have to make every character unable to be insta-gibbed by the strongest possible scenario. In this case, the damage would have to be relatively low (less than 1/4th the lowest HP of a character), unless you want that to be an element. The ability to insta-gib is probably incredibly frustrating and will be discovered instantly. The game might as well turn into that if it's viable enough at low levels. This would turn off basically every person playing the game on an entry level. If the damage is shifted that low, how would you accordingly balance healing? If its high combined with the low damage then nothing would happen and it wouldn't feel like you're doing anything. If it's pretty low, why even heal unless you build defensive stuff in the first place? You have to ask a lot of these questions that will stem from the real time nature of your idea.

The major issue I can think of in a FFX style turn system is if two characters have the same speed, what's the fairest way to determine who goes first?

[Destral]

This is a pretty neat concept. I've always preferred the FF battle system to DQ's.

[Lukas]

Faster is not better unless faster adds an element [...] I'm just wondering what the real time element will add. 

Hey!
First of all: Thanks for your considerations. It's really helpful for me to get input like that because it helps me find weakpoints (and strong points) in my design.

I don't think "faster" equals "better". And I don't want to make things harder than they should be. The game should be accessible and fun leaving enough head space for players getting really good at it. The thing with real time is that  (if used correctly, and that is hard) it adds  excitement. Final Fantasy 4 and the sequels that followed proved that. And those games were enjoyed by really novice gamers (like me and my friends when we were like... 8 years old for example.) and experienced players just as much because the speed was moderate and could be turned up or down.

I would definitely include a way to change game speeds from "beginner" to "tournament".

But aside from being accessible, I would like the game to have potential for competitive play (which also means that it should be fun to watch) aswell. And one thing I noticed about accessible and broadly popular games being played competitively alot is that "very fast" is the default, actually:
StarCraft 2 starts newcomers out with "Normal" or "Fast" speed. But all ladder-matches are played in "Very Fast", which is tournament-standard and considerably faster than "Normal". With a bit of experience, "very fast" feels just right and anything slower is really boring.
Street Fighter 2 was actually re-released to feature a Turbo-Mode which made the game even faster and this speed is pretty much how fast Street Fighter 4 is today.
It's similar with FPSes. Speed-wise, Call of Duty 4 is CounterStrike on steroids - and people love it.

I think, speed adds spice to the game. And players like that. Of course, too much only turns out in a chaotic mess, but most players like their games rather a tiny bit too chaotic than a tiny bit too slow and boring.

So the game should definitely start players out with a slow speed and eventually raise it to a level which is fast enough but not chaotic.

Considering FF X: I loved that game's fighting system. The problem in a multiplayer-situation is that players don't like to wait for each other's turns. Waiting is boring (for most people). That's why way more people play StarCraft or WarCraft online compared to the people who like to play Civilization competitively even though both games offer wonderful single-player experiences. (I think, I'd actually even prefer Civilization, single-player-wise....)

Some problems that can arise:

Yeah, good concerns. I also had the one with "pin-point"-damage dealing (or "insta-gibbing" :-D ) in my mind before. I guess, good balancing would have to fix that. Which indeed is a very, very hard thing to get right.
The damage dealt by 1 damage-dealer (a Ninja, for example) with one non-charged attack should be considerable but not devastating for armored characters (Knights). I though that the most important ability (the defining ability which would make some kind of tank-character neccessary for any party-composition) of a knight should be to enable a "mode" in which it automatically sponges most (or all?) physical (or magical) damage. So simply having a couple of damage dealers without any other tricks up the player's sleeves wouldn't be enough to beat a party with 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 other characters. Also: Attacks and Spells are performed one after another in a queue... so having 4 damage dealers pin-point-attack consecutively would be a pretty hard thing do.
 I guess it didn't come out in my short design, sketch, but actually, the game is very close to FF X (which also features a queue) except you don't really have to wait for you opponents input. And since the control scheme is so simple and so fast, players should be able to cope with the real-time-structure.