[ohh and very very sorry....just remembered there is a specific area for pvp stuff.....]
I'm sure that this has been brought up before but I had a unique idea that I really like
I'm just hoping that this is an okay place to post it....
Well while going through some of my old games I stumbled upon a game I used to play as a kid called Monster Rancher 4 (its a really lame game...). I couldn't remember why I liked it so I decided to play it again and then I instantly remembered. The combat system. Its mainly a turn based system in which your monster has a list of skills. These skills are displayed for you when you battle.
How it works is that first you spend forever training your monster in its base skills (speed, strength, accuracy, life, defense, etc). You also get specific attacks (varies on the monster). When a battle with another monster starts up your skills are displayed, your monster facing the other monster. Then lets say I attack using one of my skills. Depending on my accuracy and my opponents speed I may or may not hit. If my accuracy is higher by much then luck is with me. If much lower than the opponent will dodge. If somewhat equal then there is equal chance. To make it more intresting (for weaker monsters) there is a counter sytem. Even against an uber powerful monster one could win simply by counter attaking the opponent (but counter attacks are based on luck).
Of course the one unrealistic thing about turn based games is that its you than me then you than me, etc. However in this game one can attack without waiting for his/her opponent to take a turn. In other words you can attack the whole match and win or sit and counter every move (if that lucky). Of course then you wonder what about spamming the attack button to win? Well they already solved that. There is a "guts" ssytem. Guts are pretty much the monsters stamina. If you attack too much you use it all up. Some skills end up taking more stamina, being stronger, others take less stamina but are weaker and less likely to hit. In other words the players skill can't interfer with that of the monster.
I'm sure many of you already see where I'm going with this. A system based on these ideals only adapted to planeshift. Take the turn based system (in which we don't have to take turns). The attack buttons we have now (bloody, normal, etc) as well as any glyphs one has can be used as skills. Endurance will replace the "guts" system. To make countering more understandable I say do at least one of two things. Firstly make charisma and intellegence stats by which you can counter better (intellegence for seeing through attacks to counter and charisma for distracting the opponent). That or when battling someone using the same weapon skill (sword, dagger, etc) have the person with the higher skill more able to counter the one with the lower weapon skill (because they'd know more about using that weapon). Of course agility would serve as speed and your skill with the weapon/magic way serves as your accuracy.
While there are some flaws in this system I think it to be a much more realistic way to fight. There isn't a real way to rely on player skills. Only the skill of the actual character will really be shown. If you look into the game it does support multiple combat (more than 1 on 1) but the main flaw I see in this is that it wouldn't work well in things like guild wars, group battle etc...Even when normally training game play would be changed dramatically (unelss this was only used as a pvp function). I'm guessing implementation might also be complicated but I thought despite the problems it was worth mentioning
