Are you designing mechanics that are fun for the player, or fun for the designer?

This. I've thought about several "cool ideas" that have come up and ultimately had to completely overhaul, if not simply discard them when I realized that I would never want to play a game like that. Many features are really neat on paper as a designer, but end up leaching all the fun away from the player.

I follow this. I imagine the mechanic as more of controlling the mind and intentions of the fighter than the actual fighting. I really dig the idea! I have two suggestions. First, forget about extraneous factors for now (such as how non-combatants and multi-person fighting are dealt with). They are legitimate concerns, but too far ahead to worry about now. You don't even have the "single combatant" part down yet. Second, how about a "momentum" dynamic? When I started thinking about cerebral combat, I had a flashback to the time I played Heavy Rain on ps3. The multiple-choice reactive combat style used there has been repeated with limited success-- usually something like "press O now to counter" or "mash R2 repeatedly". These attempts at reactive choices are generally very lame (and I do mean *very*), but when done well the effect is spectacular (and very cinematic in feel). You could implement a system where the combatants act according to a real-time impromptu script (as you suggest), but when the combatants' scripts conflict then reactive choices must be made (parry left? Dodge back? Parry up and counter low?). The choices available will depend on the fighter, the situation, and the script. Rather than use HP or even stamina, you could use momentum, a single bar which moves left to right for both combatants. When one fighter makes a particularly brilliant move, the momentum of the fight moves in their favor. Successive good moves (where the enemy fails to effectively counter) will continue the trend until a breaking point is reached. If the momentum of the fight swings all the way to one side then the victor has a decisive win (enemy is on ground and submissive or otherwise utterly defeated) and has the option to kill. A decisive win will only occur if the losing player--for whatever reason--decides to continue fighting after the momentum is clearly in the other fighter's favor and the best option is to end the fight by fleeing (or submitting to defeat. Or whatever conditions apply that allow the combatant to escape with his/her life). Ignoring the momentum of the fight will cost a reckless fighter his life. An intelligent fighter knows when to back away from a losing battle. Give players this option, and deaths will be rare (and always the player's fault).

All good feedback!

I agree awesometoday, a 2d version might be a good way to test this, though I think maybe a top down 2d plane that accounts for movement might be where to start.

Thanks gamer_jack_gameson for the ideas. I will just focus on the 1v1 aspect of gameplay to see how that goes, and we're definitely on the same page about giving players enough rope to either make a hasty retreat or hang themselves. I think my stamina concept is very similar to your momentum concept the way I envision it. There would be stamina and burst-energy(which replenishes when a breather can be taken, at a rate related to overall stamina), and while overall stamina can deplete for both players, when a situation is lopsided it essentially would work as that momentum slider you speak of.

Anyway, I've poured a lot more hours into this thought project since my op. I've mapped out player decisions across action beats and solved for some unexpected complications, but I'm a long way to solving some of the problems. I'm currently facing the daunting task of how to abstract combat choices down to a manageable level that gives the player some creative decision-making freedom, but also allows him or her to take in and respond to information that the opponent is conveying. Weapon choices and their visual components are obviously a part of this, exertion will be another ...and right now I intend to break things down into stances, which will open up some maneuver possibilities and shut down others, hopefully with the intention of narrowing down the range of things each player needs to be able to preempt or respond to in the following beat. Anyway, that's one of the more basic early ideas.

This sounds awesome!

Many studios are experimenting with cinematic experiences, to mixed reactions, but I like the trend. Heavy rain is a great example of this trend (also note that many people REALLY didn't like that game). Journey is another great example of a game not strictly dealing with mechanics.

It seems counter-intuitive, but trading a measure of player control for cinematic effect can actually increase player immersion, even though you are taking away some of the player's control. There is a balance somewhere.

on that note, how are you dealing with the graphical issues? a rogue-like can get away with bare skin and bones, but it sounds like you will at least need some decent animations. You didn't say anything about your budget but I presume you are not dropping half a bil on this...

I hope to hear more about this project! And please, call me Jack.

Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 are almost exactly what you described.

The combat is very much like you described, and although HP is a thing, it doesn't have the disconnected, number-grindy feel of an MMO. Imagine Skyrim-meets-LoZ with the combat diversity of Street Fighter. The differences:

Multiplayer: You didn't mention this specifically for your idea, I don't think, but this game is not an MMO... not quite. The way multi-player works is this:

This game is built as if it were a single-player game, and the focus is on PvE... very challenging PvE. The game is run on your system, not a server. You are, however, connected to a server that exists to establish P2P connections between certain players. If two players are in the same physical area of the game, and are within a certain range of character progression, they can be connected to one another at random. (The server rotates your connections with other eligible players very frequently, almost every 30 seconds or so.) Being connected to another player does not mean that you are both in the same instance of the area; your instances are separate. However, there are items that you can use to enter someone else's instance of the game.

1.) Place a "summon sign" on the ground via a re-usable soapstone. Players that you are connected to can see the sign in their world, and can choose to summon you by activating the sign. A white soapstone allows you to be summoned for co-op, and a red one allow you to be summoned for combat against the "host" that summoned you to their instance.

2.) Use a Red Eye Orb to force yourself into the world of a random player (called "invading"), with the supposed goal of killing the "host" to collect their "embers" (explained below) and some quantity of souls. You can, of course, choose simply to dick around and never attack the host.

3.) Join a particular covenant (imagine a hard-coded "guild" that functions as a match-making/lore mechanic rather than a tool for socialization or trading) that allows members to protect other hosts. If a host in another specific covenant is invaded, you automatically "counter-invade" to protect the host.

Perma-Death: There is no "perma-death" in Dark Souls, but every time you die, there is a consequence.

When you die, you respawn at a "bonfire," functionally a check-point and a hub for inventory management. Every enemy respawns as well, except for bosses.

The unspent souls (more below) you carry on your person are always at risk. If you die, you will drop your souls at the location of death. If you can get to them without dying again, those dropped souls are back in your possession. If you die before picking them up, they are gone.

Death also causes you to lose some amount of maximum HP. This maximum HP can be restored by consuming an item, called an Ember (in DS3). The restoration lasts until you die again. However, being "embered" will make you vulnerable to invasions from other players seeking to take the ember for themselves. Simultaneously, you cannot utilize a summon sign to summon help if you are not embered.

Character Progression: The progression has verticality to it, but you don't have to worry much about leveling up. You will only ever connect to people that are [X] levels away from you, and surviving any fight boils down to dodging, parrying, or blocking, but mostly dodging.

As you kill things, you collect their souls. You can use souls at a central location in the game to increase various attributes, such as Strength, Dexterity, Vigor, Faith, Intelligence, Attunement, and so on. It does not take long to hit the point of highly diminishing returns in a given attribute, so you don't need to invest a shit-load of time into a character to make them PvP-viable. If two people with roughly equal skill were to face eachother, one with a well-focused character at level 120, and the other with a maxed-out character at level 838, the fight would be on surprisingly equal footing. When match-making is restricted to others within a much smaller range of levels, no-one remains under-leveled for long.

tl;dr: Check out Dark Soul's game design.