The idea came about after reading a post somewhere where the writer was making comparisons between RPG combat and fencing, where in the latter most of the ‘fighting’ is actually the back and forth of feints and counterfeints while each participant looks for a weakness in the other’s defense. I was thinking it would be interesting to try to build something like that into a combat system, and was thinking that maybe feints would be attacks that had a chance of lowering the enemy’s defense, but did no actual damage, opening them up for the next attack or something. There would be timed button presses involved, during the attack animations, and if you did really well you got the option of following the feint with an actual attack that dealt damage, without requiring a second action. But then I started thinking about how to implement defense, and came up with this instead. There might still be something in that other combat system, but it would probably have to be tailored specifically to a more limited type of combat (maybe like the duels in Suikoden).

This kind of a system would need something similar to keep players from getting bogged down, just looking at the bars to nail the timing. (And if the party is too big, having offense and defense options for each character could require a lot of controls.) Also, if the characters have ATB gem triggers that don’t sync up with other characters, that’s another potential snag, as players have to pay attention to a lot of different timers. It runs the risk of turning into a control memorization/timing minigame, feeling more like a Dance Dance Revolution riff than tactical combat. The non-bar visuals would also have to be designed to assist in the recognition and execution of tactical choices, rather than distract from them.

I like the idea, and I don’t think those concerns are unsurmountable, it would just need some tuning and testing to see how much information you can bombard the player with and not break the fun.

I like the idea.