I'm just curious what you guys think about a mmo with turn based combat like final fantasy style? If you think it would work, how would you implement it? Would you have visible enemies in the over world and bumping into them takes you into turn-based mode invisible to players not in the battle? Would you render the combat in the over world clearly visible to other players? Would you just have "random encounters" that jump you into turn based mode?

I personally think the idea has potential, but I know a lot of people hate turn-based combat. I like turn based combat, but I do get annoyed being constantly sucked into fights when I'm on a mission or something and I don't really NEED to fight and turn based fights seem to take forever.

EDIT: I also think it's something new and hence my reason for this post. The MMO genre as of late seems to have gotten bland and lacking in innovation. Really needs some new ideas out there.

Personally, I think it's a great idea. But as you mentioned, there are a lot of mechanics that would need to be worked out.

Even in regular MMOs you tend to get sucked into fights that you didn't intend to start. Think of aggressive camps along the way or enemy players in PVP servers. You can always find the "safe" routes which are usually paved, that would at least save you from the wrath of aggressive camps.

Also, most of the turn-based games implement a very lengthy fighting style with little "motion" into them. I personally liked the way Paper Mario: Thousand Years Door Fighting style. There's a lot more action you can do in its fights than regular games that I've seen in my lifespan.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that making the fights more rewarding for the time spent would make a lot of sense. A fight that lasts for, lets say a few minutes, should definitely be more rewarding than doing a 30 seconds of mashing buttons against your macros.

One last thing to add, there should be the option to escape fights with a certain way for making it fail. If you escape a fight it would be nice if you get tossed a short distance that would allow you to move away from the fight.

Personally, I think it's a great idea. But as you mentioned, there are a lot of mechanics that would need to be worked out.

Even in regular MMOs you tend to get sucked into fights that you didn't intend to start. Think of aggressive camps along the way or enemy players in PVP servers. You can always find the "safe" routes which are usually paved, that would at least save you from the wrath of aggressive camps.

Also, most of the turn-based games implement a very lengthy fighting style with little "motion" into them. I personally liked the way Paper Mario: Thousand Years Door Fighting style. There's a lot more action you can do in its fights than regular games that I've seen in my lifespan.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that making the fights more rewarding for the time spent would make a lot of sense. A fight that lasts for, lets say a few minutes, should definitely be more rewarding than doing a 30 seconds of mashing buttons against your macros.

One last thing to add, there should be the option to escape fights with a certain way for making it fail. If you escape a fight it would be nice if you get tossed a short distance that would allow you to move away from the fight.

Thanks for the feedback. Glad to see people are more receptive to the concept than I had expected. If I were to implement it in a game, I think I would have it so when you initiate combat with a enemy, that your characters just break off into positions in the same world as every one else so others can see the fight along with all the cool special effects etc...

I honestly don't see why it hasn't already been at least attempted in graphical MMO yet. It looks to me like it would be a lot more efficient in terms of bandwidth usage etc... than real-time fights. As soon as players enter a fight, you can pretty much stop sending position updates from server as your basically locked into position. Tracking character positions is the majority of bandwidth usage in a MMO.

FF-style = yuck. Turn-based tactical like Dofus and Disgaea = very yes *thumbs up*

I honestly don't see why it hasn't already been at least attempted in graphical MMO yet.

What about Sacred Seasons? Also:
http://mmohuts.com/editorials/best-turn-based-mmorpgs
Wizard 101 is a card/deck system so it doesn't count, but I'm not familiar with the others, they might be FF-style. Certainly there are a ton of virtual pet sites with Pokemon-influenced rock-paper-scissors turn-based combat.

FF-style = yuck. Turn-based tactical like Dofus and Disgaea = very yes *thumbs up*

I honestly don't see why it hasn't already been at least attempted in graphical MMO yet.

What about Sacred Seasons? Also:
http://mmohuts.com/editorials/best-turn-based-mmorpgs
Wizard 101 is a card/deck system so it doesn't count, but I'm not familiar with the others, they might be FF-style. Certainly there are a ton of virtual pet sites with Pokemon-influenced rock-paper-scissors turn-based combat.

Ahh didn't know of a few of those. cool. They are similar, but not entirely what I envisioned.

Also, if by tactical you mean the systems where you have to move your characters along on a grid, in my personal opinion I completely hated that. For enemies I could easily defeat, it would take forever just to move my characters into position just to 1 hit them.

But I did envision a grid like combat system. You wouldn't have to move characters, but different attacks etc... would attack in a different pattern on the grid for damaging multiple enemies at once. Also part of the design I've been thinking off is to have the attacks of the players be modifiable or entirely custom created all togeather.

So for example, I could design a grid pattern, and then say ok on the center cell I want to use my "flame tornado" effect, and on the 2 adjacent cells I want to use "snare". These abilities would be created from objects/elements found within the game. So for that example attack I would have to use (making this up as I go), a "flame tornado" crystal and 2 snare crystals.

This gives a better understanding for me desire for a turn-based system so I could have these player created abilities. I could even get more advanced and have projectile type crystals that can split at cells and create cascading effects etc...

I dunno, just brainstorming lol. Thanks for your input.

I did mean the kind where you move units around on a grid, but specifically the kind where you control several units, it's really boring if you only control one. Also if it takes more than two turns to get to where you can hit any enemy that's a balancing problem, or you chose a class that has movement penalties and close-range only combat, or in some cases it's intended that low-level characters have this situation so high-level ones can be rewarded with additional movement points. I mentioned Dofus, it is an MMO with turn-based tactical combat. If you went there and made, for example, a Cra character (archer), the fact that you only get one unit is kinda boring but they have great range so you rarely have to wait until the second turn to be able to attack something. If you made an Osamodas character (summoner) the first summonable unit you get is a tofu (chicken) which has really high movement and can immediately run over to an enemy. Disgaea is a single-player game series, but in that one you can use one character to pick up and throw another if you want to move really far on one turn.

I wouldn't personally count Final Fantasy style as turn-based. Yes, the attacks are fairly discrete, but so are the attacks in most MMOs. The FF games I've played, admittedly the later ones, were essentially real-time games, where skills had a global cooldown.

I think it's worth considering which aspects you're really interested in here. Is it the combat rules specifically, or is it the idea of being in a separate 'combat mode'?

turn-based combat can be implemented, only you need to restrict the time to use a turn so the opponent doesn't get bored.

a system i thought of a while ago just gave every character a timer/cooldown until the next action could be made, during which you could already issue the order, this way the gamepace is at least very consistent, players still need to keep up with the pace(giving the option to command less, though stronger, units should fix issues for slightly slower players, but when they get realy slow they 'll just have to play on a slower server or something(depending whether the game plays on multiple servers, with pre-arranged battles with different options you can just set the gamepace per battle off course)

also automatic actions(especially reactions) should be available to increase gamespeed a bit