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I'm changing the layout of the battle a bit. However I'm not sure if I'm moving in the right direction...

In practice as you see from the screenshot, I'm trying to do this:
- make bigger character portraits, displaying directly on them the statistics: attack (sword), defense (shield), hit points (heart), SP (star)
- remove the battle log on bottom. I thought about removing it completely but I am sure wouldn't be a good idea. So I thought to allow to toggle it on/off, but displaying on the left part of screen as you can see
- the skill description tooltip would be moved on the left, below the log
- if the log is toggled off, in that window you would see the usual character info, with a few more details (speed, critical hit)

however I'm not sure if it's a step forward or not. I mean I guess not having always displayed speed/critical hit % probably shouldn't be a big problem, and I made those decisions so it could be playable more from mobile... but on the other hand, the revenues from mobile aren't really worth any effort so I should probably concentrate to make it play well on desktop.
If anyone has any suggestion, is welcome. I'm thinking to try reducing the portraits, still keeping the info displayed, but so that the log and skill info would show up at the bottom as before...
I guess I could also build a quick test so people could play with it (any mechanic is broken so just to see how the layout works).

1. How big can the enemy parties be?
2. Do formations still matter to some degree like SOTW?
I'm just wondering since you will be limited to 3 characters this time around. Also any information you are willing to share on the game's rules can help in eliminating stuff you don't need, especially if you are aiming for a simpler game.

If you want to remove the log, you will probably have to use use more visual aids (special effects, animation, etc) to convey the information. For example, in SOTW, the only way to tell how much damage is taken from DOT is by looking at the log. Having the number pop up on the character portrait and maybe text/symbols to indicate the source of the damage. Same can be said of regenerative effects, except it you can use different colored text to indicate restorative effects. Also, it would help if there is some visual cues for the enemy's turn as well. In the older Final Fantasy (they had brief messages on screen, but no battle log) games, although the enemy sprites were not animated, they flash or shake momentarily to as a visual indication they are acting on their turn .

There's a lot of brown on that screen. Do you need a 6v6 grid? Like Jaegar asked, does position even matter? If not, you could completely simplify the grid setup.

The sword is kind of hard to see even on the player characters because it's hard to distinguish visually from the blue border.

What is the R L S H? I guess L would be "show the log".

I'm not a big fan of the combat logs in any of your games because so much stuff is dumped there so quickly it's hard to follow (especially when the enemy goes), but it's so essential to understanding what just happened. When suddenly all of my characters are at half health and an enemy mob is KOed between turns, I have a hard time determining what caused what. Most of this is because a lot of information is only available in the log (dot damage, certain buff/debuff effects, enemy attack vs special attacks, enemy healing/cleansing - okay, technically healing is on-screen but sometimes it flashes by in less than a second).

The more of this is visible on the UI itself, the better. But it's hard to address QoT specifically without knowledge about combat mechanics, skills, enemy skills, etc. Like are you're planning on including dots and buffs/debuffs? (I see them on the screenshot but they look pretty ugly.)

With smaller battles, you could presumably revamp the log so that instead of a giant scrolling text block it is more visual and focuses on just the events since your last turn or the most recent seven events or something. Sort of like how Hearthstone has a display for the past several actions and all the details about what happened are visible there, but you can't look up the history from the start of the fight (which I think is rarely needed anyway).

Jaeger wrote:1. How big can the enemy parties be?
2. Do formations still matter to some degree like SOTW?
I'm just wondering since you will be limited to 3 characters this time around. Also any information you are willing to share on the game's rules can help in eliminating stuff you don't need, especially if you are aiming for a simpler game.

Good questions, while the party is limited to 3 characters, I wanted the enemies to be up to 6. Of course since the battles will be designed to not last long (except some boss battles maybe) if there are 6 enemies they should be weaker than characters.
As for formations, it's part of the engine, though if I eliminate the push/pull skills I can just use the front line for the party, and keep it only for the enemies. Kira has a push to backrow skill for example. But as said I could just keep the front/back row for the enemies only, and make sure enemies can't push/pull the party members.
Regarding other battle mechanics I wanted to try some different things, for example:
1) a "working" aggro system like PS1, so you can have more battle control. In practice you should be able to use Kira's taunt (she is the warrior class) so that enemies attacks her mostly. Not always but in most cases.
2) as said, no healing except for potions and a combo skill of Joanne (the mage) so healing characters would be ultra-rare or limited
3) I'm also implementing a "defense" system. In this game the results will be plain and predictable:
Attacker with attack 10 hits defender with defense 5 = 5 hp dmg
Attacker with attack 6 hits defender with defense 5 = 1 hp dmg
but what happens when attacker has lower attack value than the target's defense? I thought that on each hit, the target defense is lowered. So even if a character has defense 10, and all attacker have attack 1, after 10 times they hit him the defense will go down to 0 and they'll start to do hp damage.
There are skills that can raise defense up again but like for healing are rare.
Limited SP, most skills cost 1 SP, others 2 SP. SP values as you can see are low too. No HP/SP regen value, now I don't remember if I have added some combo skill to refill those, but like with the other things, very rare.
Full heal after each battle of HP/SP. You can carry a limited amount of potions each mission, a low value like 3-4 (need to decide yet).

Ok that's the basics. As you can see should play totally different from Loren/SOTW

Jaeger wrote: If you want to remove the log, you will probably have to use use more visual aids (special effects, animation, etc) to convey the information. For example, in SOTW, the only way to tell how much damage is taken from DOT is by looking at the log. Having the number pop up on the character portrait and maybe text/symbols to indicate the source of the damage. Same can be said of regenerative effects, except it you can use different colored text to indicate restorative effects.

Yes that's the plan! Also because of low SP the effects on characters won't be many. I want each effect to have a big meaning and not have like Loren/SOTW when was common to see 5-6 effects at once on all characters

Troyen wrote:The sword is kind of hard to see even on the player characters because it's hard to distinguish visually from the blue border.

Hmm maybe I'll ask artist to draw another icon

Troyen wrote:What is the R L S H? I guess L would be "show the log".

Yeah are placeholder buttons, the same that were on previous screen displayed as texts: R=Restart battle, L=log on/off, S=battle speed Slow/Quick, H=Help.

Troyen wrote:The more of this is visible on the UI itself, the better. But it's hard to address QoT specifically without knowledge about combat mechanics, skills, enemy skills, etc. Like are you're planning on including dots and buffs/debuffs? (I see them on the screenshot but they look pretty ugly.)

As replied to Jaeger, I'm planning a very different approach, so that there won't be lots of buffs/debuffs. Of course with 3 characters and maybe 6 enemies, could happen that there are 4-5 on a character in particular situations, but not many.
Yes looks ugly now but if I go with only frontrow for party, or maybe display them top/bottom like in Loren and let's say 4 vs 4 (a bit like PS1) it could be different, there should be enough space to display the icons in a better way.

Troyen wrote:With smaller battles, you could presumably revamp the log so that instead of a giant scrolling text block it is more visual and focuses on just the events since your last turn or the most recent seven events or something. Sort of like how Hearthstone has a display for the past several actions and all the details about what happened are visible there, but you can't look up the history from the start of the fight (which I think is rarely needed anyway).

Yes I already planned it like that, would keep only most recent events (like 15-20, but can tweak the value).

Thanks for the feedback so far, was helpful

tried to change the layout, and was surprisingly easy. Of course there are some crashes because the game expects front/back row but I think should be able to fix it.
However, this makes the whole front/row mechanic null, so the ranged/magic users are weak... An idea could be that you can hit by melee only enemy in front of you, while use ranged/magic to hit anywhere. But this would mean you have to move around the characters a lot and I don't think is fun.
Another idea could be that to hit by melee ranged/magic users, the delay would be higher since in theory you should be chasing them around the battlefield...

Looks a lot cleaner. With three characters I don't know if there's much positioning strategy anyway since the mage will be in the back and the other two probably in the front. You also have an aggro system to focus on Kira.

Perhaps try to build in the back row defenses into the classes themselves? Like maybe all mages have a bit higher defense or they all start with an attack blocked by any warriors present. Or maybe just each warrior present gives other non-warrior characters on the team a bonus defense while the warriors are alive. So you have to choose between killing the low HP high damage archer at reduced damage on your attacks or the high HP low damage warrior who takes more damage from your attacks.

Yes needs some rock-paper-scissor mechanic. I could just do that each class has damage penalty vs one other specific one. Or simply Thief/Mage have bonus against melee attacks, probably that would be enough (ranged / magic attack have bigger delay).
Anyway probably something that just needs testing/tweaking. So far I like the new layout, and I'm thinking to move the turn order at bottom displayed horizontally, and use your suggestion and show the battle log as icons in place of the current turn order on the right, like Hearthstone. And with mouseover/tap you see a pop-up explaining what is that icon/event. Will probably still keep the possibility to show the full log as pop-up windows only for those who really want it

Although the front/back row system worked for Loren and SOTW, those games had a big party and selection of playable characters to work with. Unless every character has useful and unique options for either row, there would be no reason for Joanne to be at the front or Kira at the back.

If you want to eliminate rows altogether, making the thief and mage a little more durable could help, but the warrior shouldn't fall behind in terms of overall usefulness.

Ok so I decided to try with this:

5 slots, no backrow. I keep the log at bottom but display the skill info over it on mouseover.

Why 5 slots? I want to add more strategy to the placement itself. Current idea is, every class gives a bonus in an AOE radius (so herself + the char on the sides). But on the other hand, grouping the character close makes enemies AOE spells/attacks more effective
So it's a way to make the player think even before the battle starts, depending on the enemy type.

I'm thinking for the AOE bonuses:
Kira - defense bonus
Thalia - speed bonus
Joanne - attack bonus

I don't know why, but I think would be better if the party row moved to the bottom.

Anyways, as far as 5 slots and proximity bonuses are concerned, it might bring little more strategy if the values strike the right balance. Make the bonuses too big, and there is no point spreading the characters far apart, especially if its a defense bonus. Make the bonuses too small and it's safer just to keep them apart from any enemy that does have an AOE attack.