So I am beginning the construction of a new combat system for my ongoing work towards a Multiplayer Game Core(which if the combat system comes along as quickly as it should, could have a release soon). I have decided that the combat system will be quite an endeavor, and be both incredibly advanced and simplistic enough for anyone to play.

The simple aspect of the combat system will be in the form of commands such as:
'engage #monster#'
'advance'
'retreat'
'disengage'
'attack #monster#'
'kill #monster#'
as well as a logical targeting aspect allowing you to 'attack #monster#' then simply typing 'attack' again to attempt to strike the same target(if it is around and alive).

These simplified commands can be used by the novice player, and will randomly attack with the currently wielded/readied equipment in one of the equipments attack types(slashing, piercing, bashing, etc.) to a randomly chosen location on the targets body. Moreover, the player can choose to 'aim' for a particular part of a creature at any time before or during combat, then use the simple combat commands to direct their attacks towards that location.

Ranged, pole-arm and melee weapons all have different degrees of usefullness/effectiveness thanks to the flexible engagement system and can be used in conjunction with the retreat/advance commands to keep you a safe distance from attacks, close in for the kill, stun or kill enemies from hiding, raise magical shields to ward off physical/magical attacks, snipe them from a distance or incapacitate them long enough to escape. With a multitude of class/guild/societal skills, magic object(elemental bolts, balls, storms etc) manipulation, combat will be more involving than any online text game engine before.

On the advanced side of the combat system(which can be used seamlessly with the simple system) you must understand the different attack techniques associated with your equipment/fighting style and control your balance while executing them. Understanding how your attacks will effect your enemy, how to target a potential weakness and use your weapon to exploit it or possibly expose a new weakness. This leads to risking higher roundtimes to string together and create your own combonations and fighting techniques/tricks to use and be most effective during combat with whatever foe.

Instead of simply typing 'attack #monster#' using the advanced aspects of the combat system, players can specify the type of attack to execute with their equipped weapon(if weapon is capable of the specified attack). Further players can target specific locations and body parts of enemies to direct their attack at.

The logical targeting system works in this respect too and shines even more in this area as players can type 'hack left leg' direct a powerful, unbalancing(both offensively and defensively) swing to the target's left leg, knocking it off balance as well as to a kneeling or fallen position, then use a 'slash right' or 'slash right arm' command to direct an attack at the targets off balance side. Enemy position and balance modify the difficulty associated with hitting specific body parts as well as the balance outcome of the attacker. An expert player, well trained in combat manuevers and experiences with slashing attacks could easily disable a foe with one blow and follow up with a powerful beheading attack, ending the conflict.

This is where I would like some input on the ideas I've presented for a combat system. I know a few people will say it doesn't sound possible with questnet right now, but I assure you, with my current progress, it is possible and on it's way.

So please, answer the poll and please if you would express any ideas, views or questions on the proposed system or on what seem like difficult aspects of the combat system to use or get used to.

What do you mean by "balance"?
Balance as in a human being upright (as talked about mostly IMO in you post) or do you mean balance as in a balanced combat system in general (although this is confusing to me) or could you possibly mean a seperate "balance" variable which would determine how well a player could balance (pretty wierd IMO).

For the first I'd say go for it - balance sounds pretty cool, but how you'd do it fairly is a different matter. Knocking monsters (or people as you would expect in a multi-player combat system) off-balance all the time, and being able to kill them within two hits wouldn't be very fair.

As for the other two, I don't know where they came from really , and I wouldn't expect many people to actually follow either of them through.

Balance in this combat engine will basically mean what direction your weight is leaning, left or right. The logicistics of this come from factors like...

how aggressive of an attack was launched, how much skill you have attacking in that manner, how hard the targeted body location is to hit, your skill in aiming to hit said body location, your success in hitting the target, and the position/balance of the hit or missed target.

To help explain here's a diagram thrown together of a simplified system to help illustrate...

Example: 

L______________________R
[       Balance        ]
[          |           ]
[0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10]
*digit=10
The default balance state is 5(50 or 50% basically) which means he/she is in their center of balance.

If attack was a "stab type attack" towards the left leg, the work would look like this...

 Attack Type  |  Balance Modifier   |   Body Location Modifier    |    Final Balance     |    Direction    |
    Stab      |         10          |           5                 |         15           |      Left       |
(The weapon   | (A quick stab takes | (Since the left leg isn't   | (The final balance   |  (Since the     | 
 here is      |  little balance to  |  a hard target to hit only  |  modifier is 15      |   target was    |          
 piercing,    |  perform and only   |  five percent is added to   |  percent which is    |   the left leg, |  
 stab being   |  alters balance by  |  the balance cost.)         |  then reduced by     |   balance would |             
 one of it's  |  10 percent.)       |                             |  the second acc-     |   shift to the  |
 weaker       |                     |                             |  ording to player    |   left during   |
 attacks.)    |                     |                             |  balance effecting   |   attempt to    |
              |                     |                             |  stats/spells.)      |   attack)       |
              |                     |                             |                      |                 |

This would result in a 15% balance loss to the left, the results visualized like this for example...

L______________________R
[       Balance        ]
[       |              ]
[0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10]
*digit=10

The balance penalty would be removed at 10% per second resulting in a 2 second penalty in this case. This penalty would not be stacked on top of
normal roundtimes, but incurred at the same time generally wearing off before the players roundtime penalty. This would offer the defender, a 
few seconds(this time would get shorter as players got better) to strike back while the enemy is "off balance" with a small advantage, seems realistic to me.

I hope this makes the concept a bit easier to understand, but in no way reflects the full details of the system. As stated before, this is a simple example of how things could work.

*edit: As I think about it, for more realism the system would have to be designed to take into account what hand the player uses to attack. This is something I originally planned on, but didn't know it would be so vital. These words came about for the reason that a left handed attacker, attempting to stab a targets left leg, would be a simple thrust forward, while a right handed attacker would have to thrust forward and across. This would imply that the left handed attacker would require less movement(balance) to perform this attack.

Does this seem too realistic, or logical? I imagine with slashing and swinging attacks, the balance modifiers could be more drastic for basically attacking with a 'backswing'.

Cheers - Although the word wrap did confuse part of it

BTW I voted for "Yes, as long as the simple combat commands can still be used". I don't know who voted expecting the system will never get up and running - but I do expect it to take longer then (quote) "soon" (/quote).