The new button
You hit the next level and a new button lights up on your bar. Press it in the right order with the others and you win.
Every MMO player knows that loop. I've done it for years.
Classes as button sets
Most games hand you a class at the start and a fixed set of moves that unlock as you level. Everyone with that class fights the same way, and the best way gets solved on a website within a week.
I've done martial arts most of my life, and that's not how it ever worked for me. Nobody walks into their first class knowing anything. You throw a punch and it's bad. Everyone's is.
What we're doing instead
You start with nothing. No style, no secret moves, one crude strike, and it isn't pretty.
Then you learn. A teacher shows you, or you find an old manual, or you drill what you've glimpsed until you're sick of it. Someone can use a move on you until you finally get it. You can even learn by watching an animal hunt.
Every move starts in a stance and ends in one. Learn two that fit, where one ends right where the next begins, and they flow together. It costs you less and lands cleaner.
You start with nothing. One crude strike, and it isn't pretty.
What it means for you
Timing beats mashing. We check that in simulation every time we touch combat, at every skill level.
Mastery doesn't make your numbers huge. It makes you cleaner. You spend less, recover faster, and see things coming a beginner doesn't.
You can keep two forms ready for a fight, and three once you've really earned it. Reach for one you didn't ready and it comes slowly, like a word on the tip of your tongue. What you ready, and how you chain it, is yours.
Where it really is
Built today: the crude first strike, learning from teachers, manuals, drill, being on the receiving end and watching animals, readied forms, and stance chaining.
Not built yet: learning one move at a time before the next one opens, and the rule that only watching a real hunt teaches you, not a bird on a branch. The animations are placeholders and half the forms aren't in.
If that sounds like your kind of game
I write when there's something real to show. The sign-up's below.