I've been a Game Master for about 5 years now and I've mantained the same group of players for that long, we're all young gamers (I being the oldest with 22 years old) and since we're not from USA we can tell for sure we're the only roleplayers in town, and there's no place to learn here but Stack Exchange and Forums.
Thru my Game Mastery experience I've played Anima: Beyond Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons 4e, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds and Fate Accelerated; our favorite and most used system is Savage Worlds, it's our pick to go for 90% of the games we play, we all know the rules and like its simplicity and ease.
However I've always met the same issue regardless of the system: my players would rather play a full interpretative session than a battle. As long as we hit the battleground, they become iddle, focus on how the snacks taste, our school life, or simply stare at how pretty the Sculpey creatures we made are.
I can picture great combats on my head, against larger than life monsters, vehicles, large scale powers, etcetera. But my players just don't focus on enjoying the battle, they just want to end it real quick… and sometimes I get why they're bored with my battle designs and I tell them "Ok let's skip this, beast is dead…".
I don't have enough imagination for scenarios, and my players are too narrow minded; they ALWAYS forget skills are used in battle regardless of the system, so i pretty much lost interest on creating skill based encounters, also, it doesn't matters if I put pools of lava, creeping thorn vines, explosive mushrooms or snow, we all forget about those features and we just stop caring about difficult terrain, traps, etc. Actually they seem to not like those features.
Lately my battles have been taking place in more and more boring environments, and battles get reduced to both sides not moving, shooting or attacking each other without even walking and then we end with a sigh…
The best battle I've ever made (and the only good one) was against a colossal flying armored jellyfish called Gomozoa as they rode a battle airship and tried not to get devoured by the ting or fall to their doom. I don't know how on earth I made it but they pretty much prolonged the battle for the sake of fun since we were incredibly excited. I just can't make that battle happen again, I've tried similar themes but they were as boring as the latest battles and we're still here playing "Final Fantasy: Legends of Sigh".
I know I can attract them to a battle cuz I've done it before.
We're about to start a new game with Savage Worlds, using the "Agents of Oblivion" manual and a homebrew rule that will let them turn into colossal armors for a limited time like in "White Knight Chronicles". It's gonna be about agents of an old order that can enter an alternate world of horrors thru mirrors and water, saving our modern world from creepypasta-like creatures.
I will need all the helo and tips I can to create interesting battles, so, enlighten me 🙂
Best Answer
Colossal armor is not going to fix it
Colossal armor is Spectacle, but once the idea has worn off the combat will be exactly the same. The PC's abilities to become giant and fight other giants will not really offer any difference in the way they fight. They could pick up and throw a building, but they could do the same thing on a smaller scale with a rock. Now if they were fighting giant, armor clad enemies as regular sized people things could certainly get interesting.
"Terrain is often of more value than bravery....Bravery is of more value than numbers." - Sun Tzu
Your original instinct to use terrain was right, terrain can and should shape every combat that occurs. If the party isn't using the terrain, the enemies certainly should. Anything with the intelligence level of a wild predator (like a wolf) or higher should be able to utilize the terrain in some way, sentient creatures and people should especially make use of it to gain advantage in combat. For example if your players are able to flank enemies that were behind cover those enemies should probably be Shaken as their safe position is now exposed.
Combat encounters are their own story vignettes
Too often people view action and story as being separate (this is an issue in books, films, and RPGs), that the two don't mix well. The opposite is in fact true. The best action scenes are those where plot development and characterization is actively ongoing. Likewise each combat should have its own mini story arc with a rise and fall in tension as it goes on. For example, the party has just arrived at an abandoned warehouse they suspect the enemies of using as safe-house. The party attacks them and they begin to lose numbers and start retreating, the party rushes forward to capitalize on this and finds themselves ambushed by reinforcements the enemies called in. Now they need to escape, they pull back into the warehouse and are followed, as they reach the other side they explode some fuel tanks and light the building on fire cutting off enemy pursuit as they disappear into the night.