This is a hypothetical question, as I haven't yet come across the problem of making too many draw calls, but for my game I am aware that this could become a potential problem.
The style of my game is similar to an old school top down RPG, except the characters and environment are high resolution and not tile based. With moving characters and objects, different textures and geometries are flitting between layers constantly. It's all in 2D.
Currently I'm finding it very hard to batch anything. As I understand, batching requires that multiple geometries appear at the same depth with the same texture. Unfortunately, this doesn't leave me many opportunities to batch. Also consider the high resolution of the textures does not allow me put everything in a single spritesheet, and the z-order of a scene is constantly changing (characters and objects move around)
I'm now trying to add some kind of deferred lighting system and with my many draw calls this appears somewhat incompatible.
I should probably mention I'm fairly new to the concept of GPU rendering. I come from Flash.
This isn't a question really, but I'd appreciate some advice.