LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

Well, it's a specific kind of balance. I didn't have a better word for it.

There are plenty of other types of balance, so just saying balance by itself didn't really get the point across. When you have different elements of attacks that are useful against different enemies in a Final Fantasy kind of way, making the elements do the same damage and be useful about as often as each-other is certainly a kind of balance, but it doesn't create any tension, because there's always a best element. The idea with what I'm talking about is to make situations where the player's action is a legitimate choice where both options feel like things you equally want to do, instead of one of the options being the thing you're supposed to do next and thus being your inevitable next action.


Example of tensionless balance:
- You have a single target attack skill, an area attack skill, and a stun skill. You get mastery points based on which skills you use, so it's important that they all be useful about equally.
- Battles are evenly split up between single enemies and groups of enemies, and about one third of all enemies use powerful attacks that they warn you about one round before using them, so you can stun them and stop the attack. This makes all three skills get used as often as each-other.
- However, there's always a clear best skill to use. If there's one enemy that's not charging up a powerful attack, you're going to use the single target attack every time.

Example of balance through tension:
- You have a self-buff that makes you do triple damage next round, a single-target attack, and a stun skill. You get mastery points based on which skills you use, so it's important that they all be useful about equally.
- About one third of all enemies use powerful attacks that they warn you about one round before using them, so you can stun them and stop the attack.
- But if they start charging up for a powerful attack right after you buffed yourself, your next move isn't so clear. If you decide to stun them, you'll waste your triple damage buff. If you go ahead and attack, you'll take a major hit. Your next action is a real decision, instead of an inevitability.


It can exist outside of battle too!

Example of tensionless balance:
- Your main character has four possible party members he can bring with him. Each one uses attacks of a different element: fire, ice, holy, and dark.
- In order to make the characters equally useful, you make a fire dungeon, an ice dungeon, a holy dungeon and a dark dungeon, so each character has a dungeon that they're best in.
- However, there's still no reason not to use the character who's best at the time. You'll inevitably use the ice character in the fire dungeon.

Example of balance through tension:
- Your main character has four possible party members he can bring with him. Each one has a special skill that gets you stuff: lockpicking, mining, blue magic, and monster taming.
- Every dungeon has opportunities to use all four of these things. Therefore, you'll miss out on different types of rewards based on who you leave behind.
- This PULLS AT YOUR HEART because there's no right choice. Every option is worth doing, which means every option involves sacrificing the other options. But you can't do them all.


As is probably obvious from the fact that I made this thread, I think the balance through tension is way more fun. It feels like I'm playing the game instead of just pressing the buttons that the screen prompts me to press. It's the difference between gameplay that could be done exactly as well by a very simple AI and gameplay that requires a player.


Also:

author=bulgingbriefs
I spend literally less than a second deciding on an ability once I figure out an enemy weakness. Spam the strongest ability and use the weaker one after it runs out.

Man, the fact that you've never played a game that has any tension doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And it certainly doesn't mean it isn't a good idea. There are games out there that do this really well. The Dragon Age games on nightmare difficulty, the Etrian Odyssey games, and World of Warcraft all do pretty good jobs at this.

Can you post a screenshot of the event page?

Jesus fuck this event was over two weeks ago stop filling my fucking notice box with spam every single day. Can someone lock this please? This is getting retarded.

Having an online game helps, because I can watch people playing it all the time.

Even more impressively, the airplane has eyes and gills. The Aztecs must have been incredible engineers if they invented living airplanes that could breathe underwater.