Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
GAME BALANCE: THE DIFFICULTY OF BALANCING A GAME
Posts
Trihan
View playlists
CloseNote that I didn't say making everything equal -resulted- in homogenisation, I said it -risks- it. I know fine well that there are games that full this off nearly flawlessly. You probably put it better when you said that the problems start when people don't end the game after using all of their ideas.
UPRC
5516
Ugh, the title of this topic giving me nightmares. Worst part, I'm wide awake and it's 10:00 AM.
Balancing a full game can definitely be a rough experience. The hardest part is just making sure that there are plenty of viable items/skills available to the player at all points of the game. What makes this part difficult is, towards the end of your game, you might tinker around with stats on heroes, monsters, or spells which could completely alter how battles flow for various portions of the game. This could make one item skill that was originally meant to be good at the start of the game end up being garbage or, even worse, godly for a long time.
The second hardest part, for me, is just making sure that your stats on heroes and monsters are balanced well from start to finish. This is a pain in the ass with RPG Maker 2003 because of how wonky the speed stat is, and I can only hope that you're not using that maker for that very reason.
Balancing a full game can definitely be a rough experience. The hardest part is just making sure that there are plenty of viable items/skills available to the player at all points of the game. What makes this part difficult is, towards the end of your game, you might tinker around with stats on heroes, monsters, or spells which could completely alter how battles flow for various portions of the game. This could make one item skill that was originally meant to be good at the start of the game end up being garbage or, even worse, godly for a long time.
The second hardest part, for me, is just making sure that your stats on heroes and monsters are balanced well from start to finish. This is a pain in the ass with RPG Maker 2003 because of how wonky the speed stat is, and I can only hope that you're not using that maker for that very reason.
That's why I'm using VX Ace: I have control over pretty much everything. What the editor doesn't let me do I can achieve with scripts.
The other potential problem when you're trying to balance things in your game is that if you give people too few tools to use in battle it becomes an attack-spam fest. However, give them too much and they might feel overwhelmed with options and never use half the things you gave them.
The other potential problem when you're trying to balance things in your game is that if you give people too few tools to use in battle it becomes an attack-spam fest. However, give them too much and they might feel overwhelmed with options and never use half the things you gave them.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Well, if your game has any character or party customization at all, it's extremely likely that people won't use everything you give them. That's fine, though. You're giving them choices, and they're choosing the path they like. Some people like setting up combos, some people like playing it safe, some people like disabling enemies, and some people like using whatever default skillsets they start out with so they don't have to learn any others. If that's an option that works, and they want to use it, I'm honestly okay with that.
Regarding homogenization vs. balance, I guess it's true that you can't make a game where everything feels the same without it being balanced. Fire2 and Fire3 don't feel the same; one feels better than the other. But being balanced isn't the part of the equation that's causing the problem, in my mind.
I think World of Warcraft is a big reason why a lot of people mentally link these two ideas. At least, it's a big reason why I do. It homogenized all the builds at the same time as it balanced them, and it did both through the same action: by giving most of the previously unique skills to multiple classes, or even to everyone. That's certainly one way of balancing things!
But realize, about half the builds were balanced before they did that, and the others could have been fixed with just numerical changes. They wouldn't have balanced things the way they did if they didn't want to make all the classes feel more similar. They did this on purpose, because they had a lot of bosses and enemies that could be "solved" through these unique abilities, and they didn't want any build to be vastly superior for specific dungeons. They wanted people to be able to take whoever they wanted to wherever they happened to be going, instead of always bringing a hunter to this dungeon and always bringing a warlock to this other dungeon and always bringing an engineer if the healer was a druid and so forth. And the reason they wanted to do this was because it's a multi-player game. In a single-player game, figuring out what configuration to use is just a matter of party customization and problem solving, but in a multi-player game like WoW, it's also leaving people out who want to play, and causing players to run the same dungeon over and over because that's the place where they're most needed.
Regarding homogenization vs. balance, I guess it's true that you can't make a game where everything feels the same without it being balanced. Fire2 and Fire3 don't feel the same; one feels better than the other. But being balanced isn't the part of the equation that's causing the problem, in my mind.
I think World of Warcraft is a big reason why a lot of people mentally link these two ideas. At least, it's a big reason why I do. It homogenized all the builds at the same time as it balanced them, and it did both through the same action: by giving most of the previously unique skills to multiple classes, or even to everyone. That's certainly one way of balancing things!
But realize, about half the builds were balanced before they did that, and the others could have been fixed with just numerical changes. They wouldn't have balanced things the way they did if they didn't want to make all the classes feel more similar. They did this on purpose, because they had a lot of bosses and enemies that could be "solved" through these unique abilities, and they didn't want any build to be vastly superior for specific dungeons. They wanted people to be able to take whoever they wanted to wherever they happened to be going, instead of always bringing a hunter to this dungeon and always bringing a warlock to this other dungeon and always bringing an engineer if the healer was a druid and so forth. And the reason they wanted to do this was because it's a multi-player game. In a single-player game, figuring out what configuration to use is just a matter of party customization and problem solving, but in a multi-player game like WoW, it's also leaving people out who want to play, and causing players to run the same dungeon over and over because that's the place where they're most needed.
I think you're right that balance is a different monster when it comes to single player games as opposed to MMOs.
There is a difference between the two things we're discussing, though: the thing with the character and party customisation is that it has to be there in some form or another. The characters are a necessary part of the game because without them you've got nobody to throw at monsters, and your party is also necessary for the same reason. There's no "extra" effort involved in customisation here unless you have an elaborate class system, but it's work you had to do anyway.
What I was really referring to when I said having too many options might result in some not being used isn't from the perspective of the player, but rather the developer. You want to give players a large toolset to play with, but each new tool you create results in additional development time and if it's something that ultimately nobody will use because there's something better or more efficient available, it's essentially development time wasted.
There is a difference between the two things we're discussing, though: the thing with the character and party customisation is that it has to be there in some form or another. The characters are a necessary part of the game because without them you've got nobody to throw at monsters, and your party is also necessary for the same reason. There's no "extra" effort involved in customisation here unless you have an elaborate class system, but it's work you had to do anyway.
What I was really referring to when I said having too many options might result in some not being used isn't from the perspective of the player, but rather the developer. You want to give players a large toolset to play with, but each new tool you create results in additional development time and if it's something that ultimately nobody will use because there's something better or more efficient available, it's essentially development time wasted.
Xenomic
1752
author=UPRC
Ugh, the title of this topic giving me nightmares. Worst part, I'm wide awake and it's 10:00 AM.
Balancing a full game can definitely be a rough experience. The hardest part is just making sure that there are plenty of viable items/skills available to the player at all points of the game. What makes this part difficult is, towards the end of your game, you might tinker around with stats on heroes, monsters, or spells which could completely alter how battles flow for various portions of the game. This could make one item skill that was originally meant to be good at the start of the game end up being garbage or, even worse, godly for a long time.
The second hardest part, for me, is just making sure that your stats on heroes and monsters are balanced well from start to finish. This is a pain in the ass with RPG Maker 2003 because of how wonky the speed stat is, and I can only hope that you're not using that maker for that very reason.
Oh god the speed stat...probably my worst enemy with 2k3. I think I've been handling it well with it, but my lord what were they thinking with it and the other stats...
