Perceived Simultaneity Threshold: 100 milliseconds Let me tell you how I got my nickname, Jaime “Three Frames” Griesemer. We were working on the melee animations for Halo 3, trying to get the timing right. There were already fast. Like, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed. The animators were having trouble because there wasn’t enough time to add a sense … Continue reading
And there it is! The big detail! It’s a large change. It’s very easy to convince yourself that you can feel tiny changes, but you will be fooling yourself. The balance never hinges on a 2% difference in a single value! It was a smaller change than we tried initially. I think originally we changed … Continue reading
Here’s what we didn’t do. We didn’t touch the Strength Knobs. In most cases, they aren’t the problem anyway. When a weapon is being used as intended, it should feel overpowered. So most imbalances come from using a weapon outside its role, in which case changing the strength knobs won’t fix anything, it will just … Continue reading
Iteration is the key to good game design. Everyone knows this, not just designers. Artists, programmers, even the producers in charge of the schedule acknowledge that iteration is a necessary evil — a gullet of unknown appetite that must be sated. However, this abstract understanding breaks down almost immediately when faced with this inflexible reality: … Continue reading
This is the point in development where we finally changed the Sniper Rifle. Now I will try to describe how all the work from previous passes informed this decision… The Sniper Rifle was overpowered — that’s what we intended, remember – but it made the other aspects of the game feel weaker. We couldn’t make … Continue reading
Statistical Design I suggested that a good way of improving one’s design sense is by staring at Rorschach Tests, and here is a practical example of the importance of practicing pattern-avoidance. This image is a heatmap showing where people most often die on Assembly, a Halo multiplayer map. These heatmaps were first used by the Halo design team … Continue reading
Sometimes you have to let your head drive. I’ve claimed in this talk that your rational brain is a feeble instrument and cannot handle the volume of input associated with balancing a multiplayer game. This is true, but that is not an excuse for presenting your design decisions as inexplicable black magic guided solely by … Continue reading
If you were disciplined in writing your paper design, and stayed firm while doing setting up the rough balance, this stage should be very rewarding and exciting. If not, it is going to be disappointing and frustrating. The timing for this stage is tricky. If you start too early, your balance changes will be swallowed … Continue reading
Certain things about the Sniper Rifle make it strong. (Here are a few of them, for reference.) Just like with the Fun Knobs, you want to know what makes something strong, so you can avoid backtracking. Once you move on to the polish stage, resist changing the strength of an element. (At least without admitting … Continue reading
“We practice iterative design” You hear it in virtually every studio profile, every GDC design lecture, and it’s a buzzword game journalists equate with exceptional game design and a high level of polish. Apparently there is a magic formula for making good games, and it goes something like this. Start with a fun game Make … Continue reading
Notice that these guys are getting stronger and stronger as we go? I actually got this bug. Not only is it balance feedback presented with the authority of a bug report, it’s so incredibly early in the process, there is no way to know if the Sniper Rifle was balanced or not, since most of … Continue reading
A big part of knowing if something is strong or not is Affordance, a visual clue to the function of an object. Strength tends to be obvious; it’s not a hidden feature that a player is going to have to guess at. If an object doesn’t have affordance, it probably doesn’t have a strength. [Read … Continue reading
Tank Beats Everything Even in the case where an element cannot be limited by role, it can be limited by availability. Sometimes the Player should feel overpowered, either as a reward for a good player or as a temporary boost for an average player. A game that is nothing but a relentless competence test can become … Continue reading
“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” -Proverbs 27:17 [ESV] “The whats-it is too powerful.” It could be a weapon, an RTS unit, a character in a fighting game, a multiplayer class… it doesn’t matter because all chronic balance problems follow the same general pattern. The game starts to revolve around a single dominant element, which is inherently overpowered … Continue reading
Ok, now you have a flowing Sniper Rifle and all the other weapons are fun by themselves. How do you put them together? This slide is for the Engineers. Design needs to start doing rough balancing in the middle of production, probably before you hit any kind of Code Complete milestones. Properly supporting the designers … Continue reading
