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
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
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
Without anyone getting kicked in the face… You always need to listen when people don’t like something. You are too close to the game; You probably already fixed all the things you didn’t like, so you should value a fresh perspective. Keep in mind that you can always trust someone’s emotional reactions, they are always authentic … 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
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
So how do you recognize strength when you see it? How can you train yourself to appreciate strength? The first way to develop a sense for strength is to change the balance constantly. People hate it because it resets their competence, but it will prevent them from optimizing their skills and their strategies. One theory … 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
This picture has nothing to do with the topic, I just loved it. Certain settings have a lot more impact on how fun an element is than others. Usually they must be set precisely in order to maximize the player’s flow. Make sure to note these values for later so you know what you can … Continue reading
After paper design, we move to initial settings. Usually there is a period in between while the programmers build the system into the game. Some of the best producers I have worked with really understood the fact that this stage needs some breathing room! How many of you are familiar with the concept of Flow? … Continue reading
