A Balancing Act

    Building a game the way we are, prototyping the game play first, changes the order of things compared to a more traditional development method. One of those things is balance. Balance is usually one of the last things done. However, since our game is already completely playable, I get to play with different balance numbers this early in the cycle.  ( Or am forced to, depending on how emotional the last play test was. ;)

    I sincerely believe that whomever does the balance on a game has the most influence on the design of the game. They control how the game feels, the essence of the game. You can balance a game many different ways and still have it be 'balanced'.  However, you'll end up with two very different games. Imagine if you played Call of Duty where the players took 5x longer to die, jumped 3x higher and ran 2x slower? What if Halo 3 was mostly 1 shot,1 kill? Or if Gears of War enemies were 3x weaker but you had 3x more of them attacking you? (I use console shooters as examples for good reason.)  

    Balance is to games as editing is to movies. (They give Oscars out for editing, so it is a big deal.) You can invoke different emotions in your players by altering the game balance just like you can with editing camera footage. Take the same raw materials and create different things out of it.

    Now, some designers believe that you balance a game by finding some magical formula that will tell them everything they need to know.  I am not a subscriber to this method.  I believe in using tables to allow you to see what's going on, which is important, but lots of play testing allows you mold what's going on.

    I'll give a very simple example: 

    You want a player with 100 hit points to die in 4 shots from an assault rifle. How much damage should that assault rifle do per shot?  

    25?

    A formula would say 4 x 25 = 100.  Dead in 4 shots.  Perfect balance.

    Me? 33.  

    Why?  

    What happens when a player takes 3 shots and ducks behind cover?  1/4 of your hit points has no drama.  1/4 of your hit points just says 'I'm hurt and I need to heal'. 1 hit point creates drama.  1 hit point makes you say 'Holy $%#@%! I made it out with a sliver of health!'.  

    That is how you change the feel of a game with balance. 

This is how our game will be balanced. 

And now... a picture.  Historic snow in the Seattle area.  My poor mini hasn't moved in days.  Thank goodness for teh intArw3bz.

Comments

[Will]

I'd personally say that the ARs damage should be 29 or 30. That way, it's still powerful, but a tiny bit of falling damage won't turn the gun into a 3-bullet killing machine. However, your point remains the same.

[Scathis]

This was a very simplistic example. I wasn't taking into account falling damage.

I'm still not sure I'm going to allow falling to kill you.

[Will]

Of course :) I was just nitpicking the numbers. I look forward to seeing how the game ends up. The blog has been quite interesting so far.

[TheBigOne]

I'd also go for 30 Damage, getting hit by 3 bullets of some weapon seems to be a too common thing to bring a player down to 1 health. If a player is at 1 hp all it also makes him lose the thrill I think. If 1 hp is a rare occurance you can boast around that you killed someone while you only had 1 hp left but if that happens every game its not special anymore. 25 Damage would be certainly stupid indeed, its more thrilling to walk around with 10hp than with 25hp.

I also prefer round values for anything than 10.

Dying from falling damage is annoying so you shouldn't allow it , unless you do a realistic shooter where people expect a somewhat high degree of realism. Giving a player some other penalty from falling from a high position, like a temporal speed reduction is much less annoying I think; if some sort of penalty for falling is actually even needed to ensure good gameplay.

[TheBigOne]

it should read :
I also prefer round values for anything *bigger* than 10.

[Scathis]

It's just a simplistic example to outline the idea that you can create emotion around the balance. There's certainly much more that goes into it. After all you are usually getting hit by more than one weapon and getting into situations with different amounts of health.

I tend to not use round numbers when I do damage values and do use round numbers when I do health values. That tends to give you interesting health values during the game.

[NickName]

I think generally there are two forms of "balance" that most people are familiar with: "developer balance" and "player balance". (Now, these aren't used in reference to the audience that typically uses these forms of balance. These terms generally refer to whom the onus of balance relies upon)

"Developer balance" is defined by the ability for all players to have a theoretical "fair chance" at success. This is usually attained by symmetrical balance; for example, Halo sports a multiplayer in which the characters are exactly the same. Everybody is Master Chief. That way, nobody really feels cheated by the game when they're bested in a shooting bout. This is usually achieved by good design choices, and proper implementation into the game.

"Player balance" is defined by any number of players that are allowed to approach the game and still succeed based on differing, but equal skill sets. This is most achieved by asymmetrical balance, and generally has more to do with the metagame than with the actual numbers that the game runs on. This is generally achieved by pinpointing the games target audience and even cultural demographic.

... I actually wrote out a long story exemplifying these details, but I realized how irrelevant it was, so I tossed it. In the end, it seems that this is more or less something you've already realized; that you shape the game's internal balance by tweaking the numbers, but that designing scenarios around the emotive reactions from the player helps to refine the experience.