Game design volunteer?

[Doidel]

Heya

I'm a novice in game design. That's why I searched google for tutorials & stuff and had to realise that this is quite a large subject, and for my rather simple balancing a 1000 pages tutorial would kinda be an overkill..
Therefore I give it a try and ask if there's someone who'd like to help me to design some balances :) Nothing difficult, no deadline. I guess the chance to find someone is small, but worth a try :P

Please have a look at
http://lorbsbg.wordpress.com
for further details. (The best brief summary is at deviantart, on the right)

Looking forward to working with you ;)
Best regards
Doidel

[jannesiera]

I don't really understand what you are looking for. I don't understand what you're refering to when you say "desinging balances".

[Doidel]

Well, it's about finding a balance between heroes and monsters, costs of items & stuff. A basic economy system
E.g. how much gold does a group gain when killing a certain mob, how much gold does it cost to build a building...
Should I maybe provide a detailed list with all the things I need designed / balanced? Would this help? Or is the latter enough info?

greetings
Doidel

[jannesiera]

Wouldn't this be an issue of balancing while in ALPHA? Or are you looking for mathematical formulas? To me this isn't really design, but anyway. I have null experience qua balancing .

[Doidel]

Yep, it's all about figures and formulas. There are already quite a bunch them, but I think some are rather poorly conceived.
And the project's status is in a development stage where this kind of "game design" (you may call it as you like) is necessary and required e.g. for quests & stuff.
So do I, that's why I'm looking for help here

regards
Doidel

[karnedge]

Yep, it's all about figures and formulas. There are already quite a bunch them, but I think some are rather poorly conceived.
And the project's status is in a development stage where this kind of "game design" (you may call it as you like) is necessary and required e.g. for quests & stuff.

Well, someone else here on the Forums once said that formulas are based on how quickly do you want someone progress per day. Base your experience calculations on how many levels do you want to make in one day (or even the first day they play). How much gold do you want them to get within the first day?

Once you have an idea of the end value of how much, divide it up among the different entities they could possibly encounter in that one day.

So if you dont want a person to get more than 100 gold in that first day, make your monsters drop 10 gold per kill when that player will only have enough energy to attack those monsters 10 times that day. Obviously, this is a very rudimentary example but the point is, you probably want to look at the end result on what you want players to have at the end of the day or tick, etc.

[Nox]

Something that helped me a lot making a pre-alpha balance was a excel sheet with player's progress in rows (like level per row etc) and then calculated values so you can easily compare players stats and see if they are imbalanced

Or you can create some comparison tool by which you can easily compare players aka builds like a products in eshop (this is surely not the only way to balance things, just covers a small part but still)

And then of course testing in reality - as this reveals most of imbalances as players are too resourceful beings, so have your own alpha and beta testers and optionally at least partially public "beta testers"
You won't create a perfect system, mainly not without testing, they will surely find something too good for them ... and sometimes not at the beginning, but after some time, when they learn it (I see it for myself as I'm playing dawn of war 2 since the beta's been opened for public and I watch the forums closely)

[Doidel]

Thanks a lot for your tips / suggestions.
What I did so far was using Excel to do some balance calculations. Where I rather fail is e.g. to define, which stats/attributes a certain Item shall have. Well, it's kinda complicated x/
And I get your point karnedge, the gold example, it's just that there are firstly a lot of things the players must / can do with his gold (heal, build, buy units/items, trade, forge...), secondly there's no limit for fights.
What if I'd open a thread with all the details in it? ^^ Explain all the balances, state all my thoughts and let all the board people help me

All the best
Doidel

[Scion]

if you have a large number of formulas then what you want to do is include a global constant  factor into all of them.....this allows you too speed up or slow down all calculations by changing just one constant...

but then you also want another factor for each individual formula so that you can fine tune each one.

for example say we have some simple formula for calculating XP gained for defeating a monster ...um monster HP divided by level...so tougher monsters of the same level give slightly more xp....

so the end formula becomes xp = global . xpfactor . ( hp / level )

note global.xpfactor is itself constant and can be precalculated.

this can be extended if you have groups of formulas that you want to be able to affect as a group....just add a new constant factor for them....

What this gives you is the ability to tweak things as the game goes on....without having to re-write the underlying formulas...

before you release the game for beta you should have also either used excell to identify a reasonably balanced set of constant values...or what might be better is to just run a whole bunch of simulations over your actual game engine with various combinations....this assumes that youve been able to seperate you game engine from the rest of the code to a point where doing this is possible.

[jannesiera]

if you have a large number of formulas then what you want to do is include a global constant  factor into all of them.....this allows you too speed up or slow down all calculations by changing just one constant...

but then you also want another factor for each individual formula so that you can fine tune each one.

for example say we have some simple formula for calculating XP gained for defeating a monster ...um monster HP divided by level...so tougher monsters of the same level give slightly more xp....

so the end formula becomes xp = global . xpfactor . ( hp / level )

note global.xpfactor is itself constant and can be precalculated.

this can be extended if you have groups of formulas that you want to be able to affect as a group....just add a new constant factor for them....

What this gives you is the ability to tweak things as the game goes on....without having to re-write the underlying formulas...

before you release the game for beta you should have also either used excell to identify a reasonably balanced set of constant values...or what might be better is to just run a whole bunch of simulations over your actual game engine with various combinations....this assumes that youve been able to seperate you game engine from the rest of the code to a point where doing this is possible.

Very intresting! I'll remember that one .

[Doidel]

Thanks for your leads, these sure improve the game's maintainability!

Since I have problems with setting up the equations I'm still looking for a volunteer to help, just wanted to mention that. (Has nothing to do with all the tips, I definitely appreciate them)
It's just that I can imagine the massive workload when detecting a fundamental mistake at a later stage. 4 eyes see more than 2 ;)

[Chris]

I think this counts as overdesign. I was doing something like that once without any special results. Balancing duirng alpha stage is much more effective than during design stage. In addition, all balancing (except for purely exclusive player choice like profession) is not so important. If your dragon is weaker than a mere goblin, then it is just like that, it is a game where dragons are pathetic creatures and goblins fearsome opponents. Players will adjust to it.

[travo]

Balancing duirng alpha stage is much more effective than during design stage.

Design your engine properly so you only have to edit 1 file when you get to this stage.