Author Topic: How to Balance  (Read 475 times)

Offline Harkins

  • Level 28
  • **
  • Posts: 424
  • Reputation: +11/-2
  • Coder, blogger, entrepreneur.
    • View Profile
    • Push CX - Blog
How to Balance
« on: November 04, 2010, 10:01:37 PM »
http://www.eldergame.com/2010/11/how-to-balance-an-mmo-and-how-to-stop/

There have been a bunch of threads about how to start designing the formulas of your game. This is a really nice intro by a guy who designed for Asheron's Call 2, DND Online, and Star Trek Online.

Visit #bbg on irc.freenode.net to talk browser games anytime.

Offline gnoh

  • Game Owner
  • Level 15
  • *
  • Posts: 127
  • Reputation: +2/-0
    • View Profile
Re: How to Balance
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2010, 05:12:43 AM »
Well those articles took an hour out of my day, I am glad I did it however they are a really good read.

Offline Chris

  • Game Owner
  • Level 35
  • *
  • Posts: 2,217
  • Reputation: +28/-1
    • View Profile
Re: How to Balance
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2010, 06:27:06 AM »
I found the last part quite interesting:
Quote
Many tragically imbalanced games last for a very long time, because they’re fun regardless.

Eventually I realized that balancing for “fairness” was pretty unimportant compared to balancing for “awesome”. You need to get the “fairness” thing in the right ballpark, but players will never be satisfied… however, if they’re all feeling awesome, they won’t quit over it. It’s a lot easier to make sure everybody is awesome, too, as opposed to balanced.

If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end.
It is not the first time I found the notion of "fairness/balance is not important" from designer's mouths... I wonder, is it true?

 


SimplePortal 2.3.3 © 2008-2010, SimplePortal