What are some common 'lessons learned' from your time spent developing your BBG? Give your problem a name, state what you believe was the problem or bad assumption, and your fix (or theoretical fix if you have not yet implemented).
Name: Accumulation Dilemma - Units
Problem: Buying new, more powerful fighters/army units seems like a great mechanic for fun in a bbg. However, once a player unlocks a new fighter, old fighters can become useless (assuming there is a unit cap). Thus, you indirectly encourage players not to buy as the next available unit will be better than the current.
Theoretical Solution: This is not tested, but I plan to make the upgrade in power from fighter to fighter semi-negligible (but still better), and provide bonuses for having lower tier units.
Name: Accumulation Dilemma - Weapons
Problem: Buying new, more powerful weapons for a large army seems like a great mechanic for fun in a bbg. However, once a player unlocks a new weapon, old weapons that were purchased can become useless (assuming a limited number of weapons per fighter). Thus, you indirectly encourage players not to buy as the new available weapon will be better than current.
Theoretical Solution: Allow players to only buy one type of weapon at a time and have the option to upgrade all weapons. Upgrading will bring all current weapons you own to the next level, will cost less than buying the next level weapon in the same qty, and encourage the user to buy lower level items.
Name: Strategy Dilemma
Problem: Starcraft, Civilization, and many other great games have gambit maneuvers. Ie, you can sacrifice your defenses for a chance at a successful offensive. And while this works great against a limited opponent set, adding such elements in a BBG never works out as there are too many players in PvP style to counter your gambit.
Theoretical Solution: BBGs cannot be design like football, soccer, starcraft, etc in which gambits are essential. Rather, PvP BBGS must be developed with the ideas of a marathon or cannonball run in mind. That is, provide the players with an end goal, multiple means of getting there, and different rates of travel. The player that can find the best combination of shortest path and fastest speed wins.
Name: Hidden Effects
Problem: Exposing all attributes concerning fighting strength makes it possible to determine the absolute strongest path to victory. Thus, hiding these attributes from the player becomes an easy cop-out for designing good mechanics.
Solution: Do not hide attribute values. If the system fails based on the players having knowledge of the workings of the game, then the system is designed poorly and should not be implemented.
Those are the ones I have on my mind at the moment. What lessons has everyone else learned?
