Game Balancing

Game Balance

-Challenge/difficulty level in single player.

-Asymmetric Games (Possible starting advantages in multiplayer game where players don't have an exact start).

-Following a specific strategy in a game where u can use multiple strategies to reach the goal.

-A game object when compared to another game object, in terms of cost vs benefit. (Such as cards in card games, units in strategy games, and items in rpgs)

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Single player.

When trying to decide on a difficulty level for a single player game, aim for the middle of the curve, as you will get the most people (the widest possible audience).

Another way to deal with this is to add multiple difficulty levels, handicaps, or alternate rule sets.

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Asymmetric multiplayer.

In Asymmetric games, balancing the game has to be done through a lot of play testing. The more asymmetric a game is, the more testing it requires.

A player's resources are the ideal measurement to use for testing balance.

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Balance between different strategies.

Suboptimal strategy are unneccecary parts of the game and would be better off removed than left as "wrong decisions" in the game.

Playtesting, and keeping track of the popular player choices is a good method of balancing different strategies.

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Balance between game objects.

Try to make all items neither too weak to never be used, nor too strong to always be used.

Give preferance to too weak over too strong if you must.

To balance game objects, get the cost and benefit to always roughly match.

The difficult part is to give a value to the costs and benefits in order to compare them with other game objects.

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In the reading 3 methods are mentioned to balance game objects:

-Transitive

Give every cost and benefit a value so it can be compared as a value, then take all the costs of an object and add them together and compare them with the sum of the benefits.
When the cost and benefits have the same values, the object could be considered balanced.

-Intransitive

This is better known as a rock-paper-scissors relationship. Some objects are simply better than others but because they are their counter, however all the objects would have their own strengths and weakness.


-Fruity

This means the game objects are so different and unique from the others, that direct comparisons are impossible. This can only be balanced through playtesting.

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Balancing Techniques.

Maths, Your Instincts and Playtesting are the three techniques one should use to balance a game. They all have their own problems, so using them all probably leads to a better balance.

Changes should be done one at a time or you will get misinformation from results regarding to which change caused what.

Excel is great for keeping track of every detail of game objects, and allows for easy access to compare their values.
Excel can also be used to keep track of tasks and status while designing a complicated game.
Excel can be used to create formulas that let you see scaling values as game objects are manipulated in game. (such as DPS of a weapon, in combination with crit chance in an rpg)

When changing values, doubling and halving is very useful when you are unsure of just how much of a change is required. Doing such a drastic change lets you understand better how much of a change was needed once you playtest.

Write down rules as you're creating the game whenever something feels right.

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Balancing First Turns in Turn Based Games.

There are a few techniques that may be used to make up for the first turn advantage that only the first player receives.
-Rotate who the first player is. (if the game allows several turns)
-Give extra resources to second player.
-Reduce effectiveness of early game or first turn.