I am in the planning phase for a graphical mud using flash as the front end and c++ as the back end. The game would be an rpg, with the typical leveling and tech trees. I am not worried about the programming part of the game as client-server applications are my speciality. My target audiance size is anywhere between a dozen to three dozen players.

I know I have several balancing issues to consider:

1. Balancing between what roleplayers enjoy; and what player killers enjoy (which tends to be opposite sides of the spectrum)
2. Balancing between player vs player and player vs environment (thought is to first balance player vs player then adjust player vs environment accordingly)
3. Balancing between purchased items and dropped items (in one mudI helped admin, the purchased items were worthless past newb levels)
4. Balancing in leveling speed

I am sure there are more elements to the list; but I think this is good enough for my question(s):

What techniques do you use to come up with balancing items. For example, lets say I wanted to give warriors really cool skill A, what techniques do you use to make sure skill A is well adjusted?

Once you have a system you have balanced how do you test it? Is the only way to have a dozen people bang away at your game until it breaks then fix it (I really hope not) or is there a better technique for testing game balancing issues.

Salindor

Well my approach may be a bit different than a lot of others but I like to start up a game where pretty much everyone has the same abilities, same items, same probabilities for drops etc. Flesh out the basics and get the game up and running with virtually all the same character.

This is going to guarantee that all players vs players are the balanced because they are all the same character. This will also make it easier for you to balance a player against the environment because you are troubleshooting and tweaking one player (fixed type) against the changing world.

Once you have this all setup, then you can go about tweaking slowly and surely and all the meanwhile you can have players playing.

So lets say I created a warrior with 20 strength, 10 magic, and 50 health. I create the one class, test him against the environment and see how that works out. If he is handling his own fairly well, you strike your balance. Then of course if all your players are warriors they start with the same stats and health so the difference is pure player skill.

So my player vs player is currently dead even. The player vs the environment is now tweaked. Now I take the warrior and slowly tweak him to have less health and strength, more magic. Maybe 15 strength, 45 health and 20 magic. I now call him a mage and put him (with the warriors) into the world for the players to try out. The thing is that the mage is not radically different than a typical warrior and since he is not that different he should handle the environment roughly on the same level as the warrior. Maybe I take my warrior and tweak him into a rogue by boosting health, lowering magic and pumping into dexterity and put them in with the warrior and mages. Now I have three classes all from the basic base of a warrior but with slightly different abilities.

The idea here is that we are mitigating the variables and starting from the middle instead of trying to start several characters that may be extreme opposites of one another.

But know this, balancing is always a tweaking game and you do have to let the game play out and see what works and what doesn't. But if you start from the middle and branch out rather than trying to start from the outside and balance it to some environment in the middle you will be better off and it has worked for me.

Same with items. Create a sword that will have some basic features and branch out to ones that have a little more damage, maybe more durability etc. Watch your favorite online rpg games. You will see that their new weapons are often times recycled base weapons plus "extras" that make it a little better than what was out there before. Often times they even attempt to sell players on items that are "a little better" than what is out there. Knight Online is notorious for this and their "upgrade scrolls".



This post has been edited by Martyr2: 10 Nov, 2008 - 11:26 PM

It's always tough to balance the game between 'Role-Players' and 'Killers' in the scope of game design. Seeing in the killer's mindset they just want to level up their character and manipulate others (Usually Role-Players) to achieve that goal.

This kind of playing eventually ends up with the Role Player's leaving because they can't get anywhere because they are continuously being 'ganked' or don't enjoy the grind as much as Killers. (Obviously killers don't enjoy the grind, but they find getting half a bar of XP is a worthy reward after spending an hour killing something, whereas other player archetypes will get bored of the game and move on.)

I personally say give the 'killers' a large range of weapons/items/equipment to spend many hours to develop the best set possible without giving them too much of an actual advantage over Role-Players who are in the game for the storyline, the sense of adventure etc.

If you actually know your member-base personally (or close enough) you can just ask the killers to accommodate Role-Player type characters by letting them be as creative as they want without slowing a group down on the whole.


((If you haven't read the DM's guide to D&D I suggest you get yourself a copy and read the first couple of chapters on player types and running the game tips.))


This post has been edited by DoubleFission: 14 Nov, 2008 - 12:00 AM