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Original post by Neoshaman

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but first he must gain control of the engligh language, as well as learn how to express a complete thought...

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maybe that''s why he keep posting
well i have the same matter
the only way to improve is to keep talking
then here he does not train to be a game designer but to perfect is thought
well communication is important skill for a gamedesigner as well

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To write more is to lean more. Just like some say to design more it to learn more about design. It seems that to ask a question is bad too sometimes.

People do not want to listen or think about things since they feel they are always right. I say a few ideas to let some people think about it and they attack since they need help from a doctor.

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Original post by Warsong
People do not want to listen or think about things since they feel they are always right. I say a few ideas to let some people think about it and they attack since they need help from a doctor.

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You don''t say.

i dunno you take any author or scholar and i garuntee that they read far far far more than they write. you say people don''t like to read because they think everything they know is right... but everytime someone offers criticism to any of your posts.. as cryptic as they are.. you shoot them down immidiatly. You write alot but you allways seem to be stuck on what you said in your first posts rather than adapting your opinion to the new views presented.

back to the subject at hand. Balancing gameplay.

There''s the point system. Lets look at smash brothers. stripped down each character has a set of stats that aren''t even presented to the user. they''re all under the hood. if you buy a strategy guide for the game then that shows you all the different stats for the players. balancing gameplay using this method isn''t exactly down to each player has 15 points in total. Its more about playing the game through many many many times in as many different situations you can think of... and tweaking the different stat values untill you as a designer feel that every character is balanced and has some place in your game.

There''s the equal opportunity system. Games like chess, checkers, reversi, battleship, connect 4 all show this kind of balance. Its balanced because both players have exactly the same set of rules and pieces.

then there''s the rock paper scissors of creating balance. each different character or race or whatever a player can be, kills one other easily and is killed by another easily. this can be abstracted like in starcraft, where tweaking different values and ways units move affect the paper/scissor/rock balance of a unit, or it can be absolute like in the game RPS where its concretely rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, scissors beats paper.

Now that i''ve gone through an explained in depth the methods of play balancing that warsong brought up, lets take a look at some other types.

there is a board game that a friend of mine obsessively plays and allways insists i have a round with him. its called stratego. each side has the exact same number of units and types so it is a type of equal opportunity gameplay balancing. It goes further in depth than that though. neither of you can see each others peices untill you attack one or are attacked by one. you only know each others positions. the lowest character, a spy, can only kill other spys and the highest character the martial. everything other than a martial will kill the spy. the rest of the characters all go by the rule that any piece thats a higher rank can kill it. if two pieces of the same rank attack each other than they both die. i guess this would be a form of rank balancing, inside equal opportunity. anyone have any ideas of how to create a game that was based around ranks killing everything below them yet each player having different unit sets than the others?

another balancing system i''ve seen is a handicap system where the game will automaticly adjust the handicaps as players win/lose rounds.

in strategy games, not just rock paper scissors show up all the time, but unit expenses play a big part to. units may have upkeeps if they are fairly large, long build times if they''re powerful, quite cheap if they are weak.. etc... how fast you can move up a tech tree is another form of balancing. if a race of characters has nothing but power units that tear shit apart, then buildings could cost heaps more for them.

risk has a system of balancing based on progression of the game. the more territories you control the more units you bring in. the more sets of 3 cards that are cashed in the more units they yield. the more complete continents that you inhabit the more bonuses you get. then it still boils down to chance of the roll/sheer numbers of units. this way chance plays a little factor in balancing your game. monopoly is much like this as well. the more properties and hotels you own the more likely you can bankrupt the opponent.


now that i''ve gone through an disected what this thread should be discussing.. can anyone bring any more common methods of balancing to the table or go further in depth on any of the methods i''ve brought up allready? How about thinking of a brand new never seen before method? there''s plenty of room open for discussion here.. lets not make this a flame war cause thats not what this board needs. What we need is more talk about design issues and less talk about what the coolest mmorpg or what to consider in making an mmorpg. If you wanna make an mmorpg what you need to consider first is money. get lots of money THEN you can consider making one. They are arguably the most expensive genre to develop and really i don''t see the point of them.

Firstly, could someone please explain how (3,3,3) balances (5,4,1)?

Secondly, another form of balancing: "You against the world" which comes up in single-player games from "Space Invaders" to Rogue Squadron 3 - individually you outclass the opposition (by being much tougher or much smarter) but the opposition has overwhelming numerical superiority or otherwise "cheats" - in Civilisation, this cuts both ways - the difficulty level affects several numerical variables for you and the computer players so that at chieftain difficulty, they''re effectively playing something harder than Deity against you... Another example of "cheating" by AI is in Command & Conquer - the computer can rebuild isolated buidings, and a single harvester load magically fills all his tiberium storage (combining those means that you can tap into his financial pipeline by building a barracks next to a captured outlying silo, selling it, and churning out engineers to recapture and resell it as his harvesters refill it for you)

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If you wanna make an mmorpg what you need to consider first is money.

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RIGHT

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get lots of money THEN you can consider making one

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WRONG

think different

analysis

i want to make an MMORPG,
then need a server
then need money to maintain the server at least
then make a game without server
then secure the transaction
but what would prevent to hack program themselve
or create a complex of hacked program
then based the gameplay on cheating

explanation

every people know about the leibner''s price which would rewards program which will cheat human prentending being human??
it was based on a game where by a chat the player has to guess if the chatter was a man or a human
the game could be play with a simple chat program on the net
there is no risk of hacking because it''s meaningless by principle
it''s about role play and involve only two player (this not what we can call massive)

conclusion

we are blind with "traditionnal" gameplay
maybe there is a huge amount of MMOGameplay which wait we drot some habit to be discovered, ok my previous example is not something we can apply to "massive" play, but perhaps it''s the start basis of a thought toward a different aproach of playing massive online game??

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Firstly, could someone please explain how (3,3,3) balances (5,4,1)?

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it''s about statistic

let''s consider they are vector for an rpg using (attk,def,speed)

by speed the first won and could strike 2 times with 6 as damage
the second could go with 5 in one hit after but can take more damage than the first which would collapse in less time

it simple , if the speed increase you can hit more, but the amount of damage will aproximatly equal to the slow one in one hit (damge take in the count)

then it''s more a strategic matter than everything else, for ex speed leads to variety of move while strong defense help resist attack longer, while attack shorten the existance of the opponent
would you take in one blow or several attack

for ex i build a caracter with a lot of speed and a lot of attack but my defense is left weak, i must take adventage of my speed because even if i''m stronger than the ennemy every sigle attack will put me down, that''s would happen if i face an ennemy with stong defense and strong speed but little attack etc...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Infused
Criticism is good but some that attacking me without reason is silly. As for sandman I agree with him but I elaborated on what I was referring to more.

I agree with what you mainly said and I didn’t touch on some thing to let someone else like you and sandman talk more about it.

As for rock paper scissors it is in the realm of balance in a way since one does not beat all. And you can see a pattern in balance to make more things. Maybe I am not explain it well but most get it anyone I guess.

As for mmorpg it so seems but many over4 do it and can’t make something simple and fun in a creative way. I ask people to restrict themselves to make them think harder to come up with more and some do and come complain.

Some may think my post are a waste but I have gotten motivated and made some new games which 3 small ones are being made by 2 others and maybe 2 more by another.

Rmsgrey
3,3,3=9 5,4,1=10 9 doesn’t not =10 maybe you men 5,3,1
But I hope neoshaman answer you on that

"Profanity is for those who lack intelligence and imagination to otherwise express them selves." "You are what you repeatedly do; Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

You still haven''t addressed the main problem with the points system, in that it only produces balanced results if your points system is balanced. So it doesn''t solve the problem of balance, it merely shifts it in the direction of abstraction.

How do you know that a character with stats of 4,3,3 is the same as a character with 3,4,3, or 3,3,4? Just because the numbers add up, doesn''t mean they are balanced, because the numbers are pretty arbitrary - you have to examine in more detail how those numbers relate to the actual game rules. Suppose attacks were calculated by multiplying speed by power, and comparing it to the target''s speed times defense - if that was how the game rules worked, your optimium strategy would be to stick that last point on speed - the character with 4,3,3 would be more powerful than the characters with 3,4,3 or 3,3,4 - not only does he move slightly faster, but his both his attacks and defence are as effective or more effective than the other guys.

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Original post by Warsong
Rmsgrey
3,3,3=9 5,4,1=10 9 doesn’t not =10 maybe you men 5,3,1
But I hope neoshaman answer you on that

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Since I took the numbers from your original post, I was hoping you could explain them. Of course, if it was just a typo, then that''s fine.

There''s still Sandman''s point that you still have to think long and hard to get the numbers to be equivalent...

Well I am asking for others to think about it and try to tweak it out. But if you want my opinion I think that if people use it more and they will know how to perfect it better. But I think that it does have a better set of balance if you use that than just guessing.

As for the example you said about 4,3,3 in speed, power, and durability may be more powerful depending on the game and if that happens then u have to take other things into consideration and add extra rules and points which would make it 4.5,3,3 which would be unbalanced. Games like fighting (street fighter), 1st person shooter (cyber sled), strategy/rpg (final fantasy tactics), action (star control 2) and other games use this kind of balance which some show it in their stats. I said 3 types of example but there are other things that I agree that are harder to chart out but you have to test the game to tweak it better since we can be miscalculated. And when we do tweak it then we can chart it out better tailor made for that game sometimes to get it balanced.

Rmsgrey
The # were just example and if u want a example of a game look at street fighter in how the 3 standard punches work with their strength, speed of extracting and retracting movements.


"Profanity is for those who lack intelligence and imagination to otherwise express them selves." "You are what you repeatedly do; Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

well number are abstraction
the true meaning of abstration is to give knowledge to master reality, abstraction ARE a REPRESENTATION of reality but independent from him

then in order to build strong number system you have to test in reality
you will use the number where you will find equivalence from caracteristique (when 1 unit of speed equivalent to 1 unit of power or defense)

the example i use is for a turn base mostly
speed is for movement (number of turn you can use before opponent)
it''s obvious then that in the example that match because the loss of power work with the speed (speed/force=never change)

but it''s not that simple
my example use linear growth rate and are balanced already
if you make a graph of power by speed you obtain a line at 45°
this mean that there are balanced
but if you obtain a different line this mean there is a problem (unless it''s a part of gameplay)
if the line is still straight then the balnce is towards the axis which attract the line (for ex speed is x and power is y, you get a 30° line from x axis, then speed get adventage on power) and the game is unbalance (speed will always take adventage)
the problem is when you get a curve
this mean that the two stat are on different growth scale
it could happen when for ex when speed get one unit and his adventage grow by 2 (2 4 8 16 32 64 128)
depending on the curve you will heve a threshold where power have adventage and after where speed take adventage (depend on the range choosen range)
if such a treshold exists it''s the point where unit are balanced
and you have the ration to get a linear equivalent from the two stat
if this threshold doesnot exist then you have to use a weight fct for the unbalenced stat
(the treshold is generally the intersection between the curve and the 45° line when x=y)

this is the method to discover the basic unit of the stat

in fact balance a game is about create a balanced unbalance
that mean that a strategy must not totally overpower another one
because 333 not equal 531 but 541 as adventage in power and weakness on speed (unbalanced) while 333 in balanced but is more weak about power while speed is sufficient

another to get in a count and could unbalance a game, the psychologic aspect part.....
i know a lot of gamer which take adventage of this to mask some aspect of the game to certain player, particulary when the command are complex, skill of player are mostly not take ina count when design balance system
i mean if i have not that reflex i suppose that i could use my great brain to try deafeating the opponent
or if i''m not such a brain i could put more on skill but the game remain challenging for both
ok i know human has not balanced mind it''s not take in acount in our design.... but this could help
in king of fighter series you have no chance if you not master the combo system, and the game turn mostly to the first which could make the first hit and maintain the combo until death (the newer version mostly) ok there is still game before the critical hit but when you take it you know that there nothing to do but die while the game is not finish yet

another things is some enjoyable unbalance game where the psychologic aspect play a lot
winning with the most weak character is a great shame for the loser, mostly if he take the more powerful character
but such a game have still balanced at least strategy than the weaker can not be cornered (at least by a SIMPLE strategy)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>