Balancing races and classes

Started by Posselosse February 28, 2007 01:08 AM

17 comments, last by IADaveMark 17 years, 11 months ago

218

March 01, 2007 11:33 PM

For multiplayer games, don't spend too much time on it. Just create a basic concept that you think would be fair for each side, and then patch it as needed.

You will NEVER get it balanced the first time.

ishpeck

154

March 02, 2007 10:36 PM

Quote:
Original post by Posselosse
I have 5 races and 5 classes and would now like to balance these. The races aren't that hard to balance since they are not too different from each other. Race A may have +-2 more strength than race B, but race B has +-2 in another thing... The hard thing o balance is the classes. They have different spells and/or attacks, resistances and stats. How do you balance the game in the easiest way? Is there some other way than just playing the game very much and see how it works?

I have written an entire article on the race balancing process.

Read it here:
http://www.ishpeck.net/index.php?P=about_race_balance

*Salutes*

-----------------"Building a game is the fine art of crafting an elegant, sophisticated machine and then carefully calculating exactly how to throw explosive, tar-covered wrenches into the machine to botch-up the works."http://www.ishpeck.net/

Inmate2993

222

March 03, 2007 12:02 PM

Conceptual balancing is a bit harder to pull off. In terms of team roles (tank, healer), that's what Classes are supposed to serve. If you want Races to influence roles, then you may have a lot more to deal with than you bargained for. As a for instance, would there be any difference in role between a Human Cleric and an Elf Cleric? I would think no, that both serve as a healer.

william bubel

IADaveMark

3,839

March 03, 2007 12:32 PM

At that point, you are generating functional sterotypes by suggesting that certain races have either a capability bias or a decision bias toward/away from certain classes.

e.g. dwarves are powerful and make good fighters... not good theives. Oh.. AND they hate magic so you don't see many of them (not GOOD ones anyway).

Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm LLC
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Inmate2993

222

March 04, 2007 01:07 PM

I was responding in reply to Edtharan, with conceptually balancing a team, i.e. making sure everyone does their part, even if the name of their class doesn't match the name of their role. Of course, a fun system would be to only have characters locked into races, and allow them to develop skills in a free-form or classless system. The class designation could be worked out at each level depending on what skills have been developed.

Edit: Locked into Races, not locked into classes.

[Edited by - Inmate2993 on March 4, 2007 10:07:24 PM]

william bubel

IADaveMark

3,839

March 04, 2007 02:31 PM

From a conceptual standpoint, I hate the idea of rigid classes anyway. A class should be the result of skills, not the cause. I am a game programmer because my creativity and coding skills are high. I don't have 133t 5k1ll5 simply because I decided that I am a game programmer.

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