Avoid Balancing All The Fun Out Of The Game

[ffordesoon]

What we're talking about (I think) is a system where it doesn't really matter what decisions you make. Every problem can be solved with equal ease (or difficulty, for places you're "not supposed to go yet") whether you use firearms, energy weapons, melee, diplomacy, or toaster repair. Making sure that every character build is viable, even ideal, for every situation is very dull. I want my pacifist party to be worthless when it comes to stopping a platoon of ravenous mutants from destroying a town. And I don't want my combat monster characters to be able to develop a cure for the California Plague.

I don't just want my choices to change how I succeed in the game. I want some of them to let me fail sometimes!

Exactly! And what necessarily comes with that is the stuff I mentioned in the OP. A specialized thief character at max level should be absurdly amazing at stealing things, because that's what I as a player have been working towards for the entire game. But the tradeoff is that I'll never be able to take on an entire regiment of guards head-on, and perhaps not even one guard. Every choice being equally safe in every situation renders those choices essentially meaningless.

How does the Deus Ex LAM trick and the Skyrim bucket trick fit in? That's the other part of what I'm saying; YouTube-able player ingenuity should be applauded, not patched out.

Of course, failure needs to be interesting. Maybe new side missions can even open up. Fail to stop the bomb blowing up the mayor's wife? What if he goes insane with grief and he runs off into the desert, and now you have to go rescue him? Bandits took over the town because your party couldn't fight them? What if now you have a chance to negotiate with them over trade policy with the next town?

I also agree with this.

Balance isn't making every possible character build viable for every single mission or encounter,

it is in a lot of modern games. That's what I mean by "excessive balance". I completely approve of the version of balance that you outlined. It's far from standard today, though.

[Color Blotch]

I really should have said "Mass Effect 3" instead of "Mass Effect", because that's where the problem is most pronounced. I know some people would say it's Mass Effect 2, but I think 3 was worse about it overall. Which is bizarre, because 3 added in revised versions of a lot of the features 2 did away with entirely. But there it is.

Well, ME3 is hardly a pillar of balance either. It doesn't appear as much of a problem considering the overall lack of thoughtful design in this game, but balance was clearly an afterthought. Many weapons are immediately useless, while some are ridiculously destructive, including the "I win" geth plasma shotgun. Liara's stasis bubble plus singularity spamming tramples on any idea of sensible usage of team abilities. Ultrashort cooldowns in addition to biotic detonations allow for instant AOE pulverization of enemies with certain spell combinations. I can call ME3 many things, but none of them would be "balanced". Gated, on rails, unreplayable, rushed, under-designed, superficial, silly - yes; but certainly not balanced.

[Zombra]

axeldeath, it sounds like we agree on what makes a good game. We're just quibbling over what the word "balance" means.

[Game_Exile]

axeldeath, it sounds like we agree on what makes a good game. We're just quibbling over what the word "balance" means.

Good thread, and the title should be more like "Balance the Game so that it's Fun". Ultimately, "balancing" and "designing" a video game pretty much mean the same thing, outside of writing code, drawing art, composing music, etc. When we say the verb "balance" instead of "design", we are usually talking about changing finer, more narrow details like where to place an NPC or small fixes in character stat progression (though it is important to note that changes to so-called "finer details" can make a great impact on the core mechanics). The nouns "balance" and "design" have a similar relationship, with the "balance" of a game being something you can tweak or change after reflecting on the "design" (with "design" basically meaning "balance" once again, lol). Even music and art design are at least peripherally involved in balancing a video game, though they shouldn't be overemphasized (nor should anything else, obviously).

It all comes down to what the player is feeling when he is playing the game (which depends primarily on what he is "doing" or "thinking" in the game). The mistake the devs can make when designing a game, is designing a bunch of systems that superficially look neat, elegant, and interesting, but are actually messy and boring to play. In which case, you are either a) overemphasizing flashy or trivial stuff in your game (often revolving around shit concepts like "non-linearity" and "choice"*** that are used to market games) or b)mistaken about exactly how your core mechanics actually work ("how" meaning from the player's perspective).

Still, the fact that you are likely to make mistakes is no reason to throw design AKA "balance" to the wind.

***In a CRPG/adventure game it's not enough that you have lots of options and "choices". It should be interesting for the player to figure out what the "right" and "wrong" choices are. Where there are NO significantly better or worse choices, the "choices" themselves, just end up amounting to filler. And BTW, the same is true when the correct choice is totally obvious.

[Jaws4096]

From another post...

Play Balancing and Sense of Accomplishment

Wasteland was a sandbox game, meaning that that you could go anywhere at any time. However, the game’s difficulty didn’t scale, so if you wandered into an area for which you weren’t prepared, you would die fast and know that you were supposed to come back later. The result was, effectively, a linear sequence of events.

Since Wasteland 2 will be even larger, and presumably even more open-ended, there’s a good chance that the designers are spending a lot of time thinking about how to introduce some sort of play balancing. They want to make sure that players who zip through the main plot aren’t overwhelmed by late-game difficulty, while at the same time ensuring that completionists who grind it out aren’t bored with end-game encounters.

I think some sort of play-balancing is probably necessary, but it should be done with extreme care. One of the things that nearly ruined Oblivion for me was that due to constant balancing, you literally couldn’t find an encounter that was too hard for your character – regardless of your level. There was no sense of accomplishment when you developed your character, because all enemies developed right along with you.

In open games like Wasteland, I think it’s vital to always have areas that are way too hard for your party. Upon finding such an area, you leave, grind it out for a while in easier environs, and come back to smite the formerly un-smitable. Remember how satisfying it was to return to the Guardian Citadel in Wasteland, armed to the teeth and ready to take out the unholy saints? That’s a feeling I miss.

Getting that sense of accomplishment doesn’t mean throwing play-balancing out the window. One way to have your cake and eat it, too is to have dynamic leveling of enemies. For example, an easy, early game area might have enemies that are second level, or two levels lower than your party, whichever is higher. This way, if you find that area later than the designers planned, you will still have a pretty easy time, without being totally bored. On the other end of the spectrum, you could have an area with tenth level enemies, or two levels above your party, whichever is higher. If wander into this area way too early, you’ll be smashed. If you wait until later, you’ll still have a nice challenge.

This dynamic leveling should be combined with some kind of level-locking, meaning that once you visit an area, the enemies there stay at the level you first found them. This allows players to experience the satisfaction of demolishing baddies that they formerly couldn’t even scratch. It also keeps the dynamic level balancing described above comfortably behind the scenes – it would look pretty silly if every time you returned to an area, it was populated by totally different enemies.

Placing Enemies in a Believable Context

When enemies in an area are scaled up or down to match a desired level of difficulty, it’s very important that their appearance and equipment make sense given their adjusted capabilities. In other words, I shouldn’t encounter a rat that can bite through power armor or a common thug with a rocket launcher.

Players use visual and other context clues to evaluate the strength of enemies. If a level two wolf looks and behaves like a level 20 wolf, it can be very frustrating. It’s important that designers don’t just boost the stats of existing enemies when they require higher difficulty – they need to replace these enemies with more difficult varieties, and help develop a rich visual context for players to use in anticipating the challenges they face. All the better if that context fits into the local story and environment.

Other Game Difficulty Issues

If players are allowed to choose a difficulty level, there should be a reward for choosing the more difficult ones. For example, the game could provide an XP bonus per kill to players choosing a higher difficulty level.

[Zombra]

I read it this time!

One problem with "level locking" is that it's very gameable if the player is aware of it. Run to the first area, step in, step out, go to the second area, step in, step out, etc. Once you've been everywhere, the whole world is locked at level 1 and now you can powergame your way through everything. In a scaling environment, I think it's okay for an area to "level up" if the player has spent a sufficient time away from it. He may be looking forward to going back to slaughter the kittens he thought he locked in place, only to find that they've all been eaten by gila monsters in the meantime.

To be honest, though, I'm in favor of static levels. An area that may be intended to be a hard challenge if I go straight there will still be fun to play through if I don't get there until I'm level 20. The issue then is whether the writing is robust enough or neutral enough to be immersive no matter what my current power level is relative to the local challenge. E.g. it doesn't make sense for a thug leader with a switchblade to threaten my Power Armor wearing Laser Cannon carrying Rangers. But the Vision Document has a significant section on reactive environments, so hopefully it won't be a problem.

As for static levels forcing a linear experience, it doesn't have to. There just need to be multiple places that are equally challenging. As long as there are areas appropriate for every power level, it doesn't matter if I outlevel some before I see them. If anything it will enhance replay value if there are five "level 1 dungeons" instead of just one.

[ikerulz]

Hey, Color Blotch? This is a thread meant to discuss the balancing of Wasteland 2, not a place to whine about Mass Effect 3. Go take your petty, irrelevant complaints elsewhere, please.

[Zombra]

For future reference, the "report post" button is right there ................................. ^

Just hit that if you need to report someone for being off-topic. The mods can handle it. Cheers.

[ffordesoon]

Hey, Color Blotch? This is a thread meant to discuss the balancing of Wasteland 2, not a place to whine about Mass Effect 3. Go take your petty, irrelevant complaints elsewhere, please.

I'd argue that it was on topic. I mentioned Mass Effect 3 as an example of an overly "balanced" game, and Color Blotch stated why he disagreed with my example. I disagree with him, for the record, but I don't think he was out of line to mention it.

[b0rsuk]

Playing Skyrim with a sword doing 350+ damage per swing is only fun for a couple of hours. But after that you suddenly find that when nothing threatens you, your "battles" now is just clicking on enemies. You can defeat anyone, but you don't need to, and you don't care.

Stonekeep has a secret dagger in the first level. It's most likely a debug weapon used by developers of the game for more convenient playtesting. It's probably the most powerful weapon in the game, if there's anything better it's only marginally.

I get your point. It's not fun playing DooM with IDDQD, IDKFA

[GodComplex]

Playing Skyrim with a sword doing 350+ damage per swing is only fun for a couple of hours. But after that you suddenly find that when nothing threatens you, your "battles" now is just clicking on enemies. You can defeat anyone, but you don't need to, and you don't care.

Stonekeep has a secret dagger in the first level. It's most likely a debug weapon used by developers of the game for more convenient playtesting. It's probably the most powerful weapon in the game, if there's anything better it's only marginally.

I get your point. It's not fun playing DooM with IDDQD, IDKFA

Maybe not, but it was a hoot to de-compile the game and replace bullet blasts with rocket explosions. Killed the last boss in one shotgun blast. As has been stated multiple times, if ya don't like the mega weapons don't use them, but you also shouldn't have to use the 'I win' launcher to finish the game.

[Color Blotch]

What biggest failure in RPG genre could you recollect?

Chris Avellone: Lack of balance is the great destroyer, and while it's been in a number of recent titles, it's not a recent development. Lack of combat balance and any need for tactics - so much so that the combats are so easy that you don't have to do much to win or vary your combat style - is pretty crippling. One RPG in the past I've never played because I'm aware there's one low-level spell that makes the critical choice with your character progression in the game meaningless because that spell is overpowered.

I guess quite a number of people don't agree with that, although I get a feeling that many of them don't actually like playing games, but rather make-believe they're playing. I suppose it's just a kind of role-playing, where you role-play somebody playing a role-playing game...

[Gillsing]

Chris Avellone: One RPG in the past I've never played because I'm aware there's one low-level spell that makes the critical choice with your character progression in the game meaningless because that spell is overpowered.

I wonder if that would be Arcanum? Because the Stun spell can sure take all the fight out of almost every enemy. Though that might be because the Will save is broken in that game: Willpower 20 makes you immune, while anything lower than that always fails to save.

Anyhow, I don't really like exploits in games. Rather than having insane gambling exploits like in Wasteland and Fallout, I'd prefer a balanced gambling skill that would let the rangers spend some time getting reasonable profits, and some special rewards and reputations. I'm not entirely opposed to 'rough edges', but keep them limited to local situations. Don't tilt the entire game by offering infinite XP or money from single situations. Do feel free to balance all the exploits out of the game. I'm sure crafty players will still find ways to break the balance, because balancing things is hard.

[Color Blotch]

Anyhow, I don't really like exploits in games. Rather than having insane gambling exploits like in Wasteland and Fallout, I'd prefer a balanced gambling skill that would let the rangers spend some time getting reasonable profits, and some special rewards and reputations. I'm not entirely opposed to 'rough edges', but keep them limited to local situations. Don't tilt the entire game by offering infinite XP or money from single situations. Do feel free to balance all the exploits out of the game. I'm sure crafty players will still find ways to break the balance, because balancing things is hard.

To be fair, If there are some exploits - I can live with that. For example, in Dragon Age you could generate infinite gold by crafting potions and selling them to Gorim if you played as noble dwarf. When I found that out, I just chuckled and went on playing as if it didn't happen. Some exploits in an otherwise tight system are tolerable, because you can just ignore them. But there are also cases when the entire gameplay falls apart and you have difficult time figuring out how you supposed to play to make any sense of it. You cannot just ignore an exploit if the system if flawed to the point that it is one big exploit by itself. Unless, of course, you ignore the game altogether.

[Zombra]

Yeah, I don't mind exploits if they are easily avoided, and/or so boring to perform that only a powergamer would bother.

[ffordesoon]

@Zombra:

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. Thanks.

[reiniat]

One thing i like about unbalanced stuff in recent games is that you can actually turn the stats against yourself in order to make the game harsher in the ways you want.
One example is Skyrim, as soon as the game was released lots of people complained in the forums about "i found this exploiting way and now im too powerful, this game sucks" and i was like somebody found a way to broke the game and now is complaining about something HE DID TO HIMSELF, the decision was there and it was his choice to take it or not.
And i took that in my advantage and develop a way to make my game harsher in the way i liked, without even modding the game (my PC is outdated so i play on 360);
keep my life at 150, not using Alchemy but maximizing Enchanting and Smithing, and making super powerful enchanted weapons with an Archer based character; the result was: i can kill almost anyone with 1-3 shots from my bow, but i can be killed with the same amount by even the pittiest bandid, and then i can focus on Sneak, Restorarion and Blocking in order to survive a hardcore game. It gave me a lot of anger, but a lot of fun and i really enjoyed to play the game like that.
Same thing with Fallout:NV; i played the game with a very marginal character (with 4ST and 4EN), with VATS strictly prohibited, in Hardcore Mode and Normal difficulty and it was enough challenging.

And that's my point; unbalanced stuff gives you freedom; you decide what to do with it.
EDIT: well, that's only about OP stuff, a bad thing is when something is just useless no matter how do you try to use it because it was wrong designed, but i dont have examples for that right now.
PD: i hope it was understandable, sorry for my ugly english.

[ButchinMelancholy]

@reiniat: I'm not agree with that point of view, because in principle it opens the door to some really bad deviances.
First of all, once ingame, the difficulty is not something the player should have the right to choose (with apologies to the whimsical ), it has to be set for obvious design reasons. And if the developers doesn't properly care about balance, nothing is going to work fine, because one of the very fundamental principle of a game is that there are rules, and the quality of those rules (including how well balanced they are) determines some major part of the pleasure provided (namely the feeling of consistency, meaning). This also means that challenge is an important part of the fun as you have to deal with the situations within the limits of rules, and, honestly, it doesn't have the same taste or feeling of achievement when you have to create those limits rather than be confronted to it... But where it is inadmissible, is that it potentially means that you would have to deliberately ignore some parts of the game to actually find a decent way to play it, which is very unpleasant and sh*tty.

So developers have to balance the game as well as they can, to offer that full and harmonious experience, because if I understand how funny can be cheats sometimes, it's not the purpose of a game, and some people have to not confuse the enjoyment a game has to provide us with the fun we can have breaking the rules.

[Color Blotch]

If your game's exploits go by names like "smithing" or "enchanting" you know there's something wrong with your system...

[reiniat]

@reiniat: I'm not agree with that point of view, because in principle it opens the door to some really bad deviances.
First of all, once ingame, the difficulty is not something the player should have the right to choose (with apologies to the whimsical ), it has to be set for obvious design reasons. And if the developers doesn't properly care about balance, nothing is going to work fine, because one of the very fundamental principle of a game is that there are rules, and the quality of those rules (including how well balanced they are) determines some major part of the pleasure provided (namely the feeling of consistency, meaning). This also means that challenge is an important part of the fun as you have to deal with the situations within the limits of rules, and, honestly, it doesn't have the same taste or feeling of achievement when you have to create those limits rather than be confronted to it... But where it is inadmissible, is that it potentially means that you would have to deliberately ignore some parts of the game to actually find a decent way to play it, which is very unpleasant and sh*tty.

So developers have to balance the game as well as they can, to offer that full and harmonious experience, because if I understand how funny can be cheats sometimes, it's not the purpose of a game, and some people have to not confuse the enjoyment a game has to provide us with the fun we can have breaking the rules.

Well i was talking about how to make an unbalanced system be more balanced and challenging. And so i like balanced games, especially this one, but hey, there are difficulty sliders in most RPGs, players can choose that.