Question How do you Balance your game.

Hello,

I am wanting to start a debate on how everyone balances game play and elements.

When you factor in skills, equipment, class bonuses, and other things balancing can be a pain in the ass. I am constantly struggling with balance issues.

I mean some of us are running games where even a +1 to a stat can make a difference between life and death in combat.

A REALLY tough thing. I tend to underpower classes at first, and gradually improve them.

Gear is tougher. How many item slots do you have, how well do you want level 1-10 to be, 11-20 etc.
Dont want a level 10 to be protected like a max level toon. So i tend to deside how well a level can be armored and devide by item slots that would protect the toons body. Also cloth user will not be as well protected as a plate user.

Do you want a toon to nuke 10 mobs in a row, or 1-2 and then they need to regain hp before killing again.

Iwe set a weapon max of 3d8 for highest level toons, and lowering that down to level 1.

Also i like to add a negative affect/stat if there is two positive.

Great topic!

It's something I haven't spent much time on as I'm forever tweaking how the system works. But when I do, I start with level 1. I have an idea in my head about what I want the level 1 play experience to be like.

As JTP said, I'd imagine a story scenario like : a new character has their starter equipment and is going off on their first quest. A 40 room underground dungeon with monsters traps and treasure. I want it to take about 20 - 30 minutes at a leisurely pace. For simplicity I imagine they are going solo. I want the monster encounters to be survivable, even with unlucky rolls. Traps would do a minor amount of damage - just enough to be annoying and make the player cautious, valuing their awareness skills or attention to the extra descriptions. The player should have to rest and heal once or twice - or risk being slain! Maybe a challenging end boss that will guard treasure, allowing them to upgrade or improve upon one item or skill, this will give the player a sense of achieving something worthwhile in addition to (hopefully) enjoying the experience.

So I make the zone with all these things in it, create a brand new character, and play through it a few times.

Now specifically to your question of 'How do you balance?'
In the past I would adjust the numbers by 1 or 2 and then retest again. If it was too easy I'd increase the mobs strength or health by a couple for example. But man that took ages!
So then i found out about doubling/halving.
It is almost always faster to double or halve a mobs values until you go past what you were aiming for - and THEN dial it back slightly.

Once you've got level 1 right, figure out the differences in all the stats used. An example might be that having mobs str/dex/hitp 3 less than the characters gave a consistently good level of challenge. You might need to work this out as a percentage. Create a level 10 character and check out her stats - use this as your baseline for balancing.

Play test each step and make sure you have the feel correct. I think even the most heavily balanced systems on paper may not necessarily translate to a fun feel while playing.

Then you have different playstyles to consider. If you have magic users, stealthers, summoners etc - make sure there are viable ways to play each character. You will want to avoid having worthless classes or skills that are never picked because they are not 'as strong' as others. A player should be able to play their ideal 'cool' character and not be at a disadvantage because the numbers are stacked against their chosen skills.

This post got way longer than I intended, apologies!
Very interested to hear what others have done too

Great replies. Giving me how to balance my Dragon Ball MUD.

My Dragon Ball MUD uses stats as character growth. There are no levels. So stats and equipment balancing is very key for me.

Stats:
Powerlevel/Max Powerlevel - health prett much also a gague of strength.
Stamina - How long you can fight for and use attacks.
Strength - How hard you hit.
Armor - How much damage you reduce.
Magic Find - increases chance for items to drop.

So a sample NPC for me would be

Powerlevel = 1200
MaxPowerlevel = 1200
Stamina = 110
Strength = 120
Armor = 80
Magic_Find = 0

So for me equipment stats are key. I think equipment balancing is one of the hardest thing to do when you add in stat bonuses. Now most of the time I will set npc and gear around what powerlevel the npcs are and try fighting it with just that gear, but if you have a MUD with a lot of gear it can be damn near impossible to completely balance the MUD.

Also, passive skills can also unbalance things.

Lets take the Saiyan skill Zenkai. Zenkai allows the saiyan to gain powerlevel even in defeat. Now anyone can see how that would easily be abused. (Note: still haven't figured out how I plan to program that in).

How do you balance equipment?

I imagine you would need to start with a database of equipment. You need to know what equipment is available to the players and how much their stats can be affected by them.

A seemingly daunting task at first, depending on how much gear you have in the MUD.

So break it into manageable chunks and delegate to your builders. (in my case that would be just me haha!)

Use OLIST and find all your equipment - lets say weapons.
'OLIST type 5' on stock tbaMUD gives 27 pages of weapons, providing their average damage - not a bad start.
Of course this gear is not available to all players immediately so you'd want to further refine your list to show what a "powerlevel 1200" player could get their hands on. Depending how you restrict this in your MUD will dictate the best way.

(For example I might re-code OLIST to show the level requirement as well as damage)

Then I know what weapons exist for each level of player and how much average damage they do. Now as I write this I'm thinking you'd also need to know if these weapons improve 'Powerlevel' or 'Strength' - is average damage taking this into account?

The end result should be that you now know what weapons a player can have at any point in their development and thereby what sort of damage potential they have.

Do the same thing for your other wear slots - head, chest, rings, etc. No doubt you will find items with +stats that will shift your data ranges.

As you complete your database you should build a more complete picture of player stats.

With this information you can begin balancing, according to how close the encounters should be. You will likely need to create some balance guidleines for your builders as to what is appropriate to create in their zones. If you are random generating (hence magicfind stat?) then you as a coder can control what bonuses are available. Like a +5 armor might be great for starting players, but worthless for more powerful players - depends how armor is used in the code.

JTP talked about finding out how armored you would want a level 1-10 character to be, and divide that out into the available wear slots. Apply that to your MUD by powerlevel for example. You still need to know what that armor number is, from baseline testing.

Example Idea:
Lets pick powerlevel 1200. From your testing you know that having 'armor 50' (I picked an arbitrary number!) gives a mid-range level of protection.
You might go for a system than has 4 different armor 'sets' for each powerlevel.

Set 1 is pretty much rubbish - low cost, easy to acquire, gives '40 armor' which is less than your baseline of 50 - but better than nothing.
Set 2 is the normal set providing your baseline armor for that level - '50 armor'
Set 3 is better than normal, giving slightly higher armor for powerlevel 1200 - '60 armor'
Set 4 is legendary, rare and expensive, giving much better armor than would be expected at that level - '70 armor'

Now we know that a powerlevel 1200 player could have armor ranging from 40 - 70, (even if they are mixing and matching pieces from each set) allowing us to balance our mobs and encounters accordingly.

Liko - depending on if your MUD is live and has active players it might be easier to wipe all objects and start from scratch with a planned out approach like this, keeping tight control over what equipment your staff can build in their zones.

I agree with whiskey...and then playtest, playtest, playtest. And even playtest it some more.

If I made a level 10 mob, with X amount of HP, AC, hitroll, damroll, diceroll. How easy do i want a level 10 player to be able to kill it. Should he almost loose no HP and be able to just clear half a zone in 10 minutes. Or should he almost die trying. Or should he actually need a group to kill it.

I dont want people to be able to rush a zone. I tend to think what is realistic. If I just fought someone then i would prolly need to catch my breath. So people need to regain strength before killing more.

Maybe also consider what the player gains from the kill. Is the reward a really cool item. Then the mob imo must be tough, maybe even will need a group of players. Or is there no reward, the mob is just xp. Then easier.


Again its tough as hell. And requires alot of playtesting.