Game balance
From Neverend
Game balance is focused on player stats, combat, abilities, effects, PVP, siege warfare, solo combat, party combat, group combat, monster difficulty, object stats, spells, and NPCs.
The core of game balance is the combat system and how it applies to stats. The combat system will need to be balanced and rebalanced over time, even if a complete overhaul is needed.
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[edit] Player stats
Player stats are based on skill focus, skill points, and experience.
[edit] Skill based system
Stats are determined by skill points, which are increased by repetition. The drawback is in requiring the loss of skills with the increase of other skills, such as decreasing magic while increasing sword fighting. This may be unintuitive, and can discourage players by constantly lowering other skills. Otherwise, players can gain all skills and be too powerful with no balance.
[edit] Combat
The combat system is designed to work within a limited range of damage, so that a low level player and high level player can both fight in combat. This means that damage and HP uses a limited maximum number of points, rather than increasing to several times the power of an early player.
[edit] 300 system
A player does perfect damage of 100, 200, or 300 representing weak, medium, and strong damage. A warrior would use strong attacks, while a thief would use fast weak attacks. The ideal number is not reached in most cases, being penalized by weak skill and equipment, and abilities that reduce or ignore damage. A thief would strive for 100 damage, but realistically do 10-20, 30-40, 50-60, 70-80, or 90-99 depending on skill level. The warrior would use skills to reach 300, but may do only 50, 100, or 150. The stronger attacks are three times as slow as weak attacks, and medium attacks are two times as slow as weak attacks.
In this system, damage never exceeds its maximum of 100, 200, or 300.
[edit] D10 system
Damage is dealt by choosing a random number from 1-10. The total damage for one attack is determined by many D10 rolls are in one attack (x2, x3) and the sum of all rolls. Weapons that are superior will have higher limits such as 5-10 damage instead of 1-10 damage. The drawback with this system is the number of calculations just for one attack. Multiplied by several players and enemies, this may cause a burden for large group combat.
[edit] Try to hit system
Players have low HP, but combat is concerned with dealing one successful attack, while using evasion, parrying, blocking, dodging, and damage avoidance. The drawback is that it is more fun to hit people than to miss, and one lucky strike may seem unfair to players.
[edit] RTS system
Players do a low amount of damage only, such as 5. This number is reduced by defense, or increased by bonuses. The drawback is that all players will strive for a higher bonus or higher defense, with only a limited range of attack. Little sense of progress.
[edit] CCG system
All abilities and moves use a "card" system that has a skill cost, a limited number of abilities available as a "hand," and some system to enable abilities such as mana or opportunity. This may be overly complicated for simple attacks.
[edit] Hero system
Like DL Fifth Age, players have a hand of numbered cards, determining success on higher numbered cards. May prove unfair when given only lower cards.
[edit] RTS Balance
Siege combat means units need to die quickly like an RTS. A regular level system with large HP would be inappropriate for RTS combat, so units must be expendable with low HP despite having some RPG style bonuses. Warcraft III does this by limiting the number of heroes and the number of bonuses applied to a hero, while regular units are cheap and expected to die. Dwarf Fortress gives the opportunity for units to develop a long history of activities but are still expendable. Sacrifice is another example of party based RTS combat where strong units act as heroes due to surviving longer and being costly. Ultima 6 Online also uses temporary hired NPCs that die in party combat. There are a few ways to make siege combat feel like an RTS, while letting players feel they have certain units acting as heroes. Other RPGs borrow heavily from RTS design and controls- Baldur's Gate, Rage of Mages, Dungeon Siege, Diablo.
Players start out controlling small bands of basic units to serve in larger player, monster and NPC controlled armies. Eventually, players earn access to better units, then earn access to units that can level up and have more abilities, making more custom units. Points earned in combat are used to create hero units who typically last longer in combat, have more HP, MP, and stats to keep them alive, but can still die just like any unit.
The city system and roleplaying is an extra layer for players who are tired of combat, and functions as world building, sim and civ style gameplay, and a simulated roleplaying environment. Despite the expendability of units, players can still interact using the roleplaying interface, pretending to eat, dance, socialize, craft, work, and commit crimes. The high death rate should encourage risky activities more as players are not as attached to a high level character like in other games, and since players own more characters, they get to experiment in peaceful and malicious roles. As players start out with generic RTS units, they will find more attachment to certain units who have a longer record of survival, and roleplay professions as heroes, kings, merchants, guards, thieves, etc. A more unique role means the unit has survived above the common mortality rate and has some distinction by surviving. Placing more value on these units makes them more likely to be protected, necessitating cities, city defenses, a system of law and guards, and players willing to band together to defend territory to protect their precious units.
The chance to save certain units from death can tie in to religious systems, as the unit can be brought back to life with penalties, brought back as a bonus to other units, brought back as an item, reincarnated as a monster or undead, reincarnated as a new unit, or sacrificed. Religion acts as a choice on how the player wishes to handle the inevitable death of their units. A recycling approach applies to lesser units to save time, but the option to permanently keep a unit from dying or being destroyed in the afterlife incurs greater cost, giving the need to commit greater acts of peace or destruction to maintain that option, as a hero may find immortality as a lich king, a warlock, a zombie or vampire lord, having immortality at great cost. More noble and valorous actions can give full resurrection and prevent spirit death, but require honorable conduct. Neutral and gray area mortality has more options concerning expendability and recycling, as life is cheap; this applies to soldiers, mercenaries, assassins and thieves, who may find short rewards for resurrection, as a sort of bonus given on borrowed time, not as permanent as an extreme dark or light morality. Other factions can have specific ways of preserving the existence of their units, such as sacrificing to a god regularly to prevent death and destruction. Some units may require killing to stay alive, especially werewolves, undead, and shadow creatures. Others may rely on hunting these creatures to gain resurrection options.
As layers continue to resurrect using these various methods, some specialized attacks can target the spirit, preventing resurrection and reincarnation. Others can engage in combat with spirits, giving a chance for permanent death. Still others may drain spiritual energy or add to it in the battlefield. Thus the battle consists of destroying and repairing buildings, damaging and healing living units, and damaging and healing spirit units.
Units can choose to focus on spiritual elements more by being a religious city, an undead city, a spirit city or an ethereal city, but most factions will choose be mortal and have only minor spiritual influence. A third group is artificial and mechanical cities, using steampunk, golems and constructs, which ignores most spiritual attacks and spells, but is susceptible to high magic which is opposed to mechanics. Thus, conflict exists between living, undead, spiritual, magical, and mechanical, though there are rare hybrids such as spiritual mechanical, magical mechanical, and spiritual/magical mechanical.
Monsters play a larger role as pets and tamed creatures as they are the same as friendly or enemy units, and are balanced to be included in an army.
