11 items tagged with balance
Building Better Crafting Systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj7EaryBgak
crafting cross-game analysis oil theory mechanics balance
An in-depth look at the three components of crafting systems: collection, crafting, and usage - and how to make them shine; mistakes to avoid that make crafting laborious; how to make simple crafting meaningful; and when your game should and include crafting: to give players control over the way they play, and an organic way to interact with the mechanics.
What's the Point of Critical Hits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMFkd7edBR0
critical-hits mechanics balance
Critical hits are deceptively simple: add more damage randomly. You can change both aspects (when to crit, and what to crit) to create unique mechanics, such as extra status effects, skill-based critical hits or even negative critical hits. Critical hits work well in some genres (RPGs, first-person shooters), but can frustrate in others (fighting or tactical games).
How to Design Levels With the Super Mario World Method
level design difficulty balance Super Mario World CCST
An introduction to the challenge, cadence, skill-theme system Nintendo uses in Mario and other games. You design challenges, evolve them into qualitatively different types, expand them into quantitatively bigger challenges, and ultimately combine these tools together to craft interesting, balanced challenges for players.
Guide to all the different Anti-Grind Mechanics that JRPG developers have made over the years
https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/m5u2we/guide_to_all_the_different_antigrind_mechanics/
JRPG balance dynamic difficulty cross-game analysis
Many JRPGs created interesting designs that don't require or allow players to grind, such as scaling enemies, reducing or eliminating XP, level caps, not respawning monsters, and penalizing the player; this thread lists pros and cons, too.
Why it is Better to Over-Nerf than Under-Nerf
Over-nerfing in MOBAs solves the problem immediately and gives immediate feedback on the results. Under-nerfing leaves the problem running for a long time and doesn't give immediate feedback.
How to balance an RPG: or, how to not make your game feel completely broken
https://twitter.com/tanyaxshort/status/1301990872645468160
A concise Twitter thread explaining how to balance any arbitrary system in your game, such as damage, starting with the user experience and big-picture goals, all the way down to fine-tuning your final formulas.
The Reset Problem: A Case for Single-player Matchmaking
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-reset-problem-a-case-for-single-player-matchmaking
single-player dynamic difficulty balance matchmaking roguelike
In single-player games, players die, restart, and often have to grind through boring/easy content. Players don't get to practice long at their highest skill level. There are some game-design solutions to that: dynamic difficulty, and single-player matchmaking. Specific advice about roguelikes here and here.
Balancing Turn-Based RPGs: The Big Picture
RPG JRPG balance project management
How to balance a JRPG from a high-level: knowing your audience, adjusting difficulty to achieve the intended game time, taking into acount progression, and balancing difficulty.
How To Balance An RPG
https://kotaku.com/how-to-balance-an-rpg-1625516832
single-player RPG JRPG balance classes
Why and how to design your single-player RPG character classes so that they're mechanically interesting. You want players to make interesting choices through trade-offs. Make big differences, play-test, and use spreadsheets to balance.
The Brilliance of Bastion's Flexible Builds
https://www.deengames.com/blog/2018/the-brilliance-of-bastions-flexible-builds.html
Bastion allows player flexibility and experimentation with different builds, by allowing you to pick your choice of weapon and character upgrades, and swap them at any time between levels.
Why are character-classes used in game design?
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/83251/why-are-character-classes-used-in-game-design
RPG JRPG roguelike MOBA balance classes
Benefits of adding classes instead of using a class-less system in your game. They make it easier to balance, they help new players, they can provide class-specific quests or story plot points, and more.