Variety Friday: Game Design and Balancing


Alright, what I am covering is a little more complicated than the title. In general I’m going to be talking about some of the challenges that come into play when designing gameplay, levels, and balancing. The idea to cover this topic came to me while I was DMing a game of DnD and added a player in half way through, and noticed how drastically it changes the game. Similar problems arise in game design today and I am going to try and cover some of these problems, as covering all of them could easily turn into a book.
First off, designing how a game plays isn’t as easy as simply choosing how you want a game to play and doing exactly that. Sure you may keep some of the same concepts, but rarely, if ever, do you keep the exact same system you planned to start with. This is as true for AAA titles as it is for Indies, you always need to adjust your gameplay to “mold” with the rest of your game, because if your gameplay doesn’t match the feel of your art, levels, and enemies, then it wouldn’t be a very fun game and that is almost always true. Think of Mirror’s Edge, but instead of taking place on rooftops and in buildings, it took place in a farm land, do you think that would be very fun if it still had the same controls and parkour as Mirror’s Edge did? No. Though that is a pretty drastic comparison, try Black Ops taking place in much larger maps, at its current state it wouldn’t work. You would need a way to choose where to spawn, vehicles, and etc. to be able to traverse over a square mile of terrain.
But anyway the point is that one challenge of creating a game is simply making gameplay work with the rest of the game. Think of a game as an awesome steampunk tank, each golden and/or brass gear represents the art and design of the game, as well as the engine, while the steam represents the gameplay. And when it all works, you get one bad ass KABOOOOOOOM!!! But gameplay isn’t the only problem, it is only one of many, another is level design. Again this needs to take all other parts into account; it must not only work with, but assist gameplay, while also catering to the player. You need to have enough room for everything, you need to have enough variety to keep everything interesting to the player, and if one of these doesn’t work, well it’s not received well by players. One example being Dragon Age 2 and its repetitive reuse of the same dungeons and landscapes, this makes it so the game highly lacks variety and after seeing the same map multiple times, even if there are different levels, it can just get boring. This is also a challenge for DMs as far as DnD is concerned, because you want to convey your story with the maps, while allowing enough room for combat, and traps.
Now, for the biggest of them all, balancing. Balancing can mean many different things depending on the genre, yet it applies to all of them. First let’s simply talk about non-RPG and non-RTS games, since they require their own different forum of balancing. Action and shooter games require balancing in the form of making sure enemies can’t overpower you and making sure guns don’t do too much or too little damage. But again, this all is determined by the game, you can’t have enemies from borderlands do as much damage as in COD. You can’t have the tactical Rainbow Six: Vegas co-op in a Halo Campaign. Because a lot of game characteristics are specific to the game, especially existing IPs, you can’t drastically change the game too much, or it will be too far away from the core concepts gamers come to expect. Now why this can be challenging for these genres is you can’t have a game too challenging or make the player feel too strong. Finding the perfect balance between difficulty and not impossible and fun isn’t as easy as it may sound.
Now, RTS games are a whole nother story, because this isn’t simple enemy balancing, but you need to make sure each unit has the correct attack and health relative to its production cost. Not only, but you also need to have special units with special abilities which aren’t too abusive, yet can give you an edge if used right. Balancing strategy games is a strategy game all to itself, because you need to keep in mind all the possible strategical uses, which is why it can sometimes be hard to balance strategy games as a single person, because you could lean towards overpowering units to your own preferences, without even noticing it.
Now, for the big one, RPGs. Although there are many kinds of RPGs, I still hold the opinion that balancing them is harder than in any other game. Because first, you need to take into account a lot more variables, such as the players’ levels, classes, amount of players or teammates, story, and skills. While not all of these apply in all games, it is still a general list of some of the biggest variables. Not only that but you have so many things that can require changing, such as amount of enemies, their levels, and their roles, traps and other environmental challenges, while also the level itself. Making all these things work can be very challenging and can also change how the player plays, or if they play at all (I’m a DM, trust me)! Because you can’t make encounters too challenging, yet a simple variable change can completely change the balancing of a level! As for my example, I learned that adding an extra player requires a lot of addition to enemy numbers and their power. While you also need to make sure to give players choices in how they play, because no good RPG game is complete without choices in not just dialog, but gameplay. You need to allow them to play ranged, magic, stealth, allow them to use their environment, look for treasure and become rich and etc. and you need to incorporate all of this into level design, including how dungeons are laid out and what monsters are where.
So ultimately, a good game has every aspect of it working together in unison, because if they don’t the game will almost always not be as good. Because if the steampunk tank doesn't have steam, it can't fuction, yet without it's gears turning, it isn't as efficient or can't work at all.