So, im working on a RPG system for my game, and im getting pretty happy with the basics and sonn its time to start the dreadful task of balancing it. How do you ppl tackle this task, what end to begin in? Obviously it requires a lot of both internal or external testing, but before that can start the system needs to be kind of semi-balanced. I have no idea where to start : D
You want to share some more details of your system? It makes a huge difference balancing for single player or multi player. An RTS has very different balance concerns to a FPS.
Normally initial balancing is a spreadsheet exercise. Extract all of the numbers you can use as leavers. Then work out a āaverage damage per secondā value. Or a whatever per whatever that makes sense. Then start tweaking numbers until you get things to look about right.
Then you want to start playing until things feel right.
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Personally I make all the units in my game have a basic value of 10. So for balancing I just average the values of the stuff and tweak it till its about 10. Like:
damage 11
firerate 7
accuracy 12
AP 5
range 8
energy eff. 17
(11 + 7 + 12 + 5 + 8 + 17) / 6 = 10, so its balanced at 10.
This does require getting the other units pretty balanced however, so it does take a bit of trail and error.
BoredMormon: Its a multiplayer coop RPG game, pulling all numbers uinto a spreadsheet sounds like a good idea to get some overview.
RavenOfCode: Interesting technique : )
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Wizards of the Coast have done so much research on balance. I would find a dungeon masters guide and take a look at how to adapt balance based on party size and power.
This might be terrible advice: When I was a DM for a few years, I had a basic way of balancing encounters for a party of heroes. first I assume that level/health/damage ratios are all consistent across the classes. then I just add up the total max Health of all the party members. then I make sure each wave/encounter I send at them have an equal amount of total health or even a slight more if I want to make sure one of them falls, thus requiring resurrection or healing skills. You always want healing skills to be needed. This helps the hero party self regulate and balance themselves across classes and skills.
when I play RPGs I like to be a healer class. this is where you need to be carful. If you make the need of the healer class mandatory then everyone will be a healer. The best balancing Iāve seen for this is to give every class a taste of each of the others abilities. ie. give the Healer an optional ability that can do a lot of damage at the cost of a healing ability. In the case that they are out trying to solo some objectives. also give your High damage class an optional ability for healing. other wise they may find themselves with out the ability to stay alive and it becomes a race with the enemy to who can kill the other the quickest. but please donāt go Diablo3 with this. where it doesnāt matter what class you choose. the balance is so flat and bland across the classes that you arenāt playing to weaknesses and strengths of each individual character. (I havenāt played D3 since Beta so maybe they fixed that.)
I have a crazy idea for balancing and RPG game. Itās like my one golden idea but on account of work and family I will probably never get around to making it so here you go.
All stats character stats(class) are defined at character creation. Mass is a key variable. player adds strength/muscles to the way a character looks and it takes away from the dexterity stat. Use a triangle graph to plot these statistics between Dexterity, Strength, and Fortitude. at one point I did some number crunching and you have to add some curves to this graph. Iāll see if I can send that to you latter. so they can make their character supper fat and it would give them a lot of health but less strength and dexterity. thus making it impossible to max all characteristics. it is a Role playing game after all.
Then you have them use another triangle graph to plot Knowledge, Charisma, and Wisdom.
Inteligence based abilities do more damage
Charisma based abilities do more Buff/debuff manipulation
Windom based abilities do more manipulation/controller abilities.
Then when players find magic items, different abilities are unlocked based on how strong each of these characteristics are. These magic items are embodied by gems or orbs that can be slotted into equipment.
so lets say you find an Ice eliment magic orb. then you slot it into your axe. you can then choose from a handful of options to what ability it gives you. you would have a series of passive and active abilities to choose from
On hit slows enemy movement speed
On hit slows enemy attack speed
On hit cold damage
Activate ability to Freeze enemy still for 1sec.
Activate ability to do cold damage in a cone.
Passive -3 damage from cold attacks
Then you might get a different set of options if you slot it into your boots. allow players to reselect from these options when ever they would like.
because of the graphs that can be used to create a character it would be very easy to randomly generate enemies. then the core of the game becomes, chose the best combination of abilities and weapons to defeat this randomly generated opponent. Player can create encounters to challenge each other. My favorite thing would be to spawn a randomly generated enemy into the open world. balance the enemy based on the number of players in a selected zone, and use my Max Health method. then see if enough players show up to defeat it in time.
ā¦ well that was longer than I intended. good luck.
To be honest, I think this is one of the biggest problems with multiplayer gaming currently. I noticed it first with WoW. Classes started to blend too much and everyone thought they were a healer. Group dynamics went to crap because not many people really had a clue what their role was any more. People also had no concept of damage mitigation and control. So for me personally, this paragraph is bad advice - depending on what the direction of your game is as far as longevity. Well, that and poorly designed cash shop implementationsā¦ heheh
At any rate, balancing a game is a struggle. But I think you will find the player base a lot happier with having their roles balanced than just letting everyone be able to do everything. 
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Excel (or other spreadsheet software) is your best friend.
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Seems like a lot of work. GMs job is already hard enough as it is. In my games I would simply cheat and change the numbers behind the screen. Players didnāt care, they were having fun.
In single player you actually can cheat a lot like this. Spawn enemies just out of sight as needed. Itās much harder in a multiplayer game, players will notice if you mess with their character in game.
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Thank you very much for the input guys, interesting read for sure : )
Hope this helps :
I donāt remember wether the author mentions anything about crowd control, which can be game breaker
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A lot of games like to put the math on a āspineā such as the level.
MMOās and Diablo clones especially do this.
Basically you have all the math center back to the level of the player and the enemy.
So if you have something like:
chanceToHit = playerAgility / targetAgility;
instead do something like:
chanceToHit = (playerAgility / targetAgility) + ((playerLevel + targetLevel) * 0.1f);
Iām not a fan, but itās super common in a lot of RPGās.
Also, try to start off with a straight down the middle character, then create variations of them that polarizes their abilities.
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This sort of thinking can just as easily be a trap. Unless these values are carefully calibrated from reverse engineered statistical analysis studies, these values will not be equal. The low hanging here is whether damage or fire rate impacts DPS more. Hell, just depending on the algorithm for fire rate, adding one point could produce wildly different results based on what the fire rate already was.
I like where this thread is going : )
Following with big interest.
What about AI balance? is there a good miss percentage or weapon spread rating? My mind goes strait to the days of Counter-Strike source. it was fun to mess with difficulty. AI would go from hesitating a few seconds before shooting at you. to knowing exactly where you will be and getting a head shot immediately.
I guess it depends on what type of game, for a Diably style RPG i dont think you need to put many lines of code into the AI, but for something more story heavy and slow paced you probably need to think a lot more about that.
So I have been working on a balancing system for a board game I am prototyping. this picture is a graph that lets you plot one point to determine Strength, Dexterity, Vitality scores.
Notice how Iāve made a large cap between Blue and Yellow. this is Dexterity and Vitality. Iāve done this to have a larger trade off between the two. for range char to have lower health. Iāve come up with my own base numbers that these will multiply.
Now I need help.
I want to make a similar grid to plot Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. this will determine magic abilities.
-Intelligence will do more damage based abilities.
-Wisdom will be more summoning and environment manipulation/controller abilities.
-Charisma will be more like healing and buffing and debuffing abilities.
Do you think these three attributes should have an even trade off or should I offset them like Iāve done above?
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I guess Iām not understanding the chart.
Whatās the context?
Is this of stat growth? Or is this a hard set value?
also,
Blue ā Dex
Yellow ā Vitality
Red ā Strength
Correct?
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Itās a triangle graph. Itās been a long time since I saw one in a game (sim ant). But they are popular in engineering.
The user would choose their stats by picking a single point on the graph. The three stats can then be picked by tracing the lines.
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I thought it was something like that. So itās just for a starting point or for a system where your stats donāt change?
Also, what do the colored in parts mean then?
The way i do it, is to reverse design the system, start with the highest level / stats / gear and work your way down to level 1. Always consider Mob AI vs you, make āGM modeā where you can test things at all times.