Despite my habit of writing copious amounts of ero-material, I actually put more emphasis on game design than I do anything else. Shield High is more of a hobby project. A way for me to flex my muscles and get some practical design work done, and generally work out what the hell I'm doing. I've got another project open which I spend about just as much time thinking about, and I keep focusing on one very important point to it, as well as future projects. Game balance. Doesn't seem all that important, but it really, really is, even to Shield High.
However, Shield High is an example of an imbalanced game. Not that it matters, it's single-player, and more about the story, so giving the player some advantages, like first action every fight, doesn't really matter. The game so far has 5 fights, which I have to rank the fight against Andriana as the greatest show of imbalanced. The player has only a 10% chance of escape if they use the wrong escape method. And that's really damn likely. Despite this, the rest of the fight is fairly easy, so it balances out to make the fight a race against chance, can you strip Andriana before inevitability catches up. The fight with Melanie is also ridiculously imbalanced, though this time in the players favor. When I first tested what happens when you lost, I had to try really hard to lose. It was pathetic. But none of this matters, because it's mostly about the story. It's not as though an unfair advantage either way hurts the game.
Which is where I get to points of when it DOES hurt the game. The other project I'm working on is a card game (oh hey look spoilers) and the balance there is VERY important. So I end up spending a lot of my time thinking about it, musing over what cards will see more play, and nerfing them so they no longer have their stand-out power, then checking what will never see play, buffing that, and so on. It's an interesting exercise, and one I'm learning a lot from. However, it's not an exercise I would recommend, as it leads me to over-analyse other games. Games which I could enjoy, if only I couldn't notice that certain parts of it are so clearly imbalanced. It's rather depressing truthfully, to see how many people can't seem to balance, or don't understand what to balance. A balanced game doesn't just factor in the pure numbers, and make certain everyone achieves the same result there, but also the utility, the game environment, and everything like that. And that's where modern games fail it seems. Numbers balance out, but utility and environment get horrifically imbalanced, and it leads to crap games.
So, what am I trying to say here? Nothing much really, I'm just complaining, or musing, as it were. I went off on a tangent somewhere along the line, as I'm certain I had an entirely different point when I started, but these aren't exactly meant to be top-tier articles, just an insight into what I'm thinking or doing. I suppose the insight you should glean from this is that I have a big stick up my ass about game balance, and you can be almost certain that any games I release will be focusing on it heavily. That's a pretty good point to make, so I'll pretend that was the original intention.
Sorry this went on too long, hope you at least found my musings worth the time, if not interesting, informative, or just enjoyable.
Pudding Earl
No comments:
Post a Comment