Friday, September 16, 2016

rpg - Practical balance of "chance" video game mechanics



I've been a small games developer and designer for years, and I've recently begun working on more serious design documents for bigger projects.


A common theme I'm running in to is imbalance when it comes to "chance" RPG mechanics. Critical Strike Chance. Chance to Hit/Dodge/Miss/Parry/Block so on. The biggest problem in modern RPG games is factoring in Haste (Attack Speed), since it compounds so aggresivly with the other base mechanics. Obviously, the more times a player attacks, indirectly increases their "rate" of critical strikes, or hits. This creates an immense imbalance, and most of the solutions come in the form of capping haste or utilizing diminishing returns or to killing the big stat increases.


As a designer and player, I don't feel this is a healthy way to deal with the issue. It's not a "fun" solution. Recently, gamers seen Blizzard's answer to this Haste issue in Diablo3, by halfing the stat increases on most all items.


Here is a practical example:



  • 50% chance to critically strike, with 1 attack per second = on average 0.5 critical strike per second.

  • 50% chance to critically strike, with 2 attacks per second = on average 1 critical strike per second.


The second situation is by far favorable, rather than increasing your Critical Strike Chance alone, since not only will you see more larger numbers (or hits in terms of a miss chance mechanic) per unit of DPS, you'll also be hitting more and games with Proc Chance mechanics also benefits. More Complex games balance such things with Internal Cooldowns and Weighing the stats against each other, but often times Haste still comes out on top as being the supremely powerful stat.


Is it practical to instead use a Rate to decide weather or not something happens vs stat weights, capping and cooldowns?

My simplified example is:
Critical Strike RATE = Crit Chance / Attacks Per Second


The result is basically a simple stat weight system. Mechanics such a proc chances still benefit from Haste, however it may be easier to change the damage output of attacks and abilities to reflect the balance. This keeps enjoyable haste mechanics in the game, which are fun to play. It also creates more depth for slower attack builds, rather than just an ability or proc benefiting from slow weapons.


Is this a near-sighted solution? Are there working examples of games currently on the market that don't cap or punish "haste" character builds?




No comments:

Post a Comment

Simple past, Present perfect Past perfect

Can you tell me which form of the following sentences is the correct one please? Imagine two friends discussing the gym... I was in a good s...