tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439941893980599296.post2968597942154876327..comments2023-09-24T07:49:19.084-04:00Comments on Games By Design Has Moved!: Why Rebalance A Released Game?Christopher M. Parkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16719365007524426389noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439941893980599296.post-12009778696624631412009-11-09T23:24:34.589-05:002009-11-09T23:24:34.589-05:00Cool article that you linked to, it lays out the i...Cool article that you linked to, it lays out the issues very clearly, I think. You're absolutely right about the easier balancing load in single-player and co-op. To some degree, the way that I handle the varied ship mixes (you have different units available in each game), also contributes to a lowered need for balance. Since not everything is always available, you have to weigh what is there in any game. With the number of ships in the base game alone, and the length of games, this means that there is generally at least 100 to 120 hours of variety before you start having much in the way of repeats, so forming long-term habits is extremely hard to do unless you play the same scenario repeatedly.<br /><br />I don't gather any play statistics, mainly because I don't know what I would do with the data. Often there is a huge skew based on how players handle tactics, or how they manage their wider strategy and logistics, or what their ship mixes were in given battles, etc -- so looking at kill-to-loss stats for a player can be misleading. There are just so many factors at play, that I feel like play results are fairly un-analyzable in a meaningful mathmatical sense.<br /><br />Instead, I treat it more as a art, moreso than a science, and use a lot of observation and reported observations of players. When I'm unsure about something, I wait for a lot of players to report on their experiences with it; when the solution or the problem is obvious once a player brings it up, then I take care of it right away.<br /><br />Interestingly, for many AI War players who frequent the Arcen forums, there are really two metagames at play. There's the metagame that any game has, and it's a satisfyingly rich on in AI War. And then there's a second layer of metagame, where they find something exploitative (majorly or minorly), and report their findings to me so that the AI/balance/whatever "grows" and changes over time. Some of them have commented that it makes it almost like playing against a learning AI, since it does in fact learn over time through their reporting stuff to me. A number of them even fill their sigs on the forums with all the various things they have gotten nerfed through their cleverness at exploiting and then reporting them, and I've found that amusing and cool.<br /><br />This is why I made the WoW comparison in the main article (though I've never played WoW, I've certainly heard a lot about it). I'm sure that Blizzard tracks lots of different metrics about players and so on on their servers, but it does seem that they use a lot of reporting and compound data in determining their own balance shifts for their various classes. Again, art with a hint of science. In this way, that sort of evolving nature makes AI War almost like an MMO in how it grows, even though it's not online-only or for-pay, or any of those other models. I can recall having played other evolving games in the past, like Counter-Strike, or GraaL, or a number of others.<br /><br />In many ways, I actually feel sort of like a DM in a role playing game. My goal is not to obliterate players, but is to provide a rich play experience. Okay, sure, that's true of all game designers. But in my case, I get direct feedback from many of those players, and adjust the game accordingly, which -- in the context of balance and AI/opponent behavior -- is the sort of feedback loop that I've personally only encountered in boardgames like Hero Quest or Descent: Journeys in the Dark, etc.<br /><br />I could probably stand to be more scientific in how I handle data collection -- a lot of game design bloggers advocate that sort of thing -- but I really don't think that will ever be my style. I'm quite scientific and rational about how I analyze the data, but I really prefer "softer" data collection methods that rely on keen observation and honest reporting from my players. Especially in the strategy genre, this has given pretty stellar results for me so far. If this was a game for early childhood or something, that would be a different story!Christopher M. Parkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16719365007524426389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439941893980599296.post-78166314926787856962009-11-09T21:24:07.904-05:002009-11-09T21:24:07.904-05:00I've written about this in broader terms, as w...I've <a href="http://thatsaterribleidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-balance-part-1-strategy-and-depth.html" rel="nofollow">written about this in broader terms</a>, as well. Balancing strategy games is a difficult task at best and an impossible one at worst. Because AI War is a co-op game, I think you have an easier environment to tune in. Players aren't going to be exploiting the hell out of one another and ruining the metagame. They don't have to play the perfect game and face other players' exploits at every turn in order to win. The AI provides a somewhat constant challenge against which you can safely benchmark player behavior without having to worry about flavor-of-the-month play as much.<br /><br />Do you gather play statistics and metrics from everyone's play sessions in order to get a better look at patterns of play? I think it wouldn't be too intrusive if you allowed players to opt into a program that quantifies their play and does some analysis to help you see what strategies are perhaps used too often for their own good (then maybe you can figure out where some misconceptions are). Also, you can see how players react to different evenutalities during game play to see if their behavior matches up with what you think should happen. In a game like AI War where there are not absolute counters, but relative counters, seeing how players react in certain situations can highlight how they are misperceiving the decision space and help you write better tooltips so as to reveal information that the player should be finding, but wasn't.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05287543353044105998noreply@blogger.com