People keep asking on the forums how to make their maps popular. Blizzard then, told us on BlizzCon that the secret for a good map is to find the fun factor. However, to better achieve this fun factor, the map must be balanced.
Balance is the art of examining the game carefully in order to make it fair between players and game mechanics. A custom map can have an interesting story, sound, artwork, and gameplay; but, if it is unbalanced, it becomes frustrating, boring, and unfair. To describe a lack of balance, the players usually say that the map is “incomplete” or “broken.” Due to the huge variety of maps on Battle.net, there are many distinct ways to obtain balance.
I will be presenting here some hints to help you balancing your maps:
Balancing the Terrain:
An easy way to make the map fair for all players is making it symmetric. A symmetrical map is made up of exactly similar parts facing each other. Traditional board games, such as chess, use this strategy to provide fairness. For abstract games, symmetry works well. A basketball game, for example, is symmetric, but not perfectly symmetric because one team must start with the ball. Still, the players consider this unbalance since it is a minor issue. Maps like SotiS, MAD, and Nexus Word Wars used this technique to give both teams equal chances.
Symmetry is important to make a map balanced, but it is also a problem for realism and aesthetics. To improve aesthetics, the choices available for the players can be different while they still have the same functionality. For example, in a symmetric battlefield where the players start the game behind a truck, one side of the field can have a train, instead. Both the truck and the train have the same functionality (hide the start location of the players), but they are not equal. This is called “functionally symmetry” and is being used to differentiate the teams on Blizzard Dota.
Functionally symmetry is sometimes an obvious way to balance that can insult the player’s intelligence. Some maps are not supposed to be symmetric, such a Risk map. Asymmetrical terrains give different choices for the players to better simulate real-world scenarios and events. Setting asymmetrical forces against each other creates an interesting situation that can be challenging for the player. However, it is difficult to calculate whether or not an asymmetrical map is fair for all players. Letting the players choose their position in an asymmetrical map does not justify the imbalance.
The best way to balance an asymmetrical map is measuring the players’ chances to succeed and improve the game mechanics until the player’s chances match with the expectations. It is a process of gathering data do analyse the balance. Several games must be analysed with many different types of players (from beginners to experienced players). The average of success of these analysed games can give a good estimate of how much chances a player has to succeed. In a balanced map, each player has the same chances to win, even though they have completely different choices.
Balancing Units:
Maps that simulate reality, such as settlers versus natives, must be balanced even though natives would lose. “Cat vs. Mice” was balanced in Starcraft, and cats are stronger than mice.
More important than simulating the reality is to let the players feel they are playing a fair game. A good tactic to balance units is through the rock-paper-scissors strategy: from three options (rock, paper, and scissors), there is no effective strategy; each option beats one option and loses for another. It also pushes the players to keep changing strategy. This can be applied in maps such as three different heroes. This method can also be applied in a map with more choices, as long as each choice has the same chance to succeed.
Balancing Game Difficulty:
A map that is too hard might cause frustration; but, if it is too easy, players might get bored. When a map is published, it will probably be too hard since most of its testers were the ones who developed it, and they already know the most efficient strategies and how to play properly. An example might be Photon Command. To avoid this, the map has to be privately tested with beginners and their strategies should be studied to improve the map challenges. The first impression matters. These beginners need a reasonable chance of succeeding on their first match. However, the hardest part is to determine what a beginner is. Different players have different skills and different expectations. To achieve the expectations and provide fun for players in different skill levels, there are some strategies that can be followed:
Start with an easy game, and let the difficulty increase along the game; so that, both the beginner and the experienced player can be challenged. The difficulty has to increase in a smooth way avoiding a hard gameplay between easy ones.
Let the skilled players get through easy parts fast to not get bored.
Have an extra challenge that fits all the players, such as a score system where they can try to beat their own record (you can do that by using banks).
Let the players change game difficulty. But, be careful. This requires more balance, and it can make the players unsure about which mode is the “official” one.
If possible, make different modes of the map such as “Noobs only” or “Pro-players only.” But be careful, two versions of the same map might be hard to make it popular.
When deciding how hard the game is, you should also have in mind how many people you want succeeding your map. Platform Defense was made for only less than 1% of the players beat the map. However, a hard game does not mean that the game is against the player. Players should not be prevented to win through no fault of their own. Some maps allow the player to die randomly, such as traps, and use the excuse that they can always play the map again. As Chris Crawford said, “any game that requires reloading as a normal part of the player’s progress through the system is fundamentally flawed. On the very first playing, even a below average player should be able to successfully traverse the game sequence. As the player grows more skilled, he may become faster or experience other challenges, but he should never have to start over after dying.”
Balancing the Player’s Choices:
When the choices are bigger than the player’s desires, they get overwhelmed. When they are smaller than the desires, the player is frustrated. The number of choices has to match the players’ expectations, and each choice has to be meaningful. Meaningful choices are the heart of interactivity. A racing map that the players can choose between fifty different vehicles, but forty-nine of them drive slowly, the players have no choice. Each player’s option needs to be important to the game. For instance, in a TD map, there is always a frost tower. This tower attacks the enemy, makes the enemy slow, gives more mineral to the player, and increases the player score. It has four different purposes, which makes it considerable. If a player can choose between three different guns, but one of them is less powerful than the others, this player will avoid using this less strong gun as if it was not an option. For these guns to be in balance, they all need equal chances of being used. In other words, each one of them needs an important meaning in the map. If you want to have fifty different cars in your racing map, each one of the cars must be unique and worth to play with.
Balancing Randomness:
A map can be athletic and serious where it requires a good use of players’ skills or more casual and relaxing where there is an element of luck involved. Random elements can be presented in maps that the victory is won by skill, but their effect must be small to not make the game a matter of luck. Skill can be balanced with luck in a game by mixing them, such as rolling a dice (luck), but letting the player decide what to do with the result of the dice (skill). If the map is too random, it needs more skill. If it is too tedious, the map needs more random elements.
A good strategy is to let the players choose whether they will play safe with a low reward or take a risk for a big reward.
Balancing Challenges:
A map challenges a player through physical and mental activity. You should plan which challenge will be dominant in your map. Maps that use physical activity focus on dexterity, such as jumping, shooting, and building. Differently, maps that use mental activity focus on strategies and intellect, such as Debates. There is audience for both types of games. Some players like to think in a strategy for hours while others want to relax their brain and shoot zombies. That is why is important to know the game’s audience and what type of people you are expecting to play your map. The type of challenge should be clear for the audience; otherwise, they might get disappointed. For example, some players were joining Debates looking for some action, but they were getting frustrated because it was not the type of game they were expecting. To avoid this, the game mode is now called “Nerds only.” So that, the player can realize before joining the lobby that the map requires mental activity.
If possible, let the player choose between dexterity and strategy, such as with different characters (one that uses brutal force and spell and another that might require some strategy to be used).
Balancing Co-op and Versus:
To compete is a human urge, but cooperation helps the social. In a competitive map, skilled players should beat beginners. So that, the skilled player is satisfied with the fair measurement of skills and beginners can feel very proud if they win. If the map is about cooperation, the game should give the players an opportunity to communicate. Forced communication usually increases cooperation. Another possible way to balance competition and cooperation is letting the players decide what they want or mixing both modes through team competition.
One problem of competitive maps is when the player who is losing gets uninterested and suddenly quits the game. You can prevent this from happening by having surprising victories. This strategy can be seen on the chess map where the winner can check-mate his opponent in a surprising way and end the game. Another way to have surprising victories is hiding who is winning the game, such as in “Mice vs. Cat.”
Balancing the Game time:
When a game is too short, the players have fewer chances to develop meaningful strategies. When the game is too long, the players require hours of dedication, they might get bored, and the map might lose popularity. One possible strategy is having time limits to prevent the game from taking too much time.
Sometimes is good to follow the vaudevillian adage of “Leave ‘em wanting more.” In this way, players might be excited to play the map again.
Balancing the Rewards:
The players want to see some feedback when they accomplish a difficult task. Rewarding players is a way to tell them that they are doing well. Psychologically, rewards are better than punishments. As an example, games that the player must eat to not lose life (punishment) tend to be less fun than the ones where food is a life bonus (reward). However, punishments are necessary as much as rewards. Taking risks is an exciting and important aspect for the game challenge. While punishing, a player must be able to understand why and how to prevent it from happening again. Punishments that are hard to prevent makes the player feel that the map is unfair. Some common types of reward and punishment are:
A simple alert message saying if the player did well or not. It can also be a sound.
More or less points in the score.
Shortening or prolonging the play.
Allowing access to new parts of the map or forcing the player to come back to a previous part.
Displaying a show or animation, such as a dance of celebration when a character finishes a level or a sad face when the character dies.
Expressing the rewards and punishments to other players, such as a name on the top ranking or a different model for their heroes.
Giving or taking out powers, such as the character’s weapons.
Giving or depleting resources, such as minerals.
Letting the user complete the game or ending the game with a defeated dialog.
One psychological strategy is to make rewards harder to get as the player progresses in the game. This strategy is used on World of Warcraft where the game gets harder and harder to level-up. This strategy causes the players to play for more time. Another strategy is to avoid making rewards a part of the routine. For instance, employees would not see donuts as a reward if they get one every Friday. Surprising rewards are more exiting for the players.
Balancing Freedom:
Freedom can make the players bored because they might go to an opposite direction and skip all the action. A controlled experience can lead the players straight to the action giving them a more exciting experience. Of course, freedom sometimes has its advantages. But, you should have in mind that maps that allow more experience do not necessarily make them better.
Balancing Rules:
A map is elegant when it is simple to learn, but full of emergent complexity. Emergent complexity is when simple rules are combined along the game creating very complex situations. As an example, Sentry Scramble starts with a simple rule: to survive. As the game goes on, the players realize that they can use spells. The rules of these spells are simple, such as to teleport or create a force field. But, these rules can be combined creating complex situations. For instance, one spell can create a hallucination while other item creates a force field. Combining these rules, it creates a rule that allows a hallucination to be stopped by a force field. The combinations of rules can be complex and there are extra rules required to balance some elements of the game. However, the emergent complexity allows the player to intuitively know all of these rules without the need to memorize them. To conclude, instead of filling the player’s memory with hundreds of complex rules, let these rules emerge slowly and invisibly along the map.
Conclusion:
The fun factor of a map can be better achieved when the map is balanced. The process of balancing a map is all about aesthetics. A balanced map creates a huge impact on the player’s expectations. It takes months to balance it, and some map makers fail in publishing a map straight after getting it to work. As a consequence, the game gets popular before being fully balanced.
A good way to identify an unbalance is asking whether or not the map “feels right.” In the process of balancing it, you should start with the most dominant rules. For example, you first find the best distance and speed for a character’s jump before finding the right damage for the weapon. Another strategy is to duplicate the default values and see how unbalanced the map ends up. As William Blake said, “you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”
Imagine a Dota with one hundred characters, but one of them has a combination of spells and items that cannot be beaten by anyone. Soon, every player in this game will be using this exactly same character until all of them get frustrated with the lack of balance. Game balance is the finest art in map making, and a map without it can be easily reduced to nonsense.
I think the most important thing when it comes to balance is choosing the right scope for your mod. If you're balancing new weapons, new terrain, new items, new classes, new whatever else, you're taking on too much. This is doubly important. As a designer, you can only tune so many knobs in so many ways before things start falling apart from taking on too much. More importanly, players can only try so many new things before their heads explode from uknown possibilities, particularly in a pvp environment where players who have mastered the games' balance can dominate new players and destroy your player base.
My suggestion is to start small. DOTA wasn't made overnight, it started with simple hero's straight out of warcraft III. Over years of time items were added, classes were added, gameplay mechanics were added and items were added all the while all of these were refined. The players were inherently involved with all of this so gameplay could grow in complexity over time without leaving the community behind. Pick a battle, be it adding cool new weapons to simple characters, or creating a skill tree at first. Don't try to add everyone all at once or you create a mountain neither you or the players of custom games can climb.
Holy crap, someone cited sources on the internet. The end must be near lol. Very well written article Rodrigo. I think you touch on some crazy important points. I feel the complexity one is a big one. Some people wanna make these maps with massive custom UIs and a thousand rules.. Unless you ease people in, they're never going to like your game. And that doesn't just mean adding 100 tips to the game; with how fast games go no one reads these.
True haha, I think the same can be said about a lot of iphone apps... a billion features that takes forever to punch one thing in... wish more developers in general would simplify.
Anyway, most of this is obvious but maybe it's good that it's put out there. Also, while having this so called 'perfect balanced' map, the contrary has proved also to be true about getting popularity: 2 player broken map. Lol, well I know a lot of people LOVE playing broken maps and exploiting to give themself some advantage. But for the most part, you're right Rodrigo.
I think the same can be said about a lot of iphone apps... a
billion features that takes forever to punch one thing in... wish more
developers in general would simplify.
Anyway, most of this is obvious but maybe it's good that it's put out
there. Also, while having this so called 'perfect balanced' map, the
contrary has proved also to be true about getting popularity: 2 player
broken map. Lol, well I know a lot of people LOVE playing broken maps
and exploiting to give themself some advantage. But for the most part,
you're right Rodrigo.
Human-computer interaction is all about common sense. If you read Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, you will see a way more obvious things than I am saying in this tutorial. The problem is that it's so many obvious rules that we forget when we are developing I-phone apps or making maps.
Players might love to exploit broken maps, but once everyone knows how to exploit it, the map is gone.
One of the first things we learned in our Engineering Psych class is that common sense in design is usually non-existent. Designers tend to design with the notion that if they understand it, everyone else does. The issue is that designers are the minority and 'everyone else' is the majority.
Take the Apple Ipod. Simplistic design, but we ran a usability study on it with people who have never used an apple product before and they could barely turn it on, never mind do anything of value.
The problem is someone will have this huge complex idea for a map; Create it, THEN beta it. Well guess what. Your map is nearly done and just now you are asking for actual user feedback. What if they tell you your map has a fundamental problem at it's core? Do you really wanna redo everything? It's important to involve user feedback throughout the entire process. You may learn quickly that a system you are going to design over the next month or two is completely useless or counter-intuitive.
Something that I cannot recommend enough to map designers is get someone you know to sit down and play your map and just watch them. Ask them to speak out when they have issues, what they like, what they dislike etc. You may realize that something you thought was self-explanatory could use just a little more guiding.
This has definetly made me think twice about my current project. I was planning on having heros with chooseable abilities and all that, and because I am designing it, it seems easy to understand.
I think as a whole even when people ask for feedback, not enough people give it, the forums are a little quiet atm but I have been asking for feedback on my terrain as I work on it for over a week, and only mozared has replied, whilst I greatly appreciate his feedback, its only one persons, and not everyone has the same views.
I will be considering all of the above when designing my UI and gameplay though, I will be making sure to get feedback as i go.
I agree about the mapping thing. Like I've mentioned before, I've tested maps that I know needed to be changed, but the mapper wasn't willing to budge or either too far to bother. Definitely test your map a lot, be open, and test it WITHOUT YES-MEN! (thankfully the internet is full of non yes-men)
I have to say I opened this expecting another "facedesk Rodrigo post", but was pleasantly surprised. Even though most of the content is basically copy/pasted from youtube videos from the source authors (which, by the way, you should link; they are great videos), it's nice to see it all summerized.
Even though most of the content is basically copy/pasted from youtube videos from the source authors
(which, by the way, you should link; they are great videos), it's nice
to see it all summerized.
Nice job.
I didn't watch any youtube video related to what I wrote, and there is nothing copied and pasted. I wrote the whole tutorial from beggining to end. The max you can find is the quotes and some ideas paraphrased from the books I cited.
I didn't watch any youtube video related to what I wrote, and there is nothing copied and pasted. I wrote the whole tutorial from beggining to end. The max you can find is the quotes and some ideas paraphrased from the books I cited.
If there is such videos, please link them. :)
Very good watch for any mapper. Was linked here a few months ago.
HOLY CRUD!!! That's what!?! 1 hour, 42 minutes and 11 seconds!?!?! Damn! Do you want me to spend...(using a calculater)...10.14285...etc.% of my day to watch a video that I have almost NO interest in!?!?! OK!!! I'll watch it!!! :D
Ok, I watched the video. It is really good, I recommend it, but he is talking about game design in general, and not game balance. He gave a really good example of the rock-paper-scissors method working on game design.
Excellent video. I watched the whole thing. If only more people took the time to learn and actively understand game design...Our custom game list would be a much better place..;p
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How to Make a Balanced Map
People keep asking on the forums how to make their maps popular. Blizzard then, told us on BlizzCon that the secret for a good map is to find the fun factor. However, to better achieve this fun factor, the map must be balanced.
Balance is the art of examining the game carefully in order to make it fair between players and game mechanics. A custom map can have an interesting story, sound, artwork, and gameplay; but, if it is unbalanced, it becomes frustrating, boring, and unfair. To describe a lack of balance, the players usually say that the map is “incomplete” or “broken.” Due to the huge variety of maps on Battle.net, there are many distinct ways to obtain balance.
I will be presenting here some hints to help you balancing your maps:
Balancing the Terrain:
An easy way to make the map fair for all players is making it symmetric. A symmetrical map is made up of exactly similar parts facing each other. Traditional board games, such as chess, use this strategy to provide fairness. For abstract games, symmetry works well. A basketball game, for example, is symmetric, but not perfectly symmetric because one team must start with the ball. Still, the players consider this unbalance since it is a minor issue. Maps like SotiS, MAD, and Nexus Word Wars used this technique to give both teams equal chances.
Symmetry is important to make a map balanced, but it is also a problem for realism and aesthetics. To improve aesthetics, the choices available for the players can be different while they still have the same functionality. For example, in a symmetric battlefield where the players start the game behind a truck, one side of the field can have a train, instead. Both the truck and the train have the same functionality (hide the start location of the players), but they are not equal. This is called “functionally symmetry” and is being used to differentiate the teams on Blizzard Dota.
Functionally symmetry is sometimes an obvious way to balance that can insult the player’s intelligence. Some maps are not supposed to be symmetric, such a Risk map. Asymmetrical terrains give different choices for the players to better simulate real-world scenarios and events. Setting asymmetrical forces against each other creates an interesting situation that can be challenging for the player. However, it is difficult to calculate whether or not an asymmetrical map is fair for all players. Letting the players choose their position in an asymmetrical map does not justify the imbalance.
The best way to balance an asymmetrical map is measuring the players’ chances to succeed and improve the game mechanics until the player’s chances match with the expectations. It is a process of gathering data do analyse the balance. Several games must be analysed with many different types of players (from beginners to experienced players). The average of success of these analysed games can give a good estimate of how much chances a player has to succeed. In a balanced map, each player has the same chances to win, even though they have completely different choices.
Balancing Units:
Maps that simulate reality, such as settlers versus natives, must be balanced even though natives would lose. “Cat vs. Mice” was balanced in Starcraft, and cats are stronger than mice. More important than simulating the reality is to let the players feel they are playing a fair game. A good tactic to balance units is through the rock-paper-scissors strategy: from three options (rock, paper, and scissors), there is no effective strategy; each option beats one option and loses for another. It also pushes the players to keep changing strategy. This can be applied in maps such as three different heroes. This method can also be applied in a map with more choices, as long as each choice has the same chance to succeed.
Balancing Game Difficulty:
A map that is too hard might cause frustration; but, if it is too easy, players might get bored. When a map is published, it will probably be too hard since most of its testers were the ones who developed it, and they already know the most efficient strategies and how to play properly. An example might be Photon Command. To avoid this, the map has to be privately tested with beginners and their strategies should be studied to improve the map challenges. The first impression matters. These beginners need a reasonable chance of succeeding on their first match. However, the hardest part is to determine what a beginner is. Different players have different skills and different expectations. To achieve the expectations and provide fun for players in different skill levels, there are some strategies that can be followed:
When deciding how hard the game is, you should also have in mind how many people you want succeeding your map. Platform Defense was made for only less than 1% of the players beat the map. However, a hard game does not mean that the game is against the player. Players should not be prevented to win through no fault of their own. Some maps allow the player to die randomly, such as traps, and use the excuse that they can always play the map again. As Chris Crawford said, “any game that requires reloading as a normal part of the player’s progress through the system is fundamentally flawed. On the very first playing, even a below average player should be able to successfully traverse the game sequence. As the player grows more skilled, he may become faster or experience other challenges, but he should never have to start over after dying.”
Balancing the Player’s Choices:
When the choices are bigger than the player’s desires, they get overwhelmed. When they are smaller than the desires, the player is frustrated. The number of choices has to match the players’ expectations, and each choice has to be meaningful. Meaningful choices are the heart of interactivity. A racing map that the players can choose between fifty different vehicles, but forty-nine of them drive slowly, the players have no choice. Each player’s option needs to be important to the game. For instance, in a TD map, there is always a frost tower. This tower attacks the enemy, makes the enemy slow, gives more mineral to the player, and increases the player score. It has four different purposes, which makes it considerable. If a player can choose between three different guns, but one of them is less powerful than the others, this player will avoid using this less strong gun as if it was not an option. For these guns to be in balance, they all need equal chances of being used. In other words, each one of them needs an important meaning in the map. If you want to have fifty different cars in your racing map, each one of the cars must be unique and worth to play with.
Balancing Randomness:
A map can be athletic and serious where it requires a good use of players’ skills or more casual and relaxing where there is an element of luck involved. Random elements can be presented in maps that the victory is won by skill, but their effect must be small to not make the game a matter of luck. Skill can be balanced with luck in a game by mixing them, such as rolling a dice (luck), but letting the player decide what to do with the result of the dice (skill). If the map is too random, it needs more skill. If it is too tedious, the map needs more random elements.
A good strategy is to let the players choose whether they will play safe with a low reward or take a risk for a big reward.
Balancing Challenges:
A map challenges a player through physical and mental activity. You should plan which challenge will be dominant in your map. Maps that use physical activity focus on dexterity, such as jumping, shooting, and building. Differently, maps that use mental activity focus on strategies and intellect, such as Debates. There is audience for both types of games. Some players like to think in a strategy for hours while others want to relax their brain and shoot zombies. That is why is important to know the game’s audience and what type of people you are expecting to play your map. The type of challenge should be clear for the audience; otherwise, they might get disappointed. For example, some players were joining Debates looking for some action, but they were getting frustrated because it was not the type of game they were expecting. To avoid this, the game mode is now called “Nerds only.” So that, the player can realize before joining the lobby that the map requires mental activity.
If possible, let the player choose between dexterity and strategy, such as with different characters (one that uses brutal force and spell and another that might require some strategy to be used).
Balancing Co-op and Versus:
To compete is a human urge, but cooperation helps the social. In a competitive map, skilled players should beat beginners. So that, the skilled player is satisfied with the fair measurement of skills and beginners can feel very proud if they win. If the map is about cooperation, the game should give the players an opportunity to communicate. Forced communication usually increases cooperation. Another possible way to balance competition and cooperation is letting the players decide what they want or mixing both modes through team competition.
One problem of competitive maps is when the player who is losing gets uninterested and suddenly quits the game. You can prevent this from happening by having surprising victories. This strategy can be seen on the chess map where the winner can check-mate his opponent in a surprising way and end the game. Another way to have surprising victories is hiding who is winning the game, such as in “Mice vs. Cat.”
Balancing the Game time:
When a game is too short, the players have fewer chances to develop meaningful strategies. When the game is too long, the players require hours of dedication, they might get bored, and the map might lose popularity. One possible strategy is having time limits to prevent the game from taking too much time.
Sometimes is good to follow the vaudevillian adage of “Leave ‘em wanting more.” In this way, players might be excited to play the map again.
Balancing the Rewards:
The players want to see some feedback when they accomplish a difficult task. Rewarding players is a way to tell them that they are doing well. Psychologically, rewards are better than punishments. As an example, games that the player must eat to not lose life (punishment) tend to be less fun than the ones where food is a life bonus (reward). However, punishments are necessary as much as rewards. Taking risks is an exciting and important aspect for the game challenge. While punishing, a player must be able to understand why and how to prevent it from happening again. Punishments that are hard to prevent makes the player feel that the map is unfair. Some common types of reward and punishment are:
One psychological strategy is to make rewards harder to get as the player progresses in the game. This strategy is used on World of Warcraft where the game gets harder and harder to level-up. This strategy causes the players to play for more time. Another strategy is to avoid making rewards a part of the routine. For instance, employees would not see donuts as a reward if they get one every Friday. Surprising rewards are more exiting for the players.
Balancing Freedom:
Freedom can make the players bored because they might go to an opposite direction and skip all the action. A controlled experience can lead the players straight to the action giving them a more exciting experience. Of course, freedom sometimes has its advantages. But, you should have in mind that maps that allow more experience do not necessarily make them better.
Balancing Rules:
A map is elegant when it is simple to learn, but full of emergent complexity. Emergent complexity is when simple rules are combined along the game creating very complex situations. As an example, Sentry Scramble starts with a simple rule: to survive. As the game goes on, the players realize that they can use spells. The rules of these spells are simple, such as to teleport or create a force field. But, these rules can be combined creating complex situations. For instance, one spell can create a hallucination while other item creates a force field. Combining these rules, it creates a rule that allows a hallucination to be stopped by a force field. The combinations of rules can be complex and there are extra rules required to balance some elements of the game. However, the emergent complexity allows the player to intuitively know all of these rules without the need to memorize them. To conclude, instead of filling the player’s memory with hundreds of complex rules, let these rules emerge slowly and invisibly along the map.
Conclusion:
The fun factor of a map can be better achieved when the map is balanced. The process of balancing a map is all about aesthetics. A balanced map creates a huge impact on the player’s expectations. It takes months to balance it, and some map makers fail in publishing a map straight after getting it to work. As a consequence, the game gets popular before being fully balanced.
A good way to identify an unbalance is asking whether or not the map “feels right.” In the process of balancing it, you should start with the most dominant rules. For example, you first find the best distance and speed for a character’s jump before finding the right damage for the weapon. Another strategy is to duplicate the default values and see how unbalanced the map ends up. As William Blake said, “you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”
Imagine a Dota with one hundred characters, but one of them has a combination of spells and items that cannot be beaten by anyone. Soon, every player in this game will be using this exactly same character until all of them get frustrated with the lack of balance. Game balance is the finest art in map making, and a map without it can be easily reduced to nonsense.
I hope that helps you. :)
Books that helped me to write this tutorial:
Rollings, Andrew, and Dave Morris. Game Architecture and Design. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders, 2004. Print.
Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design a Book of Lenses. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Print.
Rouse, Richard. Game Design: Theory and Practice. Plano, TX: Wordware, 2005. Print.
Bethke, Erik. Game Development and Production. Plano, TX: Wordware Pub., 2003. Print.
Feil, John, and Marc Scattergood. Beginning Game Level Design. Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology, 2005. Print.
@RodrigoAlves: Go
+ 1
Very interesting and well written. I share the same thoughts and agree with pretty much all your points. Great work.
I think the most important thing when it comes to balance is choosing the right scope for your mod. If you're balancing new weapons, new terrain, new items, new classes, new whatever else, you're taking on too much. This is doubly important. As a designer, you can only tune so many knobs in so many ways before things start falling apart from taking on too much. More importanly, players can only try so many new things before their heads explode from uknown possibilities, particularly in a pvp environment where players who have mastered the games' balance can dominate new players and destroy your player base.
My suggestion is to start small. DOTA wasn't made overnight, it started with simple hero's straight out of warcraft III. Over years of time items were added, classes were added, gameplay mechanics were added and items were added all the while all of these were refined. The players were inherently involved with all of this so gameplay could grow in complexity over time without leaving the community behind. Pick a battle, be it adding cool new weapons to simple characters, or creating a skill tree at first. Don't try to add everyone all at once or you create a mountain neither you or the players of custom games can climb.
I learned all this the hard way ;)
Holy crap, someone cited sources on the internet. The end must be near lol. Very well written article Rodrigo. I think you touch on some crazy important points. I feel the complexity one is a big one. Some people wanna make these maps with massive custom UIs and a thousand rules.. Unless you ease people in, they're never going to like your game. And that doesn't just mean adding 100 tips to the game; with how fast games go no one reads these.
Well done, Rodrigo! Very solid article, props to you :)
@Aenigma: Go
True haha, I think the same can be said about a lot of iphone apps... a billion features that takes forever to punch one thing in... wish more developers in general would simplify.
Anyway, most of this is obvious but maybe it's good that it's put out there. Also, while having this so called 'perfect balanced' map, the contrary has proved also to be true about getting popularity: 2 player broken map. Lol, well I know a lot of people LOVE playing broken maps and exploiting to give themself some advantage. But for the most part, you're right Rodrigo.
Human-computer interaction is all about common sense. If you read Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, you will see a way more obvious things than I am saying in this tutorial. The problem is that it's so many obvious rules that we forget when we are developing I-phone apps or making maps.
Players might love to exploit broken maps, but once everyone knows how to exploit it, the map is gone.
@RodrigoAlves: Go
Unless that map is boosted. lol.
One of the first things we learned in our Engineering Psych class is that common sense in design is usually non-existent. Designers tend to design with the notion that if they understand it, everyone else does. The issue is that designers are the minority and 'everyone else' is the majority.
Take the Apple Ipod. Simplistic design, but we ran a usability study on it with people who have never used an apple product before and they could barely turn it on, never mind do anything of value.
The problem is someone will have this huge complex idea for a map; Create it, THEN beta it. Well guess what. Your map is nearly done and just now you are asking for actual user feedback. What if they tell you your map has a fundamental problem at it's core? Do you really wanna redo everything? It's important to involve user feedback throughout the entire process. You may learn quickly that a system you are going to design over the next month or two is completely useless or counter-intuitive.
Something that I cannot recommend enough to map designers is get someone you know to sit down and play your map and just watch them. Ask them to speak out when they have issues, what they like, what they dislike etc. You may realize that something you thought was self-explanatory could use just a little more guiding.
This has definetly made me think twice about my current project. I was planning on having heros with chooseable abilities and all that, and because I am designing it, it seems easy to understand.
I think as a whole even when people ask for feedback, not enough people give it, the forums are a little quiet atm but I have been asking for feedback on my terrain as I work on it for over a week, and only mozared has replied, whilst I greatly appreciate his feedback, its only one persons, and not everyone has the same views.
I will be considering all of the above when designing my UI and gameplay though, I will be making sure to get feedback as i go.
@Aenigma: Go
Hmm cool stuff!
I agree about the mapping thing. Like I've mentioned before, I've tested maps that I know needed to be changed, but the mapper wasn't willing to budge or either too far to bother. Definitely test your map a lot, be open, and test it WITHOUT YES-MEN! (thankfully the internet is full of non yes-men)
I have to say I opened this expecting another "facedesk Rodrigo post", but was pleasantly surprised. Even though most of the content is basically copy/pasted from youtube videos from the source authors (which, by the way, you should link; they are great videos), it's nice to see it all summerized.
Nice job.
I didn't watch any youtube video related to what I wrote, and there is nothing copied and pasted. I wrote the whole tutorial from beggining to end. The max you can find is the quotes and some ideas paraphrased from the books I cited.
If there is such videos, please link them. :)
Very good watch for any mapper. Was linked here a few months ago.
Almost 2 hours video! O.o
I'll watch it this night. Thanks!
@Eiviyn: Go
HOLY CRUD!!! That's what!?! 1 hour, 42 minutes and 11 seconds!?!?! Damn! Do you want me to spend...(using a calculater)...10.14285...etc.% of my day to watch a video that I have almost NO interest in!?!?! OK!!! I'll watch it!!! :D
Ok, I watched the video. It is really good, I recommend it, but he is talking about game design in general, and not game balance. He gave a really good example of the rock-paper-scissors method working on game design.
@Eiviyn: Go
Excellent video. I watched the whole thing. If only more people took the time to learn and actively understand game design...Our custom game list would be a much better place..;p