DOCSLIB.ORG

Analysis of Game Balance

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Analysis of Game Balance Miles Von Schriltz Analysis of Game Balance Balance Type #1: Fairness 1. Give an example of a mostly symmetrical game. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. What elements are symmetrical? What elements are asymmetrical? If there are any asymmetrical elements, how are they mitigated to preserve balance? Explain how you would change this game to make it asymmetrical but still keep it in balance. You may include diagrams or any other media that will help describe this new game. a. Hockey would be a good example of a symmetrical game with asymmetrical elements. In hockey each team starts with the same number of players, all of whom have the same basic equipment. At the start of the game the hockey puck is dropped by a referee between one player from each team giving both teams an equal chance to gain possession. Both teams play by the same rules and there is no advantage of starting on a certain side of the ice rink. b. The asymmetrical element of hockey comes when players get put in the penalty box (up to two players from each team can be put into the penalty box). If a player goes into the penalty box his team cannot replace him and must play a man short until his penalty time is up. This element gives the opposing team the advantage of outnumbering the other team’s players on the ice. When one team has a numerical advantage on the ice, it is called a power play. c. One way that could make hockey more asymmetrical would be to allow the losing team to have an extra player on the ice. This would shift the balance of the game in favor of the losing team and give them a real chance of tying the game. Once the game is tied the extra player leaves the ice. This would result in more competitive back and forth games, which would make for a more exciting game from a fan standpoint. 2. Give an example of a highly-asymmetric game. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. What elements make it asymmetric? What have the designers done to attempt to make this game in balance? Be detailed in your response to the last part of this question. a. Age of Empires 2 is a good example of an asymmetric game. Players get to choose which civilization they want to play as. Each civilization has it’s own advantages in various areas such as technology and military units. The designers have done a number of things to balance out the game between civilizations. Where one civilization might be able to create military units for cheap, another is able to gather resources more quickly. Another example of balancing would be that some civilizations start with an explorer, where other start with a ship. The various differences between civilizations allow people with different playing styles to find a good fit. While the designers made a great effort to balance the game, there are still civilizations that are better than others. 3. Give an example of a game where players of various skill levels can play together and have a good time, yet the game is not largely decided by luck. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in Miles Von Schriltz question. What have the designers done that the players able to play together and each feel the game is in balance? Be detailed in your response to this last part. a. Golden Tee is a golfing arcade game often found in bars. It consists of five buttons (left, right, fly-by, backspin, and start/options/replay) and a tracking ball. By rolling the tracking ball backwards then pushing it forward in various directional combinations (the cabinet shows you what direction does what) you can make different types of golf swings. To keep the game balanced between skill levels the designers instituted player handicaps. The better a player is the higher their handicap will be. So for example, if a player with a +9 handicap is playing a player with +7 handicap, the player with the +9 handicap has to finish the round of golf 3 holes ahead of the +7 handicap player in order to win. So while one player may clearly be better, both players have a fair chance of winning. Balance Type #2: Challenge 4. Look at the diagram of the flow channel on page 177. Give an example of a game that kept you in the flow channel. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. In your analysis, you must explain how the game kept you from boredom, how the game kept you from frustration, and how those mechanisms changed as your skill increased over time. a. Mass Effect really kept me in the flow channel and I had a hard time walking away from the game at times. For me, it had a good combination of dialogue, cut scenes, exploration and action. Whenever I started to grow bored with the dialogue I could go explore an area or find a mission where I could battle someone. When I grew bored of exploring, again I’d find a mission where I could do battle. Just about every time the battles seemed to get too easy, I’d run into more difficult enemies (stronger, more powerful, or had different weapons). Mass Effect is a big world and while at times I would get frustrated, If I started to get too frustrated I would find something else to do and then come back to what frustrated me later. Balance Type #3: Meaningful Choices 5. Give an example of a game with a dominant strategy. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. Why is this a dominant strategy? Does this ruin the game or help it? Why or why not? What changes can be made to remove this as a dominant strategy? a. In the game Monkey in the Middle the dominant strategy would be to through the ball to your teammate when the “monkey” is close to you. That way if the ball doesn’t reach your teammate, your teammate has a good chance of getting to the ball before the “monkey”. This is a very effective strategy, but it can cause the monkey to get aggravated and give up. But it can also cause the players keeping away to make riskier passes. So it largely depends on the players themselves as to whether they let this strategy ruin the game. The best way to remove this strategy is to have two monkeys in the middle. Miles Von Schriltz 6. Give an example of a game with a meaningful decision. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. Explain the decision and the options available. The decision cannot be meaningful because of the game’s framing or story alone. The decision should be meaningful because of how it affects the mechanics. Why is the decision meaningful for each of the possible options the player can choose? a. In Knights of the Old Republic when creating a character you get the option to choose between Soldier, Scout, and Scoundrel classes. The choice of a starting class is meaningful not only because it dictates what style (brawn, brains, or balanced) of play the player will be playing, but also what the character is capable of doing throughout the game. For example, a Soldier may be able to break there way into a locked box where a scoundrel may not. A scoundrel may be able to convince a NPC to do something where a soldier may not be able. A scout may be able to do just about everything a soldier or scoundrel can do, but not as effectively or quickly. As you can see the class decision can affect the whole game and dictate the supporting cast you need to keep around you (people capable of doing things your character can’t do). 7. Give an example of a game with triangularity. If this game is not universally known, make sure to explain the mechanics in question. Explain the decision and the options available. Under what circumstances would the player want to take the low-risk option? Under what circumstances would the player want to take the high-risk option? a. The game The Last Stand: Dead Zone is a good example of triangularity. It is a post apocalyptic zombie game where you have a home base and venture out to find supplies, building materials, and weapons. When you leave your base to scavenge, you are given the option to choose what buildings or streets you want to explore. The farther you get away from your home base the better supplies, materials, and weapons get, but you also have to deal with stronger and more plentiful zombies and longer return times (time it takes for your characters to return to base). b. A player might choose to search buildings close to their base (low risk low reward) if they feel like they haven’t leveled their characters up enough, don’t have powerful enough weapons, don’t have enough characters at their base, their characters are injured, or they don’t want to wait out long return times. A player might choose to search locations far from their base (high risk/high reward) if they have enough characters to do both low and high risk searches, if they’ve already searched all the locations close to the base, if they are trying to complete a mission such as finding X amount of water in X amount of time, or if they only have enough play time to send their characters on one mission.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Flexible Games by Which I Mean Digital Game Systems That Can Accommodate Rule-Changing and Rule-Bending
    Let’s Play Our Way: Designing Flexibility into Card Game Systems Gifford Cheung A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: David Hendry, Chair David McDonald Nicolas Ducheneaut Jennifer Turns Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Information School ©Copyright 2013 Gifford Cheung 2 University of Washington Abstract Let’s Play Our Way: Designing Flexibility into Card Game Systems Gifford Cheung Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor David Hendry Information School In this dissertation, I explore the idea of designing “flexible game systems”. A flexible game system allows players (not software designers) to decide on what rules to enforce, who enforces them, and when. I explore this in the context of digital card games and introduce two design strategies for promoting flexibility. The first strategy is “robustness”. When players want to change the rules of a game, a robust system is able to resist extreme breakdowns that the new rule would provoke. The second is “versatility”. A versatile system can accommodate multiple use-scenarios and can support them very well. To investigate these concepts, first, I engage in reflective design inquiry through the design and implementation of Card Board, a highly flexible digital card game system. Second, via a user study of Card Board, I analyze how players negotiate the rules of play, take ownership of the game experience, and communicate in the course of play. Through a thematic and grounded qualitative analysis, I derive rich descriptions of negotiation, play, and communication. I offer contributions that include criteria for flexibility with sub-principles of robustness and versatility, design recommendations for flexible systems, 3 novel dimensions of design for gameplay and communications, and rich description of game play and rule-negotiation over flexible systems.
    [Show full text]
  • Game Design 2 Game Balance
    CE810 - Game Design 2 Game Balance Joseph Walton-Rivers & Piers Williams Friday, 18 May 2018 University of Essex 1 What is Balance? Game Balance Question What is balance? 2 Game Balance “All players have an equal chance of winning” – Richard Bartle Richard covered a combat example in the first part of the module. 3 On Strategies Game Balance • What about higher level strategies? • Zerg rush? • Dominant strategies • Metagaming 4 Metagaming - Rock Paper Scissors • A beats B, B beats C, C beats A • If there are lots of A players, people will play C • Then there are a lot of C players, so people play B • and so on... 5 Metagaming - Dominant Strategies • What if A is significantly stronger? • No one will use the other two strategies • We want to encourage variety in play 6 Can we detect this? • Can we detect strategies which are overpowered? • Try to punish strategies we don’t want to see • We did this earlier in the week with rotate and shoot! • Can we measure this? 7 Automated Game Tuning • Academics seem to think so... • Ryan Leigh et al (2008) - Co-evolution for game balancing • Alexander Jaffe et al (2012) - Restricted-Play balance framework • Mihail Morosan - GAs for tuning parameters 8 Game Curves First Move Advantage First Move Advantage • Typically affects turn based games • Going first in tac tac toe means either a win or adraw • White has > 50% win rate over all games • Worse effects if you have resources • We need a way of dealing with this 9 First Move Advantage Magic Second player gets an extra card Go Second player gets 7.5 bonus
    [Show full text]
  • Cgcopyright 2013 Alexander Jaffe
    c Copyright 2013 Alexander Jaffe Understanding Game Balance with Quantitative Methods Alexander Jaffe A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: James R. Lee, Chair Zoran Popovi´c,Chair Anna Karlin Program Authorized to Offer Degree: UW Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington Abstract Understanding Game Balance with Quantitative Methods Alexander Jaffe Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Professor James R. Lee CSE Professor Zoran Popovi´c CSE Game balancing is the fine-tuning phase in which a functioning game is adjusted to be deep, fair, and interesting. Balancing is difficult and time-consuming, as designers must repeatedly tweak parameters and run lengthy playtests to evaluate the effects of these changes. Only recently has computer science played a role in balancing, through quantitative balance analysis. Such methods take two forms: analytics for repositories of real gameplay, and the study of simulated players. In this work I rectify a deficiency of prior work: largely ignoring the players themselves. I argue that variety among players is the main source of depth in many games, and that analysis should be contextualized by the behavioral properties of players. Concretely, I present a formalization of diverse forms of game balance. This formulation, called `restricted play', reveals the connection between balancing concerns, by effectively reducing them to the fairness of games with restricted players. Using restricted play as a foundation, I contribute four novel methods of quantitative balance analysis. I first show how game balance be estimated without players, using sim- ulated agents under algorithmic restrictions.
    [Show full text]
  • Game Balancing
    Game Balancing CS 2501 – Intro to Game Programming and Design Credit: Some slide material courtesy Walker White (Cornell) CS 2501 Dungeons and Dragons • D&D is a fantasy roll playing system • Dungeon Masters run (and someCmes create) campaigns for players to experience • These campaigns have several aspects – Roll playing – Skill challenges – Encounters • We will look at some simple balancing of these aspects 2 CS 2501 ProbabiliCes of D&D • Skill Challenge • Example: The player characters (PCs) have come upon a long wall that encompasses a compound they are trying to enter • The wall is 20 feet tall and 1 foot thick • What are some ways to overcome the wall? • How hard should it be for the PCs to overcome the wall? 3 CS 2501 ProbabiliCes of D&D • How hard should it be for the PCs to overcome the wall? • We approximate this in the game world using a Difficulty Class (DC) Level Easy Moderate Hard 7 11 16 23 8 12 16 23 9 12 17 25 10 13 18 26 11 13 19 27 4 CS 2501 ProbabiliCes of D&D • Easy – not trivial, but simple; reasonable challenge for untrained character • Medium – requires training, ability, or luck • Hard – designed to test characters focused on a skill Level Easy Moderate Hard 7 11 16 23 8 12 16 23 9 12 17 25 10 13 18 26 11 13 19 27 5 CS 2501 Balancing • Balancing a game is can be quite the black art • A typical player playing a game involves intuiCon, fantasy, and luck – it’s qualitave • A game designer playing a game… it’s quanCtave – They see the systems behind the game and this can actually “ruin” the game a bit 6 CS 2501 Building Balance • General advice – Build a game for creavity’s sake first – Build a game for parCcular mechanics – Build a game for parCcular aestheCcs • Then, aer all that… – Then balance – Complexity can be added and removed if needed – Other levers can be pulled • Complexity vs.
    [Show full text]
  • The Making of a Conceptual Design for a Balancing Tool
    Södertörns högskola | Institutionen för Institutionen för naturvetenskap, miljö och teknik Kandidatuppsats 15 hp | Medieteknik | höstterminen 2014 The Making of a Conceptual Design for a Balancing Tool Av: Jonas Eriksson Handledare: Inger Ekman Abstract Balancing is usually done in the later phases of creating a game to make sure everything comes together to an enjoyable experience. Most of the time balancing is done with a series of playthroughs by the designers or by outsourced play testers and the imbalances found are corrected followed by more playthroughs. This method occupies a lot of time and might therefore not find everything. In this study I use information gathered from interviews with experienced designers and designer texts along with features from methods frequently used for aiding the designers to make a conceptual design of a tool that is aimed towards simplifying the process of balancing and reducing the amount of work hours having to be spent on this phase. Keywords Balancing, Interviews, Conceptual Design, Game Development, External Tool 2 Sammanfattning Balansering görs framförallt i de senare faserna när man skapar ett spel för att se till att alla delar tillsammans skapar en bra upplevelse. För det mesta utförs balanseringen i form av upprepade speltester genomförda av antingen utvecklaren eller inhyrda testpersoner. Obalanserade saker som upptäcks korrigeras och följs sedan av ytterligare tester. Denna metod tar väldigt lång tid att utföra och på grund av detta är det inte säkert att alla fel upptäcks innan spelet lanseras. I den här studien använder jag information som insamlats från intervjuer med erfarna designers och designtexter sida vid sida med funktioner från metoder som ofta används för att underlätta för utvecklarna.
    [Show full text]
  • Metagame Balance
    Metagame Balance Alex Jaffe @blinkity Data Scientist, Designer, Programmer Spry Fox 1 Today I’ll be doing a deep dive into one aspect of game balance. It’s the 25-minute lightning talk version of the 800-minute ring cycle talk. I’ll be developing one big idea, so hold on tight! Balance In the fall of 2012, I worked as a technical designer, using data to help balance PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Superbot and Sony Santa Monica’s four- player brawler featuring PS characters from throughout the years. Btw, the game is great, and surprisingly unique, despite its well-known resemblance to that other four-player mascot brawler, Shrek Super Slam. My job was to make sense of the telemetry we gathered and use it to help the designers balance every aspect of the game. What were the impacts of skill, stage, move selection, etc. and what could that tell us about what the game feels like to play? Balance In the fall of 2012, I worked as a technical designer, using data to help balance PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Superbot and Sony Santa Monica’s four- player brawler featuring PS characters from throughout the years. Btw, the game is great, and surprisingly unique, despite its well-known resemblance to that other four-player mascot brawler, Shrek Super Slam. My job was to make sense of the telemetry we gathered and use it to help the designers balance every aspect of the game. What were the impacts of skill, stage, move selection, etc. and what could that tell us about what the game feels like to play? Character Balance There were a lot of big questions about what it’s like to play the game, but at least one pretty quantitative question was paramount: are these characters balanced with respect to one another? I.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Time Balancing of Computer Games Using Adaptive Time
    TIME BALANCING OF COMPUTER GAMES USING ADAPTIVE TIME-VARIANT MINIGAMES A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Science In the Department of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By AMIN TAVASSOLIAN © Copyright Amin Tavassolian, March 2014. All rights reserved. Permission to Use In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of Computer Science University of Saskatchewan 176 Thorvaldson Bldg., University of Saskatchewan 110 Science Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (S7N 5C9) Canada i ABSTRACT Game designers spend a great deal of time developing balanced game experiences.
    [Show full text]
  • Whose Game Is This Anyway?”: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World
    “Whose Game Is This Anyway?”: Negotiating Corporate Ownership in a Virtual World T.L. Taylor Department of Communication North Carolina State University POB 8104, 201 Winston Raleigh, NC 27605 USA +1 919 515 9738 [email protected] Abstract This paper explores the ways the commercialization of multiuser environments is posing particular challenges to user autonomy and authorship. With ever broadening defi nitions of intellectual property rights the status of cultural and symbolic artifacts as products of collaborative efforts becomes increasingly problematized. In the case of virtual environments – such as massive multiplayer online role-play games – where users develop identities, bodies (avatars) and communities the stakes are quite high. This analysis draws on several case studies to raise questions about the status of culture and authorship in these games. Keywords Avatars, Internet, virtual environments, games INTRODUCTION While the history of virtual environments has so far been primarily written with an eye toward either the text-based worlds of MUDs or social graphical spaces like Active Worlds and VZones/WorldsAway, massive multiplayer online 227 Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference,ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002. Copyright: authors and Tampere University Press. role playing games (MMORPG) have dramatically popularized virtual worlds [1]. The MMORPG genre now boasts hundreds of thousands of users and accounts for millions of dollars in revenue each year [2]. While multiplayer games are at their most basic level simply that, a game, they should be more richly seen as spaces in which users come together online and invest enormous amounts of time inhabiting a virtual space, creating characters, cultures, and communities, gaming together, making dynamic economies, and exploring elaborate geographical terrain.
    [Show full text]
  • Game Design Concepts
    Game Design Concepts: An experiment in game design and teaching Ian Schreiber Syllabus and Schedule 3 Level 1: Overview / What is a Game? 6 Level 2: Game Design / Iteration and Rapid Prototyping 15 Level 3: Formal Elements of Games 21 Level 4: The Early Stages of the Design Process 33 Level 5: Mechanics and Dynamics 47 Level 6: Games and Art 61 Level 7: Decision-Making and Flow Theory 73 Level 8: Kinds of Fun, Kinds of Players 86 Level 9: Stories and Games 97 Level 10: Nonlinear Storytelling 109 Level 11: Design Project Overview 121 Level 12: Solo Testing 127 Level 13: Playing With Designers 134 Level 14: Playing with Non-Designers 139 Level 15: Blindtesting 144 Level 16: Game Balance 149 Level 17: User Interfaces 160 Level 18: The Final Iteration 168 Level 19: Game Criticism and Analysis 174 Level 20: Course Summary and Next Steps 177 Syllabus and Schedule By ai864 Schedule: This class runs from Monday, June 29 through Sunday, September 6. Posts appear on the blog Mondays and Thursdays each week at noon GMT. Discussions and sharing of ideas happen on a continual basis. Textbooks: This course has one required text, and two recommended texts that will be referenced in several places and provide good “next steps” after the summer course ends. Required Text: Challenges for Game Designers, by Brathwaite & Schreiber. This book covers a lot of basic information on both practical and theoretical game design, and we will be using it heavily, supplemented with some readings from other online sources. Yes, I am one of the authors.
    [Show full text]
  • Demonstrating the Feasibility of Automatic Game Balancing
    Demonstrating the Feasibility of Automatic Game Balancing Vanessa Volz Günter Rudolph Boris Naujoks Abstract Game balancing is an important part of the (computer) game design process, in which designers adapt a game prototype so that the resulting gameplay is as entertaining as possible. In industry, the evaluation of a game is often based on costly playtests with human players. It suggests itself to automate this process using surrogate models for the prediction of gameplay and outcome. In this paper, the feasibility of automatic balancing using simulation- and deck-based objectives is investigated for the card game top trumps. Additionally, the necessity of a multi-objective approach is asserted by a comparison with the only known (single-objective) method. We apply a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to obtain decks that optimise objectives, e.g. win rate and average number of tricks, developed to express the fairness and the excitement of a game of top trumps. The results are compared with decks from published top trumps decks using simulation-based objectives. The possibility to generate decks better or at least as good as decks from published top trumps decks in terms of these objectives is demonstrated. Our results indicate that automatic balancing with the presented approach is feasible even for more complex games such as real-time strategy games. I. Introduction balancing process with tools that can automati- cally evaluate and suggest different game pa- The increasing complexity and popularity of rameter configurations, which fulfil a set of (computer) games result in numerous chal- predefined goals (cf. [14]). However, since the lenges for game designers.
    [Show full text]
  • Metagame Autobalancing for Competitive Multiplayer Games
    Metagame Autobalancing for Competitive Multiplayer Games Daniel Hernandez∗, Charles Takashi Toyin Gbadamosiy, James Goodmanz and James Alfred Walker∗, Senior Member, IEEE ∗Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK. fdh1135, [email protected] yDepartment of Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, UK. fc.t.t.gbadamosi, [email protected] Abstract—Automated game balancing has often focused on make judgements about the state of the meta-game and provide single-agent scenarios. In this paper we present a tool for designers with insight into future adjustments, such as [2]. balancing multi-player games during game design. Our approach There are, however, several problems with this approach. requires a designer to construct an intuitive graphical represen- tation of their meta-game target, representing the relative scores Analytics can only discover balance issues in content that that high-level strategies (or decks, or character types) should is live, and by that point balance issues may have already experience. This permits more sophisticated balance targets to negatively impacted the player experience: this is a reactive be defined beyond a simple requirement of equal win chances. We approach and not a preventive one. Worse, games which do then find a parameterization of the game that meets this target not have access to large volumes of player data - less popular using simulation-based optimization to minimize the distance to the target graph. We show the capabilities of this tool on examples games - cannot use this technique at all. inheriting from Rock-Paper-Scissors, and on a more complex Furthermore, the process of data analytics itself is not asymmetric fighting game.
    [Show full text]
  • Detecting Cheaters in a Distributed Multiplayer Game
    Detecting Cheaters in a Distributed Multiplayer Game Justin D. Weisz School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Abstract ing market predicted to be worth $2.3 billion by 2005 [17]. Services such as Microsoft’s XBox Live [22] have Cheating is currently a major problem in today’s mul- introduced multiplayer gaming to the video game tiplayer games. One of the most popular types of console, lowering the cost of participating in online cheating involves having the client software render games, and increasing the number people playing on- information which is not in the player’s current field line games. Even movie theatres are being converted of view. This type of cheating may allow a player into large gaming centers, increasing the availability to see their opponents through walls, or to see their and exposure of online multiplayer games [15]. opponents on a radar, or at extreme distances, when Current multiplayer games are divided into two they would normally not be able to. Currently, much types — first person shooter (FPS) games, which can research is being done to learn how cheating can be have up to around 64 players in a game world [19], detected and prevented in the context of client-server and massively multiplayer online role playing games multiplayer games, but little research is being done (MMORPG), which support around 6,000 players in studying how cheating behaviors can be detected or one world [17]. Both of these types of games are prevented in a distributed context. immensely popular. For example, the GameSpy net- In this research, we study what kinds of cheating work [7] is a service used by game players to find behaviors are possible in a distributed game environ- other game players to play games with.
    [Show full text]