It's About Time: System Design for Mobile Free-to-Play
Summary
TLDREvan Losey, líder de diseño de juegos en Skokie, comparte su enfoque en el diseño de sistemas para juegos móviles gratuitos. Explica cómo equilibrar economías y características del juego, utilizando ejemplos de batallas y sistemas de construcción de ciudades. Aborda la importancia de la escala, la sensación de progreso y la monetización a través de la venta de tiempo. Evan subraya la necesidad de iteración y ajuste para lograr un equilibrio que sea tanto emocionante como sostenible para los jugadores.
Takeaways
- 🕹️ El diseño de sistemas es esencial en juegos gratuitos y esencial para la interacción de todas las reglas del juego.
- 🎯 Los números en un juego deben tener un propósito, ya sea estético o arbitrario, y su interacción define la experiencia del jugador.
- 🔄 La balanza en los juegos no se logra con una lista larga de características; depende de decisiones pequeñas que pueden hacer que los jugadores se queden o se vayan.
- 💡 Los diseñadores pueden comenzar con números arbitrarios, pero es crucial iterar y ajustar para encontrar la equilibrio adecuado que mantenga a los jugadores interesados.
- 📊 Para juegos de construcción de ciudades, es importante modelar los costos y las capacidades a medida que el jugador avanza, utilizando un enfoque basado en el tiempo y en la escala.
- 🕰 El tiempo es un recurso valioso en juegos gratuitos, y la monetización efectiva a menudo se centra en la venta de tiempo adicional.
- 💰 La moneda en juegos gratuitos puede ser usada para mejorar o personalizar el juego, y es crucial equilibrar su valor y disponibilidad.
- 🛠️ Los diseñadores pueden utilizar hojas de cálculo para modelar y simular la economía del juego, lo que ayuda a predecir y ajustar la experiencia del jugador.
- 🔢 Los valores en un juego no deben ser solo atractivos, sino también fáciles de entender y conceptualizar para los jugadores, lo que facilita la adopción y la satisfacción.
- 🔄 La iteración es un componente clave en el diseño de sistemas; una vez establecidos los puntos de partida, el ajuste continuo es necesario para alcanzar la mejor experiencia de juego.
Q & A
¿Qué es el diseño de sistemas según Evan Losey?
-El diseño de sistemas es cómo todas las reglas del juego interactúan. Cada número en el juego debe tener una razón, incluso si esa razón es estética o arbitraria, y la forma en que estos números interactúan es donde realmente vive la experiencia del jugador.
¿Por qué es importante el equilibrio en los juegos de juego libre?
-El equilibrio es crucial porque las decisiones pequeñas pueden hacer que los jugadores dejen el juego. Por ejemplo, si los enemigos requieren un golpe más o un nivel más de grinding, puede ser el momento en que los jugadores abandonen el juego.
¿Cómo comienza Evan al diseñar un sistema en un juego?
-Evan comienza eligiendo los números más importantes y visibles para los jugadores y trata de hacer que se vean y se sientan bien. Luego se pone en el lugar del jugador y pregunta qué se siente al actualizar su espada y obtener un aumento de ataque.
¿Qué es la 'primera secreto' del diseño de sistemas según Evan?
-La primera 'secreto' es que es perfectamente aceptable que cada sistema comience en algún lugar, y no puedes ajustar algo que aún no existe.
¿Cómo aborda Evan el problema de la escala en el diseño de sistemas?
-Evan aborda la escala considerando cuán valioso debería ser el nivel máximo de algo en su juego en comparación con el primer nivel. Esto puede variar según el tipo de juego, ya sea competitivo o un RPG.
¿Qué recursos utiliza Evan para diseñar un modelo de progresión en su juego?
-Evan utiliza un modelo que incluye el nivel de jugador, la escala de tiempo para este nivel, la distribución de progresión por nivel de jugador y la creación de escalas numéricas para cada bucle en el juego.
¿Cómo determina Evan cuánto debería costar subir un nivel en su modelo de progresión?
-Evan determina el costo por nivel conociendo cuánto le gustaría que cueste a los jugadores subir de nivel y cuántos días le toma alcanzar ese nivel de poder.
¿Qué estrategia utiliza Evan para asegurarse de que los jugadores obtengan lo suficiente cada día en su juego?
-Evan asegura que los jugadores obtengan lo suficiente cada día conociendo las acciones por día y cuánto cada acción debería pagar. Añade variantes para hacer el juego más emocionante.
¿Cómo aborda Evan la monetización en juegos de libre-to-play?
-Evan aborda la monetización vendiendo tiempo, ofreciendo paquetes diarios y la opción de comprar más para que sucedan con mayor frecuencia. Él defiende la transparencia con los jugadores sobre el valor que obtienen por su dinero.
¿Qué consejo da Evan sobre la creación de un sistema de economía en juegos?
-Evan aconseja crear una escala que se vea bien y tenga sentido, definir cuánto tiempo debería llevar alcanzar cada punto y manejar las compensaciones diarias. También sugiere que la iteración es muy importante para llegar a un sistema equilibrado.
Outlines
🎮 Diseño de sistemas en juegos móviles gratuitos
Evan Losey, diseñador de juegos principal en Skokie, comparte su experiencia en diseño de sistemas para juegos móviles gratuitos. Comenzó trabajando en diseño de características y contenido para 'Taps ooh', un juego de construcción de ciudades y zoos. Posteriormente, para expandir la economía del juego, tuvo que especializarse en diseño de sistemas. Evan destaca la importancia de que cada número en el juego tenga un propósito y cómo estos números interactúan para definir la experiencia del jugador. Explica que los juegos gratuitos pueden parecer llenos de números arbitrarios, pero es perfectamente aceptable comenzar con un punto de partida y ajustar a partir de ahí. Sugiere enfocarse en los números más importantes y visibles para los jugadores y hacer que parezcan y se sientan bien, recordando que la experiencia del jugador es fundamental para el éxito del juego.
🕒 Diseño de sistemas y el papel del tiempo
El tiempo es el recurso que todos los jugadores poseen, y es crucial al diseñar sistemas en juegos. Desde los minutos transcurridos en batallas hasta los días para adquirir objetos, todo se relaciona con el tiempo. Evan enfatiza la importancia de respetar este recurso y balancear el juego en torno a él, ya que la dificultad y el ritmo son clave. A través de la playtesting, se puede ajustar correctamente. Además, discute la monetización en juegos gratuitos, sugiriendo que las mejores estrategias suelen vender tiempo, como paquetes diarios de recompensas. Aboga por comunicar claramente al jugador el valor que obtiene por su inversión, lo cual puede ser efectivo para la retención y satisfacción del jugador.
📈 Creando una escala de progresión y equilibrio
Evan describe cómo establecer un punto de partida para el nivel del jugador y el tiempo que le toma alcanzar cada nivel. Explica que se debe considerar la duración de cada elemento del juego y cómo se puede dividir la progresión por nivel del jugador. Además, se debe pensar en la escala de tiempo para este, dependiendo del tipo de juego que se esté creando. Evan proporciona un ejemplo práctico de cómo modelar una economía simple en un juego de construcción de ciudades, incluyendo costos de construcción y niveles de producción, y cómo se pueden derivar otros costos y capacidades a partir de una tasa de producción de recursos establecida.
🏰 Diseño de sistemas para una economía de juego
En este párrafo, Evan profundiza en el diseño de sistemas para una economía de juego, explicando cómo calcular los costos por nivel y cómo estos se relacionan con el número de edificios y sus costos individuales. Aborda la importancia de que los jugadores sientan que su progreso es constante y predecible, y cómo se pueden agregar variaciones para hacer el juego más emocionante. Evan también discute cómo se pueden construir sistemas más complejos utilizando la misma lógica básica, y cómo se pueden aplicar estos principios a diferentes tipos de juegos, siempre enfocándose en el tiempo y las acciones diarias de los jugadores.
🤔 Consideraciones y ajustes en el diseño de sistemas
Evan habla sobre las consideraciones adicionales al diseñar sistemas, como la velocidad a la que se puede crear contenido y la capacidad de los jugadores para responder a eventos y operaciones en vivo. Resalta la importancia de realizar un chequeo de consistencia interna en el trabajo de diseño y ajustar el sistema para que tenga sentido y se sienta bien. También menciona la importancia de no sobrecomplicar el juego con demasiados recursos o sistemas, ya que los jugadores aprecian la simplicidad y la comprensión de lo que está sucediendo en el juego.
💬 Diseño de batallas y equilibrio en juegos
Evan aplica los principios de diseño de sistemas a batallas y competencias en juegos, destacando la importancia de equilibrar las características y objetos en función del tiempo de juego efectivo. Explica cómo se pueden establecer puntos de partida arbitrarios y calcular el resto de los números necesarios para equilibrar elementos como unidades, armas, habilidades o cartas en diferentes tipos de juegos. Evan también sugiere métodos para determinar la valía de atributos específicos y cómo se pueden ajustar para mejorar la experiencia del juego, siempre buscando un equilibrio inicial y luego iterando hasta lograr un juego que sea emocionante y justo.
🔄 Iteración y equilibrio en diseño de juegos
Para concluir, Evan recalca la importancia de la iteración en el diseño de juegos, mencionando que el equilibrio perfecto puede ser aburrido y que se debe buscar un equilibrio que sea emocionante y justo. Aboga por la inclusión de detalles y ventajas pequeñas que hagan que el juego sea realmente atractivo. Evan también ofrece recursos adicionales para aquellos interesados en obtener más información sobre los temas discutidos en su charla.
🗣️ Preguntas y respuestas adicionales
Después de su presentación, Evan responde a una pregunta sobre cómo manejar y equilibrar una moneda que los jugadores pueden usar para mejorar su poder o adquirir elementos cosméticos. Sugiere que se puede sumar la demanda total y luego distribuirla, pero también es importante considerar la cantidad que los jugadores obtendrán de manera mecánica y cómo se puede usar para comprar elementos cosméticos como un beneficio adicional.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Diseño de sistemas
💡Economía del juego
💡Balancing
💡Free-to-play
💡Iteración
💡Monetización
💡Juegos de construcción de ciudades
💡Estrategia de progresión
💡Diseño de características
💡Experiencia del jugador
Highlights
Evan Losey, lead game designer at Skokie, discusses system design for mobile free-to-play games.
Systems design involves how all game rules interact, with every number in the game chosen for a reason.
Designers should aim for a balance where players are winning by a small margin, keeping them engaged.
It's acceptable to start with arbitrary numbers, as every system needs a starting point.
Designers should consider how something feels from a player's perspective, such as the impact of an upgrade.
Scaling in game design is crucial, with the value of max level compared to the first level depending on the game type.
Systems like Town Hall in a city builder are balanced around a number not visible in the game, such as time.
Time is a key resource in game design, with all other resources like battles and drop rates linked to time.
Playtesting is essential for balancing games around time and difficulty pacing.
Monetization in free-to-play games often involves selling time, such as through daily quest rewards.
Player level is an effective marker for game progression and should be considered when designing systems.
Designers should decide how powerful players should be at each level and balance the game accordingly.
Resource acquisition and player actions per day are crucial for calculating rewards and drop rates.
System design involves creating a complete economy based on time and player actions, with arbitrary costs as a starting point.
Iterative testing and refining are key to achieving a balanced and fun game system.
Designers should aim for a game economy that is understandable and does not obstruct the player experience.
Battle systems can be balanced by considering the effective time of each unit or item in the interaction.
Balancing in-game items and abilities should start with an arbitrary point and be adjusted for fun and fairness.
Slides and math examples from the talk are available for further reference.
Transcripts
[Music]
I'd thank you everyone so as he said my
name is Evan Losey I'm currently a lead
game designer at Skokie and this is it's
about time system design for mobile
free-to-play as a bit of additional
background about me as he said I've been
working in system design for years but
when I first started in mobile I was
designing features and content for taps
ooh so taps ooh was a city build a game
where you build well a zoo and after a
while we needed to keep expanding the
economy and tuning of the game so we
needed someone to branch out into
systems design my first foray into
systems design was actually more of a
player than as a designer I had been
building models from my death knight in
World of Warcraft
trying to figure out the optimal
rotations and stats and all that which
is about as good of a primer as I was
able to get see that's when I realized
there are a lot of resources on content
and features for designers out there
there was not a whole lot on getting
started with systems so through a lot of
research and iteration and trial and
error I've got a much better handle on
it now still I remember that experience
quite well so what I want to do is
provide a solid framework for designers
that are just starting out to jumpstart
the process of making economies and game
tuning as well as hopefully provide a
new angle for some of the more advanced
designers in the audience so today I'm
gonna start with a brief overview of
what systems design really means in this
space and the context and how to go
about balancing these systems
after that we'll talk about how to apply
this both on economies as well as tune
features I'll be using battle systems as
an example for those features but battle
can be a pretty abstract concept as
you'll see in a bit so what is systems
design systems design is essentially how
all the rules in the game interact every
number in the game should be chosen for
a reason
even if that reason is aesthetic or
arbitrary and the way these numbers
interact is where the player experience
really lives it's not enough to have a
long
we list the features in the game your
entire game can live or die on seemingly
tiny decisions enemies that take one
more hit or a meeting to grind a dungeon
one more time that can be the moment
when players quit your game and don't
come back the opposite is also true if
you make things just a little bit too
easy players get bored and leave before
the next big moment happens you want
players in that perfect position of
balance where they're winning by the
skin of their teeth and they're always
just about to progress a little bit
further the question then is where do
you start how do you put that first
number in the game
well free-to-play games can seem like a
whole lot of arbitrary numbers and
sometimes they are and that's the first
secret it's actually perfectly okay
every system starts somewhere and you
can't tune to something that doesn't
exist so we're gonna pick the most
important and visible numbers to players
and try to make them look and feel good
put yourself in the mind of a player in
your game and ask yourself how something
feels you upgrade your sword and you get
a plus point zero to 5 attack or it's
rounds down to zero and your UI that's
not the best experience so some things
are a little bit harder than that though
a lot of design questions come from even
those arbitrary decisions take scale how
valuable should the max level of
something in your game be compared to
the first level if this is a competitive
game all the hard work might put you at
a total of a hundred and fifty percent
of what the first level is but an RPG
where you expect to easily beat anyone
five levels under you you might get to a
thousand X for your final power from
where something begins there are no hard
and fast answers it depends on the game
you're making either way big even or
round numbers are kind of easiest for
players to understand and conceptualize
so we're gonna stick with them wherever
we can so how might a model working this
way look when it's complete don't try to
copy this down by the way this is an
example of a Town Hall in a city builder
it has costs at each level and capacity
in each level unlocks subsequent levels
of production buildings that have their
own costs and resource rates
if you look at the finished product you
can reverse engineer some things but the
truth is systems like this are balanced
around a number that doesn't even appear
anywhere on this sheet time you can take
something like a steadily increasing
resource production rate which is the
rightmost column and you can derive all
of the other costs and capacities from
there and how long it takes we have
other things on here to upgrade time is
actually unrelated to the other numbers
this might still be tied to aspects of
your game such as how long you want it
to take to upgrade your entire base from
one level to the next but it's an
unconnected loop from your production
and your building costs each sub loop in
your game may need its own starting
system of time and values so where do
you start the one resource that all
players possess time minutes spent
rounds of battles days to acquire even
things like number of battles and drop
rates all come back to time this can be
energy limits when ludas reset or even
the physical time that it takes the
klara stage in a game so we have to make
sure we respect that resource balance
your game around time just like
difficulty pacing is key it will take
playtesting to get this right so
remember in all of these tools we're
talking about they're just the first
step and iteration is very important so
since this is free-to-play we need to
talk about monetization somewhere right
well the best monetization methods
essentially sell time you get a pack of
cards every day from daily quests and
you can purchase more of them to have it
happen more frequently I always advocate
for now locking things to only spenders
you can actually be incredibly
straightforward with players of your
games with how much value they're
getting for a dollar you get this every
day you can buy it you're buying a day's
worth of work people really will respond
to just explicitly communicating these
things to them so that's the high level
approach let's get into some of the
specifics first we need our starting
point I've tried different ones from
time to time but I keep coming back to
player level level is extreme
we familiar and effective as a marker
for where players are in a game they'll
tell each other
oh I'm level eight your level twelve
they sort of know how that relates we'll
need a few more number number scales for
each loop in the game but this is a
great one to start with every time and
also advances one at a time which you
know makes for a prettier X access next
think about a time scale for this this
is dependent on the kind of game you're
making and some other factors but in
general think how long should each piece
of your game last an RPG might take a
year to get to max level and you might
stay there for another couple years
engaged in endgame activities and arcade
game on incremental with a prestige
might take only a day or two to get to
the final level it's okay to make some
of these decisions based on what it
feels like or other arbitrary things
everything starts somewhere so let's
start of this first one and for those
curious I will have a link to all the
spreadsheets I'm showing at the end so
again don't trap the write down so this
is a table of player level one to ten
and about how long I want it to take to
reach each level the convention I'm
using here is that I enter things in the
white cells and calculate over in the
gray but this is probably a pretty
straightforward one it's addition so
where do we go to after this we want to
actually divvy up the progression by
player level I as a designer
decide how strong you should be at each
point of the game it's worth noting that
this is only an average right players
experience the highs and lows of drop
chances and luck but it's perfectly fine
to do your high level balance purely
unexpected value what is the average of
what players learn as they go through
these things still the more specific you
can make each level of power in your
decisions the easier it's going to be
later the key principle here is that
there was a cost associated with
acquiring content it could be the
currency needed to buy packs or the
resources needed to upgrade your Town
Hall then how do players get these
resources they take actions within the
game for the card game with packs this
might be games one for a city builder
mine's harvested every day for our
purposes what we need to know is just
how many of each action is the player
going to do in a day our starting point
will be any actual limitations such as
an energy mechanic that tells the number
of sessions you can actually engage in
but there might also be behavioral
things just how often do players
actually come in and play around you'll
have to estimate those but as you get
real data from play tests you can refine
those put them back into the model and
keep going and you'll get better and
better numbers so now that we have this
idea let's go back to our model here I'm
building out the example to cover a
simple city builder so I'm specifying
how many buildings I want the player to
own I'm also assuming then each one can
be leveled only as high as the player
level this is a pretty normal limitation
to our town halls and games like this my
upgrade costs are actually formulaic but
again arbitrary each one is just 250
percent the previous rounded to the
nearest 5 and I would probably keep
rounding by bigger and bigger numbers
just because I wanted to look pretty in
the game but this is where your
calculations really start I know how
much I want the buildings to cost at
each level and how many I want the
player to have and I know how long it's
gonna take me to get there that means
the cost per level is just number of
buildings times the cost of each one
that's how much it's gonna cost the
player to get to the level of power I
want at that player level and if each
building was costing a different amount
you could have a different look up in
there but you know sort of keeping
things simple for the explanation on the
screen but still we're not quite done
yet
although here's the biggest secret of
system design that's actually all you
need you can build a complete economy
just off of figuring out how much time
and where you want players and some of
those arbitrary costs try not to let any
of your product managers know it's
actually that easy but once you know how
much you need per level and the number
of days you know how much players need
to gain every day when you know actions
per day you know how much each action
should pay out you can give your rewards
a drop rate if you want them to have a
chance of dropping instead of always
being awarded every action this gives
you a true payout
action you may not want to use this with
the currency like coins but if you're
doing say rare materials to upgrade a
character this is how you get to how
much should actually drop from a single
instance finally add some variants say 5
or 10 percent up or down so the game is
a little more exciting and suddenly you
actually have a game you know that's how
the experience actually plays out to
players so let's go back and see how
this looks in the expanded model the one
new column is the result of those
calculations it's the amount we need per
level divided by total harvests per
building per day in the total number
buildings this is the simpler version
with no variants at all in drop amounts
but still a player who plays four
sessions a day which is a pretty good
player from most mobile games is going
to earn enough to get to the level that
I want them at each day this is maybe a
simple example but you can actually
follow the same process for more
resources and build more and more
complex loops on top of this the trick
is to keep coming back to how long it
should take a player to progress if a
player needs resource X some action a
and resource y from action B you can
track the amounts of each one needed and
be done today and if you want both
actions to drop the same resource you
can have variables that control how much
total one comes from each point the math
is really going to work itself out
either way and you can sort of customize
what feels important to players so when
developing those more complex systems
there's a lot of considerations that
keep in mind and here's just a few of
them how fast can you make content if it
takes a month to make a character for
your game you can't have players earn
them every week or they'll outpace you
it should always take longer to earn or
earn an upgrade to viability than it
does to create it players shouldn't
actually be able to get everything in
your game choice is fun
next how fast can players respond to
events and live operations and things
like that in your game if you expect you
add a new character on Monday and have
people use it on Friday it can't take
three weeks to upgrade a to viability
likewise if you want to have a resource
that only drops from dungeons that
appear on Tuesday you
to take at least a week to maximize the
character or the players are gonna feel
a shortage in a way that they can't
address you always want to be asking
yourself does this make sense gut check
your work you know you hit level 10
after a week you have a dozen buildings
you buy the next one every day or two it
kind of feels like it could work but if
you hit you know that point after a week
and suddenly it takes another week to
get to the next level it seems wrong and
if something seems wrong on paper and
your spreadsheet it's probably gonna
feel worse than your actual game you can
solve all of your problems in this
design step but the more you do the
better it's always quicker to try to
solve them here so that examples for a
pretty simple city builder but it works
for any type of game just keep in mind
that you're balancing around player time
and actions per day the more restrictive
your game is in actions that don't earn
rewards the easier it is to predict how
many actions of player does so a game
with energy where you know the refresh
rates you can do that but you don't have
to actually limit play to get to
predictability games might have chess
slots or a daily quests that give you
most of your rewards and you can get a
really good sense of it
so here's an example of inputs for an
RPG battle-ax and each level the player
has a total number of characters that
have a level and a rank but most players
don't have all the characters upgraded
to the same power so we've broken it
down to a team and B team but I don't
want to actually hand toon everything in
the game so B teams just a percentage of
sort of the a team's power and you can
see how these come more complex systems
can all come back to the same thing I
can figure out how many character pieces
they need to unlock new characters how
much goal they need to spend how many
materials they need and so on one of the
tricks as you get more complicated is
that like the character shards in this
cheat it's not actually a smooth line
your gold and coins and soft currencies
may be but materials are going to end up
a little more staggered smooth them out
before you put them in the actual game
it's important that players never gain a
level or upgrade a building and get a
worse payout than before then that's
true whether the loss is actual or
perceived even if something technically
pays out better but a number goes down
players
gonna feel like it was a bad idea to
upgrade which is never a good spot a
model for daily quests in a card game
would work the same way how many packs
do you want players to earn a day there
were days per pack
how many quests do you have per day
that's an average payout you can get
different tiers of difficulty by saying
how often you want each one to show up
and sort of the relative value between
them the appoint important part is to
just sort of keep the average value and
use that to predict player resources so
once you have your system what you do
with it you iterate it takes time to get
to a system that's balanced and the
problem is when you're actually a
perfect balance it can be kind of boring
you want to try intentionally increasing
or decreasing payouts of resources at
certain levels of points in your game so
the player is always a little short of
something and wants to work to get it
this is especially effective if you can
tie it in with a new feature that
unlocks as the player levels up if your
player needs a new resource at level 8
and there's a new game mode at love away
that pays out that resource you can get
people consistently engage with
progressing in your game and opening up
new things
also remember that designers love
complexity with fiddly systems and
dozens of resources but most players
don't everything should be
understandable for the player few
resources or things that belong to
resource groups that drop from the same
locations and understandable is really
what helps someone latch on and figure
out what's going on in your game a good
economy is one that gets out of the way
of the player a bit and sort of just
exists you know if you've done your job
right it's a little bit like you're
never there at all so these principles
can apply to things beyond traditional
economies I'm going to use battle as the
example today but battle is really just
any measured competition between two
players or between a player and a
defined force so a fleet of ships that
are attacking one another is a battle
you can have lots of stats for each unit
range speed health so on but so is a
fashion showdown between who has the
best out fan where you care about your
popularity and style and yes I did work
on both of these games so any system
where your stats and points matter is a
battle if you look at it in that respect
so don't be afraid to apply these
principles to pretty much anything so
any of these complex interactions can be
configured through the same general
process as an economy you start from a
defined if arbitrary data points and you
fill out just enough of them to be able
to determine the rest of the numbers and
then you calculate the rest of the
numbers you can balance things in the
game whether it's units weapons
abilities cards whatever around each
other
consider how long the object or item is
relevant in the interaction which is
your effective combat time this could be
rounds or real time but it's all about
considering the relevant life of an
object depending on the game and process
you can use these to either balance the
attributes and items themselves or the
costs of them so let's start with a more
traditional example two units in an RTS
we've got one melee unit that can only
attack right next to it and one ranged
unit so the mainly unit has to be
stronger than the ranged one right why
effective time in battle the mainly
units has to walk over to the ranged one
and it's getting shot at the whole time
so balanced units are balanced with
respect to time in this regard in an RTS
this is mitigated by speed and ranged in
a turn-based RPG we're going to consider
effective health and hits to kill to
determine that time in battle and for
the record perfect balance in this
context means that the units fight to a
draw this is again a starting point but
two units should basically meet and you
know mutually annihilate each other to
be balanced in this regard so here's an
example for our melee and ranged units
the melee unit is faster and they each
have the same health so that's the
arbitrary point that I've kind of picked
here assuming the ranged units thoughts
firing as soon as it can the melee unit
of these numbers essentially soaks one
hit on its way over so it needs to kill
the ranged unit in one less hit than the
other way around
that means that if the range units doing
20 damage it kills the melee in five
shots and the melee unit deals 25 so it
can kill it in four and they can
basically get rid of each other it can
be hard to keep a lot of these numbers
in your head so consider making
sym of these battles right in your
spreadsheet you can show what's
happening each round or each second in
combat and get a better view on what's
happening as well as double-check your
numbers so this same logic can be
applied to other types of mechanics as
well take two tanks in an RPG battle
game
one of them has defense which reduces
the amount of damage taken every hit and
the other one just has a large health
pool so we can pick which attributes we
just define such as the health and
defense and then calculate damage to
make sure the unit's balanced out this
works in other directions - such as the
sighting that third tank has 50 damage
and then trying to calculate what should
its health be in order to make it fair
don't be afraid to use two different
methods even within the same game you
want to figure out the fantasy of every
character you're making and balance
around that most important part does one
character feel like they should be
faster than anything else in your game
to make it feel right then do that and
then bring something else down in order
to compensate what about calculating
cost so let's take a card game where you
need to know how powerful each
individual card is in order to balance
it ask yourself how long is the card in
play how many turns of value does it
provide establish a baseline and then
balance things around that let's say
that one mana is too damaged in your
game if you've got a car that's gonna
last about 5 turns and do damage per
turn you could say oh it's about two and
a half damn you know mana and a perfect
balance you know now you have your
starting point
you're gonna tweak and iterate from
there discounting futures and immediate
impact and so on but it's always
important to have that baseline how much
better is one keyword ability on a card
or you can look at how often it matters
and it turns the tide and the total
effect it's going to have on a game no
matter what kind of game you're making
you can start with these time measures
especially duration and frequency and
use it to assign costs so remember that
all of these are just starting points
perfect balance is again still pretty
boring get your two fare items balanced
and then start adjusting give a unit or
negative to some attribute because of
how effective its ability is add in some
type advantages to make sure that units
have
comparative advantages just the way they
work in your head and how do you know
how valuable a particular aspect like an
ability is you test it so one way I like
to do this is take two equal units one
of the ability one without the one with
the ability should win every time
whether it's in a prototype or just in
your Excel sim you can do the same with
other attributes like damage
you know just increase the health on the
one without the ability until that one
starts winning do the same with all the
other attributes and you've got a value
for your ability in terms of the other
stats and cost of your game this first
this first balance is always harder than
the rest of them but once you've figured
out how much this ability should cost
you in terms of attributes you have a
baseline to try to figure out everything
else you're going to design after that
so how much health you have the
sacrifice to make a shield keyword fair
for example so in summary free-to-play
economies are based around time
especially the acquisition rate of
content create a scale that looks good
and makes sense define how long it
should take to get to each point and get
your payouts per day you can handle
battles and other system interactions
similarly you get an arbitrary starting
point and look at the effective time of
each item whether its actions possession
turn or seconds of play and most
importantly once everything is balanced
break it until it's actually fun equal
balance is your starting point not your
destination it's the little details and
small advantages that make something
really compelling so I hope this talk
helps some of you out there if you're
looking for a copy of the slides or the
math using examples you can follow these
links and I'll tweet them out after
please if you have any questions you can
go ahead and ask now and if you have
anything afterwards you can always
contact me at my email or we have a
rapid boom after all so GDC wants to
remind me to tell you to please for
audio session evaluations we really do
appreciate it so thank you so much for
your talk
[Applause]
hello hi thanks those really insightful
I had a question about if you have a
currency that players can use to spend
on multiple things some of which might
power them up like upgrades and some
which might be purely cosmetic how do
you kind of estimate or predicts and
balance for where they're gonna allocate
that currency that's a great question
it's when you have a currency that's
used for more than one yes its when you
have a currency that's used for more
than one thing how do you balance them
with you know a total especially if you
have one that's cosmetic and when it's
mechanic when you're doing the system
total you can basically sum them all up
to see what is the total need let's say
you can buy cosmetics you can buy new
characters and skins with gold you can
sum up the total amount and divvy it out
I also try to only consider the mechanic
amount or we're saying I want players to
earn this much gold for the mechanic
benefit of the game so that's how much
you want to pay them and sort of give
cosmetics as an extra yes there will be
some players who don't spend anything on
cosmetics and just purchase more power
but that's usually okay any other
questions excellent great well thank you
all so much for coming today and I hope
you enjoy the rest of your GDC good
hunting
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