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Game Balance - Help?


Draconus297

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So, it's no secret that I am trying to work on several video game designs at once, but the one closest to being completed is an Action RPG/RTS hybrid, which has been my pet project for a while.

 

However, I have already noticed that some stats matter a bit more than others, which makes me worry about trying to tweak balance before the game is released so we don't have any one strategy that is outright superior to all others.

 

So, the stats and how they work first, before my concerns.

 

HP is HP, functions just like it does in any other game.

 

STR is your primary attacking stat, which also determines how often physically-induced status conditions (think how Body Slam has a chance to paralyze) will trigger if you're using an appropriate attack or weapon.

 

END is a total defense stat, governing all damage you take from any kind of attack. It also determines a character's maximum inventory space, so your tanks double as pack mules.

 

MAG is magic, obviously, handling the effectiveness of magical attacks, healing spells, barriers, etc. It's not a finite resource, as the attacks themselves have cooldowns, and occasionally side effects if the spells are devastating enough.

 

RFX is an evasion/accuracy stat, pure and simple. The calculation for every attack adds both units' RFX together, and if the result is less than or equal to the attacker's RFX, the attack connects.

 

FOC is a critical hit stat, rolled the same way RFX is. It also increases the range of ranged attacks, and lets a given character see farther into the fog of war.

 

AGI is a speed stat, which makes a character run and attack faster.

 

Now, my issue is that builds that focus on RFX and AGI are kinda busted, meaning that you can just focus skill points obtained through level-up into just those two, and your characters are so hard to damage that your party straight-up takes no damage, and most of your other stats don't matter besides being barely strong enough to do 1 damage at minimum with standard attacks. This means that a character who has both those stats at a high enough level (you recruit one roughly halfway through the game) can just solo most of the battles in the game.

 

Any suggestions?

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Path of Exile's form of evasion (this could be in other games too, this is just the first thing that came to mind) is instead a percentage that is affected by your total "Evasion Rating" and enemies total "Accuracy Ratings". They then use this to calculate the chance of you evading attacks, which can never be 100%, and follows a logarithmic scale so that the higher your evasion is, the less difference more evasion will make. That could encourage characters to have decent evasion, but severely nerf pure evasion characters.

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To a similar extent i can see END going the same way if you aren't careful. Especially since there isnt a distinction in how it can be used to tank physical and magical moves equally. I guess status would balance it a bit, but it is something to keep in mind.

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Well, the chance to dodge can never be 100%, due to how RFX works. Think of it this way: Your unit has 60 RFX, and an enemy unit has 40. That means that your unit has a 60% chance to hit when attacking, and a 60% chance to dodge when being attacked. However, if you invest a character deeply enough into RFX, they're dodging the vast majority of incoming attacks and rarely missing when they attack, essentially rendering investment into END all but pointless (unless, of course, you want to pair your evasion tank up with somebody that needs items thrown to them often for whatever reason, but why would you do that?). Combine that with how quickly stats grow once a character gets high-level enough, and you wind up with something silly like 99% chance to dodge, 99% chance to land a hit.

 

END is mostly counterbalanced by the prevalence of poison and burn as status effects (some missions will include even weak mooks having poison-tipped spears and arrows), and can be flat-out ignored by the weapon used by a certain recurring boss (her attacks skip over your base END, only being stopped by things like commanded blocks and the positively puny modifiers added by armors and weapons.

 

Also, offhand, I really like the idea of a character with high FOC and END as a ranged medic/scout/bombardier, throwing healing items at members of your army from huge distances away, and occasionally bombing the enemy. There isn't a character with that particular stat spread in the game up to this point, but I'm thinking about adding one.

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There is no silver bullet solution to your issue. So I will provide you with some thoughts and questions.

 

Do you know any games with a similar system, and if so how did they solve such an issue? This might give you some inspiration. Lets take Monopoly for example; you aren't allowed to only place buildings on a single field while leaving out the others in the set (there can be a difference of up to 1). If you were to introduce a similar mechanic, you'd probably want a slightly more lenient margin to allow players to experiment.

 

Is the evasion of moves only influenced by the character's RFX (reflex?), or are other things factored in as well? I'd expect more powerful weapons to be heavier. If your character isn't strong enough to wield them, their performance might suffer (similar to constitution in older Fire Emblem games). I could also imagine that the (side-effects) of some spells being almost impossible to dodge; reflexes aren't a good insulator, so good luck trying to stave of the heat after a mage ignited pretty much everything in the surroundings.

 

Another thing you could take into consideration is what your character is focusing on. Trying to get a hit in on the enemy probably makes it so their guard is down, making it easier for the enemy to hit them in return. The opposite could be true as well; focusuing on dodging moves could make it harder to land a hit.

 

Lastly, you could take a look at some high voted questions on Game Development Stack Exchange which are tagged "balance". While I believe non of the questions struggles with your exact problem, you might find a question which is similar enough to yours. And if not, you could even try to ask the question there... but I feel it is a tad too open ended for their policy.

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