Post by tupolev on Jan 25, 2009 4:42:44 GMT -5
I played a game with bug a few days ago, and brought up the issue of balance, particularly towards Rogue, as that was a big issue in that game, and bug directed me to this forum for discussion, so here goes some random thoughts. These are mini-essays/paragraphs of semi-formulated thoughts. Make of them what you will.
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Forgotten Rogue
The problem with Forgotten Rogue is that it is overspecialized. Individually, his abilities are not that overpowered by any means. Having a hero naturally good as assassination is ok, but if it's specialized to the point where the hero can focus only on assassination, the fact that he doesn't specialize at much else does not balance out the huge profit of assassination. When a hero is specialized, he should overall appear on the surface to have less overall power than a totally balanced hero.
Note that this example I'll give is NOT a guide of how a hero should be designed, or even remotely a description of how heroes function. It also presents an example with is almost impossibly in the extremes. It is simply to demonstrate a point:
Let's say a totally balanced-out hero has totally average ability to siege, assassinate, support, and defend (again, total bs categories strictly to make a point).
Now, let's say an uber assassinator can assassinate 4 times as well as usual, but has no ability whatsoever to siege, defend, or support.
Are the two heroes balanced?
No.
Why? Because said assassinator can profit off of his activities far easier by running around and killing people than said balanced hero can profit off of doing whatever he's doing, since he will be doing it far less effectively than assassinator is assassinating, regardless of what balance-man is doing. The profit is extremely high, to the point where it easily counterbalances the negatives of the hero and then some.
The problem isn't so much that Rogue is good at assassinating so much as it is that he has the ability equivalent of a 4-man gank team when it comes to assassination. Individually the abilities are nothing special, but together they are absurd.
This isn't to say that simply making his abilities less effective in general would make sense. A better method of dealing with the problem would probably be to make the hero somewhat more versatile, which would have to involve a reworking of his skillset.
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Simplicity
In mapping, a very common design method is to achieve complexity by having a large number of 'features' and 'aspects' and other such gimmicks. A statement which has always rung true is 'more is less' and it's variation, 'less is more.' This applies to writing, mapping, and all other modes of designing things. The idea is that the goal is to achieve what you want with as little red tape to plow through as possible. In writing, for example, this means that an informative essay 520 words long and direct will probably be better than one 700 words long due to loads of flowery filler language.
As far as this applying to your map, for the most part your map is currently simple and direct. However, a couple things in it seem, for lack of a better term, like politics. The entire gem system, for example, currently seems to serve as a more or less pointless load of confusing filler to plow through to achieve the very simple end of weapon upgrading.
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Intuition
Intuitiveness more or less describes the ability of something to be comprehensible and picked up easily, and is thus often related to the idea of simplicity.
Right now, your map doesn't seem to be full of counter-intuitiveness, fortunately. However, some things should probably be more up-front and understandable. For example, the control of ownership of the towers along the bridges is extremely confusing for first-time players. Since the way it works is quite unusual for towers in AoS maps, and is nigh impossible to quickly comprehend upon approaching the bridge, at the very least some indication should be given to make up for the lack of intuitiveness.
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Forgotten Rogue
The problem with Forgotten Rogue is that it is overspecialized. Individually, his abilities are not that overpowered by any means. Having a hero naturally good as assassination is ok, but if it's specialized to the point where the hero can focus only on assassination, the fact that he doesn't specialize at much else does not balance out the huge profit of assassination. When a hero is specialized, he should overall appear on the surface to have less overall power than a totally balanced hero.
Note that this example I'll give is NOT a guide of how a hero should be designed, or even remotely a description of how heroes function. It also presents an example with is almost impossibly in the extremes. It is simply to demonstrate a point:
Let's say a totally balanced-out hero has totally average ability to siege, assassinate, support, and defend (again, total bs categories strictly to make a point).
Now, let's say an uber assassinator can assassinate 4 times as well as usual, but has no ability whatsoever to siege, defend, or support.
Are the two heroes balanced?
No.
Why? Because said assassinator can profit off of his activities far easier by running around and killing people than said balanced hero can profit off of doing whatever he's doing, since he will be doing it far less effectively than assassinator is assassinating, regardless of what balance-man is doing. The profit is extremely high, to the point where it easily counterbalances the negatives of the hero and then some.
The problem isn't so much that Rogue is good at assassinating so much as it is that he has the ability equivalent of a 4-man gank team when it comes to assassination. Individually the abilities are nothing special, but together they are absurd.
This isn't to say that simply making his abilities less effective in general would make sense. A better method of dealing with the problem would probably be to make the hero somewhat more versatile, which would have to involve a reworking of his skillset.
//=========================
Simplicity
In mapping, a very common design method is to achieve complexity by having a large number of 'features' and 'aspects' and other such gimmicks. A statement which has always rung true is 'more is less' and it's variation, 'less is more.' This applies to writing, mapping, and all other modes of designing things. The idea is that the goal is to achieve what you want with as little red tape to plow through as possible. In writing, for example, this means that an informative essay 520 words long and direct will probably be better than one 700 words long due to loads of flowery filler language.
As far as this applying to your map, for the most part your map is currently simple and direct. However, a couple things in it seem, for lack of a better term, like politics. The entire gem system, for example, currently seems to serve as a more or less pointless load of confusing filler to plow through to achieve the very simple end of weapon upgrading.
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Intuition
Intuitiveness more or less describes the ability of something to be comprehensible and picked up easily, and is thus often related to the idea of simplicity.
Right now, your map doesn't seem to be full of counter-intuitiveness, fortunately. However, some things should probably be more up-front and understandable. For example, the control of ownership of the towers along the bridges is extremely confusing for first-time players. Since the way it works is quite unusual for towers in AoS maps, and is nigh impossible to quickly comprehend upon approaching the bridge, at the very least some indication should be given to make up for the lack of intuitiveness.
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