Devlog 9

When we were playing Battle Battle this week I noticed a lot of things when playtesting each player, one of those things being the balancing of the game. Each person I beat had low-end powers or abilities that I had to help tweak so they could win against me more easily without making it just a counter to my type of characters. Not only were some of the characters extremely underpowered but also benefitted less than the vanilla Battle Battle character. "Increase difficulty with each success: This is a very common pattern in videogames—each level is harder than the last. Players build their skill until they can complete a level, only to be presented with one that challenges them yet again. Don’t forget, of course, to use the tense and release pattern shown earlier." - Macklin and Sharp - Chapter 13: Game Mechanics Must Be In Balance. I let them know to add more things to that character and try customizing and tweaking them more so they feel more like that character, an example of this is when I told my fellow colleague to increase its damage for having less hitpoints or if they do add a hitpoint do something like having life steal to where each time they win they get 1 hp back. "Poker is Customizable: Poker is extremely customizable. There are many different types of Poker and many different styles of game. Dealer’s Choice Poker even takes this to the extreme, with the dealer choosing the game to be played when they deal. The concept of players really taking ownership of their play experience in this way is unusual, it is much more common for players to look to the game rules or the game publisher for “the right” way to play. As a designer, one can explore different ways to play one’s game and present some of these to the players, with an invitation for them to customize the play for the tastes of their playgroup." - Richard Garfield - Game Design Lessons from Poker. One big part of helping to design the characters was making sure to keep the stakes high and make the player feel as if either side could win whether or not a character has a strong or interesting ability or not. "Poker has Stakes: Typically Poker is played for money. Most players find that unless it is played for money it is pointless. If you experiment a bit, however, for some playgroups one may find that there are some ways around this for example, playing a tournament where you can’t buy back into the game. In this case the stakes are elimination from the game. My pals from Adobe have another solution as mentioned above, they keep track of the results over the course of years – and players value their “score” because it is being recorded. The score is a measure of game honor. Playing for stakes has an interesting effect on a game, whether or not the stakes are money or honor. The stakes make it so that players are playing for more than just first place, they are competing every hand to win and it means something to them even if they are still in dead last. I have used this mindset to completely alter the nature of a Hearts league I played in, where we played as if we were playing for money and kept track of the results. It is amazing how that change alters the play of good players!" - Richard Garfield - Game Design Lessons from Poker. Other than helping people with those changes I enjoyed coming up with new ideas on the fly, I felt as if it helped increase my scope of ideas for future projects.