Why is it costly?

In the past, I tried to play Valorant at the invitation of my friends. And while waiting for the champion, I heard the sentences like “this child”, “this general is very wasted”, or “I needed”. And even though the FPS game is favored by the player’s gun skills and depends on many other factors such as map, role, and tactics, why is Harbor so few play? Or why Chamber at the time of debut was so “expensive”? What we are mentioning here is consistency Balance of the game.

Balancing is an important move of gaming makers to create fairness between the options in the game, ensuring that no character will be too weak or any weapon is too strong. Currently, although there is still a clear balance between options, most games are It is not necessary to towards the perfect balance.

For games, where everyone starts with a similar starting point, balance is unnecessary. Different from the games that make players confronted with completely different things. More than a hundred generals to choose, dozens of different weapons, or thousands of upgrades to increase points. Developers believe that providing players with many unique options will increase the competitiveness and appear more surprising and different among players with the same level.

It must be emphasized that the game balance is a very difficult task. Requires continuous and consistent. MOBA games like League of Legends have more than 200 different patches over the years. But in addition to regular updates, Balancing is also a matter of psychology of the player. To make the player aware of the real balance is even more difficult than the balance.

So how to balance?

There are many options to make a game balanced. The first factor that needs is the trade -off. Eliminate the advantages, instead of some disadvantages. For example, in Mario Kart, where Donkeykong has a high speed, but the ability to accelerate is limited, while the opposite we have TOAD. If done well, these two characters can be balanced. Or in the League of Legends, the skills with great damage most have to trade with a certain amount of mana or certain conditions. Champions who are more likely to control will have less damage, or long -range generals will often be less mobile. If all the generals are aiming for that, the maximizing the power of the general will now depend on the level of the player, and almost balanced. For example, card games, a card with an effect that causes 1 damage and a card that can deal 5 damage, the balance now is to increase the amount of resources used by the second card a little bit more . But the important thing is still The uniqueness between options to make players feel interesting. A game can be balanced when every choice is similar, but that makes players feel bored.

So what we need now is Counter ability, or counter. This is the time when we make the options capable of opposing each other’s effects and advantages. For example, in the strategy games, to combat strong attack play in the beginning of the game, defensive tactics with works will be appropriate, and to overcome the defensive gameplay, the player will save talent My original to put the total force to destroy those defensive works. But if you keep creating a new thing to overcome something, and then continue to counter that remedy, it will always be an endless path. So what do we need here? That’s right, to overcome the resource -saving gameplay, we will attack in the beginning of the game. And this counterpart triangle is really familiar to us, it is the scissors – hammer – bag. A simple and great balance.

This ensures that you must be a flexible player, using mixed tactics and must constantly adapt to the opponent’s tactics. Because there is not always three options such as scissors – hammer – bags. In Overwatch, the combination of generals creates many squads that you need to improvise to win. Some champions may be superior to many other generals, but when placed in different squads, the win rate is certainly not 100%.

And return to the concept of “costly”. The choices or tactics when effective beyond the expectations make everyone use them to win for themselves. This forces other players to create how to overcome them their own. But not always doing this. “Ton Kem” is simply too strong, too overwhelming compared to the rest. At this time, the impact of developers, Nerfing is to minimize and limit their ability, or buffing for weaker options. But it is not necessary to always need Nerf things and buffs in secondary. It is completely possible to increase the power options so that they can balance each other on their own. In fact, increasing strength is often easier than reducing power. Because sometimes the problem is not in the power of that champion, but in many other factors such as equipment, meta, … Any change affects the game and players when used to a choice. Choose certain, the catastrophic Nerf option will sometimes not really fit. Yes, the psychology of the player is really important.

Therefore, the game balance is really a challenging job. The more different options are created, the harder it is to balance them, and there are related issues to the players’ abilities. So the appearance of “costly” options is inevitable.