I would like to take the time to express the abstract of my own design theory for balancing rpgs. Its important to understand this model is to examine the state of the game at any given moment for any given battle.
to achieve any type of balance you must understand what you're weighing and which side of the scales each of these things should go on. lets break this down first. with very few exceptions everything in turn based rpgs can be categorized into 4 groups.
Party power: the party's cumulative ability to kill the monster(s). weapons.. offensive spells..( including DOT and direct damage) offensive buffs
Party health: the parties health includes restorative spells and restorative regeneration spells (like a dot) as well as potions and any other form of damage reduction.
damage reduction can be thought of as practical health since it prevents damage from occurring that otherwise would have.
if a character has 1000 health and 50% damage reduction the character can withstand just under 2000 points of damage before dying. when determining enemy power its important to consider how much damage will actually affect the player.
potions contribute to the health category and their quantity/availability also contributes. potions are more valuable outside of battle than inside since the cost of using a potion in battle means potentially losing more health from enemy attacks infinite potion stock and easy money makes for an easily abused game. its easier to balance if you limit or remove potions since their impact can vary a lot.
healers are an easy way to throttle the parties ability to recover and maintain health in various circumstances. you can decide how long the party can sustain a level of health by dictating mp pool and regeneration and you can control what degree of damage the party will sustain over the course of battle. healers are a very good place to work from in respects to achieving balance.
enemy power: the enemy of the moment is what we are aiming to balance against. when you're deciding what kind of attacks to give an enemy look at what party health has available. it would be unreasonable for example to give an enemy a hit-all attack of the party doesn't have the tools to recover or prevent the damage enough to survive the number of encounters you expect the player to survive.
enemy health: for the most part enemy health dictates the length of the encounter but must be compared to party power to give a general understanding of what type of damage is possible to deal in a single turn. the number of targets and their ability to regenerate
on the left we have party power and party health and on the right we have enemy health and enemy power.
its really that simple. kill them before they kill you.
I would suggest achieving the desired balance first THEN start dividing and specializing damage types like magical/elemental
or any other type of fluff. if you want your players to jump through hoops i suggest you build the hoops after the rest of the game is already balanced or you will have to jump through your own hoops for a chance at understanding where your ratios sit.
how to balance a turn based rpg
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It's... not quite that simple. Sure, in many cases you can work out mathematically the total number of HP available to the party, assuming all potions are used, all MP available to the healer is spent, and all MP-restorative items are used. Eventually, all resources run out and you have a finite sum. (It doesn't work in all cases, because there may be abilities like Auto-Regen that effectively give an infinite HP pool, just not all available at once. But let's ignore this and concentrate on the finite case.)
That sum really doesn't tell you much. You don't want the player to be exhausting their stock of items after every battle (or even after every dungeon), because even if the battle gives enough rewards to outweigh the resources spent, too much inventory management just makes a game tedious.
You're thinking on the right lines, though. Damage numbers don't mean anything by themselves; what matters is how many turns it would take for your damage output to destroy the enemy, and vice versa. For an ordinary encounter, you might decide you want the enemy to go down in 3 rounds and take 7 rounds to destroy the player. (Those are just example numbers; it's something you would have to decide for yourself depending on how you want the game, and the individual encounter, to feel.) The combat won't actually last 7 rounds, but another way of putting it is that the enemy depletes 1/7 of the party's HP per round, or 3/7 in total; so for this particular example, the player will need to pay attention to healing in between combats, and make sure they come into a dungeon with plenty of resources. Also, the damage may not be spread evenly between party members, so the player may have to spend resources during combat to prevent a member being knocked out.
Of course, if the player's party has access to healing and the enemy does not, it's reasonable for some encounters to take down the player in fewer rounds than they would destroy the enemy; that just means that enemy would be a particularly heavy resource drain. -
The only real way to achieve balance is to playtest your game a bunch of times, under all sorts of circumstances (not just isolated encounters), and then make adjustments based on the results. The best playtest is one that assumes you, as player, are taking on the enemy for the first time, without knowledge of their skill patterns, weaknesses or anything.
I don't find systems, like working out how many turns it should theoretically take enemies to defeat the player working very effectively. There are too many variables to take into account that can change things that don't follow basic guidelines. Play the game, and if it feels good = keep what you've got. If it doesn't feel good = make changes and playtest again until it does.
Anyway, yeah, balance around playtesting and feeling. Not just guidelines based on a set of arbitrary numbers. -
It's... not quite that simple. Sure, in many cases you can work out mathematically the total number of HP available to the party, assuming all potions are used, all MP available to the healer is spent, and all MP-restorative items are used. Eventually, all resources run out and you have a finite sum. (It doesn't work in all cases, because there may be abilities like Auto-Regen that effectively give an infinite HP pool, just not all available at once. But let's ignore this and concentrate on the finite case.)
That sum really doesn't tell you much. You don't want the player to be exhausting their stock of items after every battle (or even after every dungeon), because even if the battle gives enough rewards to outweigh the resources spent, too much inventory management just makes a game tedious.
You're thinking on the right lines, though. Damage numbers don't mean anything by themselves; what matters is how many turns it would take for your damage output to destroy the enemy, and vice versa. For an ordinary encounter, you might decide you want the enemy to go down in 3 rounds and take 7 rounds to destroy the player. (Those are just example numbers; it's something you would have to decide for yourself depending on how you want the game, and the individual encounter, to feel.) The combat won't actually last 7 rounds, but another way of putting it is that the enemy depletes 1/7 of the party's HP per round, or 3/7 in total; so for this particular example, the player will need to pay attention to healing in between combats, and make sure they come into a dungeon with plenty of resources. Also, the damage may not be spread evenly between party members, so the player may have to spend resources during combat to prevent a member being knocked out.
Of course, if the player's party has access to healing and the enemy does not, it's reasonable for some encounters to take down the player in fewer rounds than they would destroy the enemy; that just means that enemy would be a particularly heavy resource drain.
The intention never was to have expect the player to use every potion available its just a model to help developers understand the consequences of their design decisions and where to look to achieve balance against those changes or problems. the numbers fit but you don't actually need to tally everything up. kind of like how you can tell me how many degrees there are between 12 and 3 on a clock. its more about knowing how the pieces interact but its really not for everyone.
The only real way to achieve balance is to playtest your game a bunch of times, under all sorts of circumstances (not just isolated encounters), and then make adjustments based on the results. The best playtest is one that assumes you, as player, are taking on the enemy for the first time, without knowledge of their skill patterns, weaknesses or anything.
I don't find systems, like working out how many turns it should theoretically take enemies to defeat the player working very effectively. There are too many variables to take into account that can change things that don't follow basic guidelines. Play the game, and if it feels good = keep what you've got. If it doesn't feel good = make changes and playtest again until it does.
Anyway, yeah, balance around playtesting and feeling. Not just guidelines based on a set of arbitrary numbers.
what numbers? when you playtest you play until you find a problem. boss too easy.. or combat taking too long. then you decide to change something to fix the problem by changing something and anything you change falls into one of the categories of this model. -
I find that playtesting your own game for anything except just making sure things work is... bad. You need an outside opinion. I like to recruit friends or family to do my combat playtesting. Or to interact with limited systems I'm implementing. Not because I think they're smart enough to offer me useful feedback... But, because I'm learning things by WATCHING how they play. If they have feedback, I accept it and bounce ideas off of them. However, I'm more interested in what they're doing during the playtests. Does it appear like they're struggling? Are they running from combat a lot? Etcetera.
That being said, I think it's important to note that for a topic like this... "Balance" means all sorts of things. Is the game meant to be balanced to be easy? Hard? Somewhere in between? The dev decides what the balance should be and is then responsible for maintaining that balance through the whole game.
As such, Balance for my game is meant to take players 4 actions upon encountering a new monster to kill it. Minimum 4 turns (one action for each party member). Once they know the weakness, it's meant to take 1 or 2 actions each time. Bosses are meant to take a minimum of 4 ROUNDS (16 actions) to defeat, unless a player knew what they were doing the minute they entered the fight (which means they were essentially over-leveled). Players are meant to die in 1-5 hits. Balance for my game is to make combat "relatively deadly". But, that might not work across all games, ever, or every flavor of RPG.
Devs need to decide what their balance is and then have a lot of players to playtest their game and watch how they play, in order to maintain the balance they've settled on. Usually though, the best ways to measure "balance" are the same way players do... How many hits does it take to die in, how many hits does it take to score a kill in? Balance is simple to create. It's difficult to maintain. -
I find that playtesting your own game for anything except just making sure things work is... bad. You need an outside opinion. I like to recruit friends or family to do my combat playtesting. Or to interact with limited systems I'm implementing. Not because I think they're smart enough to offer me useful feedback... But, because I'm learning things by WATCHING how they play. If they have feedback, I accept it and bounce ideas off of them. However, I'm more interested in what they're doing during the playtests. Does it appear like they're struggling? Are they running from combat a lot? Etcetera.
That being said, I think it's important to note that for a topic like this... "Balance" means all sorts of things. Is the game meant to be balanced to be easy? Hard? Somewhere in between? The dev decides what the balance should be and is then responsible for maintaining that balance through the whole game.
As such, Balance for my game is meant to take players 4 actions upon encountering a new monster to kill it. Minimum 4 turns (one action for each party member). Once they know the weakness, it's meant to take 1 or 2 actions each time. Bosses are meant to take a minimum of 4 ROUNDS (16 actions) to defeat, unless a player knew what they were doing the minute they entered the fight (which means they were essentially over-leveled). Players are meant to die in 1-5 hits. Balance for my game is to make combat "relatively deadly". But, that might not work across all games, ever, or every flavor of RPG.
Devs need to decide what their balance is and then have a lot of players to playtest their game and watch how they play, in order to maintain the balance they've settled on. Usually though, the best ways to measure "balance" are the same way players do... How many hits does it take to die in, how many hits does it take to score a kill in? Balance is simple to create. It's difficult to maintain.
I think ive left the concept too abstract I can never tell what people will or wont understand...
In looking to acheive your own ideal difficulty balance you change different aspects about your combat the model is intended to express a relationship much like the formula for a circle. Reguardless of how big of a circle youd prefer the aspects of a circle relate to one another the same way. Nobody seems to agree though so oh well. -
The point about healers as a balancing factor is pretty important. Basically, I think of combat as a sort of arms race between "how much damage the enemies do" and "how effectively the party can remove that damage via healing." If the healing (mainly AoE) is too strong, it becomes difficult to challenge the player without cheap RNG because otherwise, they can undo all damage every round. If the healing is too weak, then battles become a war of attrition which favors the enemies, and that could also be seen as unfun. So design your healing carefully and limit the effectiveness of any AoE healing. If you want a strong AoE heal anyway, consider making it a cooldown ability, very expensive, or a limit break type ability so it can't be easily spammed.
Status ailments are another thing to keep in mind. It's a very good idea to avoid giving players a "cures all status ailments" ability, unless you limit it to removing only a few ailments at a time. Being able to purge everything in a single shot cheapens the whole concept of status ailments, which also makes battles easier. -
The point about healers as a balancing factor is pretty important. Basically, I think of combat as a sort of arms race between "how much damage the enemies do" and "how effectively the party can remove that damage via healing." If the healing (mainly AoE) is too strong, it becomes difficult to challenge the player without cheap RNG because otherwise, they can undo all damage every round. If the healing is too weak, then battles become a war of attrition which favors the enemies, and that could also be seen as unfun. So design your healing carefully and limit the effectiveness of any AoE healing. If you want a strong AoE heal anyway, consider making it a cooldown ability, very expensive, or a limit break type ability so it can't be easily spammed.
Status ailments are another thing to keep in mind. It's a very good idea to avoid giving players a "cures all status ailments" ability, unless you limit it to removing only a few ailments at a time. Being able to purge everything in a single shot cheapens the whole concept of status ailments, which also makes battles easier.
Well said. You seem to have a grasp of the relationship im trying to explain. -
The relationship is clear, but the model does have some shortcomings imho...
- You equalize damage reduction with hit points. However, this only works if damage reduction is relative and not absolute. If I have an absolute damage reduction of 4 points per hit, it matters very much whether the enemy strikes with a 5-point or a 10-point hit. Does your model somehow account for this?
- Second, there is the question of regeneration between battles. In a game with unlimited healing directly after every combat, a battle that consumes 10% of the party's health is trivial, and 20 of those in a row just the same. But if you don't have easy access to healing after every battle, surviving those same 20 battles is basically impossible. (Incidentally, this opens up questions like "do I need someone in my party who essentially contributes nothing to individual battles, but is pretty good at healing inbetween them?")
- Third, what about balancing for different parties? If our game is very linear, with little to no optional side quests and possible even predefined character development, we can roughly predict the state the party will be in when they face a specific battle. But what if the game allows the player a lot of freedom? We now have to take numerous possible party conditions into account if we want to balance the battle (there are methods for this, but that would be an entirely different topic). I'm not sure how much help a standard formula would be here.
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The relationship is clear, but the model does have some shortcomings imho...
- You equalize damage reduction with hit points. However, this only works if damage reduction is relative and not absolute. If I have an absolute damage reduction of 4 points per hit, it matters very much whether the enemy strikes with a 5-point or a 10-point hit. Does your model somehow account for this?
- Second, there is the question of regeneration between battles. In a game with unlimited healing directly after every combat, a battle that consumes 10% of the party's health is trivial, and 20 of those in a row just the same. But if you don't have easy access to healing after every battle, surviving those same 20 battles is basically impossible. (Incidentally, this opens up questions like "do I need someone in my party who essentially contributes nothing to individual battles, but is pretty good at healing inbetween them?")
- Third, what about balancing for different parties? If our game is very linear, with little to no optional side quests and possible even predefined character development, we can roughly predict the state the party will be in when they face a specific battle. But what if the game allows the player a lot of freedom? We now have to take numerous possible party conditions into account if we want to balance the battle (there are methods for this, but that would be an entirely different topic). I'm not sure how much help a standard formula would be here.
The bigger point is knowing where to look and understanding what your actions affect. I do equate damage reduction with health yet i don't state any kind of conversion ratio because individual designs would vary but the relationship between the two exists regardless adding more damage reduction or adding more health both make the thing in question take more damage to kill.
in achieving your own personal taste in balance healing between battles contributes to the party health. in any situation where the party's healing MP pool regenerates faster than its used to restore health the party has infinite health. this is true as long as monsters deal less damage than the party can restore while regenerating. all of this is noted in the model but it doesnt give you a clear instruction on how to mend this situation it just points out what you can change to affect it.
such as for example increasing monster damage output rather than decreasing priest mp or healing spell effectiveness both would have the result of breaking the infinite loop and creating a potentially challenging situation.
I think you have some kind of misunderstanding though because your preference in balancing actually falls inside this model. its not about any one specific system you're talking about things that could and would be done by concidering what gets affected by what. -
A simple yet complex method to balance any game, is to create a neutral enemy/obstacle for the desired difficulty, and then use that as a template for all the others.