Newbie needs a bit of math help....

hey

Im new to the site and im still on my first project

so far i'v been able to figure stuff out but i finally hit a stump the other day when it came to creating original

well balanced skills and balancing all my mobs

i suck at math...i really do

so i was wondering if someone might be willing to offer some help?

im pretty sure there's some sort of formula by using starting stats vs max stats vs exp curves

to kinda lay something out know what i mean? I already have 3 dungeons done and im planning on doing 2 more plus a few hidden one's so i have to factor all of that in and at this point it's just become too much for my little brain lol

There is no simple formula - even the best formulas (plural, not singular) can only give you an estimated starting point that you can then use to balance by playtesting.


Give it your best guess as to what you want to have as combat, and then make several dozen testplays to see if your estimates are good enough.


If simple formulas could result in a balanced game, the defaults would already be balanced...

lol figures

hmm well any chance anyone out there will show me there's?

i wouldent be copying it directly i promise that but i need a base or something to work with because im really stuck here

There are already several topics on balancing in this forum - the problem is that there is no single way to balance something, it depends on too many different things to give any fixed rules.


For example, how long do you want the combat in your game to last? That is determined by the difference between damage and HP.


If you want your battles to be finished in two or three turns, then the damage (as determined in the skills) needs to be about one-third to one-half of the HP (as set in the database for actor and enemy).


If you want your battles to last ten or twenty turns with several strategic options (skill selection, target selection), then the damage needs to be about 5% of the HP of the enemies.


But we cannot know how long your battles should last, so we can't give you numbers.


And that is only the beginning - how often should the player fight and how many fights should be in any given time? That determines part of how many XP each enemy should give.


But each game has their own values and goals, no two games are identical.


The reason why there is no formula and why all topics on balancing are incomplete is because there are thousands of values or decisions that affect the balancing - and playtesting by dozens of different people is the only way to get the answers needed for balancing.

So what do you suggest i do? this is clearly too much for me to do all by myself it would take 3 times the time it took me to create the entire game

there's gotta be someone willing to help me on the site no? someone experienced and intrested whom i could talk to about the game and

stuff? im not looking for someone to do all the work for me i just need some help

i need a ground for me to build from cuz right now i just got a bunch of numbers everywhere and things kinda work but its absolutely awful^^

like i said im new to the site so i don't know exacly how everything works but there's gotta be someone right?

Balance is probably the hardest thing in game development.

lol your telling me

I think  i just need someone to help me out and spend a few hours trying to work everything out with me

Balancing is usually a full-time job (I have experience with browsergames) and it's tedious and difficult, so don't be surprised about the complexity. If you don't have a QA budget, (like most people on this site) the best thing to do is making your game downloadable so people can playtest it. You can do that on this forum (game development, keep in mind Archeia takes a fair bit of time until she approves posts, so you won't get any feedback right away), or on other indie game sites. (I posted mine on tigsource, wonderful community over there.)

These tutorial really helped me get a start on the process of balancing. http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/5623-godlike-rodents-rule-of-thumb-for-balanced-encounters/

Maybe it's more basic than you're looking for, I dunno, but it gave me a good starting reference.

Start by figuring out what your average class is and what their stats are (in my game, it was all 20's at level 1 for the average class, except for HP and MP). Then for your other classes, decide if their stats should be above, way above, below, way below, or average, using your average class as your base. Once you have that decided, you can then decide how they should be at max level (99 by default, though in my game its 25), figure out what the base class should be at your max level, and how the other classes will be relative to that.

Once you have that decided, set up your equipment. What is your starting weapons ATK going to be? What about your starting armor? What will the best weapon have for ATK? What about the best armor's DEF (and don't forget that with armor, you also have shields, and with some scripts you can have hats and cloaks too).

Once all of that is set up, then it is time to address the damage formula. I used the default of 4 * a.atk - 2*b.def until I got all of that set up, but once it was set up I decided how much damage do I want a character with 20 ATK to do to a monster with 20 DEF (which is what most of my starting characters and monsters have)? Then, what about 100 ATK and 100 DEF (which is high in my game)? With that in mind and a spreadsheet I tinkered with the numbers in front of atk and def until I found something I liked, then based HP of monsters around that. I then did all of this with the skills too, using the same spreadsheet and figuring out what the average stats would be of a character using this skill at the point you learn it, and the average defense of the monsters, and how much damage did I want it to do? Once I had that I tinkered with the numbers until I got close to what I wanted (I say close, because if I got 316.57 and I wanted 315 I usually just left it as that was close enough).

Even with all of this, prepare to test, test, and test. Have others test it for you too (the early project feedback part of the forums can be a good place for this), this can alert you to skills that are underused or balance issues you didn't notice.

Long post but hope it helps. Also, I'll leave you with a damage formula I used in one of my skills: 20 + 8.8 * a.mat - 5.0 * b.mdf. It was for a skill which was supposed to do 400 damage if the caster has 100 MAT and the enemy has 100 MDF (test it, those numbers work), as it is a low level skill and mainly used by starting characters (hence the low damage at 100 MAT).

In my experience, balancing the game really depends on a ton of variables.  A single Attack can:

* Inflict special States (a Sword of Sleep, for example)

* Have a significantly different damage formula

* Have one or more Elements --- for example, an Ice Sword might have an Ice element and perhaps an "Edged" element (to represent edged attacks like swords)

* Bypass the defender's DEFense

* Can hit one or more defenders at a time. 

* Have a chance for a Critical (4x damage!)

Now, on the Defense side, there can be custom levels of resistance to each Element, special States, as well as how effective the DEFense is, the EVAsion and even a counter-attack percentage.

AND, the Attacker and Defender each have varying amounts of HP.

The "Battle Test" button (on Troops tab when pressing F9) is REALLY your friend here.  You don't need to do any math explicitly.    Test out the battle with the desired party/levels/equipment.  If it's far too easy, boost the monster's ATK, grant a status inflicting percentage, a special skill or whatever.  If it is far too hard, reduce the monster's ATK or HP and try again.

I try hard not to change the party's HP once I have set curves I like, because there are just too many variables to play with at once, otherwise.

Best of luck!  Balancing is definitely a tricky beast.

I guess first of all it's kinda important to say something like, the actor shouldn't have any stat higher then 100.
Then the monsters should be around an absolut maximum of 100 too.
I kinda used a.atk - b.def, worked for me, but be aware, if your attack is 20 and enemies defensiv is 20, this means 0 damage. :)
But I'm not 100% ready or satisfied with my balancing. I also have to keep in mind, that I have 6 actors in my game. o_O
I try to achieve a difficulty around of Shin Megami Tensei, what is a huge challenge. :D /)

It works with more too, but then it becomes very difficult and only really advanced player could do it. ;)
So basically you should look out that the monsters don't have higher stats then the actors. 
But in some parts, some people like it super difficult, so the double stats would be fine then.

But without testplay it is not possible to balance. I testplayed 8 hours for one enemy to balance them for the items, stats and equip I have. ;)
It goes faster, when you get to know what you are doing. It is a balance example for a one on one battle. (\s/)

Actually I'm a big fan of shin megami tensei

The hours I sent playing nocturn lol

You might find this two-part tutorial helpful:

http://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/bc2prod/rpgmaker-20130522223546811/files/RPGMakerVXAceTutorial6.pdf

http://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/bc2prod/rpgmaker-20130522223546811/files/RPGMakerVXAceTutorial7.pdf

The first few pages of the first one don't deal with balance, but there's a lot of good stuff about balance that you might not have thought of in both links.

Now, depending on other mechanics you have in your game, you'll still need to tweak different elements of the balance to find the right flow and level of difficulty for the player.  Like a couple people have already mentioned, the best way to do this is to have people thoroughly playtest your game.  If you can watch them playtest it to gauge their reactions (whether you sit with them as they play or they take a video/do a Let's Play), even better.