David Fried, a former employee of the company who worked on WC3 and Frozen Throne, decided to elaborate on what needs to be done to get the most «fair» game. Well, we have prepared for you a translation of this material.
WHAT DOES BALANCED MEAN?
Nevertheless, you still have to figure out who comes out the winner in battles between different units, because it will make the matches interesting and will allow you to create unique strategies and counter-strategies. This is the traditional stone-paper-scissors system that most games use. In the fantasy setting, this system turns into Infantry-Spearmen-Cavalry, and often expands with Archers, who are good against infantry and spearmen because they can kite them. The balance is achieved when the opposition of various types of troops will lead to logical results. For example, in a battle of equal numbers of cavalry and spearmen, the latter should emerge victorious.
It is important to understand that a perfectly balanced asymmetric game simply does not exist. In a symmetrical game, when both players use the same units and have the same access to resources, you can achieve complete balance, because both sides are actually equal in their capabilities.
ECONOMIC BALANCE FACTOR:
The balance is achieved by fitting certain numerical values so that the counter strategies do not give players too much of a bonus. Let's assume that spearmen have a 20% advantage against cavalry, so in a battle of 10x10, 2 spearmen must remain alive. This is an extremely serious plus, especially considering that spearmen are often cheaper than cavalry. So if one player gave up 50 gold for the spearmen, and the second paid 100 each for the cavalryman, then at the end of the battle the first player also received the advantage of 600 gold! Therefore, when we are engaged in balance, we need to monitor several aspects of the gameplay at once.
BALANCE TESTING:
Ultimately, the best way to find out how well balanced your game is is to make players play a lot of matches against each other. It is best to take approximately equal strength players and ask them to play the same races to find out which of them will be more successful. Then you need to look at their progress in each match and look for obvious and hidden problems with the balance.
GOOD FEELING FOR BALANCED GAME:
The final touches in the balance should be aimed at ensuring that the overall feelings of the game are positive. When you are finished with the base balance unit you need to go through the gameplay and figure out what makes the game interesting. Do the players like when, after a shot of a siege tank, zerglings survive on 1 hit? If not, then most likely it should not be. Does it seem to players that the “perfectly balanced” psion storm is still too weak? It may be worthwhile to slightly increase the damage, while at the same time increasing the delay between the visual effect and the first wave of damage by 0.25 seconds to encourage good microcontrol.