06-20-2003, 08:42 PM
Hi,
Adequate balance is only important in DII, because almost all the skill is in choosing skill points, and equipment. If actual user skill was required, then skill and equipment balance becomes less important overall. So a Grandfather in the hands of an incompetent is as worthless as any sword you can buy from Charsi.
That is a major concern. However, when the best item of a type (say swords) is hundreds of times better than the worse, and hundreds of times better than none, then the game *will* devolve into an equipment race. Ideally, again looking at just the one handed sword class of weapons, a character should be able to do about twice as much damage with the worse sword (a plain dagger) as with none. There should be only another factor of two with the best possible sword. All skills and other attributes combined should not increase that more than another factor of two. All that, of course, at a given clvl. The biggest thing that determines the power of a character should be clvl, followed by distribution of skill and attributes, followed by type of equipment. The present situation is just the opposite.
I'm not advocating an interface that requires an ergonomic game controller, just maybe a few things. Say dodge, parry, thrust, aim high, or low, and block with shield.
Sorry, what you are talking about here is mouse skill, not game skill. If you want to play arcade/console fight games, that's fine. Personally, I don't. Keep the flavor of the game as it is, but make the order of taking out the monsters important. Make character position important. Make tactical moves like advancing and retreating to spread the monsters important. Of course, all that would require an interface where what you see is actually what the server thinks. That leaves D2 pretty much out in the cold.
Next, compare apples to apples. Have your play testers measure the time and difficulty it takes to accomplish an Act with a given build. If one seems out of balance, have more people attempt that same assignment to validate it wasn't just one personâs inability to out think the game. Do this from Act 1 normal thru Act 5 Hell difficulty.
Yes! But, before that is done, get someone that actually knows how to use a spreadsheet and analyze a game to look at how various builds will work out. Yeah, that is only a theoretical view and the actual play might be different. However, it at least gives you a reasonable baseline to work from. With as many variables as D2 has, randomly tweaking knobs will never give a balanced game.
Also, any given combination of map layout and monster types might make a given level more difficult for one class (or build) or another. So your advice to play the level multiple times is very important. The balance should be *on average* and not for every individual case. There should always be cases that are easier and ones that are harder for each class and build.
In order for the game to be interesting, there needs to be extremes.
I would say that "extremes" is one of the drawbacks of D2 as it presently is. Specifically the extremes of packs of meaningless monsters interspersed with the occasional near impossible boss. As you say, "I dislike the 1 hit kill monsters as much as I dislike the silver bullet items that kill monsters in 1 blow." What the game should require is a constant flexibility on the part of the player to be able to handle a constantly changing mix of monsters on constantly varying terrain. Somehow, with less numerical variation, D1 seemed to achieve this better than D2 has. The "randomness" of D2 seems to be of no significance -- every game is different but every game *feels* the same.
--Pete
Adequate balance is only important in DII, because almost all the skill is in choosing skill points, and equipment. If actual user skill was required, then skill and equipment balance becomes less important overall. So a Grandfather in the hands of an incompetent is as worthless as any sword you can buy from Charsi.
That is a major concern. However, when the best item of a type (say swords) is hundreds of times better than the worse, and hundreds of times better than none, then the game *will* devolve into an equipment race. Ideally, again looking at just the one handed sword class of weapons, a character should be able to do about twice as much damage with the worse sword (a plain dagger) as with none. There should be only another factor of two with the best possible sword. All skills and other attributes combined should not increase that more than another factor of two. All that, of course, at a given clvl. The biggest thing that determines the power of a character should be clvl, followed by distribution of skill and attributes, followed by type of equipment. The present situation is just the opposite.
I'm not advocating an interface that requires an ergonomic game controller, just maybe a few things. Say dodge, parry, thrust, aim high, or low, and block with shield.
Sorry, what you are talking about here is mouse skill, not game skill. If you want to play arcade/console fight games, that's fine. Personally, I don't. Keep the flavor of the game as it is, but make the order of taking out the monsters important. Make character position important. Make tactical moves like advancing and retreating to spread the monsters important. Of course, all that would require an interface where what you see is actually what the server thinks. That leaves D2 pretty much out in the cold.
Next, compare apples to apples. Have your play testers measure the time and difficulty it takes to accomplish an Act with a given build. If one seems out of balance, have more people attempt that same assignment to validate it wasn't just one personâs inability to out think the game. Do this from Act 1 normal thru Act 5 Hell difficulty.
Yes! But, before that is done, get someone that actually knows how to use a spreadsheet and analyze a game to look at how various builds will work out. Yeah, that is only a theoretical view and the actual play might be different. However, it at least gives you a reasonable baseline to work from. With as many variables as D2 has, randomly tweaking knobs will never give a balanced game.
Also, any given combination of map layout and monster types might make a given level more difficult for one class (or build) or another. So your advice to play the level multiple times is very important. The balance should be *on average* and not for every individual case. There should always be cases that are easier and ones that are harder for each class and build.
In order for the game to be interesting, there needs to be extremes.
I would say that "extremes" is one of the drawbacks of D2 as it presently is. Specifically the extremes of packs of meaningless monsters interspersed with the occasional near impossible boss. As you say, "I dislike the 1 hit kill monsters as much as I dislike the silver bullet items that kill monsters in 1 blow." What the game should require is a constant flexibility on the part of the player to be able to handle a constantly changing mix of monsters on constantly varying terrain. Somehow, with less numerical variation, D1 seemed to achieve this better than D2 has. The "randomness" of D2 seems to be of no significance -- every game is different but every game *feels* the same.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?