Tactics Game Online

Lets say for a moment that we are on the right track with our characters, battle system, and battle field approaches.  At this point, we can put some of our decisions to the test by seeing how they interweave with each other through the creation of some of the characters, on a conceptual level of course.  Well, lets cement down some basic building blocks of that they all have in common.  As proposed previously, their essential traits are: health points, strength, speed, range, and splash.  After some deliberation, two additional traits that will create a paper, rock, scissors strategy are defense and resistance, which allow characters to absorb damage from physical and magical sources.

Since we are planning on adopting a point-based approach to army creation, it is important to begin thinking about whether we want every character in the game to have the same point allocation needed for all traits, or if there should exist different character types that have varying levels of point cost for their traits.  If you think about some of the different character types, like melee, ranged, and magic, then it leads to a quick conclusion that each type should have different point allocation.

Now is a good time to discuss game balance.  Game balance is essential in the creation of a good game, but how do you develop characters that are different, yet balanced with each other equally?  Ultimately, we want to give players a fair chance at winning against other players no matter what strategy they incorporate in the building of their armies.  Establishing a perfectly balanced game when you are dealing with different characters with different strengths and weaknesses is impossible to do, but if we consider the elements we need to analyze success of players utilizing different characters, we can adjust and balance the game over time relatively efficiently.  I met another game developer who was preparing to release a game with huge off balance characters and abilities.  When I asked him why he wasn’t spending more time on the game balancing, he stated proudly that he was so confident in his game balancing formulas based on data collected over time, that he had no worries about releasing an unbalanced game at launch.  I was amazed, and am now a high believer in incorporating the right data collection formulas to ensure effective balancing over time.   This is especially helpful if you plan on releasing new content for a game, after its launch.

Getting back on track, lets take a look at what the trait point costs would be for some of the character types we mentioned above: melee, ranged, and magic.  Before we can do this, however, the trait ranges should be decided on:

Now that we have some concrete numbers to use, we can decide how each character type will prioritize these traits.

Melee

Ranged

Magic

Character Costs

Army Points

Based on the above data, we can start with a total army point value of 1,000 points.