As the title suggests, I am having some difficulty in balancing a spell system I'm working on. (I'm still quite new to game design.) Forgive me from a little vague as I am not ready to reveal detailed information about my work.
Here are the key points:
The maximum energy pool for any given hero is to be fixed at 100
Energy will recover at a rate determined by 'Stat X' when not in battle
Attacks will cost energy as well, but this may be is reduced by another undisclosed Stat.
Energy will affect the sequence at which battle participants perform their actions during battle. More energy means higher priority.
I am aiming for a system that encourages party shuffling with this energy mechanic;
That is, if a party member is 'exhausted' (has low energy levels) a party swap is performed to allow the exhausted member time to recover. You can recover while on the field, but at a slower rate than benched.
Spells are invoked from a combination of 2 reagents
Spell energy cost is based on the grade of the reagents
Spell damage is based on 'Stat X' and the grade of the reagents
It is planned that Every Y of 'Stat X' will reduce the Spells energy cost by 1
(Let Y = 20)
Equipment's that amplify 'Stat X' are planned, with allowance of up to 300% amplification.
For example:
Reagent A (Grade 3) + Reagent B (Grade 2)
would yield a spell with a cost of 3+2 = 5.
The theoretical maximum energy cost for a spell is 20 (2 Grade 10 reagents). With a maximum pool of
100 energy, this would allow 5 spells to be cast before 'Exhaustion'
The problem I'm facing is as follows:
If a hero has very high values of 'Stat X', the spell cost would be reduced to 0,
This completely breaks the need for party swapping.
If I increase Y, it might also break the system because spell costs would be
too 'Exhausting' to use as the player begins to upgrade their reagents
What I've considered:
Clamping the minimum spell value to 1 or 2. This still allows about 50 casts, which is quite a lot?
With such a low mana cost, energy recover rate could still be fast enough to never have to party swap.
My question is, Is this balanced? If not, how can I balance/improve this system? It feels rather rigged at the moment...
Are there any other flaws of this system that I not yet noticed? Feel free to critique.
If anymore information is needed to make judgement, feel free to ask, I'll consider posting it.
Extra info:
Current endgame 'Stat X' for all planned heroes
189, 42, 350, 182, 80, 63.
I am aware these numbers are not balanced, but the reason being is that certain heroes have other stats that offset their lack of 'Stat X'
In my opinion, any linear reduction of something, which can be stacked quite high causes issues. Either you cap it early, limiting its usefulness and confusing the player, if the theoretically possible stack would be way higher, or you cap it late, which has partly the same problem and additionaly creates a strange balance progression with the first stacks hardly making any difference while later stacks become more and more effective until reaching the hard cap, where every additional stack loses its entire effectiveness. Or, the third option, you don't cap at all, which is a no-go in most cases, because abusing it usually causes massive imbalances.
Take your example: Lets say, you have a spell with 100 mana costs. Now, you put 10 in your Stat X, cost is reduced by 10, it is 90 now. So 10 stacks reduced the cost by 10 percent.
Now lets say we already have 80 Stat X, so the spell costs 20 mana. We add another 10 stacks, the spell costs 10 mana now. Still only an increase of 10 points, but 50% mana cost decrease. This gets more extreme, the closer we get to 100.
As a result, I would probably use a dimishing progression for your 'Stat X', so the more of the stat you get, the smaller the reduction for spell costs becomes.
For example, make each point reduce the casting cost by 0.69%, stacking multiplicatively. This would result in the first 100 points decreasing mana costs to roughly 50% (99.31%^100~=50%), but the next 100 points don't bring them down to 0%, but 25% (99.31%^200~=25%) instead. You would have to find a balanced progression yourself, but you get the idea.
Other than that, it is obviously a quite complex system. Will need some playtests to find system flaws, I think, and I am not talking about implementation errors. At first glance, Stat X sounds a little strong, decreasing mana costs when mana seems to be quite a huge limiting factor and increasing spell damage, and it can even be amplified heavily. I woud recommend keeping a close eye on that.
Now that's a brilliant idea I never would have thought of. I think it would work very nicely, not just for 'Stat X' but many of the others. Probably rest my brain for a bit and when I'm up for it its time for mathcraft @_@. Will search for a balanced progression from there.
Thanks for reading through my almost illegible wall of text and sharing your opinion :)
At first glance, Stat X sounds a little strong, decreasing mana costs when mana seems to be quite a huge limiting factor and increasing spell damage, and it can even be amplified heavily. I woud recommend keeping a close eye on that.
With regards to this, I'll share more of the details with you over PM when I'm not feeling tired (Little burned out atm, so don't feel like doing anything or thinking too much lol). I'd like to hear your opinion on the full picture rather than just a single stat. But yes, I do agree with you, at a glance it does seem like an OP stat. Having some difficulty balancing the rest as well. And in total its just 4 stats, originally I had 6 planned but my friend warned me its not advisable because it'll be very hard to balance, so I hacked off two.
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As the title suggests, I am having some difficulty in balancing a spell system I'm working on. (I'm still quite new to game design.) Forgive me from a little vague as I am not ready to reveal detailed information about my work. Here are the key points:
That is, if a party member is 'exhausted' (has low energy levels) a party swap is performed to allow the exhausted member time to recover. You can recover while on the field, but at a slower rate than benched.
(Let Y = 20)
For example:
Reagent A (Grade 3) + Reagent B (Grade 2)
would yield a spell with a cost of 3+2 = 5.
The theoretical maximum energy cost for a spell is 20 (2 Grade 10 reagents). With a maximum pool of
100 energy, this would allow 5 spells to be cast before 'Exhaustion'
The problem I'm facing is as follows:
This completely breaks the need for party swapping.
What I've considered:
With such a low mana cost, energy recover rate could still be fast enough to never have to party swap.
My question is, Is this balanced? If not, how can I balance/improve this system? It feels rather rigged at the moment...
Are there any other flaws of this system that I not yet noticed? Feel free to critique.
If anymore information is needed to make judgement, feel free to ask, I'll consider posting it.
Extra info:
189, 42, 350, 182, 80, 63.
I am aware these numbers are not balanced, but the reason being is that certain heroes have other stats that offset their lack of 'Stat X'
In my opinion, any linear reduction of something, which can be stacked quite high causes issues. Either you cap it early, limiting its usefulness and confusing the player, if the theoretically possible stack would be way higher, or you cap it late, which has partly the same problem and additionaly creates a strange balance progression with the first stacks hardly making any difference while later stacks become more and more effective until reaching the hard cap, where every additional stack loses its entire effectiveness. Or, the third option, you don't cap at all, which is a no-go in most cases, because abusing it usually causes massive imbalances.
Take your example: Lets say, you have a spell with 100 mana costs. Now, you put 10 in your Stat X, cost is reduced by 10, it is 90 now. So 10 stacks reduced the cost by 10 percent.
Now lets say we already have 80 Stat X, so the spell costs 20 mana. We add another 10 stacks, the spell costs 10 mana now. Still only an increase of 10 points, but 50% mana cost decrease. This gets more extreme, the closer we get to 100.
As a result, I would probably use a dimishing progression for your 'Stat X', so the more of the stat you get, the smaller the reduction for spell costs becomes.
For example, make each point reduce the casting cost by 0.69%, stacking multiplicatively. This would result in the first 100 points decreasing mana costs to roughly 50% (99.31%^100
~=50%), but the next 100 points don't bring them down to 0%, but 25% (99.31%^200~=25%) instead. You would have to find a balanced progression yourself, but you get the idea.Other than that, it is obviously a quite complex system. Will need some playtests to find system flaws, I think, and I am not talking about implementation errors. At first glance, Stat X sounds a little strong, decreasing mana costs when mana seems to be quite a huge limiting factor and increasing spell damage, and it can even be amplified heavily. I woud recommend keeping a close eye on that.
@Kueken531: Go
Now that's a brilliant idea I never would have thought of. I think it would work very nicely, not just for 'Stat X' but many of the others. Probably rest my brain for a bit and when I'm up for it its time for mathcraft @_@. Will search for a balanced progression from there.
Thanks for reading through my almost illegible wall of text and sharing your opinion :)
No problem, I edited my post to quite a wall myself, just to make a point xD
@Kueken531: Go
At first glance, Stat X sounds a little strong, decreasing mana costs when mana seems to be quite a huge limiting factor and increasing spell damage, and it can even be amplified heavily. I woud recommend keeping a close eye on that.
With regards to this, I'll share more of the details with you over PM when I'm not feeling tired (Little burned out atm, so don't feel like doing anything or thinking too much lol). I'd like to hear your opinion on the full picture rather than just a single stat. But yes, I do agree with you, at a glance it does seem like an OP stat. Having some difficulty balancing the rest as well. And in total its just 4 stats, originally I had 6 planned but my friend warned me its not advisable because it'll be very hard to balance, so I hacked off two.