Tips for balancing battles

[Duel]

The current game I'm working on relies on random battles. Pretty much if I can't make these random encounters not frustrating and repetitive, my game will fall apart. So, what are some tips? I am aware of the 30-point rule but what else can I do to improve my battles?

[Wavelength]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

I looked back to the beginning in this forum for any advice that had been given on this before, and (this actually comes as a surprise to me, too) I made a topic covering this very concept two years ago. It has a few good answers, particularly Karr's advice, as well as some good links to other topics still.

Here you go!

I think the single most important thing you can do is playtest thoroughly, and, if possible, get someone else to playtest it as well. If characters' power relies on finding secrets or figuring out what combinations work well, it's a very valuable tool to see whether other players besides you yourself will figure them out or not.

The second most important thing might be to start your characters at a level much higher than 1. The Level 1 start breaks battle balance horribly because most of your stats are increasing by 100% of your base level every time you level up. Start your characters around level 7-10, or higher, and you can create a much gentler progression on the power curve, which should stop battles from swinging radically one way or the other.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Don't throw random battles into a puzzle room.

[Redeye]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Don't throw random battles into a puzzle room.

Unless if your game was meant to troll people.

Or if the puzzle involved battles in the first place.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Well, if you're using battles to solve puzzles, then they couldn't be actual random battles.

[Redeye]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Well, if you're using battles to solve puzzles, then they couldn't be actual random battles.

Actually, you could, with some complicated way of variables and items.

You could make it so you have to find a certain number of key items dropped from random encounters in order to unlock a door or something...

[Wavelength]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Red, this is specifically an RM1 topic, so I don't think you can do that. You certainly can't use variables. (I do love the idea - I have a few puzzles in NiB that involve winning battles, sometimes in specific ways, and they're some of my favorite puzzles - but yeah, not as much an RM1 thing.)

Anyway, hope Duel can get the balance advice he needs.

[TheHonorableRyu]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

I'll try to type out some general suggestions later, but first, how many playable party members is your game going to have? Is there going to be like the same four in the party most of the time, or a bunch more that the player will be swapping around?

[Duel]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

There will only be one party member throughout the entire game.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

i would say that choosing to not use random battles is the best solution of all. using events as monsters lets you control how many battles a party can get into. this helps with balancing and gives the player a breather if they want to explore something thoroughly, but dont want to have to take on the draining battles as well.

remember that randomness doesnt need to be truly random, only to feel random. i had a few puzzles which had about 30 different variations and it felt like every time was completely random.

very critical also is to remember that rpg maker is an old game which uses an old grinding system. i would barely tolerate massive leveling in a professional game, let along a basic one designer game. be generous to your player and give them the experience they want out of the game. i provided my players with the option to use cheater weapons if they wanted to breeze through battles and enjoy the rest of the game.

a game maybe fun to make, but if no one wants to play it because its tedious then you have denied everyone else the fun from enjoying it also.

[TheHonorableRyu]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Here are some suggestions, Duel. Let me know if you can work with some of this.

1. Hierarchy of danger
An amateur mistake is to make all the enemies in an area deal around the same amount of damage and have around the same amount of HP. Thus each encounter ends up feeling the same, and there's no rhyme or reason for which enemy the player should attack first (if there's multiple enemies in the troop) or spend resources to kill quickly (if there's just one enemy in the battle) and hence no satisfying decisions to be made in how to proceed in a battle. So try throwing in, say, an enemy that has an attack that deals very heavy damage or inflicts an undesirable status effect (but is killed easily enough). This way the player has to pay attention, learn what poses the most threat in an area, and can feel satisfied that they're making the right choices; while making the enemy fall easily enough makes it so that the player can do something to prevent cheap, frustrating damage. In a game with ~4 party members, 60-100% of one character's HP would pose a real threat, but since your game is going to have one party member you'll have balance this with the availability of healing items and how likely or common you want game overs to be.

2. Variety of battle lengths
I learned this principle from shmups, and it's exemplified in Mega Man as well. Not every enemy dies in one hit but neither is every enemy a beefy tank that takes 20+ hits to destroy. Rather there's strings of one or two-hit "popcorn" enemies in between and accompanying the beefier enemies, leading up to the mid boss and stage boss. This adds variety, allows the player to feel powerful during the faster-paced "popcorn battles" while still maintaining the challenge in the longer battles.

3. A variety of attack options and elements
Battles are going to get repetitive fast if you're constantly using the same attacks (usually a normal attack that costs nothing and a powerful attack that costs MP or HP) to defeat all the enemies. This is all the more important to consider since you have just one playable character. So you need to make it so that the player often actually has to consider "what attack would be best in this situation?" The Shin Megami Tensei/Persona series usually handles this issue fairly well. In each game, on top of there being an elemental resistance/weakness system there's usually not even just one kind of normal attack, but a melee and a gun normal attack, with enemies regularly being strong to one and/or weak to the other. And if you make a dumb decision you're usually punished for it.

One idea that I found worked really well in my unreleased RPG Maker 1 project is weapon and armor classes. Enemies in each area were assigned heavy, medium, or light armor (defined by their DEF stat), and between your party members you had access to three different kinds of normal attacks that faired differently against the three different armor classes.

1) Basic, standard normal attacks (in form of a normal weapon that hits once) were best against enemies with medium armor. But they dealt little damage against heavy armor and usually not as much damage as multi-hit weapons against light armor.

2) Multi-hit attacks (in the form of multi-hit weapons) were designed to be best against light armor enemies and worst against heavy armor enemies. These attacks would usually have the highest total base damage (because of the multiple hits) but since the enemy target's DEF stat is subtracted with each individual hit I tuned it so that these weapons would the least total damage against heavy armor (it wouldn't pierce their defenses), less damage than standard attacks against medium armor, but the highest damage against light armor.

To illustrate, let's say you had a multi-hit weapon that hits twice at 60 base attack power (120 total base attack power) and a standard weapon that hits once for 100 base attack power. If the enemy target had 40 DEF (heavy armor), the multi-hit weapon would deal less damage [ 2 x (60-40) = 40 ] than the standard weapon [ 100-40 = 60 ]. But the multi-hit weapon would deal more damage against an enemy with 5 DEF (light armor) [ 2 x (60-5) = 110 vs. 100-5 = 95].

3) Piercing attacks (in the form of a skill that does a set amount of damage and doesn't cost HP or MP) have low base damage but ignore defense, and deal the most damage against heavy armor, but the least against light and medium armor.

With a good mix of enemies with different armor types you'll find that the player won't do well just by mashing the X button, that they'll have to slow down a bit and think about what enemy they're targeting with what attack. (Of course for pacing's sake there should purposefully be some "popcorn" battles where the player, upon seeing the enemies he's up against, can rest easy and realize that they can quickly win just by using all standard attacks).

You can expand upon this base system in several ways.

Buffs and debuffs: Skills that buff your ATT or debuff the enemy DEF really benefit multi-hit attacks but disfavor piercing attacks; and skills that debuff your ATT or buff enemy DEF really favor piercing attacks but hamper multi-hitting attacks.

Target scopes: Once you start including standard weapons, multi-hit weapons, and piercing attacks with "Group" or "All" target scopes the player starts having more options to figure out which plan of attack will kill enemies the quickest and prevent the least damage to himself.

And this is just your "normal attack" scheme, without getting into elemental skills and magic yet. Although RPGM1 limits you to three elements there's still a lot you can do with this.

If you used this or a similar mechanics in your game, you should make sure the player is aware them, that it's supposed to be a thing in your game, and clearly presented in form of tutorial or something. Depth that goes unnoticed won't feel like depth and will just feel random.


4. Battle customization
For many RPGs the interest and fun of the battles is intertwined with party customization. In monster collecting games like Pokemon, SMT, or Dragon Quest Monsters the idea is capturing and breeding/fusing new and more powerful monsters. In FFV, FF Tactics, or Bravely Default it's the job system. In character based RPGs like FFVI, FFVII, and Xenoblade Chronicles there's usually character-specific skills plus a customization system that applies to all the characters (Espers in FFVI, Materia in FFVII, Gems in Xenoblade). In SRPGs it's a matter of what buildings and units the player will use in what proportion and in what positions.

Given that your game an RPGM1 game with one playable character I think your best chance at customization would come through a variety of equipment and/or job classes. What you'd want to emphasize is that different equipment and job classes will be better suited for different situations or suit different play styles. Simple examples might be the player finds himself in an area where the enemies specialize in physical attacks, and only certain job classes allow you to equip heavier armor; or the player finds himself in an area where magic casters abound and a certain job class has a silence/mute skill. At the same time, giving the player multiple viable ways to approach a situation is usually a good thing. For example, instead of equipping the heaviest armor to deal with the physically-strong enemies, perhaps the player could use equips/job that has a self- DEF buff, enemy ATT debuff, or a skill that inflicts blind. Instead of using silence skills perhaps the player could decide to use equips/job that emphasize speed and attack power at the cost of defense in the hopes of killing the magic casters before they have the chance to use their strong spells, or resist a certain element, or even have a magic reflect skill.

5. Enemy classes
I worked with this in my RPGM1 project and I liked it so much that I've expanded upon it in my RPG VX Ace project. The basic idea is that every enemy has a class, according to which the player can somewhat predict the enemy's stats, elemental weaknesses/resistances, and behavior.

For example, a "Beast" enemy may specialize in physical attacks, lack magical attacks, and be weak to the Fire element. A "Demon" enemy may specialize in powerful offensive elemental magic, but have low defenses and physical strength overall, like a FF Black Mage. A "Fairy" enemy may be physically frail but resist magic and specialize in healing/restorative skills. "Insect," "Mechanical," or "Material" enemies might have heavy armor, while "Fairy," "Aerial," and "Slime" enemies might have light armor. Etc.

The themes are fun, provide structure your battle system, and give the player a chance to make strategic decisions even if it's their first time seeing the enemy.

6. After-battle rewards
Each random battle should feel like it is moving the player forward goals a goal, usually the goal of becoming more powerful, whether that's in the form of EXP, Job Points, money, items, equipment, or materials for trading/forging new equips. Otherwise random battles can easily feel like they're just getting in the way.

[Duel]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Awesome advice guys, repping you both.

I'm still in the process of experimenting with my game and its mechanics, so I may ditch the single character idea and see if the use of multiple characters works better. Also, Karr's post definitely had me thinking. Bon's Dorito Dash had zero random encounters; instead it had events that triggered battles, which definitely gave me more control when it came to balancing them.

Ryu, those are some awesome suggestions, especially #2 and #3. I think variety and a healthy dose of strategy are great ways to prevent battles from becoming stale and boring. I'll keep your advice in mind, for sure.

[Wavelength]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Booyah, Ryu. That's some really, really good advice that any RPG designer can use.

[TheHonorableRyu]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

I'm currently playing an RPG Maker VX Ace game called Project Oscine where like 90% of the gameplay is random battles and it's pretty good at exemplifying a variety of enemies, job classes, attack options, and equips. There's some broken things about it--like some of the classes and skills are wildly overpowered and some battles are unbalanced and depend upon luck (e.g., I faced an optional boss that seems virtually impossible to beat except by luckily pulling off burn status effects which shaves off 25% HP per round)--but it's worth a play for inspiration.

[Duel]

Re: Tips for balancing battles

Last night I played an RPG Maker 1 game called The Tale of Cloran Hastings for research and inspiration since it was conceptually similar to my current project. It had this lengthy and actually well written introduction; but as soon as I was given control over my character the game completely fell apart thanks to unfair random encounters. Did he even test-play his own game? How can I experience Cloran Hasting's tale when I'm bombarded with enemies that can crush me in the first area. I believe in escalation. Start the battles off easy so I'm not discouraged and then throw the difficult stuff at me later.

I'll have to check that out, Ryu.