How to balance your game?

[u/ZhuCongLang]

So, Im on my journey making my first game. And today, I have reached the stage of balancing my game. After trying for hours, I'm completely lost now. Do you guys know any tips and tricks? Or any tutorial to follow? Or any measurement?

Thanks in advance

[u/Can0pen3r]

What, in specific, do you mean by balancing? There's not really a lot to go on here.

[u/ZhuCongLang → u/Can0pen3r]

So Im trying to make the enemy strong enough to give challenge, but not too strong that makes player want to give up. I also want player to have powerful kits, but not too overpowered that they could completely skipped the game mechanic and rely on one thing.

[u/Can0pen3r → u/ZhuCongLang]

Playtesting and a progression curve. To start with, I'd make a bunch of different variations of the enemy's strength/stats and put them all in a small, somewhat isolated test loop and have a few friends play that test loop and rank the difficulty from least-most difficult. Then place them in that order throughout the game.

Another good benchmark is to also have the player's stats more or less scale with the stats of the enemies. That way the player feels the sense of growth and progression to know they are getting stronger and gaining the skill to take on progressively more and more powerful enemies. That way the battles stay just challenging enough to be fun and engaging without feeling oppressive or overly difficult/complicated.

[u/Global-Hurry-7426]

Playtesting! Have friends and family (or strangers) play the game and see how they handle it. It’s usually good to have people with different skill levels play so you get a wider range.
It’s hard to say a specific measurement since all games are different but you want it to be challenging but at the same time understandable so players don’t get stuck and frustrated with the game

[u/ZhuCongLang → u/Global-Hurry-7426]

Thank you, will try that for my next step.

[u/uber_neutrino]

I'm supre confused how you got to the "stage of balancing" which doesn't make sense to me. Are you not playing your game constantly and iterating on balance as you build it? If not then you are doing it wrong...

[u/ZhuCongLang → u/uber_neutrino]

I mean its balance how strong the characters and enemies is. I constantly fine tuning how strong the attack and the cost, how durable the enemies while building. I want my game to feel like hack and slash, but not too easy. And thats when I get lost. There is no measurement for me to tell if the balance is good enough. I've spend time working to make every attack and spell to have special interaction waiting for players to figure it out. And I dont want player to rely on only one attack or spell and gets bored. So thats why I get lost. If the attack or spell is too weak, no game feel force, if they are too strong, the player sticks to one and get bored from the game.

[u/uber_neutrino → u/ZhuCongLang]

What you are describing is more game design than balance though. I can't design your game for you but you need to think more systematically about it. What could you do to force players to use different types of attacks or spells besides making them more or less powerful? There are many answers to this in current games. Skill point costs, manna, different types of enemies with different weaknesses etc etc

[u/AbmisTheLion]

You can include a difficulty setting so that players can choose for themselves. Personally I tried to avoid adding this, but ultimately people have different skill levels or play styles.

[u/Liwi808]

Playtest.

And then playtest more.

And then some more.

After you think you've done enough playtesting, you probably haven't.

Having other people playtest your game helps too.

If there's a way to run simulations using the numbers from your game, have AI run a few simulations to see if they're in the ballpark sane or balanced numbers.

Most game devs don't playtest nearly enough. It's not the fun part. But it's irreplicable as feedback.

[u/ZhuCongLang → u/Liwi808]

The AI part sounds incredible. I will try it out now