1) Any game with variable stats + Multiplayer is inherently difficult to balance.
LoL, HoN and DotA all have "Tier 1", "Tier 2" and "Junk Tier" heroes. If the game was balanced in the first place, all heroes should be in "Tier 1" and the "junk" tier shouldn't exist.
2) You are looking at this from the wrong perspective. If you simplify the whole game to "Damage" and "HP", you are going to always end up with "Damage" beating "HP" because HP doesn't do anything on its own. Its like you are playing Rock-Paper-Scissors without the Scissors. If "HP" = rock and "Damage" = paper, of course paper beats rock every single time. You need to find a scissors to beat paper. This is where skills and equipment comes in. The "scissors" can be anything from Healing skills, to Disable skills, to Magic-Immunity skils, Evasion, Illusions, etc. Anything that stops or reduce the damage is a counter to it.
3) There are other variables and stats you should consider. Also, you can change the function of each stat to balance the game. In your example of [500 STA/500 STR] vs [700 STA/300 STR], if I were to remove the HP gain from Stamina (changing it into "STA x 10 = Max HP") and introduce a new stat called "Regen", and 1 "Regen" = +1 HP per second, I could nullify the glasscannon's damage per second if I change the tank's layout to [200 STA/300 STR/500 Regen]. You then have 2 choices: reduce your glasscannon's STA and add it into STR to overcome Tank's Regen, or pump some stats into Regen. The latter choice would more or less result in a draw, so I assume the glasscannon would opt for more damage instead. If you opt to increase damage, the Tank can choose to sacrifice STR and even more STA to counter the glasscannon's damage.
For Example:
[400 STA/600 STR] vs [200 STA/200 STR/600 Regen] = Tank wins because all the glasscannon's damage is nullified.
[300 STA/700 STR] vs [200 STA/100 STR/700 Regen] = Same as above
[200 STA/800 STR] vs [100 STA/100 STR/800 Regen] = Same as above
[100 STA/900 STR] vs [200 STA/400 STR/400 Regen] = Glasscannon need 4 hits to kill Tank, Tank kills Glasscannon in 3 hits.
[50 STA/950 STR] vs [200 STA/400 STR/400 Regen] = Same as above, but Glasscannon dies in 2 hits instead of 3.
In response to the introduction of new stats, you can introduce some other stats to counter Regen (such as Critical, which determines chance of character to deal X times base damage). Ideally, all the Stats should balance against each other like Rock-Paper-Scissors in terms of their natural mechanic. Then you can use skills and equipment to swing the favour one way or another.
Hp is useless in rpgs. Damage is all that matters.
It feels that this is a rank about DoTa games, rather then all RPGs in general. I would suggest looking into how such games as WAR or WoW balance their tanks vs ranged. I am unsure what is the current situation now in WoW, but in WotLK tanks were pretty viable in PvP due to stuns and insane HP. As for WAR; they went with your idea of bit lower damage but high surviveability, also tanks there have high magic resistence on their armor which helps a lot vs casters, not to mention all their crowd control.
Warning: incoming essay!
You could always ditch the whole Tank, DPS and Healer archetypes. To see a game where that's devolved into hilarity, check out Everquest. To keep the game challenging, they made it so that the NPCs have 10x as much HP as any player has, and deal about 5x as much damage. To solve that issue, healers can take any player from 0 to 100% HP in one or two casts. It's like rock paper scissors. The tank can either tank an NPC or he can't, there's very little in between with players trying harder. You either get smashed in the first melee round, or the healer can keep you alive no matter how much your HP bar ping pongs.
Glass cannons alone don't work in EQ. They'll get creamed by a snake that bites for 5x the damage their greatsword is doing. You absolutely have to have either have someone with a ton of HP and AC (to reduce incoming damage) and a healer, or you have to abuse the game by chain stunning or rooting the NPC so you can whack away with impunity. Then it gets interesting again when the root breaks and you're dead before you can get another cast off, and the NPC still has 50% of its original HP after 3 minutes of continuous whacking on it.
PvP is completely broken in EQ, this is in reference to PvE.
I'm a bit tired of that formula really, but it's hard to come up with anything else I suppose. I'd like something more realistic myself, but finding a way to make that fun is tough. In real life you didn't exactly have 5 or 6 man bands digging through lost dungeons with one of them volunteering to get hit all the time and another healing him. Mostly because the last part is not terribly applicable to real life, but I hope the point was clear.
In real life, in armies and battles at least, soldiers were more or less uniform. They wore the best armor they could get away with (expense and comfort) and used the best weapons for their position (pike formations, bows, spears, whatever), and each formation generally used the same gear. It made sense in context, but this isn't terribly fun for players who want to be heroes.
I guess the question then becomes what sort of game are you trying to make? If it's a massive battlefield simulator like many modern FPS games are, then it might make sense for players to have little variability in their gear, at least between group mates. Their entire group has a purpose, not individuals. That might make sense.
For heroic individuals like in WoW, Rift, or whatever, you could always reduce the incentive to be a glass cannon. People didn't do this in real life because people didn't want to die. Charging into combat with a greataxe without armor is a great way to kill people, and a great way to lose your only life. Using a pike and some armor would keep you a lot safer, which is what most people cared about. To simulate this, you could possibly ramp up the death penalty. Care has to be taken here though, as games like EQ can cause me to throw tantrums when I die, because in EQ you lose experience when you die, and it takes ridiculous amounts to level up. You could potentially lose hours of time if you were very careless. Remember how unbalanced those NPCs are?
You could also make it impractical to be a glass cannon, and all but require players to take some sort of defensive abilities. If players want to take all offensive abilities and have very low HP and armor, then place groups of NPCs in some areas that are very hard to separate. The player might get the first one, but he'll get killed by the other two. Players won't like things that feel artificially put there to thwart them though...
In the end though, is it necessarily a bad thing that players will find ways to optimize gameplay? If they're dedicated enough to figure it out, don't they deserve some benefit? The trick here is to give players more than one obvious choice (i.e. in WoW, there were only a handful of good talent builds, you were stupid and a n00b if you didn't follow them). This is going to depend heavily on game design though, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
You could always ditch the whole Tank, DPS and Healer archetypes. To see a game where that's devolved into hilarity, check out Everquest. To keep the game challenging, they made it so that the NPCs have 10x as much HP as any player has, and deal about 5x as much damage. To solve that issue, healers can take any player from 0 to 100% HP in one or two casts. It's like rock paper scissors. The tank can either tank an NPC or he can't, there's very little in between with players trying harder. You either get smashed in the first melee round, or the healer can keep you alive no matter how much your HP bar ping pongs.
Glass cannons alone don't work in EQ. They'll get creamed by a snake that bites for 5x the damage their greatsword is doing. You absolutely have to have either have someone with a ton of HP and AC (to reduce incoming damage) and a healer, or you have to abuse the game by chain stunning or rooting the NPC so you can whack away with impunity. Then it gets interesting again when the root breaks and you're dead before you can get another cast off, and the NPC still has 50% of its original HP after 3 minutes of continuous whacking on it.
PvP is completely broken in EQ, this is in reference to PvE.
I'm a bit tired of that formula really, but it's hard to come up with anything else I suppose. I'd like something more realistic myself, but finding a way to make that fun is tough. In real life you didn't exactly have 5 or 6 man bands digging through lost dungeons with one of them volunteering to get hit all the time and another healing him. Mostly because the last part is not terribly applicable to real life, but I hope the point was clear.
In real life, in armies and battles at least, soldiers were more or less uniform. They wore the best armor they could get away with (expense and comfort) and used the best weapons for their position (pike formations, bows, spears, whatever), and each formation generally used the same gear. It made sense in context, but this isn't terribly fun for players who want to be heroes.
I guess the question then becomes what sort of game are you trying to make? If it's a massive battlefield simulator like many modern FPS games are, then it might make sense for players to have little variability in their gear, at least between group mates. Their entire group has a purpose, not individuals. That might make sense.
For heroic individuals like in WoW, Rift, or whatever, you could always reduce the incentive to be a glass cannon. People didn't do this in real life because people didn't want to die. Charging into combat with a greataxe without armor is a great way to kill people, and a great way to lose your only life. Using a pike and some armor would keep you a lot safer, which is what most people cared about. To simulate this, you could possibly ramp up the death penalty. Care has to be taken here though, as games like EQ can cause me to throw tantrums when I die, because in EQ you lose experience when you die, and it takes ridiculous amounts to level up. You could potentially lose hours of time if you were very careless. Remember how unbalanced those NPCs are?
You could also make it impractical to be a glass cannon, and all but require players to take some sort of defensive abilities. If players want to take all offensive abilities and have very low HP and armor, then place groups of NPCs in some areas that are very hard to separate. The player might get the first one, but he'll get killed by the other two. Players won't like things that feel artificially put there to thwart them though...
In the end though, is it necessarily a bad thing that players will find ways to optimize gameplay? If they're dedicated enough to figure it out, don't they deserve some benefit? The trick here is to give players more than one obvious choice (i.e. in WoW, there were only a handful of good talent builds, you were stupid and a n00b if you didn't follow them). This is going to depend heavily on game design though, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
This happened in a game I used to play called Dragonica Online... They had the 4 major classes (warrior, archer, mage, thief) and I chose a warrior because they looked like they could deal some good damage. Turns out that everyone played archers because you could just stand back 20 feet from the enemy and spam arrow attacks at it... The game was entirely DPS to the point where tanking wasn't even needed, because raw DPS was far more coveted than standing there taking damage but being weak. Monsters went down so fast that they couldn't reach the glasscannon characters to damage them.
Also because tanking had no place in the game (even though they obviously set up warrior class to be tankers) anyone who played as a warrior was shunned from groups, because they slowed down all the crazy dpsers and couldn't pull their weight as an attacker.
I would say that one way to prevent glasscannons from being the favored type is to make sure you get plenty of enemies who go after the characters with the lowest HP, and make sure the enemies are fast enough to reach them and become a threat. A warrior with high HP isn't bothered by fast enemies, because they are going to end up getting close to them anyway... it helps out if the enemy runs right at them. But a ranged character is going to be wetting their pants if the enemies charge at them faster than they can kill. Then they will need some help to take down the enemies instead of just standing off to the side and soloing groups of monsters all day.
Also because tanking had no place in the game (even though they obviously set up warrior class to be tankers) anyone who played as a warrior was shunned from groups, because they slowed down all the crazy dpsers and couldn't pull their weight as an attacker.
I would say that one way to prevent glasscannons from being the favored type is to make sure you get plenty of enemies who go after the characters with the lowest HP, and make sure the enemies are fast enough to reach them and become a threat. A warrior with high HP isn't bothered by fast enemies, because they are going to end up getting close to them anyway... it helps out if the enemy runs right at them. But a ranged character is going to be wetting their pants if the enemies charge at them faster than they can kill. Then they will need some help to take down the enemies instead of just standing off to the side and soloing groups of monsters all day.
I got two answers for you.
Make HP be able to regain a % back every tick, so that the more HP a character has, the more HP they gain back. Thus, those with high HP will be able to tank even longer while those with low hp with gain back negligible amounts. Of course, this would work if things like potions didn't exist{or if potions exist, then make it so that potions get a bonus % based on the characters HP, so that those with high HP will benefit more from a single potion than somebody with low hp.
The other answer is, make a move/technique learnable by anybody that is extremely fast, highly accurate, but low in damage and is ranged. This technique would seem almost fairly useless against a character with average stats as the damage dealt would be low. HOWEVER, against a glass cannon with 1/1, it will be a near unavoidable OHKO, and thus, you will be able to stop a glass cannon before they are able to deal a significant amount of damage. Even if they have maxed out attack, if both have an attack exchange, the glass cannon will be KO'ed while the high HP character will be left with 20-50% of their health left.
For me, I have always considered HP as "the amount of time your character gets to unleash their attacks/do stuff before being put out of the game." Of course, that would be in a game where dodging/defending of any kind didn't exist. That's what I always thought of my Zergs back when I played starcraft "You only got 35 HP to do stuff, so you better hit the vital targets!"
This is unrelated, but its a good idea that attack and dodge have limits of their own too. They can't be infinite! Some guys have damage capacity and damage per second to give limits to their attacks. Dodging should eventually run out, thus allowing even a slow character to get a hit in on something thats preventing damage through "dodging". "HOW" is up to the game designer, I have my own ideas regarding each of those attributes.
EDIT: The point is, the problem is that their needs to be "techniques/moves" that attack the weakness of the glass cannoners perfectly. Just like high DPS is the weakness of tanks. An attack that is all range, highly accurate, very quick, and low in damage would feel like an overpowering, 1 hit KO attack to a glass cannon type while all others will be hardly affected by it due to its low DPS. So that's just it, make a different attack/technique that strikes the weakness of every character build in game{an attack for each build that hits its weakness hard.}, give it to the in-game enemies, and people will be forced to mix their groups and work as a team with varied tactics in order to overcome their adversaries. So no longer will everybody use glass cannons, they'll want tanks to be in their groups, and healers to cover the tanks, and any other class to cover the weakness of the others.
Make HP be able to regain a % back every tick, so that the more HP a character has, the more HP they gain back. Thus, those with high HP will be able to tank even longer while those with low hp with gain back negligible amounts. Of course, this would work if things like potions didn't exist{or if potions exist, then make it so that potions get a bonus % based on the characters HP, so that those with high HP will benefit more from a single potion than somebody with low hp.
The other answer is, make a move/technique learnable by anybody that is extremely fast, highly accurate, but low in damage and is ranged. This technique would seem almost fairly useless against a character with average stats as the damage dealt would be low. HOWEVER, against a glass cannon with 1/1, it will be a near unavoidable OHKO, and thus, you will be able to stop a glass cannon before they are able to deal a significant amount of damage. Even if they have maxed out attack, if both have an attack exchange, the glass cannon will be KO'ed while the high HP character will be left with 20-50% of their health left.
For me, I have always considered HP as "the amount of time your character gets to unleash their attacks/do stuff before being put out of the game." Of course, that would be in a game where dodging/defending of any kind didn't exist. That's what I always thought of my Zergs back when I played starcraft "You only got 35 HP to do stuff, so you better hit the vital targets!"
This is unrelated, but its a good idea that attack and dodge have limits of their own too. They can't be infinite! Some guys have damage capacity and damage per second to give limits to their attacks. Dodging should eventually run out, thus allowing even a slow character to get a hit in on something thats preventing damage through "dodging". "HOW" is up to the game designer, I have my own ideas regarding each of those attributes.
EDIT: The point is, the problem is that their needs to be "techniques/moves" that attack the weakness of the glass cannoners perfectly. Just like high DPS is the weakness of tanks. An attack that is all range, highly accurate, very quick, and low in damage would feel like an overpowering, 1 hit KO attack to a glass cannon type while all others will be hardly affected by it due to its low DPS. So that's just it, make a different attack/technique that strikes the weakness of every character build in game{an attack for each build that hits its weakness hard.}, give it to the in-game enemies, and people will be forced to mix their groups and work as a team with varied tactics in order to overcome their adversaries. So no longer will everybody use glass cannons, they'll want tanks to be in their groups, and healers to cover the tanks, and any other class to cover the weakness of the others.
Shift crowd control effects away from automatic ability effects, and something that happens based on level of health.
Shift healing so that it is much more powerful, but does not "fix" the level of CC you are at.
Shift damage so that there are diminishing returns(Log scale damage with the multiplier of the reduction based on raw health taken in 1 second).
____________
end effects you discourage "maxing" damage while "mining" everything else.
health becomes a lot more powerful. since it's defense against Crowd Control, and damage reduction if spiked.
Healing becomes a little more powerful, but has a "hidden" diminishing return.
Shift healing so that it is much more powerful, but does not "fix" the level of CC you are at.
Shift damage so that there are diminishing returns(Log scale damage with the multiplier of the reduction based on raw health taken in 1 second).
____________
end effects you discourage "maxing" damage while "mining" everything else.
health becomes a lot more powerful. since it's defense against Crowd Control, and damage reduction if spiked.
Healing becomes a little more powerful, but has a "hidden" diminishing return.
Alternatively, you can always play rock paper scissors. Consider the old school "party" of warrior, thief and wizard. The wizard and thief have low hitpoints, the warrior has high hitpoints. The wizard demolishes the warrior with magical DPS before the warrior could possibly do enough DPS to slay him. The warrior demolishes the thief because the thief deals plenty of physical damage, which is reduced to nothing by the warrior's mighty breast plate. The thief demolishes the wizard because he can sneak up on said wizard, interrupt the caster's spell (say, the warrior attacks too slow to consistently interrupt) and deal high damage because the wizard has no breast plate.
That's rather simplistic, but it makes each role have a function and does NOT make wizards the best class. You can then add in all sorts of variables to make it more skill oriented. Perhaps the thief must time each of his attacks to interrupt the wizard. A good wizard might be able to outmanuever the thief and squeeze a spell off, or bait him into wasting an attack, giving him the chance to cast a spell. And so on with the warrior. Now you have a game where DPS isn't everything, nor is it a simple function of rock, paper, scissors.
And btw, League does exactly this. Akali eats leblanc, Trynd can eat akali, and leblanc can eat trynd. But, that depends on the player's timings, reactions to circumstances, and everything else. Further, I feel compelled to point out that any decently kitted tank can shrug off leb's burst, stun/CC her and then /l as the carry proceeds to eat the noob who's trying to burst a tank for no apparent reason. There's a reason people continuously tell n00bs "NEVER FOCUS THE TANK"
That's rather simplistic, but it makes each role have a function and does NOT make wizards the best class. You can then add in all sorts of variables to make it more skill oriented. Perhaps the thief must time each of his attacks to interrupt the wizard. A good wizard might be able to outmanuever the thief and squeeze a spell off, or bait him into wasting an attack, giving him the chance to cast a spell. And so on with the warrior. Now you have a game where DPS isn't everything, nor is it a simple function of rock, paper, scissors.
And btw, League does exactly this. Akali eats leblanc, Trynd can eat akali, and leblanc can eat trynd. But, that depends on the player's timings, reactions to circumstances, and everything else. Further, I feel compelled to point out that any decently kitted tank can shrug off leb's burst, stun/CC her and then /l as the carry proceeds to eat the noob who's trying to burst a tank for no apparent reason. There's a reason people continuously tell n00bs "NEVER FOCUS THE TANK"
Change the Life points system.
The Magic Points System is as different from the rest of the stats as Life Points as well.
People find ways around that.
The KEY would be to make a # of hits system or a bar system.
The Magic Points System is as different from the rest of the stats as Life Points as well.
People find ways around that.
The KEY would be to make a # of hits system or a bar system.
Author
Just played another dps is the kingz game, dungeon siedge 3.
1) My full stamina, armor tank warrior died in exactly 1 hit. Developers: "Sorry, we dont support melee classes in this game, too bad you chose a warrior, please just evade all attacks because you have 1/1 hp." You die because ranged chars get hit only once for 50-100 dmg, but melee character gets hit for 2000-3500 damage because enemy spells do more damage the closer you are too them "nice idea to remove melee from the game".
2) My glasscannon arcon, every boss / enemy died in 1 hit. Last boss died in 1 hit with my 4000 crit (he had 3000 hp). I had 0 stamina / 0 armor on purpose to show that glasscannons have unlimited hp. Only used will stat because it deals 300% more damage than attack damage (hi guyz, we hate melee again).
[font="Arial"]@Zouflain :
1) it works on 1vs1 pvp, but it doesnt work on group pvp.
A rogue shows up, gets focused and dies because he is the closest enemy. A rogue is a 1/1 hp glasscannon thus dies in 1 sec.
[/font]
1) My full stamina, armor tank warrior died in exactly 1 hit. Developers: "Sorry, we dont support melee classes in this game, too bad you chose a warrior, please just evade all attacks because you have 1/1 hp." You die because ranged chars get hit only once for 50-100 dmg, but melee character gets hit for 2000-3500 damage because enemy spells do more damage the closer you are too them "nice idea to remove melee from the game".
2) My glasscannon arcon, every boss / enemy died in 1 hit. Last boss died in 1 hit with my 4000 crit (he had 3000 hp). I had 0 stamina / 0 armor on purpose to show that glasscannons have unlimited hp. Only used will stat because it deals 300% more damage than attack damage (hi guyz, we hate melee again).
[font="Arial"]@Zouflain :
1) it works on 1vs1 pvp, but it doesnt work on group pvp.
A rogue shows up, gets focused and dies because he is the closest enemy. A rogue is a 1/1 hp glasscannon thus dies in 1 sec.
[/font]
a thief must time each of his attacks to interrupt the wizard[/quote]
i stopped reading right there, your thief can cc, but my mage just 1shots.
2)And btw, League does exactly this. Akali eats leblanc, Trynd can eat akali, and leblanc can eat trynd.[/quote]
Nope leblanc kills anything because she is ranged, she kills her in 0.1secs with her 1shot macro (i use autohotkey).
3)any decently kitted tank can shrug off leb's burst, stun/CC her and then /l as the carry proceeds to eat the noob who's trying to burst a tank for no apparent reason[/quote]
Not happening in a real case scenario :
1vs1 battle: battle starts leblanc deals 1200 dmg out of your 1500 hp pool. You have 300/1500 hp, you run away or fight her ?
Fight her: you cant 1shot her, cooldowns recharged, you die.
Run: gratz, you escaped ? you recall, blink - teleport out of nowhere, boom boom macro - you die.
5vs5 battle: mages focus you and you die in 1sec. Sure they waste their ults to kill the tank, but your team (4vs5) escapes, instead of fighting, saying "nab tank going alone". This always happens when you have 5 ranged glasscannon team, its instant win, so why take another champion. These strategy works if you are all a premade team using auto-hotkey macros and synchronize your actions.
Other things in games :
@Hp regen, +heal, +lifesteal : wont increase your survivability in a 1/1 hp game.
Well, this is more of a LoL related rant than a discussion about game design. I would gladly engage you on the LoL forums (and troll you, since you're raging based on clear misconceptions), but this is not the place for that. "I stopped listening" tells me you're looking to have people nod and say you lost to that leblanc because of bad design, not poor performance... none of which is particularly relevant outside of LoL's context.
I would suggest moving away from LoL altogether if you want this to be an actual discussion. And try to see the merits of the arguments leveled against your initial assertion. You've been completely dismissive, which ultimately leaves no room for a conversation.
I would suggest moving away from LoL altogether if you want this to be an actual discussion. And try to see the merits of the arguments leveled against your initial assertion. You've been completely dismissive, which ultimately leaves no room for a conversation.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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