Hello everyone, and welcome to another Progress Report!
OgreWare has been on a mission. …A whole Mission interface, in fact! Yes, they are still working on that Mission system. Fear not, players: it’s coming soon, and when it does, we’ll be able to earn more Materials, unlock further Troops, and generally progress in the game.
There’s more to the Mission system than just designing a few missions and installing functionality for the player to send the Troops out. To explain what I mean, I need to give a little background.
There are a few common terms in gaming, regarding balancing stats for missions, weapons, and characters; specifically referring to stats that are imbalanced. Such items, weapons, and characters are often termed “broken” or “overpowered.” One is reminded of the grenade launcher attachments in Call of Duty, which were so overpowered that they were termed “noob tubes” (due to newbie players taking advantage of the imbalanced stats to balance out their own newbie status).
It might seem fun to play a game with broken, overpowered elements, and maybe it is – for about ten to twenty minutes. Then it’s just frustrating, because either everyone has absurdly high stats and kills are too easy to achieve, or one player has incredible power and everyone else is at their mercy. Either way, it’s actually not that fun.
And while “overpowered” often refers to weapons and items, it’s actually easy to accidentally overpower missions and quests, too. If a quest, for example, is broken in the game’s favor, it may be near-impossible to beat; if it’s broken in the player’s favor, it’s actually just as bad: The characters on the mission team gain too many levels and leave their fellows in the dust, and excessively high rewards can end up more a curse than a boon for players.
So game developers usually try to stay away from overpowering anything in their games. One of the things OgreWare has been doing this week is balancing the Missions so that they pop up at the right time and the right level, give out the right amount of XP and resources, and aren’t overpowered.
Building a game is hard. Building a well-balanced game is harder. I truly respect game developers who are able to balance a game and have it be playable, challenging, and fun. The number-balancing side of things might sound dull, but, in my humble opinion, it is that very balancing act that makes a good game good.
As always, I’d like to thank you for your support. Go like the Facebook page and follow the blog for updates, and we’ll see you next time!
~Julian