How to build a Balancing System?

[LostInWeb]

I tried to work and play around with my Batman Database and realized, that the balancing between Heroes and Villains is complete crap. The heroes mostly have just some attacks and nothing else, while the villains have powers and attributes, that are way to strong. In part, the problem ist, that the Batman Family has no real superpowers and use their fighting skills and gadgets instead. The Villains have some superpowers and are much more diverse in their skills.

So, I'm thinking about developing a Balance System for the Powers, Attributes etc.

For now, my idea is, to set up a fixed amount of Points that can be used per character. Like, an Attack, that can deal up to 5 damage would take 5 points, a Healing power, that heals up to 3 HP takes 3 points and so on.

The amount of points would be tied to the Star Rating. More stars equals more points. (I'm thinking about ignoring the Star Rating completely and give everyone the same amount of stars and points, but don't know, if that would break the matchmaking in the game).

Where I'm not sure yet, ist how to handle Powers, that don't have a direct effect on enemies and friends, like Positioning Powers.

It is a work in progress.

 

How do you handle the balancing in your mods? Any tipps, what could work and what would not?

[Cold Cobra]

In my mod (which I do hope to release a first version of eventually...) I ended up settling on a fighting game-like system, where nearly everyone has the same health split across three levels (apart from canon fodder having less and a couple of super powerful boss-like characters having a bit more) and everyone has at least one offensive move that deals 1 damage guaranteed to activate, 2 damage that will hit if you roll a 2-6, and 3 damage with a 3-6 roll, with mid-range characters having a "super move" that deals 4 unlocked at health level 2 that can only be used 6 times at a 4-6 roll and again the few really powerful have a 5 damage move that unlocks at level three that can only be attempted 4 times at 5-6 chance.

The same goes with moves that allow people to dodge, they nearly all have a 5-6 chance of activating and I've tried to avoid as many stun effect moves as I can all in favour of speeding the battles along a bit. This way the fights are down mostly to who has higher stats allowing them to stop attacks or not, unless they get lucky on the dice roll. It's not a system that would really work for a 1-on-1 game but given all the fights are made up of teams it's actually working really well, it's just a shame it took this long for me to figure it out as its involved going back over old characters I'd already "finished" and updating them a few times now...

[LostInWeb]

3 hours ago, Cold Cobra said:

In my mod (which I do hope to release a first version of eventually...) I ended up settling on a fighting game-like system, where nearly everyone has the same health split across three levels (apart from canon fodder having less and a couple of super powerful boss-like characters having a bit more) and everyone has at least one offensive move that deals 1 damage guaranteed to activate, 2 damage that will hit if you roll a 2-6, and 3 damage with a 3-6 roll, with mid-range characters having a "super move" that deals 4 unlocked at health level 2 that can only be used 6 times at a 4-6 roll and again the few really powerful have a 5 damage move that unlocks at level three that can only be attempted 4 times at 5-6 chance.

The same goes with moves that allow people to dodge, they nearly all have a 5-6 chance of activating and I've tried to avoid as many stun effect moves as I can all in favour of speeding the battles along a bit. This way the fights are down mostly to who has higher stats allowing them to stop attacks or not, unless they get lucky on the dice roll. It's not a system that would really work for a 1-on-1 game but given all the fights are made up of teams it's actually working really well, it's just a shame it took this long for me to figure it out as its involved going back over old characters I'd already "finished" and updating them a few times now...

I like the idea of having attacks, that do different damage according to the dice roll. I think, I'll adapt that in some form.

Until now I connected health to the Star Rating. More stars means more health. But I'm not really happy with that either. Especially, since a fight in the game can take pretty long with characters that have a lot of health. So I have to figure out a system there too. I guess, I will connect it more to the overall damage, most characters make. When a character has a move, that makes 5 damage, the health level of strong characters should be more than 5, so they don't get knocked out directly. But health shouldn't be to high either, so the moves still have an effect.

My Database has a lot of characters in it too and it will be a pain to update all of them to a new system, but I hope it will be worth it in the end.

[Cold Cobra]

4 hours ago, LostInWeb said:

I like the idea of having attacks, that do different damage according to the dice roll. I think, I'll adapt that in some form.

Until now I connected health to the Star Rating. More stars means more health. But I'm not really happy with that either. Especially, since a fight in the game can take pretty long with characters that have a lot of health. So I have to figure out a system there too. I guess, I will connect it more to the overall damage, most characters make. When a character has a move, that makes 5 damage, the health level of strong characters should be more than 5, so they don't get knocked out directly. But health shouldn't be to high either, so the moves still have an effect.

My Database has a lot of characters in it too and it will be a pain to update all of them to a new system, but I hope it will be worth it in the end.

Yeah, I had more health early on but the first play test showed me that didn't really work.

I use the stars as just a mark as to how powerful they are, stats-wise. Therefore you can't fill your team with the big powerful characters, only one or two big hitters during major events (but plenty of options for smaller skirmishes!)

[LostInWeb]

1 hour ago, Cold Cobra said:

Yeah, I had more health early on but the first play test showed me that didn't really work.

I use the stars as just a mark as to how powerful they are, stats-wise. Therefore you can't fill your team with the big powerful characters, only one or two big hitters during major events (but plenty of options for smaller skirmishes!)

The Star Rating is my nemesis in some kind of way. I tried different approaches but am not happy with any of them. Right now I tend do give stars between 1 and 10, but I have the feeling, that the higher rated characters are excluded from all fights. So that doesn't work either. Maybe I'll go down to 1 to 5 and just make some kind of categories for the Ratings. Something like the popularity just downgraded to 5 levels.