What if a multiplayer game took stats and then balanced itself solely based on those stats? In Counter-strike, if a gun becomes more popular than the rest or if it is the gun that causes the most kills, the game either raises its price or lowers its power. Has this been discussed before? It seems a logical topic for MMORPG''s but it may be equally relevant to an online FPS. After reading this article on the balance in Natural Selection, it seems like a game''s balance is not an absolute. A game which is balanced for playtesters who know the game well isn''t necessarily balanced if the game''s true audience doesn''t know the game well enough. An interesting dilemma.

I don''t know if it has been acheived in a multi player game, but I believe Severence (a very good single player action game) adjusted its difficulty level on the fly depending on the performance of the player. It worked quite well, as there I think there was a psychological incentive to keep the difficultly at "hero level", well for me anyway.

Computers are cronical at common sense issues; you can do the basic balancing like that, but there''s always a chance that some hickup in the algorithm will keep escelating, creating a form of hysterisis. A lot of freeware games have tried systems like this in strategy-games; it usually leads to a gameplay system that blows up eventually.

Imagine a system where every weapon that scores a kill gets reduced in power. I play for a while using weapon A, then it becomes unusable, and I have to swap to weapon B. Every time I loose a battle (through misfortune or failed strategy), I will be wondering whether it''s because my weapons have become obsolete, and curse the system because I had just managed to afford the entire set, etc...

In single player systems, it''s a lot easier... Imagine an RPG where your party accounts for a given Power value (calculated from your level + weapons); you can then scale enemy power to party power (give me a troll party of power 300 gives one elite, 2 standard, and a baby troll..)

Fe doeyr, Frender Doeyr,Ein sjoelv doeyr paa sama vis.
Eg veit et som aldri doeyr, dom over kvar ein doed.
Cattle die, Friends die, You yourself will also die.
I know something that never dies, the memory of every dead.

Would be an interesting test, but I doubt it would be viable in the end. The FireArms team just posted a nasty note to all the complaining players who are bitching about balance in a mod with 20+ weapons.
Balance would be a nice thought, but there are just too many fuzzy variables to take into account, IMHO. Pretty soon the AI would, in fact, simply make all the weapons exactly the same.
You''d have to hardcode in certain things that couldn''t be changed(Clip size, damage, etc) at which point yet again, there''s a bit of human error to be had.
The best a mod team can do at this point, IMHO, is *not* go the ''Valve route''(I.E. Only updating on an official Valve schedule) and keep an eye on their forums and fansites. If it seems the entire community is complaining about a weapon(ala AUG in FA 2.0) they need to promptly patch it or remove it in the next major version.
CS being an interesting example, since there are weapons issues already, and they just seem to want to add more more more to the mix(FAMAS, AR, Riot Shield) with each patch, rather than fix current issues(FiveSeven, Dual Berettas, Para, UMP, etc).

-Ryan "Run_The_Shadows"
-Run_The_Shadows@excite.com
-The Navidson Record! The best film you''ll never see!

I liked the AUG....



seriously, most games have automatic difficulty balancing nowadays.

I would only do it if certain weapons seem to dominate the playing field. For example, if those that use them typically end up with more kills than everyone else.

Then again, if a sniper gets more kills than everyone else, isn''t that expected?

Balancing could involve fire rate, damage, how fast the player can move with the weapon, etc.

On another note, I''ll say that adding more weapons to the mix does create the potential for an additional fun factor. The problem is those that are DEAD SERIOUS about playing (clans and such) are going to treat it VERY SERIOUSLY if it affects the overall game too much.

When I played online, I hated it when someone hopped in and was able to use a strategy that whomped on all the rest of us. It took the fun out of the groove we were enjoying with each other until they arrived. It was random though. Sometimes, I didn''t mind so much because I had gotten my fill. But other times I wished the designers hadn''t put that possibility in the game, even if it meant I couldn''t do it either.

I imagine balance has been important in game design ever since similar play situations emerged in pen and paper games and board games.

Hmmph, I''m rambling.

quote: Original post by Hase
I liked the AUG....

seriously, most games have automatic difficulty balancing nowadays.

1) Yuo are teh n00b! (heh)
2) What games? Yeah, UT has a nifty "adjust skill level" for the bots, but there is not a game on the market or even in development(AFAIK) that is supporting auto-adjusts to this degree. Changing weapon balances on the fly? Hasn''t been done.

-Ryan "Run_The_Shadows"
-Run_The_Shadows@excite.com
-The Navidson Record! The best film you''ll never see!

Well,

the problem with ballancing is plain simple.

Any game, where the players'' weapons are the main factor in the equation, will encounter ballancing issues.

This can be easily removed if you introduce another more significant variable - the skill to handle that weapon. Any weapon (it is insignifficant how powerfull it is) has some pros and cons. For a person, that''s proficient with some kind of weapons (pistols for example) there''s no difference between shooting a Glock or a Desert eagle. The probability, that he hits (aims correctly and pulls the trigger) is equally high with both of them - he can counter some of the cons (he is skilled and knows the cons), that a particullar weapon has.

So IMHO games that use skills as a variable in the hit/damage schema, do not suffer from ballancing issues (at least no so much as those games that don''t).

have a nice day

Petr Stedry

In a multiplayer game you could use a democratic system. The game decides that a weapon is unbalanced, and the players vote whether something should be done about it.

I personally believe that is the absolute wrong choice. There''s something to be said about player and community feedback, but you can''t just democratically run a mod.
I picked up CS at b5.2 and loved it. I gave it up around the first ''release''(1.0) and am just recently giving it another chance(1.5). Why did I give it up? Because it stopped being a vision, and turned into a democratic system run by a million incompetant forum whiners. What has happened with the system of perfect democratic balancing? There are MANY useless weapons in the game, that you''re lucky to see in use by a top-scoring player. And the ones that are used, are generally so unbalanced between themselves that it''s amazing anyone manages to do anything. Take the SMGs and Rifles from CS. Once you get into late game when everyone can afford a rifle, you mainly see 4 guns in play on a given server. Deagle, AWP, m4, ak. Nothing else in mass. On a truly ''balanced'' gameplay, we should see each and every gun being used evenly, instead of grouping towards obvious killwhore weapons like the m4. I should be able to see one guy nicely capping with a p90 as easily as someone else with a scout.
Democracy ruined Counterstrike for me. Personally, I think I''ll stick with "designer vision is the fascist rule" mods like The Opera.

-Ryan "Run_The_Shadows"
-Run_The_Shadows@excite.com
-The Navidson Record! The best film you''ll never see!