Hi. Me and a friend of mine is currently working on our Masters Thesis in computer science. Our goal is to find a way to design large multiplayer games balanced, meaning making them fair to all involved, without suffering loss of variation or originality. Currently we are looking for articles written by others on the subject and we've found a few articles, including: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/balance/ http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1241.asp http://finegamedesign.com/data_mining_article.htm If you know of any more we'd be happy if you posted it here. I know that there are many views as to what 'balance' means, and this question is partly within the scope of our thesis as well, but if you read the aboce mentined articles you'll hopefully understand what we're aiming at. Later we have as an objective to write a program to test a game for balance (please don't ask me how, because we honestly don't know yet). Lastly, please don't make this a thread about whether or not game balance is needed. I know that a lot of people are spending a lot of time creating good balance, and our thesis is intended as some sort of help to those people.

I don't know exactly what you had in mind but it would probably be more sensible to develop some kind of survey or analysis method - likely a set of questions to be answered about the game by a human, rather than a piece of software to do the job.

Anyway I wish you good luck.

By the way it's nice to see other people on these forums who study at Uppsala University. Or at least I assume you do. [smile]

Yes, I do study at Uppsala University. And I agree that it is important to ask players what they think and feel about a game. However I also believe that a piece of software can do a part of the job, thus eliminating some amount of beta-testing. And since beta-testing is both expensive and timeconsuming, this should be a good thing.

Thanks!

The best way to make a game balanced, is to give every player the same thing.
Same units, same equipments, and same skills, etc.

However, even though balanced games are good, but a game that are too balanced can be bad, this happens very frequently in MMORPGs. One of the reasons that player want to play a multiplayer game, is to be in a virtual world where he/she can be superior to others. Player will keep reaching for that goal until...GAME PERFECTLY BALANCED!!...players lost the oppertunity to become superior, and lost interest in game

Of course balance can be reached by giving each player the same thing. However if you want variation in a game (which is often the case), difficulties arise.
And I know a lot of people do their best to optimize their character in multiplayer rolplaying games. But if there is a single configuration that is best always, then everyone will play that one. Suddenly there is no variation in the game and most likely everyone will stop playing anyway.

Would you like to play a game where your character was the best around, there was noone to challange you, and no matter how skilled other players are, they could never beat you? I know I wouldn't.

But as I said previously, I don't want this thread to be on whether or not to achieve balance. I want it to cover the topic of HOW to achieve balance.
And by balance I mean some sort of fairness for all players. Making the game about skill and tactics, not just choosing the optimal race, class and set of abilities.

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Original post by egoon Would you like to play a game where your character was the best around, there was noone to challange you, and no matter how skilled other players are, they could never beat you? I know I wouldn't.

This can be fixed by applying patches and updates to the game, not to balance the game, but just to keep the numbers changing to giving players a fresh taste of the game

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Original post by egoon Making the game about skill and tactics, not just choosing the optimal race, class and set of abilities.

choosing optimal race and abilities IS part of the skill and tactics. Again...if we can keep the number changing as state above, none of the race and ability will always be the best. The thing is to give each of the skills and race a chance to be the best

That is a quite attractive idea....

But still, if the game is reasonably balanced, it would be harder to find the optimal solution. Meaning that every time the optimal solution changes, the good players will find it first. And the bad ones may possibly not find it until it changes again.

Anyway, usually in these games, the optimal configuration is usually posted at some forum somwhere rether quickly, making it available to all. But changing it often might just be the trick.

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This can be fixed by applying patches and updates to the game, not to balance the game, but just to keep the numbers changing to giving players a fresh taste of the game

That's an awful way to balance a game, if indeed it can be called balancing at all. What you would be doing there is changing the game itself, which just brings you back to square one in terms of deciding whether the game is balanced.

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Original post by Argus2 Quote: This can be fixed by applying patches and updates to the game, not to balance the game, but just to keep the numbers changing to giving players a fresh taste of the game That's an awful way to balance a game, if indeed it can be called balancing at all. What you would be doing there is changing the game itself, which just brings you back to square one in terms of deciding whether the game is balanced.

That is the idea I been talking about! The point is NOT to get the game balaced, BUT to keep the values in game changing, thus keeping the game fresh.