Professional game designer here Wander. In the Diablo and WoW systems design pits we did discuss the implications of % vs flat damage scaling quite often. Im uncertain if there are discords which discuss that however. If you find one, lmk! The math was determined through theorycrafting and some very smart designers. We then implemented and tested it to see what the impact was. Then built curves that mapped to our overall leveling curve and monster stats. Id be happy to dig into a topic like this (maybe even get a fellow class designer like Kris Zierhut who was lead class designer on WoW for a long time) to discuss it with me on my channel.
I'd love to see some more in depth discussion on this, I reckon most developers keep it pretty close to their chest for a couple of reasons, if full data tables are freely available people will optimise the fun out of the game, not to mention if everyone knows your special sauce it's easier to replicate? We found if pretty hard to find open discussions about how other developers decided on how they handled their balancing and progression. In our current game (Twin stick Roguelite with gun crafting) we've built our systems by just throwing numbers by analysing other games, then refining that with testing data that we put into tables. I'd love an equation to calculate it off, because when we add a new modifier or weapon mechanic we need to do even more testing to make sure it stays inline with what we currently have... theorycrafting is a nice way of putting it. Truth be told we have hidden stats that affect our gun play we don't tell our testers about sometimes, because it might affect their feedback so who knows ha ha ha
Regarding your question with math, personally I put in a number, playtest it, tweak the number, playtest it, and stop whenever I feel my increase is noticeable but not totally overpowered. It's important that the more simple upgrades have impact, but don't trivialize the game. I really just come up with a number that's in a ballpark that sounds appropriate and go from there.
I think the best game I've seen in terms of meshing weapon sound effects with sound track is an old freeware game called Garden of Coloured Lights. The effect of enemy spawns or firing was to play that enemy's notes. I'm not entirely sure the game even has music that's independent of the enemy sound effects.
A game dev here, though in the animation side of things, not code or game design. A little fun fact: Some games actually cheat the player, telling them X % chance to hit, but in reality it is added a bit on top, just to make it feel good. Its weird, but if you read hit chance 75%, your brain wants that number to be like 80 or 85. So if you miss 25% times, you get angry at the game, even if you know it is correct you feeling wronged somehow. So yeah, that little extra helps with that game feel as well. :P
This topic has been talked about before and i forget who said it, but i remember someone compared it to a survival situation. They said if you look in the bushes and see one lion, you look away and count again and see two, then thats a 100% increase and thats more detrimental to you mentally, whereas if you look in the bushes and see 20 lions, look away and look back and see theres 21 lions, your situation hasn't changed much.
Background enemy scaling making damage increases feel less impactful is the one real gripe I have with a genre I'm otherwise quite happy about. As you've said, getting an upgrade that defeats a mob in one fewer hit feels great. And that exact same sprite going back to taking an extra hit in between your level-ups feels awful. I certainly enjoyed slotting my abilities into other abilities in Transistor. It's a good system.
I feel like if you introduce rare/elite & named (miniboss?) versions of mobs and have enough mob variety you should be able to get the same outcome without it feeling so lame. So you start swapping out some of the initial mobs for their rare/elite versions and then start mix in the next mobs normal version and maybe a named/unique here and there... and continue that trend as your progress. Similar maybe to how Risk of Rain 2's AI Manager/Spawner works where as the time progresses the amount of "points" the AI can spend to spawn mobs goes up along with it preferring to spawn harder mobs while keeping a certain level of mobs spawned in.
I am at a point where I don't really watch the videos anymore, I just check out the title and the intro and then try them mysself since we have similar taste in game
i'm not sure if you've seen any of supergiant's other games, but the second game they made called transistor, has a skill slotting system similar to the one you were talking about, you have 4 ability slots, and an unlockable upgrade slot for each ability, as well as 4 passive slots, and at save points you can slot the abilities, each ability has it's own cost to slot and you only have so much slot currency, but they have your base attack called break that gives enemies a debuff so they take more damage, and they have another ability you get called jaunt that makes you dash forward a little, but the big important thing about jaunt is that you can use it during your ability cooldown, as the cooldown system is basically, pause time and plan your attack, then wait for your time to come back, but jaunt can be used during that time, and as an upgrade to break it makes it so you can use break in the waiting period, where normally you just have to run around in that time, waiting for it to replenish, while if you put break on jaunt, it makes it so dashing past enemies gives them a debuff so they take more damage
The law about noticeable difference that people can tell is called Weber's law. Typically an additional between 8-10% of the perceived value is needed for people to notice a difference.
game balance is mostly feel after the initial formulation you gotta balance the number of hits you want an enemy to take, and balance that to other abilities, and take those numbers into account to make a rough estimate of the amount of time a player will be around those enemies you want to maximize playtime while keeping the player engaged, so whatever you're doing with the numbers, you need to take all that into account
100% crit damage multiplier does NOT mean double damage, at least in most games. You subtract 100 from that number and anything past 100% like 101% is essentially 1% extra damage on crit. 200% crit multiplier means 2x damage.
Personally, the simple upgrades feels good to build up hype for the eventual good upgrades. Like with skill trees, you could use trivial upgrades to block non trivial upgrades so that the player doesn't get it to soon, but also when the player eventually gets it, the non trivial upgrade feels stronger that it is due to the build up from the trivial upgrades.
Small upgrades are great on talent trees especially, especially when they lead to major, build-defining ones. I'm mostly focused on them for the weapon upgrades during the actual runs, since they're barely noticeable and not overwhelmingly interesting. I'd rather have small stat increases be for the totem level-ups only and have big ones for the weapon upgrades.
Gungnir spawn count throws more swords into the ground in the same place, Sometimes a pixel apart. Those could use either a delay between throws or some scatter on the additional throws. E̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶l̶y̶ i̶t̶ i̶s̶ a̶ d̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ u̶p̶ b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ p̶u̶l̶s̶e̶s̶ i̶n̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ a̶t̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ t̶i̶m̶e̶ i̶s̶ j̶u̶s̶t̶ s̶t̶a̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ m̶o̶r̶e̶ d̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶. Well I suppose it counts as more hits for % chances and hit counts.
Benefits for mixing elements I'd prefer on element to element level not item to item. Item to Element would work ok too... Wanderbots after suggesting having item pairings immediately complained about how Vampire Survivors has them, lol.
I prefer bullet heavens that have both stat upgrades and weapon upgrades with ultimate skills. But 100% Between the two, I find minimal stat upgrades to be miles more boring than fun skill upgrades.
wanderbot with what you were saying about boring level up systems you should definitely try cube chaos, retromation and olexa both loved it. Its a 2d rts roguelike that breaks your brain with incredibly unique abilities, synergies, and level ups
That games is actually genius. A bit clunky, early access and the fact that (I think) made on their own engine, but it's positive so so so makes up its flaws.
I broke the game, im standing in the middle for about 3 hours. Reached lvl 154 and wave 200. Maybe if they implement a ranking system of a sort would be nice
I see what you're saying, and stating it in another way, the 2 damage vs 5 hp enemy (+30%) situation you talk about is really just 3 hit to 2 hit, which our brains can easily see through. There are only so many ways to give a player feedback, such as health bars. I think another aspect is whether the game deals in hard numbers; I've seen games that might state things like 'a bit' rather than something like +5, but I don't know about how intuitive that might be. Oh, and I was thinking about your dislike of repetitive sounds. The direct solution would be to have a pool of sounds that a hit can pull from, but there must be a cap on how much time you can put into that with a small team while keeping to a certain level of quality, making the pool size limited to just a few per weapon. So I was wondering, do you think it would be less grating if each hit had a +/- pitch shift on it, or an effect like reverb, dopplering, or asynchronous stereo? A slight effect, I mean, because too much would make it sound strange. Or do you think it might end up to chaotic to the ear?
i absolutely despise when people add "a bit" as a damage descriptor, but i am a very numbers oriented person, playing a game where it shows me the exact % increase to the ability, and then shows the change in number as well to show how it effects, whether a +% or *% bonus is very satisfying to me having a bar that you could mess with every individual sound in the game would be possibly quite jarring, but with the right tweaking you could make it hilarious for the player, when finding how different sound settings affect each other to make everything sound really silly
27:09 I think contact damage needs a reason to happen. Spiky enemy? Sure. It’s the only attack that enemy has? Fine. Game would be too simple/easy without it, such as Mario? I guess. Enemy has multiple melee attacks, and maybe even some ranged attacks? No, why should it do damage upon bumping into it? The enemy has clearly defined telegraphs and can be understood easily? Why would it need it? I just really think you should be able to look at an enemy a figure out if it will hurt your character to touch it without needing to touch it. Fire? Probably hot, do not touch. Spikes? Pointy, sharp, don’t want to be stabbed. Skeleton with a sword? Why should the bones hurt me, the sword is the sharp end?
Yeah that's Retro. I have a love/hate. For skinner box roguelites like Rogue Legacy and Bullet Heavens, metaprogression can be a lot of fun, especially if you're constantly unlocking new ways to get increasingly busted. But it can also have a downside. Rogue Genesia is one of my favorites, but at this point the power creep has rendered the game a bit boring and I struggle with it.
I love these types of games but the main problem I find with coding roguelikes is the balancing. Can someone maybe help and give me some tips on how the stats, progression, upgrades of enemies and enemy spawn rate can be balanced?
![Bullet Heaven With Deep Branching Upgrades! - Diebrary [Early Access]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2HjGvqBUxWk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Bullet Heaven With Deep Branching Upgrades! - Diebrary [Early Access]](/img/tr.png)
![Busted Build Bullet Heaven With Extensive Upgrade Trees! - Core Devourer [Demo]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/w2oMqpZyea0/mqdefault.jpg)
![ปฏิเสธไม่ไหว (Crush on you) - LIPTA feat. No One Else [TEASER MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VC689EgdSIw/mqdefault.jpg)
Good to hear Wander found his voice. Being voiceless must be a nightmare
Professional game designer here Wander. In the Diablo and WoW systems design pits we did discuss the implications of % vs flat damage scaling quite often. Im uncertain if there are discords which discuss that however. If you find one, lmk!
The math was determined through theorycrafting and some very smart designers. We then implemented and tested it to see what the impact was. Then built curves that mapped to our overall leveling curve and monster stats.
Id be happy to dig into a topic like this (maybe even get a fellow class designer like Kris Zierhut who was lead class designer on WoW for a long time) to discuss it with me on my channel.
I'd love to see some more in depth discussion on this, I reckon most developers keep it pretty close to their chest for a couple of reasons, if full data tables are freely available people will optimise the fun out of the game, not to mention if everyone knows your special sauce it's easier to replicate? We found if pretty hard to find open discussions about how other developers decided on how they handled their balancing and progression.
In our current game (Twin stick Roguelite with gun crafting) we've built our systems by just throwing numbers by analysing other games, then refining that with testing data that we put into tables. I'd love an equation to calculate it off, because when we add a new modifier or weapon mechanic we need to do even more testing to make sure it stays inline with what we currently have... theorycrafting is a nice way of putting it.
Truth be told we have hidden stats that affect our gun play we don't tell our testers about sometimes, because it might affect their feedback so who knows ha ha ha
Legend has it, this man is still trying to complete his thought on stat upgrades to this day.
Technically true. I'm writing the notes for it at the moment.
@@wanderbots Send/post it for us (if you don't mind) when you finish. As indi dev, i interested to hear/see it~
Achievement unlocked: Wanderbots played our game! Thank you a lot, sir!
This looks really fun.
Can't wait for the full release!
The man has a voice again!
Watching this without your voice the first time was a novel experience that I never want to have again.
Regarding your question with math, personally I put in a number, playtest it, tweak the number, playtest it, and stop whenever I feel my increase is noticeable but not totally overpowered. It's important that the more simple upgrades have impact, but don't trivialize the game.
I really just come up with a number that's in a ballpark that sounds appropriate and go from there.
I think the best game I've seen in terms of meshing weapon sound effects with sound track is an old freeware game called Garden of Coloured Lights. The effect of enemy spawns or firing was to play that enemy's notes. I'm not entirely sure the game even has music that's independent of the enemy sound effects.
A game dev here, though in the animation side of things, not code or game design. A little fun fact: Some games actually cheat the player, telling them X % chance to hit, but in reality it is added a bit on top, just to make it feel good. Its weird, but if you read hit chance 75%, your brain wants that number to be like 80 or 85. So if you miss 25% times, you get angry at the game, even if you know it is correct you feeling wronged somehow. So yeah, that little extra helps with that game feel as well. :P
This topic has been talked about before and i forget who said it, but i remember someone compared it to a survival situation. They said if you look in the bushes and see one lion, you look away and count again and see two, then thats a 100% increase and thats more detrimental to you mentally, whereas if you look in the bushes and see 20 lions, look away and look back and see theres 21 lions, your situation hasn't changed much.
Background enemy scaling making damage increases feel less impactful is the one real gripe I have with a genre I'm otherwise quite happy about.
As you've said, getting an upgrade that defeats a mob in one fewer hit feels great. And that exact same sprite going back to taking an extra hit in between your level-ups feels awful.
I certainly enjoyed slotting my abilities into other abilities in Transistor. It's a good system.
I feel like if you introduce rare/elite & named (miniboss?) versions of mobs and have enough mob variety you should be able to get the same outcome without it feeling so lame. So you start swapping out some of the initial mobs for their rare/elite versions and then start mix in the next mobs normal version and maybe a named/unique here and there... and continue that trend as your progress. Similar maybe to how Risk of Rain 2's AI Manager/Spawner works where as the time progresses the amount of "points" the AI can spend to spawn mobs goes up along with it preferring to spawn harder mobs while keeping a certain level of mobs spawned in.
I am at a point where I don't really watch the videos anymore, I just check out the title and the intro and then try them mysself since we have similar taste in game
i'm not sure if you've seen any of supergiant's other games, but the second game they made called transistor, has a skill slotting system similar to the one you were talking about, you have 4 ability slots, and an unlockable upgrade slot for each ability, as well as 4 passive slots, and at save points you can slot the abilities, each ability has it's own cost to slot and you only have so much slot currency, but they have your base attack called break that gives enemies a debuff so they take more damage, and they have another ability you get called jaunt that makes you dash forward a little, but the big important thing about jaunt is that you can use it during your ability cooldown, as the cooldown system is basically, pause time and plan your attack, then wait for your time to come back, but jaunt can be used during that time, and as an upgrade to break it makes it so you can use break in the waiting period, where normally you just have to run around in that time, waiting for it to replenish, while if you put break on jaunt, it makes it so dashing past enemies gives them a debuff so they take more damage
17:00 wait, you can get Odin's ravens to watch over you? Sweet!
The law about noticeable difference that people can tell is called Weber's law. Typically an additional between 8-10% of the perceived value is needed for people to notice a difference.
kickass video once again mr wander
Lover wanderbot's random ramblings.
game balance is mostly feel after the initial formulation
you gotta balance the number of hits you want an enemy to take, and balance that to other abilities, and take those numbers into account to make a rough estimate of the amount of time a player will be around those enemies
you want to maximize playtime while keeping the player engaged, so whatever you're doing with the numbers, you need to take all that into account
100% crit damage multiplier does NOT mean double damage, at least in most games. You subtract 100 from that number and anything past 100% like 101% is essentially 1% extra damage on crit. 200% crit multiplier means 2x damage.
Personally, the simple upgrades feels good to build up hype for the eventual good upgrades. Like with skill trees, you could use trivial upgrades to block non trivial upgrades so that the player doesn't get it to soon, but also when the player eventually gets it, the non trivial upgrade feels stronger that it is due to the build up from the trivial upgrades.
Small upgrades are great on talent trees especially, especially when they lead to major, build-defining ones.
I'm mostly focused on them for the weapon upgrades during the actual runs, since they're barely noticeable and not overwhelmingly interesting. I'd rather have small stat increases be for the totem level-ups only and have big ones for the weapon upgrades.
I loved the other video too. But glad to know you’re still speaking
The lightning stopping power was from not skipping damage upgrades.
Gungnir spawn count throws more swords into the ground in the same place, Sometimes a pixel apart. Those could use either a delay between throws or some scatter on the additional throws. E̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶l̶y̶ i̶t̶ i̶s̶ a̶ d̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ u̶p̶ b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ p̶u̶l̶s̶e̶s̶ i̶n̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ p̶l̶a̶c̶e̶ a̶t̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ t̶i̶m̶e̶ i̶s̶ j̶u̶s̶t̶ s̶t̶a̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ m̶o̶r̶e̶ d̶a̶m̶a̶g̶e̶. Well I suppose it counts as more hits for % chances and hit counts.
Great video👌
Usually aura based skills are always broken in games and attack speed/multi strike or anything that gives flat damage/speed
I'd love more of this.
I can feel a 5% change in something. If a certain enemy type has a 0% chance of spawning vs a 5% chance of spawning, thats pretty noticeable!
Har har.
I like how there was no magnets... It seems to make players get in the thick of things instead of run in circles around the map.
I think magnets are good on large maps, but here no magnets was a great way to boost risk vs reward gameplay.
Benefits for mixing elements I'd prefer on element to element level not item to item. Item to Element would work ok too... Wanderbots after suggesting having item pairings immediately complained about how Vampire Survivors has them, lol.
I prefer bullet heavens that have both stat upgrades and weapon upgrades with ultimate skills. But 100% Between the two, I find minimal stat upgrades to be miles more boring than fun skill upgrades.
09:00 I think you underestimate most people, in this regard. Tweaking builds in minor ways is where its at!
wanderbot with what you were saying about boring level up systems you should definitely try cube chaos, retromation and olexa both loved it. Its a 2d rts roguelike that breaks your brain with incredibly unique abilities, synergies, and level ups
That games is actually genius. A bit clunky, early access and the fact that (I think) made on their own engine, but it's positive so so so makes up its flaws.
I broke the game, im standing in the middle for about 3 hours. Reached lvl 154 and wave 200. Maybe if they implement a ranking system of a sort would be nice
I see what you're saying, and stating it in another way, the 2 damage vs 5 hp enemy (+30%) situation you talk about is really just 3 hit to 2 hit, which our brains can easily see through. There are only so many ways to give a player feedback, such as health bars. I think another aspect is whether the game deals in hard numbers; I've seen games that might state things like 'a bit' rather than something like +5, but I don't know about how intuitive that might be.
Oh, and I was thinking about your dislike of repetitive sounds. The direct solution would be to have a pool of sounds that a hit can pull from, but there must be a cap on how much time you can put into that with a small team while keeping to a certain level of quality, making the pool size limited to just a few per weapon. So I was wondering, do you think it would be less grating if each hit had a +/- pitch shift on it, or an effect like reverb, dopplering, or asynchronous stereo? A slight effect, I mean, because too much would make it sound strange. Or do you think it might end up to chaotic to the ear?
i absolutely despise when people add "a bit" as a damage descriptor, but i am a very numbers oriented person, playing a game where it shows me the exact % increase to the ability, and then shows the change in number as well to show how it effects, whether a +% or *% bonus is very satisfying to me
having a bar that you could mess with every individual sound in the game would be possibly quite jarring, but with the right tweaking you could make it hilarious for the player, when finding how different sound settings affect each other to make everything sound really silly
Seems a good game, the sticky enemies is bad tho. You dash into an enemy he hits you 2-3 times.
27:09 I think contact damage needs a reason to happen. Spiky enemy? Sure. It’s the only attack that enemy has? Fine. Game would be too simple/easy without it, such as Mario? I guess. Enemy has multiple melee attacks, and maybe even some ranged attacks? No, why should it do damage upon bumping into it? The enemy has clearly defined telegraphs and can be understood easily? Why would it need it? I just really think you should be able to look at an enemy a figure out if it will hurt your character to touch it without needing to touch it. Fire? Probably hot, do not touch. Spikes? Pointy, sharp, don’t want to be stabbed. Skeleton with a sword? Why should the bones hurt me, the sword is the sharp end?
I thought he hated meta progression? Or is that retro?
I think that was retro
Yeah that's Retro.
I have a love/hate. For skinner box roguelites like Rogue Legacy and Bullet Heavens, metaprogression can be a lot of fun, especially if you're constantly unlocking new ways to get increasingly busted.
But it can also have a downside. Rogue Genesia is one of my favorites, but at this point the power creep has rendered the game a bit boring and I struggle with it.
@@wanderbotsman, I know this feeling, been playing some new rogulites on itch lately and yeah, same issues
Updated ?!
I love these types of games but the main problem I find with coding roguelikes is the balancing. Can someone maybe help and give me some tips on how the stats, progression, upgrades of enemies and enemy spawn rate can be balanced?
heyo
Ey it’s fixed!