r/gamedesign • u/NathanRazaf • 2d ago
Discussion A game-balancing platform idea
Hi game devs! I'm a software engineering student and I was thinking about an idea that could help a few of you, particularly RPG makers. It's a platform in which you could assess the balancing of your game easily by transcribing the gameplay configuration of your game (level scaling, progression parameters, stats curves, passives, equipment, skills, resource allocation, unlocking trees, requirement trees, etc) into it and testing multiple encounters of party VS enemy (very simplified though for generalization) with player-simulated behaviour. I'm even thinking about simulating the entire game journey with checkpoints, planned encounters, and more. It would all be very generalized to accommodate as many as possible, but I recognize there's a lot of uncertainty that won’t be implementable like unique gameplay mechanics or randomness that could skew the math and bias the balancing. For now, I got the framework for RPG games mostly figured out, but in the future I plan to extend that platform's reach into other types of games like shooting games (with simulated gun ttk, maybe even simplified map modeling) or sims like city skylines etc. If such a tool interests you, what would you expect in it? What are the things you would avoid or recommend? What insights could you give me if I fully commit to the project?
Thanks in advance, I love you all 🥰
2
u/ryry1237 1d ago
Would be neat to see, but at best this could only be used to figure out already obvious balance mismatches. Most great games use incomparable mechanics, ie. how can you judge whether +5 damage is better or a 1s stun is better?
1
u/NathanRazaf 1d ago
My first thought was that its purpose would be to catch broken builds early like the one-shot Maelle build in Expedition 33. Though you're making me realize I forgot to put status effects into account, I have no idea how to involve and weight them accurately in the calculations 🦧
1
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with WHY games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of systems, mechanics, and rulesets in games.
/r/GameDesign is a community ONLY about Game Design, NOT Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design.
This is NOT a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead.
Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design.
No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting.
If you're confused about what Game Designers do, "The Door Problem" by Liz England is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the r/GameDesign wiki for useful resources and an FAQ.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/ShenGahMing 2d ago
You basically want a platform that code/simulate a game, and get it played by AI.
For the result to be viable you have to ensure the simulation is accurate, which is hard. Then build a bot to play the game.
Maybe modern AI agent/models are up to the task, but its borderline AGI.
1
u/NathanRazaf 2d ago
Ngl for the simulation I was just thinking about bruteforcing thousands of encounters with different character builds and player setups to catch how likely the player would be overpowered or underpowered given the whole game's configuration 😭
1
u/DiscombobulatedAir63 1d ago
"Thousands", oh. I've a rough class balancing sim script (simple as bread one) it says: "Running... 5/13695 matchups done". For any non-manual tweaking you'll need much more (halving - binary search is fastest way to find some rough values). More variable parts - more combinations. And if you fall into local maximum of that Ndimensional function and later player discovers global one then GGWP - failed balancing and diff between those defines how hard everything will go to shit.
It only includes 3 char party combos of all classes. Doesn't run search for perfect stat allocation combos, skill grading combos, skill use ordering combos, skill resource management combos, roughly simulates per class skill based distancing movements and so on. Accuracy of char decision making in sim is most important (need to find perfect, good, bad char decision making so equal level of char management is still quite balanced).
2
u/thedaian 2d ago
Unfortunately the more generic the tool, the less useful it is for testing game balance. For RPGs, and most other games, the maths for battles can usually be tested in a spreadsheet, or maybe hooking up a simple game AI to auto select commands in the in game battle system. This way, the test can fully take advantage of the game systems, and it's arguably usually easier than learning a new 3rd party tool.