![]() If a monster doesn't look powerful, it's not going to be well-received when it takes away 75 health with one attack. Keep in mind graphics go into balance as well. The only way these can really be balanced is with proper testing. It could be the Archvile's resurrection ability, or the Revenant's homing rockets. By gimmick, I mean some unique feature in the monster that doesn't fit into any other category. Gimmicks are the hardest things to get right, because it's all unique. Don't make something too fast that it's silly, though speed is one of those things that can look downright hilarious if something is too fast or too slow. Arachnotrons also have a short delay between attacks, but there's a delay before they fire that you can take advantage of, either to duck behind cover or to interrupt them. Revenants are quick, and that makes them tricky to hit sometimes, which balances their low health. There's also attack speed (how quick between attacks, how short the delay before it attacks) and projectile speed. Speed is another balancing factor, but not just the movement speed of the monster. ![]() Random spreads are sometimes used for balancing hitscans, but remember that with projectiles launched with a random angle, it's possible to dodge into the attack. Projectiles are dogable, so they should do more damage, whereas you can't dodge hitscan, you have to rely on luck to avoid damage. Another common one is the type of attack projectile versus hitscan. The only difference is health and damage. The original Doom used these because primarily because Id didn't have a lot of other gimmicks to add. Health and damage are the two most common ways of balancing a monster. If an attack does 500 damage, but moves so slowly that an ant will outrun it, that's not fun, that's not balanced, that's just stupid. Yes, I'm guilty of making one (The Repeater Zombie), but recently I have rebalanced it quite a bit. If a monster has an insta-kill hitscan attack, and one health, that's not fun! It's either a pushover, or too damn frustrating! Glass cannons are stupid to fight. I will say first that you DO NOT EVER balance one extreme with another. Then there are numbers of attacks, type of attacks, speed of attacks, movement speed, gimmicks, rarity and situation. ![]() Health and damage being the most obvious. There are several factors that go into the difficulty of a monster. ![]() Play Nuts.wad without any cheats, gameplay mods or anything like that. The second thing to make sure of is to see if this balance is actually FUN. Was the imp meant to be a common weakling? Was the Cyberdemon meant to be a boss? If the answer to these questions is yes, then very good. There are two ways to see if something truly fits into this staircase the first is seeing if it fits the difficulty the monster was intended for. Cyberdemons have a whopping four times the health of a Baron and is capable of one-shotting the player. Barons are the same as Hell Knights, but double the health, so it stands to reason these would be rarer. Just as dodgeable, but it also has more health to deal with. The Hell Knight, however, is much more damaging. Imps are a bit more powerful but dodgeable, and still common because it's not very strong. At the bottom of this staircase is the Former Human it's very weak, almost incapable of killing the player, and usually placed in groups. Let's look at the basic Former Human, Imp, Hell Knight, Baron of Hell and Cyberdemon. Some monsters are more powerful than others, according to this staircase. In a single-player game like Doom, you balance it according to a progressing staircase. How do you decide a weapon does too much damage? Or if a monster has too much health? What are you balancing it against? In a multiplayer game like Quake 3, you balance it with the other weapons because each item is readily available, they should be equally useful in general. In first-person shooters, things aren't any easier to see if they're balanced. Blizzard Entertainment tweaked Starcraft 1 for years to make sure it was balanced, and it appears they're doing the same with Starcraft 2. Balance issues are not always clear it takes testing in real game conditions to make sure, but it is worth the work to make sure a game or mod is the best it can be. If one faction is too powerful, then that scale tips and the game is unbalanced. Here's a subject apparently few users grasp sufficiently: Balance.īalance mostly deals with different factions in strategy games like Starcraft or Age of Empires, where each faction has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they have to remain balanced on the stereotypical scale.
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