Allowing users to customise the attributes (eg weapons
and armour) of their units or avatar (for fps) in games
can
give a game great diversity. However, this usually leads
to
an unbalanced game and so a way of balancing content is
needed.
If two attributes such as 'armour strength' and
'weapon
power' were able to be modified to different levels (1-10)
and each level had an associated cost (1-10) then players
could balance them for how they liked to play. A player
with 10 credits could have 5 strength and 5 power, or 7s
and 3p, etc. However, it is likely that one combination
would be optimal and soon everyone would have to play
with that combination to have a chance to win.
If the cost of an attributes level increased when chosen,
and decreased when less popular, combinations would
become balanced over time. So if players always chose
high strength and low power then the costs of these
options would increase.
Level Strength Cost Power Cost
1 0.5 2
2 0.6 4
3 0.75 6
4 0.95 7
5 1.35 8
6 1.8 8.5
7 2.5 8.8
8 5 9.2
9 7 9.4
10 10 10
This will eventually remove any advantage from any
particular combination and allow players to play with
combinations that suit how they want to play.
This could be tested with a very simple 2D move and
shoot
game or a turn based strategy game like Battle Isle.
Additional attributes like speed, acceleration, weapon
range, fire rate, weapon explosive area, etc could be
added to build up the complexity. At some point the
maximum of the levels may need to be re-adjusted. The
games would have to be multiplayer and the statistics
from
each game stored online. It would be complicated to
adjust
the levels for each game so the cost adjustments would
be
made daily or weekly.
Abilities can also be added, for instance the ability to
fly.
This would be compared against travelling on land. If one
option is chosen more often then the cost will increase,
the more expensive options will mean they have less
credits to spend on other options and you are likely to
end
up with low strength flying units. More movement
abilities
could be added so it is possible to travel on water
(boats)
water and land (hovercraft), over rough terrain
(bipedal),
etc. Alternatively abilities such as invisibility, shields,
radar, etc could be added. Each of these additional
abilities could themselves be editable so invisibility may
range from camouflage to full invisibility and could have
modifiable duration and cool down times all with prices
that vary over time.
This would ideally suit real time strategy games but
would
work well as a fps too. However, it would become really
interesting if the control types were offered as abilities
so
you could have one player with their super soldier taking
on the others army. If the rts option in this case was
very
unfair then the fps option would be more popular and the
weighting would shift until the rts was balanced.
This could also be applied to tps games and games where
teams of bots are controlled commanded. Additionally
multiple players could be on either side using different
control types for a really varied game.
To introduce an element of skill levelling players will
gradually be allowed to use more cash to develop their
army/avatar and will be matched against players with
the
same available cash. This would also allow different
numbers of players on either side.
There could be three factions human, robots and alien.
Each would have access to different combinations of
abilities and costings. Which would add another layer of
variety. It would nice to allow players to fully customize
the
look of units but it would become too difficult for
opponents to assess how to fight the different units.
Instead, as attributes change so their appearance would
change. For example as weapon range increased so
would
the length of the barrel.