28% (9)
71% (23)Well I've been trying to develop the leveling and stat gaining features of Fighters and I've hit a little fork in the road along the way.
Currently my system is as follows:
Each level has a max for every stat, your cap depends on how well you raised your character the previous level, etc...
This system is my standard and will remain so for the duration of the game, my question to you is more based on race differences. This game currently consists of four races: Saiyans (Goku,Vegeta), Icers (Freeza, Cooler), Humans and Nameks (Piccolo)
Each race will have their base power, Which is pretty rounded from the start, but as they progress they will have ways of gaining transformations and/or power-ups that will raise their overall advantage, some will be very powerful (such as Super Saiyan) but will also be very difficult to achieve. Others will be a little less powerful but easier to achieve.
The way I have it now, if each race trained the same exact way and achieved all of their power-ups they are far from equal come level 50 (In a level range of 1-100)
Icers are the strongest characters from the start getting a free transformation early, saiyans are the strongest toward the end if they achieve super saiyan, and nameks are right in the middle, having moments when they surpass all other races. Humans are currently the weakest, yet they are stronger than an icer's base form. I have plans on adding mechanical aspects to the game that will make humans one of the strongest and most customizable races towards the later part of the game.
Now should I keep it this way, which is much truer to the Dragonball series', or should I try to equal them out a little more? As it stands very few will actually max out their characters in this extreme sense I was using to test, so overall each race will have their advantages and disadvantages to make it fair. As a developer it makes more sense to keep it this way, but I would like some opinions from those that would play the game too.
Poll: How should I tweak my current system? (Please read before voting)
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Could make it like one race is stronger than another but then that race is weaker than another one. But at the end equal it out a bit but leave human weak. Maybe mid game humans have the chance to become androids, they will get custom armor to make them stronger. And maybe the armor would change their icon.
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I dont know about all that...but correct me if im wrong. Once someone finds the 'ultimate race' im pretty sure everyone would choose that race.
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Yeah exactly so make it so one race can beat another with ease if they have skill and that race can be beeat by another. No ultimate race.
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Drakiel: Not exactly. Not if he finds out some special aspects to give the other races. Here is an idea (please note this is taken from DragonBall Epic Online, the first DragonBall game to ever hit BYOND, and still the best): give Icers the ability to regenerate. For example, if they get hit with a few Ki blasts they can regenerate their health automatically. Their health should slowly go up. The higher their transformation, the faster their regeneration. Their transformations should also be permenant.
You see, if Icers have that ability, and the disadvantage of having their transformations stay permenant, we shouldn't have a problem. There, I just equaled out one race. Props to DBEO though. =D | |
Yeah I agree with you there. As long as it isn't an obvious advantage and you code the numbers in right then race balance should be good.
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Well as it works now, there is no real ultimate race. Each race has their advantages and disadvantages.
In the field of power, if you can raise a saiyan through all of their transformations then generally they will be more powerful in hand-to-hand (But they are also weak in energy combat) Humans will definitely have value to the game or I wouldn't include them as a race. I'm not sure why some games include a giant amount of races when 2-3 of them tower over all others, but this game is nothing like that. | |
There's a huge problem with trying to balance a DBZ-based game, and simultaneously trying to remain faithful to the series...
That simple problem is the fact that no matter how you slice it, according to the "rules" of the series, the Saiyans will always be the ultimate race... Any instance where they weren't on top was one where the stronger being had a headstart (the gap of which is very quickly filled, of course) It's like a race between a guy on a bicycle and a guy in a sports car... You can start the biker out a few miles ahead, even give him a rolling start, and the car will still overtake him before the finishline (stopping to refill along the way, even!) So when designing a game that offers more than the Saiyan race as a playable character, it becomes necessary to impose unnatural (to the series) limitations on them (weaker with energy, for example) If you made a game truly faithful to the DBZ universe, there's absolutely no way to limit the Saiyans to the rest, or raise the rest to their level... At least not in any form of sustained balance... Especially when comparing individuals on the same level... To use an analogy, DBZ is nothing like Rock, Paper, Scissors, where each item has one beneath it, and another above; strengths against some, but weaknesses compared to others... In the DBZ version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, the Saiyans would end up being something like "Nuclear Bomb"; capable of wiping out everything else, and virtually unscratched by any of the other options... But again, that doesn't work for a game that intends to offer other options... So basically, if the desire is to balance things out, very large departures need to be made from the series... It's one goal or the other... I like the way you're going with this for this game, but have no delusions about sticking to series accuracy when it comes to this aspect... | |
Well I have thought of neat ways to "balance" the races out while staying somewhat true to the series. Saiyans without their transformations are just above-average fighters that take the whole "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" analogy into a literal sense.
Freeza killed an entire planet of them, and from what I've seen he's the weakest of the three of his kind introduced. Nameks have been shown to be very strong too, especially when it comes to them fusing with eachother. Androids were also shown to be very powerful, and one of the strongest fighters in the afterlife was a human (mind you all those years of training, but still) So trying to balance out the races in one aspect is just a matter of interpretation, keeping them balanced is another. That's why some power-ups (especially Super Saiyan) are going to be very difficult to get, but they hold a high advantage over any others provided. So at this rate, if all races were to level the same and acquire all forms of powerups and transformations provided to them, saiyans rule over the higher levels, icers over the lower ones, and nameks and humans hold the middle ground . But it won't be too often that you will see a super saiyan or anybody progressing perfectly like I tested. Having a procedure do the work for you and doing the work yourself are two different things. | |
How about for humans to balance them out at the end is that they can become androids by two ways, either having someone change them or by changing theirselves. By changing theirselves they will be weaker than ones that are changed by someone else but they will still be as strong. Also you can make it so if someone stay a human(pure human) they will become a Z warrior? ... oh and if your game include flying you could make it so it would take longer for a human to learn how to fly but a sayian can learn it quicker.
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At end game levels, the races should be more or less equal, and player skill should be the most important factor. The main reason for this is that, generally speaking, the majority of time spent in a MORPG game is at/near the level cap in my experience, since that's generally where the most fun and the best PvP is at. And if you put level/power gaining in a game, a lot of people are going to play just to get to the top (not to say it shouldn't be fun on the way there).
That said, you can do both in a way. Going by what I just said, you'd want races to be around equal in the 80-100% level cap range. So everything up until 80% is free game. One race could be the best in the early levels, say from 0-20% of the level cap, then another race taking the low-mid levels (20-40%), and so on up until the 80-100% range. At the same time, you can of course have certain advantages and disadvantages that make the races unique and require different styles of play - they should just balance out when it comes to an even fight at the end-game levels. | |
I agree with that last post Cinnom, and for the most part it is that way. Some races of course have advantages over others played the same exact way, but as of now I still have alot to work around before end-game is included.
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I like your idea of having each race being able to cap out a certain statistic. That's an awesome idea. As you mentioned before, having each race transform easier/harder than others is a good idea as well. Also, have some transformations be stronger than others to balance it out a bit, such as the Nameks first transformation being stronger than the Icers second transformation, but then have the Icers second transformation be stronger than the Nameks 3rd or whatever, but the second transformation for the Icer has to be difficult to obtain. I'm not sure how many transformations you are going to give them, I assume one for Namek. That was just an idea to show you what I meant.