Warhammer Online: Creativity and Numbers dev diary
The math behind a game such as EA Mythic‘s Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning seems so complicated that it would probably take months for the uninitiated to learn the intricacies of the system. Steve Martin, the Lead System Designer of the game, did an admirable job explaining how they went about constructing the system in his Development Diary post. To find out more, be sure to check out the full article.
The average MMORPG gamer would probably log into their game of choice and play without giving a second thought to the huge amount of number crunching that is done behind the scenes. Everything from game balance to the weapons available are handled by an enormous frame work of numbers.
While it would probably take months to learn the intricacies of the system, Steve Martin, the Lead System Designer of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning did an admirable job explaining this in his Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Development Diary post.
According to Martin, the numbers in the game are based on baselines they’ve established. This is done for pretty much everything, including damage per second, time to kill, time to level, total hours of play, value per point of each statistic, damage absorption, damage deflection and more. From that point, the developers then started to add the various skills, abilities, and even monster behavior in the game.
The designer pointed out that this daunting task became easier once the baselines were tweaked and general rules were established. He said that “rules of thumb can be derived that provide shortcuts in balancing.”
While it may seem pretty complicated, Martin said that there was one major rule they always stuck to. Everything in the game has to be fun. While the entire number crunching seems like a drag, it is the only way to make sure that “one fun ability doesn’t imbalance the game, ruining everyone else’s fun.”
In case you have some extra time on your hands, you might want to go over the entire development diary post of Martin. Just follow our Source Link below to get there.
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