Balancing, EXP and attack damage

[Wasserteufel]

Hey!

I have a few questions, again.. xD


Soo... as I play tested my game I experienced a wide difference in damage I do to enemies.

My hero uses the normal "attack" and every attack has a very different damage dealt.

Sometimes it's 40 dmg and the next time it's 65 damage.

Why is the damage dealt so differently? It should be almost the same everytime, shouldn't it?

A testplayer of mine asked me why his hero does so different damages when he attacks..


The second questions is balancing.

How do you balance correctly? Because I don't want my game to be too easy but I don't want to make it too hard for casual players.

Is there a guide I can read to get into correct balancing?

I create a lot of weapons, armors and new enemies but I don't know how a sword or something else doesn't become too strong for the area..

Or an enemies isn't too strong for this area or doesn't give too much or too less EXP.

Thanks for your help in advance! =)

 

[TheoAllen]

Why is the damage dealt so differently? It should be almost the same everytime, shouldn't it?

There is "Variance" in damage formula box. If you put zero, it will be the same all time

How do you balance correctly? Because I don't want my game to be too easy but I don't want to make it too hard for casual players.

The "correct" balance is subjective. But if you want a guideline, I usually use something like, enemy A should get killed after x times normal attack when actor is already at level x

I use the same guideline when doing EXP. Player should get level up after encountering a certain troop x times when they'are at level x

 

[bgillisp]

The damage depends on the damage formula you enter, and the character and enemy stats. The default is 4 * your attack - 2 * the enemy defense. The default variance is 20% too, which means the attack can do 20% more or less from the calculated damage.

You'll have to play with the stats to get that more balanced, and if you don't want much variation on the damage you'll have to play around and come up with a new damage formula too.

As for EXP, what I did was I decided to first designate a level that I think the party should be encountering it at (I note this in the notetag of the enemy). From there, I look up how much EXP is needed to level up at that point in time, and run the following calculation:

EXP needed to level up when the average party encounters this monster / # of those I want them to kill for a level up.

Seems to have worked out so far. Though you may want to make an excel spreadsheet with all the EXP to level up numbers (as well as the stats of monsters at that point in time), it will make the look up easier and quicker.

 

[Wasserteufel]

Thank you both very much!

I always thought the "Variance" is for the crit. XD