RPGMVXA: easy balancing tutorial

[Lyseth]

Hello, I'm here with my first tutorial, a simple balancing tutorial, now I'll be sharing how I balance out my game projects, we'll be going over,


enemies,


armor/weapons,


cash income rewards,


skills,


and bosses.


Enemies:


As we all know, monsters and bandits are basically the glue to our project,


So for enemies, personally, I give them stats that depend on the players level range,


ex: your starting playable(s) are Lv.1 with 16 ATK, 12 DEF, 8 MAT, 10 MDF, 15 AGI, 17 LUK and 325 HP and 118 MP


now a good way for balancing is to give monsters stats that are equal to around half the player's stats, so for example, look back at the playable's stats, now the stats should be lower than the player's,


let's take a slime in a starting forest area,


Slime


HP: 250 ATK: 7-9 DEF: 10 MAT: 5 MDF: 6 AGI: 10 LUK: 8 MP: 0


Grants: 12 EXP and 10 gold per slime 


Now swarms should be 1-3 slime, while VERY rarely groups of 4-5 can appear,


Remember, think about the player's level of what it could POSSIBLY be at each point in the game,


look at the stats and then come up with a close estimate for monsters.


Armor/Weapons:


As we all know, buying armor and weaponry is a fair necessity of RPG games, a weapon typically should boost a character by 1/3-1/2 of their stats, so for example,


If your character's ATK is likely around at some point in the game 24, then a long sword available at said point for example should boost ATK by 10-14.


Armor following the same rule.


Cash income rewards: Now income such as gold, coins, dollars, pound, or even pizza, idc what you call it, just call it whatever you like.


Now a good way to balance this is like, rare enemies give better gold,


Ex: Mimics are exclusive to certain chests, so they are considerably rare, so they could grant like 1000 cash and a cheap shield, but with a high reward, give the mimic the first attack of the battle, no if's ands or buts about it,


Skills: 


Skills make the game more interesting, so skills can be exclusive to certain events, ex:


let's make a move for this,


"Doomsday cannon"


Base damage: 400 Physical damage: 400 magical damage: 400


removes all buffs to enemies, and has 25% success rate


your character can only learn this by a secret event such as defeating a secret boss or a super hard quest, now you may be wondering,


"why only 25% success rate?"


that's because, an enemy with 325 defense and magic defense will take 13,000 to 21,000 damage,


now this extreme damage is balanced by low success rate and costing 100 TP or 300


MP, so sometimes give a powerful move some kinda drawback, either lack of accuracy or it deals recoil damage.


some abilities can cost like 30 MP while dealing 162-210 damage,


also so if you want a class to learn 20 abilities for instance, make the class learn 1 skill every 5 levels.


Bosses:


bosses are are pretty much milestones for the player, typically I choose a player's level then I make the bosses stats the me as the player's but with 50% more added, while the bosses health is about 5 times the player's,


Ex:


Bosses recommended level range, (Lv.16 or higher)


Let's say you take Player stats for Lv.16:


Ex:


Player:


Lv.16


HP: 1200


ATK: 50


DEF: 46


MAT: 34


MDF: 40


AGI: 60


LUK: 50


Bosses stats:


HP: 6000


ATK: 75


DEF: 69


MAT: 51


MDF: 60


AGI: 90


LUK: 75


Now this is typically how I would balance these things, but feel free to balance things out HOWEVER you want.


Hope this gives you all a general idea on how to balance things out. :3

 

[Archeia]

I moved this to General Discussion because it's not exactly what we're looking for in a tutorial format. However, it can be a good discussion material and people might have some tips and tricks too to add more to this.