Day 5: Balancing thoughts and the coming week
So I hope that by now a few of you found some time to play the PREVIEW build with the improved AI. As you may have noticed, this makes the game a bunch tougher.
So I'm currently looking at the overall balancing to bring it back in line. CHOSEN still seems to be mostly fine, though could be a tad easier, while the change to the AI is felt more strongly in BURDENED and DOOMED, which makes me think that both of these need to be brought down a bit as well.
I'd love to hear some feedback about your experience on whether you agree or disagree with me. That would help me a lot to zone in on an ideal curve.
In the meantime, I am thinking about which levers to use to change things:
All of these dials affect the game in different ways. The changed AI basically dialled up the difficulty of fights with the enemies playing more effectively. Tweaking health would be the easiest change but it would also make the game even more sensitive to alpha strikes as it already is in the non-elite non-boss fights.
Enemy decks are probably a better are to address but they are a bit finicky and hard to balance because there's so many things coming together, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Enemy status effects are simpler (fewer moving parts) but the changes are less gradual. One fewer trigger can sometimes make a challenging fight trivial.
So that said, my current thoughts are to make the enemy decks a bit less mean in Chosen and Burdened so that the decks start to synergize at higher levels. This would also help with making map 1 a bit less of a make or break moment. Also some tweaks to the status effects and then pulling down HP for the elites and bosses just a tad (on Burdened and Doomed). And lastly to make the AI in the early maps a little stupider again - not as much as it was but just a tad less optimized.
I am also considering changing the length of the maps and how the enemy levels are spread out across them a bit. Currently the game ramps up quickly in Map 1, so maybe that should be a bit more gradual.
In any case, expect an updated PREVIEW build Monday or Tuesday next week.
With all that said, please keep the feedback coming! Specifically:
- Martin
The new normal
So I'm currently looking at the overall balancing to bring it back in line. CHOSEN still seems to be mostly fine, though could be a tad easier, while the change to the AI is felt more strongly in BURDENED and DOOMED, which makes me think that both of these need to be brought down a bit as well.
I'd love to hear some feedback about your experience on whether you agree or disagree with me. That would help me a lot to zone in on an ideal curve.
Knobs to tweak
In the meantime, I am thinking about which levers to use to change things:
- Player Health (At start, increase per level)
- Enemy Health
- Enemy Decks
- Enemy Status effects (which, at what level, how strong)
- AI cleverness
- Fight Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
- Event Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
- Length of maps
All of these dials affect the game in different ways. The changed AI basically dialled up the difficulty of fights with the enemies playing more effectively. Tweaking health would be the easiest change but it would also make the game even more sensitive to alpha strikes as it already is in the non-elite non-boss fights.
Enemy decks are probably a better are to address but they are a bit finicky and hard to balance because there's so many things coming together, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Enemy status effects are simpler (fewer moving parts) but the changes are less gradual. One fewer trigger can sometimes make a challenging fight trivial.
My plan for balance
So that said, my current thoughts are to make the enemy decks a bit less mean in Chosen and Burdened so that the decks start to synergize at higher levels. This would also help with making map 1 a bit less of a make or break moment. Also some tweaks to the status effects and then pulling down HP for the elites and bosses just a tad (on Burdened and Doomed). And lastly to make the AI in the early maps a little stupider again - not as much as it was but just a tad less optimized.
I am also considering changing the length of the maps and how the enemy levels are spread out across them a bit. Currently the game ramps up quickly in Map 1, so maybe that should be a bit more gradual.
In any case, expect an updated PREVIEW build Monday or Tuesday next week.
With all that said, please keep the feedback coming! Specifically:
- How does the current PREVIEW difficulty feel to you?
- What do you think about my plan for rebalancing?
- Martin