Balancing Act Howdy howdy! I'm Shana Markham, and I'm part of the design posse, or is that design amigos? Design Coven, there we go. Mike, Eric and I have had our heads down for a good while, especially as we move from the "does it work" beta to the "is it fun" beta. So, why not talk a little about tuning and balancing while feeding you a little in-depth information about one of the more lovable Demigods?

Around the time the three of us arrived on the project, we set up definitions for what tuning is and what balancing is. Tuning is about making sure an aspect of the game is working and making sure the base mechanics of it are fun and interesting. Deep Freeze is a great example of how tuning changes the game. It used to be a stun that was very effective against structures, but most players saved it to use on Demigods. Additionally, Torch Bearer could chain stuns together easily, and no one likes being on the receiving end of chain stuns for long. So we tuned the ability to where we encouraged its use on Demigods, and significantly weakened the target without taking their control away.

Balancing is that time-honored practice of number crunching, playtesting, and number crunching some more to make sure everything is playing well with everything else. GPG has a daily game where we put the latest balancing changes to the test with an old fashioned 5v5. It's awesome to have a team that really enjoys playing, and it's even more awesome to have some members who go out of their way to find the nasty ways to win. As we bring the design hammer down on the more obvious flaws, we also working on the base progression of stats and abilities, massaging the numbers to really make everything shine.

A few months back, we were in a whirlwind tuning pass for all of the Demigods, particularly for the generals. As the Demigods got better and better, one particular Demigod lost his way. The stubby-winged sniper Regulus was looking more plain every day, and what was one of the more popular characters here was being discarded during playtests. At first, we tried to take a balancing approach to it, adjusting the numbers to see if it would help, but it became more and more obvious that Regulus at his core was just not as fun.


Regulus got quite a makeover, and he served as a good experiment. Some abilities received minor tweaks. Snipe kept much of its flavor, but deals extra damage based on the distance it travels. Pretty hilarious to use on a Demigod that's teleporting away. The mines are still there, but they're now ranged, and it's significantly easier to defend a location when you can toss three mines at once.


The other aspect we experimented with was improving skills in different ways as you went further down that line. For example, as Regulus improves on mines, they deal more damage and he can throw more out at a time. At the end, his mines turn into shrapnel mines, slowing anyone who stumbles into them and making their escape that much more difficult. As Regulus invests more and more in Maim, he gains access to a skill that gives his weapon a chance to double the costs of a Demigod's abilities. I think this experiment came out pretty well, but you're the ultimate judges of that.

I'm really excited for Beta 2 and to be able to mix it up with the beta team. Let's see how fun we can make this. Happy smiting!