Speaker: Rob Pardo, Blizzard Entertainment

Rough notes below

Game Balance

- solo to max level

- important role in a group, raid, and group PVP

- Starcraft - Race totally different

- Better players can win games fast

- Offense over defense (don't want Starcraft 2 as a Sim City simulator)

- Creative strategies

- Every unit has a counter

- Be fun Game Balance

• Game Balance: Math vs Fun
• Math is the foundation
• Everything should feel overpowered
• Don't balance the game into mediocrity
• Must understand nuances
• Can't balance the game through replays (doesn't show up in spreadsheet, pathfinding algorithm)
• Balance for all skill levels
• Shamans could buff (bloodlust) became much more overpowered, aoe spells needed to be adjusted
• No super weapons
  • Super weapons are fun (not so fun for the other person)
  • Ex: Ghost, powerful weapon feels super (sees nuke silo), see ghost sneak in, nuclear launch detected
• Use your beta
• how i approach beta - 3 months get as many balance patches within that time, buff it a little more
• UI affects balance
  • Unlimited selection vs 12 selection
  • Internal battle about
  • army of 100 zerglings, game became easier to play, overpowered?
    • Players didn't understand why they could only select 12 units
  • Multiple building selection
  • Subgroups
    • Before Warcraft 3, all you would get is intersection of abilities (lowest common demoniator)
      • Hero can still cast spells
  • Wow - Click to move - play more like diablo, not the preferred way to play
    • Originally got put in a way to auto-face/pathfind to player (PVP)
    • In Wow Beta
  • UI Mods
    • has a dark side
    • What mods are out there
      • should we balance game for modders vs non-modders?
      • make the choice to break the mods
      • Mods are bad when they play the game for you (bot)
  • Balance - It Never Ends
    • Change is always bad to players
    • Maintain your game to keep it relevant
    • Still putting out Warcraft balance patches
    • Ban the cheaters -
    • plan patches, but leave time to be reactive
      • Talent reviews for each class
      • at any given moment, a strategy or bug will be uncovered
    • Don't panic
  • Competitive Sports - Football
    • 3-4 Defense, Zone Blitz
    • NFL isn't outawing defenses, enable players to find the counter
• Player Psychology
  • Not always predictable
  • Perception of fairness -
    • Best balance spreadsheet and tester in the world
    • if players don't believe it, it doesn't matter
  • Can't argue in forums with a million people
    • Arguing is not the answer
  • Players hate losing
    • Counterstrike can play 10 games
    • 1/2 hour - 1 hour long game if you lose, not interested
    • Alliance wins 90% of AV, lose AB 90% of the time
      • Make sure losing side still gets something out of it
      • 1 mark of honor and still get honor
  • How do they climb the ladder?
    • Need to decide what your goals are
    • Starcraft 1 ladder - ELO chess system
      • Not necessarily fun to play
      • #1 player in world doesn't gain anything from playing
        • No incentive to be #1 until #2 passes you
  • Right amount of complexity
    • Starcraft II - 15 units is the right amount, depth to game, learn units and strategies, can still easily identify units, understand counterstrategy
    • Magic - The Gathering: Hundreds of thousands of options, turn based,
  • AV
    • Original vision o fAV was epic, huge battle zone including player controlled bases, npc support, quests, and capture point
    • av was ment to be fought in several smaller fronts with npc assistance in a war of attrition
  • isn't exactly waht happened
    • How we designed map isn't how we made it
    • incentive to get honor is to kill opposing NPC and just zerged to win
    • players ride by each other
    • wave emote on horseback
    • players on losing side still get honor
    • knew it was going to be a 30-60 minute match
    • AFKaving - players leeching honor because of insufficient incentives to actually play PVP
  • Inspect messages was creepy
    • [altair] is inspecting you
    • players felt they were getting stalked, removed the message, now everyone loves the feature
    • Rest isn't a penalty it's a bonus - original implementation, keep playing you get less experience, instead switch it to a bonus
      • Exact same system, now people love it
    • Warcraft 3 "thumbs" - thumbs up/down any map you wanted
      • Then changed it to a veto system to thumbs-down a map as players were asking WTF when they thumbs -down
  • Does a unit, gun, weapon, suggest it's function and power
  • Special effects can cause confusion in battle
  • Team differentiation (Warcraft) races, and colors in Warcraft 3
  • Avoid hidden modifiers - do this very selectively
  • Visualization
    • does the art tell you who has more HP or who runs faster - art and balance is not aligned
  • MMO - much, much tougher
    • class-based armor sets - make the art of the armor set suggest the class - gear and equipment visualize
  • Home Stretch - Maps
    • Random vs pre-made
      • Age of Empires vs Starcraft
      • Player perception will be that map generator screwed me in starting point
    • Number of maps - more is not better
      • Starcraft II - 8 maps
      • more maps means players won't world battle field very well
      • Black shround vs Fog of war
        • reveal resources
      • Size does matter
        • Bigger isn't better - people want to be in the combat right away,
        • design as small as make sense for # of players
  • Matchmaking
    • Less buckets is better
    • What type of game play will it be
    • Don't give players too many choices, no one in your matchmaking bucket
    • Feedback on system - LFG doesn't give feedback, AV is in queue
      • momentum works against you so if matchmaking doesn't work, it falls aparat
  • E-sports
    • Decide upfront if you want an E-sport game
    • Replays
    • Spectator mode
• If a player beats me

Questions

• World of Warcraft not designed to be E-sport game, now retro-fitting, I hope one day we can get a spectator mode into it, but it's non-trivial
• Why don't we have stats on server on maps like there is in Warcraft 3.
  • We consciously don't put up race versus race stats (Orcs vs Undead), you put that on the Web and players will jump onto Orcs
  • If we put up there that alliance always wins AV, horde will stop playing
  • Can balance stabilize: Starcraft is pretty well balanced, need
  • Warcraft: Cross-server interaction,
    • hardcore stance that we wanted realms to be their own communities
    • softening up - battlegroups, matchmaking (arena), battlegrounds (queues)
    • cross-server chat a possibility
  • Philosphy on super-weapons - is this for all games or subscription games?
    • For PVP, did the other side feel like there was no way they could have stopped it