Blog FeedGame Development - Playing Fair
Perhaps the key reason for the existence of The Project is my dissatisfaction with previous games like it, and the desire to do better. Having played two text-based strategy games previously, both quite different, the pros and cons of Mech Wars and NukeZone became quite obvious when contrasted with each other. One of the biggest differences between the two was how they managed game balance. Being online strategy games, each was made up entirely of other human players. Such a system is hence prone to what can only be described as the most important scientific observation of our time. So common is this problem, that computer games these days have disclaimers reminding players that the quality of the gaming experience in multiplayer is too dependent on the actions of other players for any type of guarantee to be made. For a game such as The Project, which doesn’t even have a singleplayer aspect, this is perhaps the most important single issue that we’ve had to deal with.
In Mech Wars, no real system existed. Clans had no size restriction, enormous players could attack smaller ones without any penalty, and clans could form alliances with whichever other clans were willing. They only real balancing mechanism was in the form of stealing goods from other players - the more goods you had relative to your enemy, the less you could steal from him. Exactly how this equation was done was the source of a fair few disputes between the players and the administration. Nevertheless, the freedom each player had was fantastic. The only downside is that smaller players and smaller clans often had a very hard time going about doing anything. While Mech Wars no longer exists on the web (at least at the time of this writing - it has been resurrected numerous times previously), this system is both something I want for my game, and something I want to avoid. I want the freedom for the players, but without the unfair situation for smaller players and clans.
NukeZone took a very different approach. Each clan had a player cap of 20 players. Alliances between clans were forbidden, and there was a very solid restriction on who each player could attack. Only players which were a certain amount bigger or smaller than you could attack or be attacked by you, except during a formal war (where both sides have agreed to it). Now while being a much fairer system than in Mech Wars, it was also stifling. Not allowing large clans or alliances simply meant that there was no real diplomatic aspect to the game at all. The game is essentially an arena, with clans warring with each other for no real reason other than to score points and reach the heights of the clan rankings. Now that may be how some like their games. But not me.
Naturally what I want for The Project is a mix of these systems. I want the freedom and diplomacy offered by Mech Wars because it creates a game atmosphere and an entirely new facet of play which NukeZone doesn’t have - politics. At the same time I want some restrictions like NukeZone has to safeguard against the more extreme methods of unfair play. This involved a fair bit of discussion in The Project’s development forum, but in the end we have a two-tier system which allows for plenty of choice in playing styles while not ruining the experience for new or smaller players. So while remaining as ambiguous and secretive as possible while still being able to describe them, here are those two tiers:
The first is a hard limit. It is every players assurance that if they are small, they won’t be obliterated within a week of joining the game. It is much like NukeZone’s attack limitation - players simply cannot attack each other if the size of their empires is too different. This restriction is relaxed (though not removed) during war time, allowing more freedom for clans who are on a legitimate offensive, while discouraging raids on random players as was often the case in Mech Wars. On the flip side, this also applies to defense - you can’t send units to help your ally if you are too much bigger than him. This is simply put down to fairness - if a small player can only be attacked by other small players, then it makes no sense to allow him to get defense help from a gigantic ally who could take them all on at once. This also encourages clans to try and keep its players around the same size, which is important for other reasons I won’t go in to.
The second tier of the system is a soft limit. That is, while there are limits, they can be breached without too severe penalty - unless it is done to the extreme. In The Project this is done as a score multiplier. Every player starts out with a neutral multiplier (that is, of course, the number 1) and their actions or their clan’s actions may increase or decrease this number, effectively changing their score in the process. While the game will have no clan size limit, bigger clans will gradually have each members multiplier reduced as more and more members are added. Similarly for alliances, the more allies you have the more your multiplier is reduced. Declaring war on a clan which is already at war with someone else does likewise. So, a clan which generally engages in dishonourable activity will find itself with a score problem, and action will need to be taken to regain it’s lost multiplier points.
Naturally this system will need plenty of testing to get it exactly right, but the idea I believe is solid. Players and clans are welcome to do as they please (with some restrictions at the extremities), but consistently acting in a way which might make things unfair will put them at a severe disadvantage in the end. While a fair game isn’t necessarily fun, an unfair game is definitely unfun.
Series Index
- Game Development - The Project
- Game Development - Playing Fair
- Game Development - Communities
- Game Development - The Gap
- Game Development - Frustration
27th January | Reply
Elegantly balancing player freedom and fairness is probably one of the leading struggles in modern game design. With many genres bending towards having open world foundations or having a predominant multiplayer focus the line between too much control and too little becomes more difficult to define.
For a brief period of time I often noticed people rationalizing or forgiving open world games for having unbalanced or unpolished play in given areas. “You don’t have to play it that way” was often the argument attempting to trivialize what would have been glaring faults in a more linear experience. However, as these games become more and more frequent and a large scale GTA-like world is not such a rare event in a game, we are starting to see more developers having a hand in the player’s every-minute experience.
I think on the initial statement of The Project’s hard limits people might scoff saying such a thing would limit a players freedoms and ability to play how they wish. However, the sliding scale and more fluid nature of the restrictions is a very elegant implementation of a very necessary system.
29th January | Reply
A text based strategy game eh? All sounds abit radical to me, but then I feel like I’m getting on abit and I feel I should try some new things. Good luck, I’ll be about to try it out. Noob ahoy!
19th February | Reply
Heh, I loved Mech Wars - also played NukeZone for a while.
Your game seems pretty interesting, although I hope it doesn’t balance on the NukeZone side of things too much. That game was just too limiting and didn’t feature enjoyable, giant-scale & truly strategic battles at all.
Mech Wars could be unfair at times, but that was part of the challenge and the fun in my opinion. Yes there were people who razed people into nothingness, but that was motivation to grow into a powerhouse yourself and return the favour one day. It’s part of the attraction of the game - although a bit less unfairness would indeed have been nice.
Mech Wars was certainly the most enjoyable text based game I’ve ever played. It’s politics made it into one heck of a game, allowing for some truly massive battles to take place. In fact, by the time I joined up for the first time the game had already known 3 gigantic world wars between player alliances of insane sizes (hundreds of clans - each clan being able to reach up to 100 members - on each side).
I teamed up with a real-life friend (and classmate) and we formed our own clan. I handled all the politics: forming alliances, declaring war, issuing public statements, etc. In many ways it was like 10SIX and EVE Online - and this was very enjoyable.
Unfortunately some of our members got attacked by a weaker (albeit same size) clan and we retaliated. This resulted in their clan being wiped out entirely and many clans responded negatively to that (although we weren’t the aggressors). I dissolved the clan and we went our separate ways.
My friend joined up with one of the uberclans at the time (SX I believe?) they had several sections, massive amounts of players, but weren’t very elite. I joined The Praetorian Guard, which was pretty much the opposite but still ranked highly.
If you played Mech Wars around that time then you aught to know what happened. Two incredibly large alliances were formed and waged war for many weeks. Many clans joined in the battles later on, but our clans were in from the start… on opposite sides!
We wasted a couple of clans, weakened some larger targets (orca) and still kept our military strength very high through use of good tactics and focusing. My friends clan on the other hand simply zerged their targets endlessly, with their incredible numbers.
It was only a matter of time until our clan was assigned his clan as their target. The battle between TPG and SX was very fierce and very enjoyable. Many of SX’s territories were wasted in the first day, but some of ours succumbed to their overwhelming numbers as well. In the end I managed to completely annihilate roughly 3 SX territories on my own, until I started being targeted as one of their primary hit territories.
I don’t remember who won in the end, SX and their allies probably because they had a vast numerical advantage (roughly 3 to 1). Still it was awesome just being able to participate in an event like that. It might have been an unfair game, but those kinds of truly memorable battles totally made it worth playing.
It’s unfortunate that Mech Wars is no longer around, but it’s more recent incarnations proved a bit less enjoyable than the game used to be. I’ll be picking up EVE Online now to get my fix of alliance wars - now I just need to reactivate my account and get into a decent corp
19th February | Reply
The story of the formation and victory (yes they won) of SX in the early Mech Wars rounds has something akin to legendary status in the game. So while I wasn’t playing at the time (I joined the next round I believe), I know a fair bit about the history. It’s just one of the things which gave Mech Wars such a rich community atmosphere.
The two-tier limitation system is something I deliberated on for a while. Many times I considered doing away with the NukeZone-style attack limitations and I figured that the soft limits would all be enough to keep people generally in line, while still giving them the choice to be evil if they wanted to. However, memories of being continually zeroed in Mech Wars came back to haunt me, and I decided to include it for the most extreme situations.
They are both definitely things which will require balancing once the game makes it to a playable beta. Mech Wars had a community which could largely keep itself in check - clans and alliances which would stick up for the small guys. This more or less ceased to be the case in the latest round (Late 2005) because there were just too few players and clans were thirsty for blood.
So, I think that my game will be quite different when it starts off and is small, compared to when (or if) it gets big. Things will need to be changed and balanced accordingly. But generally I completely agree that being more like Mech Wars is far better than being more like NukeZone.