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平衡《Gunsport》:非对称性游戏玩法的问题

发布时间:2015-06-10 14:24:29 Tags:,,,,

作者:Brandon Sheffield

单屏多人游戏!这似乎是时下的一大快速发展的主流。而当我们在Necrosoft Games开始创造《Gunsport》时情况还不是这样的。这并不是一件坏事,但这却让这个市场变得更加拥挤了!而这也进一步鼓舞着我们—-因为当更多游戏与我们做着同样的事时,人们对我们的期望也会越大。这是件好事!这让我们能够更严格地要求自己,不过这也不是件容易的事。

最近Engadget的Anthony Agnello询问了我有关创造这类型游戏最艰难的地方,我也希望在此进一步描述这一内容。选择适当的实体是一点,创造多人游戏是另外一点,但因为我是制作人/设计师,所以这并非我所涉及的领域。就我个人而言,创造《Gunsport》最艰难之处在于保证非对称游戏玩法的公平性。也就是说让任何团队能够在公平的体验标准中获胜。在我们于去年的PAX South和RTX等展会上呈现的原型中,我们创造了两个带有相同武器和能量的团队—-如此便能够确保一切足够公平。从内在看来这是非常公平的!用《街头霸王Alpha 3》的表达来说这便是:“全部取决于你的技能!”而现在情况又不同了。为了提供更多深度,我想要让团队中的每个角色都拥有自己的武器,并且这些武器都拥有不同的子弹威力,攻击角度和射击性能。例如你可以拥有一支射程更广的短枪或拥有较窄射程但是更准确的突击步枪。而像这样的设定有可能提高团队间的差异,从而导致更多平衡问题的出现。

完美的对称性

《Pong》是对称游戏玩法的典型例子—-你拥有两支船桨和一颗球。船桨都是一样的,所以你可以轻松地管理玩家体验,不会出现什么“不公平感”。船桨将基于同样的速度上下移动—-这全是取决于玩家的技能以及对于垂直移动的预测。

然后让我们看看像《Windjammers》这样的游戏,即使用了与《Pong》一样的方式,但添加了前后移动的能力(游戏邦注:每个角色基于不同的速度),每个角色的不同投掷力和必杀技。现在你便需要进行更多调整以确保任何角色间的平衡。你希望角色选择是关于偏好的问题而不是像“这显然就是最佳选择”这样。

Pong(from gamasutra)

Pong(from gamasutra)

现在我们将从对称竞争转向非对称竞争,我们需要处理更多元素。我们希望玩家能够选择自己喜欢的带有不同武器装备和游戏风格的团队,并且不会因此觉得不公平。例如我们的刚果团队便是关于多次击球,使用上述提到的突击步枪以及能够击中更远的球的溜溜球抢。而日本团队则是关于更有力且更快速地击中球,但是击中次数比刚果团队少。在游戏中日本射击者的第三级别射击是最快速且最强大的射击,但在你到达这个级别前你需要进行一段时间的“充电”。

Windjammersn Characters(from gamasutra)

Windjammersn Characters(from gamasutra)

我们尽力在大会上呈现游戏之前去平衡这些内容,但是当游戏出现在游戏开发者大会上时,我们仍能够清楚地看到刚果团队比日本团队更强大,因为它更多能,且能够更频繁地击中球,这便是巨大的优势。所以我需要在PAX East之前将其修改过来,然后在PAX的最后几天我又做出了一些调整以迎接在英国举办的EGX Rezzed。

转变

为了解释我们进行的平衡,你需要进一步了解《Gunsport》的运行。简单地来说:你拥有两支团队,她们都尝试着射击一颗球或另一端的地板。每个团队具有两种定位—-看守者,即不能移动但是拥有更广的射程且每次射击都能够二次击球;射击者,可以移动与跳跃,但是射程较窄,且每次射击只能发射一次。同样重要的是,每次当球穿过网时它都将获得额外的点数。最后一点也很重要,即我在GDC时所作出的调整与平衡无关,而是关于分数。从根本上来看,点数将伴随着射击被添加到球体上,但是在我们全新的非对称模式中射击所发生的频率并不高,所以你只能从每颗球中获得3至5个点数,而在玩家反复射击多次后我们将看到他们获得12至15个点数。当团队间存在推拉的紧张感时游戏会变得更加有趣。在《Gunsport》中,球的速度是取决于子弹的速度—-它将与玩家的子弹一起快速移动。幸运的是,我们的首席程序员/首席美术师Decinoge在Unity中添加了一些可调整的内容,从而让我们能够随时做出调整而无需再打扰他。

为了修改射击“问题”,我降低了游戏中每颗子弹的威力,同时也减少了重力值。这意味着球的移动速度将变慢,如此玩家便能够更轻松地击中它,但同时也因为重力的影响,球将更有可能笔直移动,如此玩家便不会察觉到球的速度变慢了。这种方法很有效。尽管我仍需要为此进行更多调整,但是游戏的确变得更有趣了。

关于平衡,我相对于日本团队而进一步降低了刚果团队子弹的威力。因为刚果团队的看守者每次射击可以击中球最多三次,而射击者的溜溜球抢的子弹会在延伸的同时变得更活跃,所以他们总是拥有更多击中几率去弥补较低的射击优势,如此我也能够更加安心地做出调整。经过证实,刚果团队的射击者具有太强的防御性,于是我便缩减了他的射程,这意味着他将不能完全控制领域,就像刚开始那样。

而对于日本团队,我提高了射击者子弹的整体性能(包括速度),因为人们总是很难去判断他们是否击中目标。同样地,我还提高了日本团队看守者的射击速度。在经过一系列调整后,所有的一切都能够有效地运行着。玩家将能够从中获得更多乐趣,并且也不会感受到我们所作出的调整。在《Gunsport》中,更严格的匹配总是比任何爆炸更有趣,而这也是我们想达到的目标。

继续前进

基于你所作出的决定的平衡都很棒,但是真正的问题在于我并未更多地考虑从一开始每个武器设定彼此之间的相互作用—-虽然我想到了这点,但却考虑得不够周到。我花了更多时间去思考在任何特定团队中每个武器是如何相互补充,而并未真正思考它们与其它团队中的武器间的相互作用。我是一个较为保守的设计师,我总是希望在真正掌握事情的发展前先明确游戏中的内容。但这却会导致更多工作的产生,其实我本应可以通过更周密地思考而想出更有效的解决方法。《Gunsport》的程序员兼艺术总监Decinoge便非常擅于做到这点。

现在,游戏已经得到了有效的平衡,虽然还不够完美,但已经不错了,虽然只是针对于其中的两支团队。作为控制过游戏世界中大多数角色的人,我可以保证不管我的团队处于怎样的设置并且面对多有经验的玩家,它都能够获得胜利。但接下来的武器设置系列该怎样呢?我们总共会设定五支团队,所以我不能只是平衡两支团队—-这就像一张相互影响的巨大的武器系统!不过这应该属于另一篇文章的内容了。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Balancing Gunsport: the trouble with asymmetry

by Brandon Sheffield

Single-screen multiplayer games! It seems like they’re the big burgeoning indie zeitgeist right now. It wasn’t that way when we at Necrosoft Games started making Gunsport, but we took too dang long, and now it is. That’s not really a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s getting crowded in here! And there’s a lot of potential for us to screw up – the more games out there that do something semi-similar, the greater the expectation. This is good! It holds us to the standard to which we hold ourselves, but doesn’t make it any easier on us.

Recently, I was asked by Engadget’s Anthony Agnello about the toughest aspect of making a game like this, and I thought I’d expand upon that a bit, here. Getting the physics right is one thing, and doing the multiplayer is certainly another, but I don’t touch that stuff in my role as producer/designer. So for me personally, the toughest thing about making Gunsport is ensuring that asymmetric gameplay is fair. That is to say, making sure matchups allow for any team to win across equivalent experience levels. In the prototype we’d been showing around at places like PAX South and RTX for the last almost-year, we had two teams with exactly the same weapons and powers – so it was easy to make everything fair. It was fair inherently! In the immortal words of Street Fighter Alpha 3, “it all depends on your skill!” Nowadays though, things are different. In order to offer greater depth, I wanted to allow each character on the team to have their own weapon, with different bullet strengths, angles of attack, and shot properties. For example, you could have a shotgun, which has a wider spread, or an assault rifle, which has a narrow spread, but is aimable in an arc while firing. This sort of thing, perhaps obviously, dramatically increases the number of matchups between teams, and thus introduces balancing issues.

Perfect symmetry

Pong is a great example of symmetrical gameplay – you’ve got two paddles, and one ball. The paddles are identical to each other, so you can easily manage the player experience, and nothing feels “unfair,” because it is perfectly even. The paddles just move up and down and hit at the exact same rates – it’s all about skill and prediction of vertical movement.

Then look at a game like Windjammers, which essentially uses the same formula as Pong, but also adds the ability to move forward and backward (at different speeds per character), variable throwing power per character, and character-specific special moves. Now you need to do a lot more balancing to make sure any one character can more-or-less stand up against any other. You want character choice to be a question of preference rather than “this one’s obviously the best.”

Now that we’ve moved from symmetrical to asymmetrical competition, there are a lot more factors for us to deal with. We want players to have a preference for a team that has a weapon set and playstyle that resonates with them, but without feeling unfair one way or the other. For example, our Congo team is all about hitting the ball multiple times per shot, using the aforementioned assault rifle, and a yoyo gun that can hit the ball as long as it’s extended. The Japan team is more about hitting the ball harder and faster, but fewer times, when compared with Congo. The Japan striker’s level 3 charge shot is currently the fastest and most powerful shot in the game, but has a lengthy charge-up time before you can fire it.

We tried our best to balance this in advance of showing it at conferences, but when the game was on display at the Game Developers Conference, it was pretty clear that the Congo team was much stronger than the Japan team, because it was more versatile in terms of what it could do, and hitting the ball more frequently was a huge advantage. So I had to take some steps to correct this for our PAX East build, and then I made some further adjustments for the final day of PAX, and EGX Rezzed in the UK, where the game showed next.

The shift

To explain the balancing we did, you need to know a bit about how Gunsport plays. In brief; you’ve got two teams, both trying to shoot a ball over a net into goals or the floor on the opposing side. There are two positions per team – the keeper, who doesn’t move but has a wider aiming range and gets two shots per volley – and the striker, who can move and jump, but has a narrower aiming range and only one shot per volley. Also important, the ball is worth one additional point every time it crosses the net. That last point is important, because the first thing I changed during GDC was unrelated to balance, it was related to scoring. Essentially, points are added to the ball with volleys, but volleys weren’t happening as often in our new asymmetrical model, so you’d be getting scores of 3 to 5 points per ball, when we’d rather see 12 to 15, after players shoot the ball back and forth multiple times. It’d just massively more fun when there’s a push and pull of tension between teams. In Gunsport, the ball’s speed is simply a reaction to bullet speed – it moves as fast as the players’ bullets can push it. Luckily, the lead programmer/lead artist Decinoge has built a bunch of tweakables into Unity for me, so I can change things on the fly without bothering him.

To fix the volley “problem” I reduced the power of every single bullet in the game, but also reduced the gravity. This means the ball moves slower, so is easier for players to hit, but also is more likely to travel straight because it’s less affected by gravity, so it doesn’t feel like it’s moving slowly. This worked great. Though it can still be further refined, the game became much more fun right away.

Then on to the balancing, I took the Congo team’s bullet strength down even further, compared to Japan. Since the Congo keeper can hit the ball up to three times per shot, and the striker’s yoyo bullet is constantly active while extended, they have more hit opportunities to make up for a lower shot strength, so I could be more aggressive with my deductions here. The Congo striker also proved to be too defensive as a character, so I reduced her aiming range a bit, which meant she couldn’t control the field completely, as she was beginning to.

On the Japan side, I increased the hitbox (and speed) of the striker’s bullets, since people were having an inordinately difficult time gauging whether their shot would hit. Likewise, I increased the speed of the Japan keeper’s shot. After a bunch of tweaking and back and forth, this all worked pretty well. We saw higher volleys, and people were having a lot more fun, without really realizing what we’d done. In Gunsport, tighter matches feel much more fun than blowouts, so this is what we wanted to achieve.

The way forward

Balancing based on decisions you’ve already made is all well and good, but the real problem is I didn’t think hard enough about how each of the weapon sets would interact with each other weapon set from the onset – I did think about it, but clearly not enough. I spent more time considering how each pair of weapons would complement each other on any given team, and didn’t think all the way through how those would interact with each other on other teams. I’m a very reactionary designer, and I like to see something in-game before I really grasp what it should be. But that creates more work, and I might’ve fallen into some better solutions with a lot more thought. Gunsport’s programmer/art director Decinoge is pretty mad about this, as you can imagine!

Nowadays, the game is pretty decently balanced. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there, for just the two teams. As the person who has played this game the most of anyone in the world, I can pretty consistently make sure my team wins no matter what position I’m in, on either team, against relatively experienced players. But what of the next series of weapon sets? We’re going to have five teams total, so I can’t just balance one against another – it’s a big nest of interacting weapon systems! That’s a post for another day. From here on out it’ll be a lot more planning, and a lot more playtesting – wish us luck! (And say hi to us here!)(source:gamasutra)

 


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