XNA RPG: Bug fixes and gameplay tweaks

I finally got around to dumping all of the equipment, monsters and items into a giant spreadsheet. Mind you, this project was written over the span of a few days so there is intentionally very little config files here. The system is still ‘data-driven’ in that there is a good common object model and the data items are plugged into an internal database.

One of the problems I’ve been running into playing the game has been balance past the first 5-10 levels. As soon as I made the loot drops dungeon level appropriate the game became increasingly difficult.

 Since the primary goal is for this game to be fun to play I decided to go back to the drawing board and re-balance all the stat based stuff in the game. I have a new-found respect for the ammount of work that goes into this area of game development on the top teir RPGs, where you may have many hundreds of mobs and thousands of items.

 The various battle gameplay mechanics are having their algorithms tuned as well. For physical damage the system is basically layed out like this:

• Evasion calculation
• Parry calculation
• Damage jitter
• Main damage calculation
• Crit calculation
• Elemental modifiers

So there is a good ammount of stuff going on that has to to balanced out. The problem that I ran into is that the algorithms I used didn’t scale very well as they were very basic. The only one that seems balanced later in the game is the crit calculation. The main part of the problem is that I hadn’t really setup good operating boundaries for most of the basic stats on equipement. A related problem is that weapons and armor have too wide an array of bonuses on basic stats. Sometimes an uber weapon is all you need to get insanely good chance rolls in each phase of physical attack as it can buff defense, evasion and attack.

Some games have simplified this to where each type of item only boosts one or two player stats. This simplifies things for the player a bit as well because they can more clearly understand the trade-offs of equiping a certain item. At this point I think I will just be dropping one stat bonus from weapons (defense) which will change the way parry calculation is done.

So my general plan to fix this has been:

• Get all stats into a spreadsheet
• Break down player and mob stat progression into the sheet
• Translate the probability and damage calculation into the spreadsheet
• Use the empirical data that comes out of that to tune various pieces of equipment and level progression

It all seems a bit dry and it’s not as fun as designing the spell particle effects was but I’ve been entertaining myself by researching different mythologies and rolling new mobs, mini-bosses, unique weapons and what not into the mix.

Massimo and I were talking the other day too about the beastiary, I think there will be another meta-game created for that. Currently there is a fun meta-game in the llama store where you actually have to buy higher level gifts for your llama to unlock more carrying capacity and items. The current plan is to have an additional meta-game around the beastiary, if you kill a certain number of a given mob type there will be a unique drop based on that mobs equipment. Normally, the enemy weapons are not instanced in the player database but you can change this by hunting down these mobs.

One of the harder mobs that I’m working on is Zahhak who is a figure in Persian mythology. He has a unique weapon called the Usurper’s Blade. This is based on the story of how Zahhak came into his power. This weapon has a unique type of stat leeching and pretty good overall stats.

 Oh one little feature I added to the HUD is nice. You can see the health for any mobs you’re attack or are attacking you now. This was a great addition suggested by my friend Mike. Thanks Mike!

 At some point in the near future I think we’ll need to publish a limited Alpha for PC. We’ll also be alpha testing on our retail kits in a few days. After that we may open it up to more people. If you’re interested let me know.