Balancing balance to achieve equilibrium. Plus features coming soonTM
(Fair warning: This post has quite a bit of math numbers and whatnot in the first half or so, if that's not your thing, skip down and find where the features coming soon starts)
Balancing has proved an arduous task, particularly with trying to figure out how to properly have things like stat nerfs in the game. I'm trying to move away from static % numbers as these make it incredibly hard to make high-effect jutsu at lower ranks without rendering higher ranks useless. For instance, if you have a Genin speed nerf of 33% for 3 turns, which equals out to ~100% total effect, then what are you supposed to do at Jonin? 40% speed nerf for 3 turns? It becomes a game of either making higher ranked jutsu stupidly OP, or making lower ranked jutsu so low they're useless. 10% speed nerf for 3 turns, anyone? Kappa
The key to making jutsu balanced at all ranks is to copy what is probably the most balanced effect in the game: Residual damage. Residual damage is perfect, because it's based off of the damage of the jutsu, which is a pure expression of its strength. The only external factor to consider with residual damage is that doing 1000 damage over 3 turns is actually less valuable than doing 1000 damage in 1 turn - over 3 turns someone can use a defense buff, a heal, etc. So for a 3 turn residual, it might be set to do 1100-1200 damage, in order to compensate for the possible counterplay from the opponent. Now how do you apply that to an effect like speed nerf? This is something I've been pondering, because you can't just nerf speed by 35% of the user's damage, damage is way higher or lower than a user's stats depending on which side of the defense (before/after) it's on. My original solution was to actually factor out the jutsu power and randomness, making it a pure % of the effect user's offensive stats. But the problem with that is that jutsu should have different power levels, and their effects should reflect the power levels. Otherwise we're right back to the % effect making genin and jonin jutsu effectively the same.
After taking a long walk and thinking about it, I realized the answer isn't in fancy formulas or percentages, the answer is to balance the effect with everything in mind. Everything? Like, literally, everything. Health per level, pools per level, damage scaling, jutsu power levels at each rank, the works. Rather than having a variable for jutsu power and not being sure if jutsu power is 7 or 17 at Chuunin, I need to set a structure for that to decide exactly what jutsu power levels should be, in relation to health and a user's stats. I've been planning that type of structure to fix problems like battles being too short because of high damage values, but now I'm realizing that to do all of the effects the way I want to, they need to be planned with knowledge of the structure in mind. I generally prefer to keep things separated so that the code doesn't rely on specific content values, but in this case I think doing so would actually limit the game, so everything needs to be planned with the grand scheme of things in mind. I'm working up "Relative Power Levels" for the different ranks now, which I'll then plan out as to how much stats each rank should have compared to each other, then seeing how much damage users deal with those stats and planning out health and pool values accordingly to make sure battles last the correct number of turns. Then when I know all that, figuring out how much a speed nerf needs to do to be proper at a given rank is a more straightforward task.
After that, the major thing remaining to balance will be the bloodlines - A lot of their boosts have really low ratios that badly need to be adjusted, such as if you train 50/50 bloodline and offense skill, having 300 extra raw damage when your jutsu has ~20,000 raw damage. Someone was mentioning the current boosts on their bloodline and it was something like (with 1000 bloodline skill) 300 raw damage, 30 speed, and 20 intelligence. Which is basically crap, crap, and super crap. So yeah, that kiiiiinda needs to be fixed.
(END MATH BALANCING NERD RAMBLES, BEGIN NEW FEATURE HYPE)
Aside from the boring balance stuff, what new features are coming soon? For starters, stat gains in PvP battles. There will be less of a chance of getting one from a spar compared to a fight, and I'll probably add some tracking to see just how close the battle was and give a higher chance of reward if it was a mortal fight to the death that was close, rather than just a one-sided stomp. You learn the most when you're in a fight that you almost lose. Also on the shortlist are some usability features like character counters on chat posts/private messages, more organization in the shop so you can easily determine the rank of the various jutsu or items, adding combat to missions so we can finally introduce B-rank missions (I know everyone just loves picking up garbage with their team, but getting to cut loose and shoot a few fireballs is a nice reprieve once in a while). And coming in the next ranks (Jonin hype!) are things like Clan leader positions and tools/controls, also probably clan training (Would be nice if you had someone to help you learn how to use your BL jutsu, wouldn't it? A senior clan member NPC with experience in the bloodline might be able to), maybe the summoning system so everyone can summon pet cats every 3 seconds, and the long-discussed layered genjutsu system (which will be accessible to Chuunin as well, not just Jonin). A few other things are on the possibilities but not decided for Jonin yet.
Before delving into too much work on the Jonin rank, I'm focusing on reviewing, reworking, and polishing up the current state of the game, especially with regards to content. Now that the stat caps are higher and players have longer to go before hitting the ceiling of how strong they can be, there's more time to go back over things and make sure everything is all g before adding new stuff.
Balancing has proved an arduous task, particularly with trying to figure out how to properly have things like stat nerfs in the game. I'm trying to move away from static % numbers as these make it incredibly hard to make high-effect jutsu at lower ranks without rendering higher ranks useless. For instance, if you have a Genin speed nerf of 33% for 3 turns, which equals out to ~100% total effect, then what are you supposed to do at Jonin? 40% speed nerf for 3 turns? It becomes a game of either making higher ranked jutsu stupidly OP, or making lower ranked jutsu so low they're useless. 10% speed nerf for 3 turns, anyone? Kappa
The key to making jutsu balanced at all ranks is to copy what is probably the most balanced effect in the game: Residual damage. Residual damage is perfect, because it's based off of the damage of the jutsu, which is a pure expression of its strength. The only external factor to consider with residual damage is that doing 1000 damage over 3 turns is actually less valuable than doing 1000 damage in 1 turn - over 3 turns someone can use a defense buff, a heal, etc. So for a 3 turn residual, it might be set to do 1100-1200 damage, in order to compensate for the possible counterplay from the opponent. Now how do you apply that to an effect like speed nerf? This is something I've been pondering, because you can't just nerf speed by 35% of the user's damage, damage is way higher or lower than a user's stats depending on which side of the defense (before/after) it's on. My original solution was to actually factor out the jutsu power and randomness, making it a pure % of the effect user's offensive stats. But the problem with that is that jutsu should have different power levels, and their effects should reflect the power levels. Otherwise we're right back to the % effect making genin and jonin jutsu effectively the same.
After taking a long walk and thinking about it, I realized the answer isn't in fancy formulas or percentages, the answer is to balance the effect with everything in mind. Everything? Like, literally, everything. Health per level, pools per level, damage scaling, jutsu power levels at each rank, the works. Rather than having a variable for jutsu power and not being sure if jutsu power is 7 or 17 at Chuunin, I need to set a structure for that to decide exactly what jutsu power levels should be, in relation to health and a user's stats. I've been planning that type of structure to fix problems like battles being too short because of high damage values, but now I'm realizing that to do all of the effects the way I want to, they need to be planned with knowledge of the structure in mind. I generally prefer to keep things separated so that the code doesn't rely on specific content values, but in this case I think doing so would actually limit the game, so everything needs to be planned with the grand scheme of things in mind. I'm working up "Relative Power Levels" for the different ranks now, which I'll then plan out as to how much stats each rank should have compared to each other, then seeing how much damage users deal with those stats and planning out health and pool values accordingly to make sure battles last the correct number of turns. Then when I know all that, figuring out how much a speed nerf needs to do to be proper at a given rank is a more straightforward task.
After that, the major thing remaining to balance will be the bloodlines - A lot of their boosts have really low ratios that badly need to be adjusted, such as if you train 50/50 bloodline and offense skill, having 300 extra raw damage when your jutsu has ~20,000 raw damage. Someone was mentioning the current boosts on their bloodline and it was something like (with 1000 bloodline skill) 300 raw damage, 30 speed, and 20 intelligence. Which is basically crap, crap, and super crap. So yeah, that kiiiiinda needs to be fixed.
(END MATH BALANCING NERD RAMBLES, BEGIN NEW FEATURE HYPE)
Aside from the boring balance stuff, what new features are coming soon? For starters, stat gains in PvP battles. There will be less of a chance of getting one from a spar compared to a fight, and I'll probably add some tracking to see just how close the battle was and give a higher chance of reward if it was a mortal fight to the death that was close, rather than just a one-sided stomp. You learn the most when you're in a fight that you almost lose. Also on the shortlist are some usability features like character counters on chat posts/private messages, more organization in the shop so you can easily determine the rank of the various jutsu or items, adding combat to missions so we can finally introduce B-rank missions (I know everyone just loves picking up garbage with their team, but getting to cut loose and shoot a few fireballs is a nice reprieve once in a while). And coming in the next ranks (Jonin hype!) are things like Clan leader positions and tools/controls, also probably clan training (Would be nice if you had someone to help you learn how to use your BL jutsu, wouldn't it? A senior clan member NPC with experience in the bloodline might be able to), maybe the summoning system so everyone can summon pet cats every 3 seconds, and the long-discussed layered genjutsu system (which will be accessible to Chuunin as well, not just Jonin). A few other things are on the possibilities but not decided for Jonin yet.
Before delving into too much work on the Jonin rank, I'm focusing on reviewing, reworking, and polishing up the current state of the game, especially with regards to content. Now that the stat caps are higher and players have longer to go before hitting the ceiling of how strong they can be, there's more time to go back over things and make sure everything is all g before adding new stuff.
So, that other ninja game is getting a new core, and what about the avatar game we've heard about?
These two things are actually surprisingly related. TNR Core 3 has been teased now with screenshots from the beta, and I haven't seen the entire game so I won't try to speak to the core gameplay, but reports are that it looks nice, and for sure the interface is a big upgrade over C2. It has a few things that SC currently doesn't such as quick travel and health/chakra/stamina bars on every page. I'm planning to introduce that kind of all-the-time information interface in my next level of game standards which starts with LoE, and will then be retroactively applied to WoB and SC. The rest of C3 I don't know too much about, but frankly I'm not too concerned with. And I don't mind if people talk about or link to TNR from SC, because my philosophy is that I want to make the best games out there. If someone else's game is better than mine, that means I need to improve mine. I strongly believe in the core concepts of SC, which is to go back to the roots of what makes Naruto enjoyable and capture the feel as much as possible in a browser game. In addition, the plans I have for LoE far surpass anything I've seen from WoB, SC, or TNR to date. And I'm super excited with every rank I release on SC because it's another step closer to starting the real development on the game that will more closely realize my vision for what kind of game I want to make. I'm keeping most info on that under wraps because until the entire thing is released, I don't want little trickles of information, I'd rather surprise everyone with it all at once. And previously I've had people copying systems I've done - While this isn't necessarily a bad thing because it builds the overall level of games up as people integrate more and more developments, I'd rather people not be copying them before I have a chance to really let everyone see the whole product. I feel that when people see it, they'll realize what I'm going for and if they like what they see, they'll play it and not be distracted by anyone copying things.
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