Hello all,
I've been mathcrafting the balance to my game prior to having people play it, so I can have a basis for future tweaking. I've done this by assigning numeric point values to abilities in my game. To break it down, each card has
The Abilities can appear on different cards, but some cards are able to play them as a tap vs a sacrifice (thus a major factor in my mind, and through playtesting)
The modifier influences the end result. A safe ability could provide a +1 to something, but it could also provide a +3 on a different card. Additionally, a Risky action could have a + modified to make it slightly less risky.
All abilities are rolled on 1d6. Target difficulty is generally 4.
I don't expect to nail 100% accuracy on the first pass, but I use this sort of setup to create a relative balance. I modeled it after the lessons I learned from conducting Planning Poker, using Story Points as a relative measure of difficulty. Essentially, I may not know if ability 1 is more powerful than ability 2 in absolutes, but in a general scale, I feel comfortable rating it higher or lower than another ability (through some playtesting of the abilities). Also, this is how the TCG designers I worked with did their first pass on balance.
I was wondering if anyone else had different approaches, and how you balanced over time. For me, its important to have metrics and benchmarks, and after a session have the ability to compare my numbers and relative rankings with what the players felt.
This is a sample of a sheet I'm using. The "rarity" I use as a guide for the number of points a Crew Card should have. I try to have, for every 6 cards, 3 Common, 2 Uncommon, and 1 Rare level of power.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al8hu3E24Pl7dHJQM1hVR1BGc0Z...
So how do you balance your games?
