Today I came across this post on Slashdot:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/06/14/1147214
I’d like to expand upon the idea of an Equalized Conflict Generator some more. My thoughts on aspects of a level generating conflict where abilities and interaction with the environment based on which team you’re playing on were originally solely base on Team Fortress 2. However, this idea can be implemented not only in the FPS genre but many others.
Giving teams or players different sets of abilities and interactions with the level presents itself to be quite a task in balancing, especially if the development is still undergoing balancing in core gameplay. This can be alleviated through tight communication between the game designer(s) and the level designer(s). If the teams structure is such that the level designer IS the game designer as well, that is even better. Basically, anyone involved with using aspects of level design that modifies the gameplay in any significant way (and it could be argued that the level itself inherently does modify the core gameplay, which it does (I’ll get to that in a later post)) needs to be aware of the cascading changes that go both ways. Balance is key in any design and using non-quantative ideas such as colour for camoflage in multi-player and trying to balance that with a totally different aspect such as traps or weapons may seem ridiculous. Putting traps in a multi-player map that are accessable to players on both teams is easy. Traps accessable to one team and not the other is an unfair advantage and how in the hell would you know whan that is balanced with the other team’s ability to blend in with their surroundings?
This form of asymmetrical design is harder to balance, but I believe the end result of balanced gameplay through this asymmetry would be well worth thwe extra work and thought involved.
