<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\subtitle{Game Balance}
\date{Friday, 18 May 2018}

\begin{document}
	
	\begin{frame}
	\titlepage
	\end{frame}
	
	\section{What is Balance?}
	\begin{frame}{Game Balance}
		\begin{block}{Question}
			What is balance?
		\end{block}
		
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Game Balance}
		\begin{quote}
			``All players have an equal chance of winning'' \\
			\par\raggedleft -- Richard Bartle
		\end{quote}
	
		Richard covered a combat example in the first part of the module.		
	\end{frame}
	
	\section{On Strategies}
	
	\begin{frame}{Game Balance}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item What about higher level strategies?
			\item Zerg rush?
			\item Dominant strategies
			\item Metagaming
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Metagaming - Rock Paper Scissors}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item A beats B, B beats C, C beats A
			\item If there are lots of A players, people will play C
			\item Then there are a lot of C players, so people play B
			\item and so on...
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Metagaming - Dominant Strategies}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item What if A is significantly stronger?
			\item No one will use the other two strategies
			\item We want to encourage variety in play
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Can we detect this?}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Can we detect strategies which are overpowered?
			\item Try to punish strategies we don't want to see
			\item We did this earlier in the week with rotate and shoot!
			\item Can we measure this?
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Automated Game Tuning}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Academics seem to think so...
			\item Ryan Leigh et al (2008) - Co-evolution for game balancing
			\item Alexander Jaffe et al (2012) - Restricted-Play balance framework
			\item Mihail Morosan - GAs for tuning parameters
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\section{Game Curves}
	\section{First Move Advantage}

	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Typically affects turn based games
			\item Going first in tac tac toe means either a win or a draw
			\item White has $ &gt;50\%$ win rate over all games
			\item Worse effects if you have resources
			\item We need a way of dealing with this
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage}
		\begin{description}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item[Magic] Second player gets an extra card
			\item[Go] Second player gets 7.5 bonus points 
			\item[Hearthstone] Second player gets 
			\begin{itemize}
				\item An extra card
				\item Mulligan an extra card
				\item Special card worth one free Mana
			\end{itemize}
		\end{description}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item It is really difficult to decide how to balance the FMA
			\item Go players spent 150 years slowly tuning the bonus points
			\begin{itemize}
				\item We do not have 150 years
			\end{itemize}			
			\item Many professional hearthstone players like to go second
			\begin{itemize}
				\item Second player bonus may be too much
				\item Hearthstone players will know what I mean
				\item Which is good - I don't
			\end{itemize}
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Static or Developed}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Static
			\begin{itemize}
				\item All pieces available at start
				\item Don't build up the board over time
				\item For example:
				\begin{itemize}
					\item Chess
					\item Final Fantasy Tactics
				\end{itemize}
			\end{itemize}
			\item Developed
			\begin{itemize}
				\item Pieces are gained over time
				\item Build up the board
				\item For example:
				\begin{itemize}
					\item Go
					\item Magic the Gathering
				\end{itemize}
			\end{itemize}
			\item First Move Advantage much more of a problem in Developed resource games
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Gets worse over time
			\begin{itemize}
				\item Even if you do nothing
			\end{itemize}
		\item Players get more skilled over time
		\item More skilled players exploit the advantage better
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage - dealing with it}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Ensure game has fine tuning of handicap
			\begin{itemize}
				\item Go's point system easy to tune in small steps
				\item Hearthstone's bonus much harder
			\end{itemize}
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}
	
	\begin{frame}{First Move Advantage - dealing with it}
		\begin{itemize}[&lt;+-&gt;]
			\item Metrics help us - we can track win rates
			\item Need ways of tweaking power levels - small increments are better
			\item AIs might help here - known skill levels, running lots of games help us tune our values
			\item Careful, our AIs might not be good measures of possible skill levels
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}

	\begin{frame}{Exercise}
		\begin{block}{Exercise}
			Investigate dominant strategy in Civ style game
		\end{block}
		\begin{itemize}
			\item Download latest copy of the \href{https://git.fossgalaxy.com/ce810/module-game}{game engine}
			\item Look at and run class ``DominantStrategy''
			\item Create new maps that don't display this behaviour
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}	
	
	\section{Watching}
	\begin{frame}{Extra Credits}
		\begin{itemize}
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw - Power Creep
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3b3hDvRjJA - Power Creep in hearthstone
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w - Perfect Imbalance
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w - Balancing for skill
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V5eq4IQ6Go - Delta of Randomness
			\item https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRHdIScOMWQ - Balancing Turn based games
		\end{itemize}
	\end{frame}
	
\end{document}
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