Wanted to note that I'm obviously still learning and everything I say in the video here is just based on my personal experience. Is there anything you disagree with? What else would you add to the list? Looking forward to some inspiring discussions. :)

I recommend playing around with extreme values, to get a feeling for what they do, before settling for the realistic ones. Sometimes you find surprises and new inspirations by doing that as well!

I don't know from where you came out but you, blackthorn and brakeys are the best and more informatic channels in all youtube. Your quality is awesome, your content is becoming better and better. Thank you for everything.

At the same time about weapon balance, bc first shot is instant that means that despite the fact that both guns do 10dps on paper, first one will deal 15dmg after one second and second will deal 12dmg. Also in case of burst weapons like the first one you can use cover between the shots to mitagate damage from someone using second weapon. This is very common in tf2 if you fight shotgun vs a heavy with mashine gun, so both are good depending on the scenario

When I first saw the 3D text, I thought you want to spend all of your time to make videos instead of games. Then I realized that it was basically an interactive app you probably made in Unity. I guess it's one of those "It'll save time in the long run" things. But one thing: If your mouse moves over black text to create black particles, it makes the text difficult to read ;) "Save your game under a different name so you have a copy" - Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! (And when you struggle with understanding how Git works, just make a copy of the repository and give it a different name xD) As for balancing early, it depends. I think you should have a rough sense of balancing rather early on, like "section A comes before B, there A should be easier", but personally I'd put balancing actual precise numbers towards the later part. At least that's what I'm doing for my current game. How much damage a particular attack does under which circumstances - that can be a huge time sink that you don't want to block your early creative sessions. Onto the guns: If there are quick enemies, you might miss 1 or 2 shots of the slow gun but maybe hit 3 shots with the fast one. So I'd consider the second one to be better. And then you said I'm right :D #SoProud. I'm a bit scared about the balancing I will have to do eventually. I think I won't be able to get around large spreadsheets because a wide range of choices have to be playable and that will probably be quite the challenge. ...but that's years in the future so I don't need to care now. Huh, your "Rock Paper Scissors Action RPG" looks funny. I actually had an idea to make a small action RPG that only uses one button. That is, no sticks or anything, not even the menus. The core idea was already done but then I was too lazy to implement anything.

That's good. I like listening to a guy who enjoys what he's doing. 👍

I've started and stopped alot of habits including game dev but I'm doing it more consistently now and honestly even just hearing you talking about these things is really helpful and a bit comforting

great video man every week you get even better at making these videos I can confirm that working on a competitive game is always a gamble with balancing updates like you said - take gambles, just make sure they are smart gambles

I know it's not related to this video (great video btw) but I have two ideas for a final boss in Will you snail!: • AI tries to destroy you, so you have to escape him and lead him to his own traps • You take control of the AI and place traps to destroy him

6:40 On the other hand, if you're overwhelmed by 5HP enemies, then the top gun will be much better. Or if it's not about DPS, or rather, how quickly you can deal a burst of 3-5 damage, then it will be better too. Balancing truly depends on the surrounding factors :D

I just love your handmade programs you use/make to do your videos. So much back end work but the originality is 100% worth it!

I've been watching your channel for a while and I just want to say that your content lately has really been valuable to me and i'm sure a ton of others. Thanks!

0:59 Saw the mouse cursor 😁 Great video like always Jonas

the rock paper scissors situation is effing amazing

love the cool visaul effects and animation in the vid

Thank you for all your videos. I know I'll need them in the future. ♥

a lot of games have test servers like overwatch and pubg to test these things but i doubt that kind of thing would be too good for an indie dev (i wouldnt really know i just assume it wouldnt)

Excellent work, Jonas! You always do such a great job with these videos. The visuals running in Unity were a very nice touch :)

Again thanks for the quality information Jonas! I am currently a designer on a project for the first time and I can see myself going back to this video during the project.

you are a very powerful dude, what you do is incredible

This was incredibly informative, thanks for the great video as always!

Damn dude i think this is one of your best videos. Good work

Awesome video. Love your Unity Powerpoint :D

Hey, I just wanted to say that I respect your work and you’re doing well, keep it up! I’m also working on my own lil game! Sometimes you might wonder if it’s even worth all that hard work, or spend hours trying to figure something out like you said, but in the end the solution was so simple! If you keep going and get a little progress done regularly, you’ll get there eventually though and you might even create something you can be proud of.

First gun is clearly superior if enemy has armor that reduces damage by 1 point, for example. This way, first one has 8 dps while the second one only 5 dps. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw them compared. But it can also be better against enemy with exactly 5 hp, it would take 0.5 second to kill them with this gun and 0.6 second to kill them with the other gun. So the answer would be: it depends on a lot of factors.

also listen to player feedback. A lot of triple A games nerf their most fun mechanics to the ground which in the end only makes their whole playerbase not enjoy the game as much as before. Most of the time it is always better to buff less viable options then to nerf the good options. Or at least have interesting decisions attached to the good options rather then getting rid of them completely. in a lot of cases i feel like the developer did not intent something to behave in a certain way, but it became such a fun mechanic for the whole playerbase which was then removed by the developers since they just soley focus around their vision. sure a developer should always have the vision for all things in their game in check but also be able to adapt to the players.

I love this video, and I love how he presents topics This guy is a genius

Very good info. Thanks for sharing

Love the idea for this video! :)

Wow, with 3d text/titles this time - awesome! :)

Love your videos they're insightful keep it up! At 6:11 (Lets call gun A = 5 dmg/shot; 2 shots/sec. gun B = 2 dmg/shot; 5 shot/sec) I disagree about the conclusion, imo I think it depends the scenario. What if your character holds a limited amount of ammo? lets say 10 bullets? gun A would deal 50 dmg and gun B would deal 20 dmg in total. What about if the enemy has a shield that blocks attacks lesser than 4 dmg? gun B wouldn't have any effect!

Awesome video, very informative. I see you are improving on the graphics design. It may be nitpicking, but watching fullscreen my eyes were exploding because your cam view has a dark background and every 10 seconds you switch to a completely white screen, if you move your mouse over the video playtime bar you can see on the preview a lot of black/white flashing

Thank you

When I was looking how to start with unity I was browsing your channel for how to start and watched this, I remember being so scared of rolling dices with every decision I make. Now I'm working on my first release and looking back it is quite funny seeing younger me stressing thinking game dev is mega stressful (I mean it can be but it isn't non stop pressure usually)

Yay, more video’s by Jonas :)

Math is not just multiplying and adding numbers, that's like saying that medicine is just fist aid. Everything in game design is math, even buffs and debuffs.

This video is so beneficial!

Jonas, you are really a great inspiration. Love from India.

I should have known that you were behind the tight ebb and flow of islander's scoring system.

Id like to add: Make everthing (for example all guns) overpowered rather than underpowered. Make the bad guns better, not the good guns bad.

thanks for teh vid!

Nice videos, very interesting. I would like to see a big game project with you, BlackThornProd, Brackeys and Sykoo it would be the game dev cinematic universe, so epic.. x)

So my problem right now is deciding what the *initial* values should be in the board game I'm making. How much health should someone have? Armor? Movement speed (spaces per turn), how much of each resource should they start with, then how much of each resource should they lose or gain over time? Once I get the basic values in I think I can start designing more of the game around that and deciding which skills and such need to be changed. But that's where I'm stuck right now. Any advice?

Even total placebos can alter balance. Even with identical stats and similarly-sized view models, the noise a gun makes in an FPS can alter how players perceive it enough to change their confidence and intimidation about the thing. There have been cases where both player complaints and actual statistics confirm that mechanically identical weapons are unequal in performance due purely to sound design.

I like this kind of video very much! Getting closer to GMTK which is an amazing channel too:) since we’ll be having mining, trading and management, we’ll have a lot of parameters to balance.. did you ever consider using AI to balance a game?

Do you have any advice on where to find play testers? I’m currently looking to balance my game so this video is perfect timing haha

Nice

With my game (an rpg) I had to scale down health a whole bunch because the starter stats were too low to deal much damage and you’d be sitting there attacking doing 5 damage a turn to an enemy with like 150 hp. This also has to do with my damage formula which could use some work on its own, but that’ll come later when I think of something better.

6:11 faster is usually better unfortunately i'm a bit obsessive with balancing to the point where i don't even finish prototyping but have spreadsheets for the numbers

amazing video Jonas, can you tell me please how to edit your videos ? like what software do you use ? thank you :)

TL;DW: 10. Balance is connected with other game development disciplines. 9. There's more to balance than number parameters. 8. Be ready to change many, _many_ things at one. Don't fear to experiment! 7. Balance throughout development. Start early. 6. Take a look at the mathematics. (But don't obsess about it...) 5. Obtain analytics for objective truths. Try to get as big of a sample size as you can. 4. Be wary of mental pitfalls. (placebo effect, confirmation bias, misleading data, anecdotal evidence) 3. Use rock-paper-scissors advantages and disadvantages. 2. Make changes with positive expected payoffs. 1. Know. Your! Design! _Goals!!!_ For ALL OBJECTS!!!

Daaang ten years making games?! I think I’ve been making games on and off for like ...3?

Morgen sind meine Ferien vorbei, dann komme ich auf den Discord

6:23 Yes, but the gun with less shots is saving more ammo if you fight a boss or a stronger enemy But tbf if its PVE then you can make an funtionality to make it like, go throught enemies

If you added more spread or recoil to the faster shooting one then that would help make the guns similar in power, then for the user it would be more about preference

This will help with my game CHA0S :D

with number 5 i would see it as that time when you said to always keep your game finished every time you add a new layer to the tower you balance the game

The 5hp gun can still perform better against high-hp enemies, if weaving in and out of cover is involved

YES! I'm early :D

Hy Jonas!I work on my game art and all the people says its similar to HollowKnight!Its there a problem if my art style its like that?Or i keep doing that? Thanks fir the video bdw!!

i think by salt you mean how hard it is and sugar how fun it is. you want just the right ammount of sugar. and just the right ammount of salt

13:42 Just a still image of this presents such a succinct depiction of exactly why interacting mechanics make games so much more interesting. I came to this video looking for an answer to "how do you make sure everything is balanced against everything else?" It turns out the answer is "they don't need to be, but everything needs a(t least one) counter." I imagine balancing based purely on "different tools shouldn't be any better/worse than others" leads to limited mechanical depth as everything is just a matter of who has the bigger numbers/who goes first. But this rock-paper scissors design opens up doors to all sorts of encounters with combinations of mechanics that force the player to think about what they're doing. This is probably nothing new to RPG fans huh? XD

The rock paper scissors game is probably the most fun thing ever

3:21 sounded like a discord ad Lol

Hello! I am NoTime. I am currently developing a game called His Journey! I have been working on this project for almost 2 years now. I have a steam page up and a demo coming on the 21st for the Steam Festival! make sure to wishlist His Journey On Steam!

No Donkey... not like a cake. Video Games are like onions! They have layers

5:57 I would make this into an FPS shooter scenario and add a range to the two guns The gun at the top would have more range than the gun at the bottom and give it semi auto fire, it makes it a DMR, has risk and rewards I would give the gun at the bottom lower range but deal maximum possible damage close range and give it auto fire, that makes it an SMG

that editing is crazy is that the same project that u was working on on unity

finally

Jonas : The best way to imagine a game is like a cake Me: Wtf

How did you do the animations in the VideO?

5:53 one of the guns deals less overkills tho

I like to make enemies glow, (not much, but still visible) on some of my games cause you may not be able to see them

I think it depends on the things you're shooting. If each enemy has 2hp, well I know which gun I'd pick. If your enemy has 5hp I know which gun will feel more satisfying. If they have buckets of hp then it won't matter as much.

If there is a giant complex game like SLG war game, giant spreadsheet is indeed, just make a clarification

Experiment by playing with my knob. Got it

and the most important point is most of the time real balance is boring, not needed, and sometimes even counterproductive.

all you need to know is: Make a game that is hard to master, but easy to start

2 damage per shot with 5 shots per second is better, because you get more chances to hit the target.

What is the game at 17:56?

yay Yay.

At the time of watching this, Jonas has 99.9k subs

Machst du auch Videos auf deutsch? Fände ich leichter

At the moment I am making a top down shooter where guns have almost 30 parameters to tweak. I'm a bit afraid.

I think the gamble part was too long compared to the amount of information it delivered. Super helpful video though!

The upper gun is better! Maybe the lower gun doesn't make you lose any damage, byt when attacking a single enemy (you know, like every single shooter) before going for the first one, the upper gun: Has more ACCURACY: Same damage, less shots. Is ECONOMICAL: Same damage, less ammunition. :-)

"Make a backup of your project, maybe under a new name"... Just use source control everyone please it makes your life so easy.

Hey, just wanted to say hi.

quick note: Don't ignore tons of negative feedback. If one person doesn't like it, that's fine... but make sure other people don't dislike the same thing.

should i start eating my games then?

7:43

15:09

You add salt to your cake??!

Oof its called dice not die

Anecdote is spelled with a c in English.

This is the most German accent I have ever heard.

parameters

Developers of fortnite should watch this video.

idk why i get unreasonable angry when coding is boiled down to "changing some values"

*too much salt* dsp is interested.