Balancing Offense - Capstone

                                     In an effort to further my knowledge of balancing and mechanics, I have read even more of Jesse Schell’s novel, The Art of Game Design to get an idea of how these balances should be implemented.  An aspect of balance I had never thought about was the “risk versus reward”  factor:  moments during gameplay that offer little risk yield little reward, and therefore actions that involve high risk would yield a high reward.  A way to implement this is by creating a light, medium, and heavy version of each attack, all with minor changes.

                                An example of this is a move common to fighting games: the command grab.  A command grab is an input that certain characters can perform while directly next to an opponent.  If the grab connects (aided by the ability to go through an opponent’s guard because of its grab status) a decent amount of damage can be dealt.  But with light, medium, and heavy versions of attacks, we can add variety to each attack by offering the player 3 different versions to choose from.  The light version would deal the least amount of damage if it connects, but it would activate the fastest.  It also has the shortest reach, meaning you would have to be right up next to your opponent to activate it.  The heavy version on the other hand is the opposite:  deals the most amount of damage if it connects, has great range, but activates slower.  This means that if the opponent were to throw out a move at the same time as his command grab, the opponent’s attack has a better chance of breaking through because of the lower priority of the heavy command grab.  The medium version is a nice balance of the two for safer players.
                                Another addition to this strategy of multiple versions of attacks is allowing the player to use their a portion of their “hyper meter” (or whatever meter is being used to display special attack energy) in order to power up a normal attack to have essentially the “best” combination of effects.  Using the command grab as an example again, this powered up command grab utilizing a bit of hyper meter might have the damage of the medium version, the range of the heavy version, and the priority of the light version.  This means that the attack is better in every way, taking the better aspects of each version in order to make the “best” version of the attack.  It is up to the player to choose which one of these to use depending on the situation.  It also adds more depth to the fighting because even if a character has four attacks, if they have four different version of each attack then they can stand a fighting chance.  Sometimes the hyper meter versions of moves have effects like projectile invincibility, or home in on an opponent if the attack is a diving kick for example.
                                In my quest for obtaining balance the next topic I need to research is defense.  As a constant reminder from Schell, keeping both players on a level playing field is ideal, so I must find a way to level the playing field even when two polar opposite characters are fighting.  A lot of fighting game rosters suffer from “bad matchups”, where certain characters are just plain not good against others.  Hopefully the combination of defensive and offensive tactics implemented will combat this dilemma.