This week we spoke about unbalanced games and how to deal with them. There are many different things that go into a game or when you make changes to one. When reading the Fullerton Chapter about functionality and balance there was a section that spoke about a problem with the respawn spot and how to stop players from being spawn killed over and over again. The solution that the designers come up with has to be enough for the player to be able to spawn back in without dying again immediately, but have to find a way that it also doesn’t mess up the game or ruin the player experience. An example of one of the solutions that Fullerton came up with is having the same number of spawning points on a map should be equal to the number of players in the game. A pro that came out of this is that players have at least one safe point on which to spawn. I liked this because there are many games that kind of use this concept already and it works sometimes. But a con is that you have to design the maps arena specifically to the number of players that are gonna play. Fullerton goes on to explain how maps can’t facilitate a fluctuating number of players compared to other FPS games. In class we watched a GDC video on the balancing for league of legends. Listening to Greg Street talk about the balancing of characters in League of Legends, helps give me an understanding of what developers are thinking when making or balancing characters. I’ve never played League, but I have played other games where you team up with a group of people and you pick a character/champion/operator to play for that round to help your team win. I have run into situations where I see a character and say “Wow that’s not balanced. They’re way too overpowered”. Greg says that balance isn’t everything and that many people have their own reasons for playing specific champions. So just cause they see people playing on champion a lot doesn’t mean that should nerf them cause that will upset players. This week really helped me see what a developer has to take in account when trying to balance a game.