Most game designers tend to just modify the parameters of the entities (the objects, items, creatures, abilities, etc) of their games arbitrarily, in an undisciplined way. They just freely change each parameter however they want, and believe (falsely) that the only part of the game’s balance that will consequentially change is the specific thing they modified.
However, this is actually not a safe way of making changes if you care about preserving a game’s carefully calibrated pre-existing balance. Many changes have unexpected effects. It is a common experience among game designers that after making a bunch of seemingly simple changes the balance of the game seems to have shifted in a frustratingly unpredictable way. Luckily though, there is an easy way to often greatly reduce this effect.
Continue reading Game Dev Tip #1: How to make changes to gameplay without screwing up existing balance