I’m currently working on a simulator game, and the development is almost complete. I’ve steered away from balancing my game’s economy (effort vs reward, shop prices, amount of xp needed to level up) until now. What I’m doing right now is using module script dictionaries to store the data for the xp requirement for each level, the different levels of your “backpack”, and the cost and attributes of the upgradable tools, and the rewards of different jobs.
OPTION A:
Now that I’m tackling all of it, I’m not sure what the best approach is. The problem with keeping all this data in dictionaries is that I have to add new data for every single level and customize each value to my liking. That takes a lot of time and isn’t sustainable for when players reach a higher level than what I’ve inputted. The only pro to these module scripts is that it’s 100% customization and I can have full control over each stage of progression or reward.
OPTION B:
My other option is to either scale linearly, or scale exponentially, therefore removing the need to put in any information myself. The game would just calculate it in real time for me for the player and there’s no need to worry about them reaching too high a level. I don’t really want to scale linearly for most of these things since the progression has to get more difficult as you go. However with exponential scaling, I also don’t want to just multiply each value to the power of “x” because I don’t want the values to get insanely high as the player really progresses.
My overall question is, is there a sweet spot between linear and exponential scaling, or should I be sticking with typed out module dictionaries? Is there some math equation that could scale just the way I’d like it to? And what do other developers like you all do when it comes to game balancing and progression? Any feedback is appreciated. 