How would you stop high-level players from overpowering gameplay in a survival game?

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#1

I’ve come to the devforum to solve my problems :wink:

The setting for this is a survival game, in which you are constantly trying to survive against increasingly larger hordes of enemies, until your entire team inevitably dies. However, the game incorporates a progression system, in which you can upgrade your weaponry and other stats as a result of levelling up, or receiving loot from dead enemies.

How would you prevent high-level players from inevitably destroying through the early waves of zombies, leaving new players to simply struggle as the game inevitably progresses to harder waves relatively quickly? Would you implement matchmaking or use another solution?

#2

You make it so lower level players play on easier modes and as they reach for example level 5, 10 or 15 they are introduced to harder modes.

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#3

Have items scale in a logarithmic fashion. This allows for a power spike in the beginning of the game, with a gradual increase in power as the game continues.

For example, with the game I’m working on, I have items scale logarithmic-ally using this:
f(x) = level / (level + coefficient)
where the coefficient is how much you want the stat to scale as the player progresses

#4

I think I’m leaning towards this, and fragmenting the game into three different “planets” (i.e. a low-level one, a one locked to mid-levels and higher, and one locked to high-levels only), with different loot and difficulties for each planet. This means the difference in power between the end-game players ends up being relatively low (all other things being equal), and they don’t have much reason to hop into a low level planet and cause chaos (unless that’s something they find fun, but hardly something worth their time in terms of progressing further).

However, this also introduces the problem of players moving out of the low-level content too quickly, meaning that, after a while, there aren’t enough other new players to play with. I’ve seen this in some other progression-based Roblox games, where the low level is pretty dead and boring and you pretty much rely on higher level players to “carry” you.

#5

This is a pretty good point. Another suggestion that I can think of is having player stats proportionately scale based on area/region, with a some allowance for high-level players to ‘flex’ their power. The only game that I know of that does this is Guild Wars 2.

#6

I called this in the past:

Gang of Four Design

Alternate/Popular Name: Snowball Effect

Short Description: Given a playerbase, players that has longer playtime progress faster in-game than their new player counterpart.

In essence, assume a playerbase/match with 10 players. One player has the best gear in-game due to grinding/purchases/skill, let’s assume that they kill atleast 90% of the zombies in a round leaving the remaining 10% to be divided amongst the rest.

Answer A: Do nothing
With this solution, newer players progress through your game slowly since they will only get a small piece from the 10%. It is not in the best interest for newer players to play with experienced players. I wouldn’t call this an answer personally. It’s just lazy design.

Answer B: Share Experience/Loot
Results in newer players being carried by stronger players, they might not even be able to fully experience the game, if your essential experience for this game is about how difficult and scary your game is: they won’t experience that, they’ll be exploring around waiting for that strong player to carry them. I played games like this before, I didn’t even play the game, I just waited and made sure I survived while I waited to be carried.

Answer C: Separate by Matchmaking
Some games cover this problem by making sure new players have newer players to play with :slight_smile:. In a Roblox game, that isn’t very realistic. Your playerbase will be divided by skill level, higher leveled players will never touch the new players, since they either can’t or have no real reason to do so. At some point, all your players will be at the very top of your game and newcomers will only see themselves in the game.

Answer D: Don’t make it
This is the option I would take, this game is too risky. This isn’t something for new game designers to accomplish, this is a hard challenge to tackle. Hire an experienced game designer, they’ll do this best. However they will most likely change your game design. Your game’s success is based on how you can market it and gain new players, since the solutions above will only be effective if you always have players will fill in the “slots”.

Answer F: Time-Gates!!!
<sarcasm’> Woweee what an innovative solution! Truly the best!’ </sarcasm’> This prevents players from progressing too quickly, however if there is gap between high leveled players, increase the timegate for experienced players and decrease for new players, allows them to catch up. Will eventually have problems just like Answer C. Not the best solution as well. Lazy Design too!
HOWEVER, there is a plus! If you want to monetize this by allowing players to pay to skip a timegate, think mobile games and some special currency to skip waiting. Man I sure do love implementing game mechanics so that I can monetize it later.

There are more solutions, but this already took some time to think and write about plus and am lazy and doubt that people will read my posts anyways. I keep my own solutions private too, pay up. I can write some more if I have the time.

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#7

I fail to understand how that would help. If high-level players are flexing their powers, how would new players gain loot or experience, since the high-leveled player are taking all the kills leaving the rest with none?

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