Points Balancing Help

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#1

Hello everyone, I’m working on a Single Player Roguelike Horror Game. I have a system where the player can get Survival Points and to get these Points the player just has to stay alive. (And yes they can stand idle or go afk to gain points as well).

Now I made it where the player gets 1 Point every 45 seconds. The player can spend these points on Class Upgrades and/or Ammo. The upgrades cost +50 more Points every upgrade and the Ammo is 10 Points for 15 Ammo.

The Class Upgrades, and the Ammo does not save. Only the Points do. I’m not sure if I should change the 45 seconds to 30 seconds or maybe lower.

The ClassGui

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#2

Is there another way to get points? Because 100 points means 4500 seconds of pure waiting, just for the class not to save… I recommend making other ways to get points and completely removing the free points system to maintain a simple game

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#3

I was thinking of other ways, like killing enemies. But the main purpose of the point system is to Survive/Stay Alive. That’s why I was thinking of making the time limit shorter. I could also make it where the time is randomized when you get a point.

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#4

Make it so you get an amount of points depending on the wave, if the skill points are the most precious thing in the game, make it so the player feels rewarded with them.

That waiting system breaks the game, it makes it so players will mostly decide to stay afk instead of rewarding points depending on their skill

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#5

I see, I’ll make it so when the player kills the enemy, they get 3 points. This is because there are only a certain amount of enemies in my game. It’s not a wave game, but I didn’t provide enough information about that so thank you for your feedback!

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#6

I don’t think this will work well at all and will lead to major player frustration.
I’ll lay out some numbers below on why this will be problematic and then I’ll offer some solutions.

So, to start off, I have a game with an average session time of 16-17 minutes which I believe is fairly typical. With your current point info, here is the time it will take to buy stuff.

Ammo - 7.5 minutes (almost half an average session)
Upgrades - 37.5 minutes (this will take over 2 average sessions to accumulate this many points)

To recap, with your current setup you could buy ammo twice a session on average, OR save all your points and purchase one upgrade every third session. I think this will be way to long and most players will get bored and/or frustrated, especially since upgrades don’t save.

Now, on to some solutions. You have a few options.

  • Make it so players earn points faster
  • Reduce the cost of stuff
  • Add other ways to earn points

I see you’ve mentioned getting them from killing enemies which is an excellent option. It gives players a way to earn points faster, but at the risk of dying. You could also always introduce a mechanic where you earn more points the longer you’ve stayed alive. E.g. you earn points every 30 seconds but the number of points given goes up the longer you’ve stayed alive. Players then have the option to try survive for a long time or risk getting killed but get some points from the enemies.

If you’re having a hard time figuring out how many points to award you can easily work backwards.

First, make a list of how much stuff you think players should be able to earn in a single session and how much each of those items should cost. Then simply add up the total cost and adjust your reward rates so that players can earn that much during a session (15-20mins).

For example, say you want them to buy 2 upgrades and 4 ammo. Currently you would need a total of 140 points during a session to do that. If all of those points come from idle then you need to earn 140 points in about 17 minutes. In that case you would need to award 1 point roughly every 7 seconds. You can also round up and award 5 points every 35 seconds which is the exact same rate, just larger point amounts with a bit more time in-between.

If the total points per session that you came up with feels high, then simply adjust the prices of items to be cheaper.

Hope this helps and best of luck with your game :slight_smile:

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#7

Whoa, thank you for all the feedback!
I definitely know what to do now. I’ll go with the enemy killing idea, and make it so the player can get point faster. You’ve really helped me open my eyes and notice how long it would take to get upgrades and ammo. :sweat_smile:
I’m also going to make it where the player can get 4 - 6 Points randomly in 25 seconds.
Once again, thank you for your feedback!

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#8

Try adding permanent upgrades that cost 10x more than normal upgrades. Some users have very bad internet connections, and they usually lose progress in the game if the game does not save their data. Permanent upgrades will fix this, but they will cost more.

You could also design a system where the upgrades save until you die, but they still save if you leave. You’d need to add some sort of a PvP mode where people cannot leave in PvP, or else the data will reset their upgrades.

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