Hey everyone!
For today's blog, we wanted to talk about a topic that is always a hot topic in the community of almost every game. Which one? Well, it is about the economy of the game; from the initial approach to the current state of the game, after the feedback players provided during OpenDevs and Insiders (right now).
To talk about this specific topic we will host Armand, Expert Game Designer.
If you are not a fan of seeing a lot of numbers/maths, do not worry, as it covers other things, such as the rationale of what things we have changed and why (which is super interesting, from my point of view)
The Basic
Endless Dungeon has a door-based economy. The more you explore the dungeon, the more resources you produce, but the more you need to spend to survive. We have 3 main Resources (Food, Industry, and Science) that increase when you open a door. We also have 3 secondary Resources (Dust, Medkit, and Crystal Shard) that are not door-based and can be obtained by exploring the Dungeon. Today, I'm going to focus on the main Resources, as there's already a lot to say about them.
To build a balanced economy, we need Sources (production) and Sinks (consumption). For Sources, we have the Doors (astonishing for a door-based economy), the Generators (which increase the door-production of a main Resource), the Tanks (scattered around the Station), the Crystal Slot (when the crystal bot reaches it for the first time), the Chests and the Boss Rewards. As for Sinks, we have the Generators construction, the Turrets construction (in Industry), the Research Machine (in Science), the Hero Upgrader, the Medkit Dispenser (in Food) and the Merchant.
To offer you the best possible experience, we have to find a fair but challenging balance between the sources and the sinks.
The rationales
At Amplitude Studios, we always define the rationale for our features to ensure that we achieve our goals when implementing them in the game. Here's the one we defined for Endless Dungeon's economy:
- Overall feeling of scarcity of Resources
- All the 3 main Resources are key to be used
- What is more expensive is stronger
- Multiple Sinks per resource to force you to make choices
- Impossible to unlock all economy-based content within a single run
The balancing during the Open Devs
All along the OpenDevs of 2022, opening a door gives you 2 Food, 2 Industry and 2 Science. If you build a Generator, you increase the production of one of the main Resources by 4. With this setting, Generators are the main pillar of Resources and their destruction could ruin your run and lead to game over. It was this argument that led us to make the major balance changes, but if you look closely there were many other flaws:
- Too great a difference between an economy based on 0 Generators and an economy based on 3 Generators
- Unbalanced Sinks on the 3 main Resources (Food, Industry & Science)
- Linearity in Hero Upgrader, Research Machine and Medkit Dispenser prices
- Low cost of Generators while they have a big impact on the economy
- Lack of variance in Turrets construction prices and Weapons purchase prices
A new hope methodology
Thanks to OpenDevs, your precise and qualitative feedbacks, and the analysis of the collected data, helped us pinpoint our new approach.
To rebalance the economy as a whole, we change our balancing methodology and begin to work with scenarios. So, we define typical scenarios for the use of the system, the mechanics, and the content to establish radically opposed situations but well-balanced. From the state of the economy, it is possible to identify the average prices for each content in the game. By combining these typical scenarios and average prices, it is possible to evaluate the balancing of the economy and to correct its invisible weaknesses.
The minimum scenario represents the content required to progress (but not complete) for new players.
The maximum scenario represents the content required to complete a run for core players.
The average scenario is established from the min and max scenarios to serve as a reference in the balancing.
The impossible scenario represents all game content unlocked for 3 Heroes.
By applying this method, we identify 2 major problems in the OpenDev balancing:
- For each scenario, the gap between the Sources and the Sinks is too large. Although this contributes to the feeling of lack, it can also generate frustration. By reducing this gap, it is possible to keep our intentions and reduce frustration.
- The analysis of the Sinks by type of resource reveals that the quantitative needs are very different, which makes one resource more important than the others.
The new balancing for Insiders
To solve the problems exposed previously, we decide to change the gains of the Doors (2 → 5) and Generators (4 → 5):
- To reduce the gap between 0 and 3 Generators' economy
- To present the economy via multiples of 5 and 10 (the simplest multiplication table)
- To be more generous with average players while being harder on good players
Then, we update the formula of Hero Upgrader, Generators construction, and Research Machine:
- To have quadratic and non-linear prices
- To better balance the Sinks between the 3 main Resources
Finally, we update the calculation of Turret prices:
- To rebalance the price of Lv1 turrets (by type) according to min-max prices values
- To increase the cost of Lv2 and Lv3 turrets by 1 and 2
- To increase from 6 unique price values to 13 (x2)
- And thus answer the rationale: what is expensive is powerful!
After all these changes, we think we have a more balanced economy, adapted to new players as well as the most hardcore while respecting our rationales. And to prove it to you, what better way than with a final round of spreadsheets and graphs to compare balancing before and after? (note: 'current' = OpenDevs balancing and 'new' = Insiders balancing)
The balancing for the release
Although we're pretty satisfied with the new balancing, the work is never totally finished, and we'll be continuing to make various small changes to find a formula that responds to your feedback and our rationales. For example, we currently find that the scarcity feeling isn't strong enough, so don't be surprised if we test a few tweaks on this in future Insiders releases.
Finally, I'd like to thank our Live Ops team for providing us with top-quality tools for tracking game data, and our Community Management team for bringing your voice to our ears and providing us with invaluable feedback to help us find the best solutions.
Hope you like all the changes and the rationale we have been following, as it tries to solve some of the main frustrations of players and make the game much more fun (from my bias perspective of course)
Have a nice day ^-^
