Week 09 - *Cyberpunk and Game Balancing*

When I first started reading the chapter by Schell this week, I was greeted with a question: "Have you ever looked forward to playing a game that you were certain was going to be incredibly fun, only to be terribly disappointed?" I immediately thought of the first time I played Cyberpunk 2077 when it was released. It looked amazing- the graphics, the storyline, the trailers/gameplay! But my first time playing I was extremely disappointed. The graphics were decent, the story was confusing, the missions were unclear, nearly every item or NPC would glitch, and the gameplay was often grotesque. 

I noticed one type of balance the game developers did well and one type that they did not. To start, I think the game had a really good balance when it comes to triangularity- or the concept of high risk, high reward/low risk, low reward that we saw in the reading by Schell. Cyberpunk 2077 does a really great job with this type of balancing, as the areas in the game are based on the players' level. Higher-level areas are harder for lower-level players but have higher-level loot,  while low-level areas are easier. It's entirely up to the player to explore the areas they want, as long as they can handle it. I loved this concept and thought they did a great job with the balancing of this one type of experience in the game.  

Something Cyberpunk 2077 really struggled with was giving the game, and the players meaning. An important type of balancing from the reading is meaningful choices. Since the missions, storyline, and side-quests were all such a blur, it was hard for the player to understand what they were trying to accomplish, and the choices available often led to the same outcome, regardless of which path the player took.

Overall, I think I can carry these observations into the Battle-Battle project to make informed decisions on how to balance characters in a game, as well as the game itself. I'm excited to use the balance types of character, skill v. chance,  etc. when creating our game!