I have started adding races to a project I have going–a QuickMUD (Rom deriv). I want to proceed carefully so as not to have any super races running around. I wanted to use a point system where each race is compared to human, the standard race. Adding bonus skills/affects/higher stats would increase the tnl and cp. Vulnerabilities or low stats would lower it.

Just to get a better feel for this before I get too involved, I wanted to find out how each of you balance races.

You should be careful when taking this approach to balancing races, as usually it ends up leaving humans undesirable (even if they're balanced), because they end up being boring.

The best method, in my opinion, is to do your best to balance them before starting your game, and then use player-base statistics after a long enough period of time to determine which are the most/least popular and adjust accordingly. Players naturally migrate towards the more powerful races and away from the least powerful, so it's a pretty accurate method. Once you have a fairly even distribution, you know you've done the most you can.

I totally agree with the above. My particular game isnt really centered around races so this isnt as applicable in my case however… One method would be to give each race one unique, specific trait or gift. I.e. Dwarves get the stout shield trait, when activated their defense is multiplied by 3 but their attacks take a x .5 penalty lasts X long. With each race having one unique power or gift, even humans, and then a couple detractors, or resistances that fit your theme you can make each race interesting in a different and fun manner.

I don't like the tack where by any race is inferior to another because it lacks something, either make them all the same and just a neutral backdrop, or each one is as good as another, in certain situations. In D&D humans didnt get much but it was what detractors they didnt get that made the most difference. In most muds people started to lump way more cool things onto other races so humans simply became a lame race to play in general. Enforce stat caps based on race, add some unique abilities, and keep it small.

thats my advice.

-Syn

We have 9 or so races.

Each race has a +1 to a single stat, a -1 to a single stat, and +0 to the other two remaining stats. So, the final tally is identical. Class then further modifies this with a +1, a -1, and two 0s.

Humans get a +1 to everything, otherwise, all of the other races have the same stat total.

In addition to this, each race gets a unique starting skill, and an additional skill every 20 levels for a total of 5 racial skills. You just balance those the best you can. Humans get "Cheater" as their first level skill, which allows them to access all of their racial abilities from the first level.

Technically speaking, Humans are losing out on 1 of their 5 racial skills for the trade off of having them all accessible in the beginning. To illustrate:

Racial Bonuses:
Level   1: Cheater (All Racial abilities available at level 1)
Level  20: Scavenge/Move-Find (more gil from kills, able to find random items)
Level  40: Lower TNL (less exp required to level)
level  60: Versatile (Able to use EQ 10 levels higher)
Level  80: ExPrac (One extra practice per level gain)
Level 100: Increased Learn (Increase skills through use faster)

End game, Humans have a little bit of a bonus because of the extra practices, but they aren't overpowered. They basically have an "easier" time playing the game, and players have referred to Humans as the "easy mode". It was a priority for me to try to find a way to highly encourage people playing Humans, for them not to just be the default boring race no one wants to play. Based on our world, Humans would be the majority of the population, and we wanted to influence our playerbase to follow suit.

Well, it worked. I think we found a good balance between making Humans desirable to play but without making them overpowered. Again, they are just simply easier to play, and this seems to have made a significant impact on numbers.

I don't know if any of that helps you or not, but that's what we have done.

This is actually a very common thing to do, concerning humans. I can't say that I like it much, though. Like other games, you're basically limiting humans to the role of "newbie race", in that it's the easiest race to play, but isn't quite as good as the others for those who already know how to play. This usually results in very few human characters that stick around for longer than it takes to learn how to play your particular game (with a few exceptions). While this may even out the numbers if you only take snapshots of your game, it's certainly not balanced from a retention point-of-view.

Why is it bad to have a "newbie" race? It can be very useful to have a race or class that is simple to play, yet not necessarily as rewarding, in order to get people started. There are many games where this is the case. In Morrowind or Oblivion, for example, the warrior-type leads to an easier game than the mage or thief type. That doesn't make the warrior useless or uninteresting; it still serves a very important role.

Yes, but in Elder Scrolls games, a warrior is not "less powerful" than a mage or thief.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a "newbie race", as long as the only difference between it and other races is that it's easier to learn with. Being easier to learn with and equally powerful are not mutually exclusive traits.

There's an argument to be made that a straight warrior type in Oblivion would actually get their asses handed to them in the end. A character in Oblivion needs to be well rounded, you only place some emphasis on the warrior/mage/thief skills during your creation.

Personally I've had a lot of success with the character I rolled up as an almost pure stealth archer/summoner type. His only major failing is when things get into close combat. Not exactly well rounded. The specialization is great as long as I can keep things at a distance, or have room to retreat backward while peppering them with arrows. :)

Well, actually, I'd say that the warrior types are more, not less, powerful at lower levels of play. (By level, I mean competence of the player, not stage in the game.) Put another way, the warrior types have a much friendlier learning curve than the others. My point was that I don't think it's really a problem to have one kind of character that is easier to learn and develop but less powerful in the long run. Again, the point of balance isn't necessarily to make every single possible option exactly equal in terms of end result, but rather to give the same opportunities to everybody. (Gee… that sounds familiar somehow… :wink:)


My warrior type did pretty well. OK, fine, he casts some spells, but they're not major skills or anything.

Making every option exactly equal in terms of "power" is exactly the point I was making. Balance is a very tricky and relative issue. Looking at the "whole picture", a race like we're talking about could be seen as balanced, but rarely do players ever see things from that perspective. Most players are concerned with how "good" X is compared to Y, and this usually excludes how "easy" it might have been to play. Thus, in terms of balance of power, such a race is obviously not as good as the others.

Of course, none of this stops you from clearly designating the race as a learning-only race and letting players know beforehand the situation. Then the race isn't lumped in with the others and can't be compared to them in terms of balance.

I often see people advertise humans as an easy race to play and start with – no particular advantages or disadvantages. Is that what you want to see?

I actually can't recall ever playing a game that didn't make some mention about humans being easier to play, but no, that's not what I meant. I was more referring to letting a future player know that said race isn't going to be as powerful as the others and that it is intended to ease the learning curve or whatever. Simply saying that they're easier to play doesn't resolve the issue, and I have played plenty of games where players put months, and in some cases years, of time and effort into a human character before realizing that they'd never be able to level the playing field in the end-game. It usually sparks a lot of disappointment, complaints, special requests, and other nonsense that could have been avoided with a proper disclaimer.

Of course, I prefer the alternative of just making human an interesting, powerful race on par with the rest of them, but to each their own.

Well, I agree that a disclaimer would be nice. I disagree that all races should be made equal, if only because the newbie race/class/whatever plays such an important role. Is it that you think that humans are such a fundamental race to the game world that they should not be chosen as the newbie race?

No, it's not that so much as it is the fact that I think it's rather silly to have a designated newbie race at all. I mean, if you're trying to make the game easier for newbies, why not just actually make the first part of your game easier instead of making it only easier if you pick a particular race?

Well, that and then there's my opinion that the only reason human was ever designated a newbie race is because it's harder to think up interesting features or abilities for them that make sense than it is for other races.

In many muds that I've seen, races are implemented as little more than a series of stat modifiers. The problem is that those stats often result in classes and races going together in pairs - eg halfling thieves, elven mages, dwarven fighters, etc. In the worst cases, it becomes almost inviable to play other combinations; you can play a dwarven fighter or a weak fighter, an elven mage or a weak mage, etc. Instead of races adding more variety, all they do is punish those who break from the stereotype.

If you want to give the classes stat modifiers, my personal suggestion would be to make sure that each combination is viable. Perhaps the dwarven fighter is still the strongest, but the halfling fighter might be the fastest, the elven fighter might be the most accurate and the human fighter might have the most tricks up his sleeve. If you really don't want certain race/class combinations, then block them, or perhaps provide something different (eg dwarves can't play mages, but instead they can play the dwarf-only geomancer class)

I'm also not fond of the ROM concept of balancing class strength against exp-per-level, particularly not in a competitive game. It's okay when you're still leveling, but once you reach the top level you'll be at your maximum potential - and so will everyone else. Those who took a faster advancement route will never be able to match you in power, just as you will never be able to match those who took a slower advancement route.

If you really want to have 'stronger' races I'd suggest looking at the way D&D handles level adjustments (you count as being X levels higher) - or better yet, racial levels (you gain your special racial abilities by putting some of your levels into a race-specific 'class'). This balances the stronger race bonuses against weaker class bonuses. D&D's approach of giving humans more skill points and (particularly important) an extra feat also makes humans much more appealing, and would be well worth considering if you have a feat-like system.



I don't really have 'races' as a mechanic (they're combined with class from a conceptual perspective), but if I were to explicitly implement them, I'd probably do something like the background system described her....

My sentiments exactly.

-Syn

That system reminds me of what the PvP MMO Shadowbane did. It had a really interesting stat and trait/talent system which was really different then other MMOs, to this day it was by far my favorite character system in an MMO.

Here is a snip of the description of the system : "In the final stage of Character Creation, players are given the chance to flesh out their Characters by increasing and decreasing Attributes, and by purchasing "Talents" and "Traits." A Talent or Trait is a particular gift or area of expertise, such as "Heroic strength", which will, in many cases, allow players to overcome normal racial attribute maximums and/or give them access to hidden in-game powers. As with Races and Base Classes, Talents and Traits are represented by Runestones, and may be purchased with Ability Points.

The Runestones with brown symbols denote "Traits," special advantages granted to a character based on their background, history or training. Traits typically impart a bonus to the maximum value of one or more of your attributes, giving your character the potential to exceed his or her racial limitations such as "Hero's Strength" which will increase a Race's maximum Strength allowance by 10 points.

The Runestones with gray symbols denote "Talents," special gifts or abilities that are granted to a character through birth, fortune, or bloodline. Talents typically provide characters with an intrinsic benefit in some particular area of gameplay, such as "Stormborn" (more resistant to lightning attacks) or "Giant's Blood" (which will increase your strength but lessen your maximum potential in other attributes)."

So, some of those traits may be something like, bowyer born, which gives you a faster draw/shoot time with a bow, and better repairing skills and crafting skills. Or brilliant mind, which gives a bonus to intelligence and learning new abilities. As that snip says these all 'cost' something. That something is a pool of points you start with ( a small amount) to either simply dump into stats (all of which cap at 100) or purchase traits and talents with. The examples I gave were to give some of the other possibilities that they offered, as the ones above show more of a direct combative relationship.

They are not quite as in depth as your system KaVir, but the overall feel is quite similar, and overall the game embranced a more open feeling in class and race design with this line of thinking.

-Syn

I've always thought a rather easy fix to the "races are nothing but statistics" problem is to assign races statistic modifiers rather than higher/lower maximums and such. Coupled with some kind of statistic improvement system that is never capped, this would give the impression of race aptitude (such as orc strength being easier to improve than halfling strength), but at the same time does not funnel players into uneeded/boring stereotypes. While it may be harder or take longer to deviate from these aptitudes, it is still possible and very viable.

I'm personally implementing a hybrid type of system that encompasses both this and a similar 'traits' system like the ones you two are talking about.

Because making the game 'easier' is often at the expense of something else, and some players would prefer a little more difficulty if it means they can have more options and greater flexibility. When the difficulty is optional, it leaves the decision in the hands of the individual player.

My mud has three modes of character creation: 'quickstart' (creating a fairly decent all-round character), 'concept' (select from a list of predesigned character concepts), and 'custom' (design your own character from scratch). I recommend that new players avoid the last option, as those who use it usually end up putting together a bad character - but experienced players much prefer the flexibility of being able to design everything themselves, and I doubt they'd appreciate having that option taken away from them.

The problem still remains that if strength is the best stat for a warrior, the race with the biggest strength modifier will produce the best warriors. That's why I feel it's better to avoid having 'best' stats for certain classes.