Relic's balance team did a fantastic job and was instrumental in ensuring the final game had an overall sense of balance and feature continuity. Made up of RTS fanatics, the Balance Team proved that highly skilled RTS gamers tend to be highly skilled gamers, period. Playing the game and submitting feedback every day in the final months of the project, they injected a level of balance that has resulted in an action game with strategic depth found in few multiplayer console games.
When Bugs Attack
Jeff Brown (Design Director on The Outfit) and I were playing the game non-stop over the holidays to get the tuning tightened up before we shipped. Jeff kept commenting that everything was taking too long to die. I didn't completely agree with him because we hadn't changed many values for the past two months and everyone was happy. No one else was complaining; it didn't seem possible that something fundamental could have changed, and it would be a huge risk to retune all the weapons vs. heroes at the eleventh hour. But he had a point; something didn't feel quite right.
We did some tests and, lo and behold, it was taking three shots with the Sniper Rifle to kill an enemy. We then knew something was wrong, because it should only take two shots (or one head shot) to kill an opponent. Turns out we had increased the health of heroes in the single player campaign the week before using a campaign specific multiplier. Jeff Howell, one of our programmer ninjas, made that multiplier apply only to single player and the problem was solved.
So when you get your hands on The Outfit and have an opinion on the low cost of Destruction on Demand or some other tuning issue, please feel free to send me, Damon Gauthier, 25 cents and your opinion. I hope you enjoyed my little bit about the tuning and balance done on The Outfit, and perhaps I'll see you online.
