Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 300 - 309: The Way of Game Balance

Chapter 300: Chapter 309: The Way of Game Balance

Gu Fan continued:

"The second step is to quickly develop more powerful healing BDs, like one that can hang a hot on the entire group directly, or one that adds a buff to the entire group when healing, and so on."

"Third step, once these new healing BDs are developed, and the players start to accept them, with a portion of Starlight Healers switching BDs, we then carry out further balance adjustments to the Starlight Healers, normalizing them."

"For example, if a new healing BD is released, we cut the Starlight Healer’s healing effectiveness by 10%, release another one, cut another 10%."

"After three cuts like this, combined with the previous debuff effect, the healing output of Starlight Healers would more or less be back to normal. Although operationally it would still be much simpler than other healing BDs, other healing BDs would also become viable."

Gu Fan’s words left Lilith in a daze.

"Ah? Not fixing the bug, but directly changing the text description?"

Gu Fan nodded, "Right, what’s the issue? Bugs are nothing more than inconsistencies between game design plans and in-game behavior. Since the players like the current in-game behavior, I will revise the game design plan to make them consistent again. There’s no problem with that, right?"

Lilith was a bit confused, but after thinking about it carefully, she realized it made sense!

In fact, within many game companies, and even among gamer communities, there is a group of ’purists.’

No matter what, as soon as there is a deviation from the original design, they deem it a bug that must be corrected to match the design.

But the issue is, whether something is a bug or not is not just up to the designers, is it?

If you say it’s a bug, it’s a bug; if you say it’s a feature, then it’s a feature.

Even many classic game mechanics or gameplay styles originate from bugs.

However, while some clever companies turn bugs into features, creating a great gaming IP, other foolish companies rush to fix the bugs and thus kill off other possibilities.

At the end of the day, whether something is a bug or a feature isn’t strictly defined.

The original design was concocted by humans, wasn’t it?

As long as it is human-designed, it can be right or wrong. Since the players like this ’bug,’ why not just change the design and establish this ’bug’ as a feature."

Gu Fan went on, "Moreover, even if we decide to make changes, we can’t directly fix the bug.

"Because fixing the bug would completely destroy the underlying mechanics, leading to the eradication of that gameplay with no chance of recovery.

"The best way to fix a pile of crap isn’t to pull out the bottom log, causing the pile to collapse, but to patch it up, or pile some new code on top, or just tweak its numbers a bit.

"It’s simpler and less risky—a win-win."

Clearly, Gu Fan’s suggestion to "add a debuff" appeared to be a mechanic fix, but in reality, it was a numerical tweak.

There are many other methods, such as directly halving the healing output of the Starlight Illumination skill, or even reducing it to a quarter.

But whether it’s simply and crudely reducing the healing amount or mitigating it indirectly by adding debuffs, both are essentially changes to the numbers, and the fundamental mechanics of the BD remain untouched.

"In fact, maintaining game balance and preserving player experience do not fundamentally conflict.

"Many people only see that Infinite Starlight Healing affects game balance, making other healing BDs unplayable, but they don’t quantify how long this impact will last, how big it is, or whether, if something must be reduced, it’s possible to retain the core fun of this BD while bringing its numbers back to normal.

"After all, this is just a PVE gameplay; to be extreme, so what if everyone can clear a legendary T3 raid?

"If it’s a 25-person team, and they clear once a week each with the highest level gear set dropping, then it would take at least 25 weeks for the entire team to graduate, which is nearly half a year."

"In this half-year, the project team has enough time to develop one or two higher difficulty, higher level raids."

"Where’s the core thrill in Infinite Starlight Healing?

"Single-player healing a 25-person team is certainly a thrill, but it obviously has other sources of excitement, like: its operation is very simple, needing only one key to function, allowing newcomers to quickly get started and play a role in the team, creating a strong sense of participation; and it also offers a relaxed and measured gameplay experience because when the starlight is cut, the player needs to find a way to rapidly restore it.

"So, if the numbers are modified, although it won’t be possible for a single player to heal a 25-person team, the advantages of being easy to operate and having a high lower limit can still be preserved."

"Dark Chain has similar reasoning; its thrill certainly comes from its powerful AOE ability, but a large factor is also its cool effects.

"A Lightning Chain goes out, various dark skills are triggered, and suddenly the screen is filled with cool effects—it’s a visually stunning thrill in its own right.

"So, one could limit this powerful AOE capability through numerical means, such as the more skills triggered at the same time, the more each skill’s damage would be reduced; or the triggered skills would also consume a certain amount of mana."

"However, the full-screen effects after triggering will still be retained, allowing players to continue experiencing this lottery-like thrill.

"If the original damage without triggering skills was 10, and triggering 10 skills resulted in 100 damage, then after the change, triggering 10 skills might do 70 or even 60 damage."

"Despite the reduced numbers, the BD still retains its powerful AOE capability. Players can still reluctantly accept it."

"Thus, even if these two BDs are nerfed, some players will quit the game in anger, but evidently more will stay."

"Next, it’s a matter of using the ’add water to dough, add dough to water’ method to continuously enhance the strength of other BDs.

"If the Starlight Healer feels too strong, then boost other healing BDs, no complex mechanics required—just multiply the numbers for the core BDs by several times."

"If thrice isn’t enough, do it five times; if one zero doesn’t work, add two zeros."

"If there’s overflow in healing, then simply increase everyone’s, especially the Tank Profession’s, health ceiling."

"If tanks are too tanky and their damage too high, then open up higher difficulties by boosting the monsters’ stats in raids.

"Like some games that offer an endless mode, where monster stats multiply, granting players higher attribute equipment for each level they clear."