It would be nice to live in a world where it makes sense, it makes you easy to beat game design issues with the raw power of mathematics and point on spreadsheets Unfortunately, we don't live in that world as Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer backed up— recently dispensed with a grain of wisdom: Balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance, balance This unpleasant reminder was delivered via a recent YouTube video on the developer's channel (thanks, GamesRadar). In response to a question received on Tumblr, Sawyer shrugged and said, "I don't really believe that people spend a lot of time in 'simulation land' before they play the game." Because it really does not matter.

Sawyer recalls that during the development of Fallout: New Vegas, he set up a spreadsheet to tweak the game's weapons. But that was the case in the sketch before drawing the rest of the game development owll:"I made a spreadsheet that listed weapons by ammo type and did some relative comparisons with the damage threshold...I used it for a few months, maybe.

Sawyer says the last time he accessed the document was "2010/3" and, as he says, was "prior to shipping the game." Released in 2010, "New Vegas" means that the veteran dev has been flying in the seat of his irradiated pants for more than six months. 

"Ultimately, it's about practical effects in the game," Sawyer argues. "You just play with it."He's not completely scrapping the idea of making a dedicated test level to rinse the numbers, but "Most of what I've done is [real] game levels, I run around the area around Vault 3, then go into Vault 3 and test my weapons against enemies in that area.

"It's really important for me to see how those things actually feel."

This is not entirely new wisdom. Earlier this year, Hugo Martin, the creative director of Doom (2016), answered a question about how the development team balanced the destructive BFG. Simply put, they didn't: "It's the franchise's iconic awesome gun, but it's the "kill all" button."

It's only flanked by weapons, but after recent tweaks to the solo mission overwhelmed players with new rich patrols, Arrowhead Games actually saw this in Helldivers2, noting that players had previously only won 4/1 of the enemy regiments that a team of players would win, but other factors were not." Before changing for that

As Sawyer points out, "Once you get player feedback, you need to listen to player feedback," he correctly points out, "but that doesn't necessarily mean you act on it.""

Even though we finally scrapped the spreadsheet, Sawyer still sees it as a valuable part of the process: "Most of it is spreadsheets"

Now in fairness— Fallout: New Vegas is a single-player RPG, The balance between the different options is less important than making sure that everything is viable at the baseline. If a player doesn't stumble on a broken combo, they get angry because, as the old adage says, what you don't know can't hurt ya,

Weapon mouthfeel is still very important in multiplayer games, but it will fall on the roadside in favor of an even playing field more often. I'm not sure what to do. But it can be very difficult to find the level that the field should be.As if Destiny2's change to one of the guns was controversial because it was nerfed for raid reasons in 2022 — just as balancing itself is susceptible to vibes, so was the community's knee reaction. Sawyer is probably right, it's a vibe all the way down.