《骑马与砍杀2：霸主》开发日志（96）——关卡设计师Paul Kaloff的问答环节

贤狼赫萝 · 发表于 2019-2-15 02:58:24

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In a real-life battle, clever commanders will look for as many advantages as possible: they will try to get the high ground, outnumber their enemies, flank and surround them, strike by surprise… If they could do so, they would only engage battle when odds are overwhelmingly in their favour, so the battle ends even before it begins. Video games, on the other hand, are supposed to be fun – and for that, they need to be fair, especially in multiplayer. If you see yourself in a disadvantaged position, you should be there because of taking the wrong decisions, not because the game failed to find a balance where it’s the one with the best skills who win. In a game with deep gameplay, such as Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, with so many different factions, troop types, weaponry, terrain, etc., finding that delicate balance is particularly tricky. Our level and game designers work hard to make battles as fair and fun as possible; today we talk with Level Designer and Assistant Game Designer, Paul Kaloff, to find out what he is doing for the game. By the way, if you think his name and face rings a bell, you’re right: you probably saw him in last Gamescom’s livestreams!

卡拉迪亚的战士们，大家好！
在现实战斗中，一个机智的指挥官会尽可能地寻找优势：他们会抢占制高点，以优势兵力对抗敌人，侧绕和包围他们，来个突然袭击……如果他们能做到这些，才会让他们参与战斗都有极大的优势，如此战斗就会在开始前就已经胜利了。另一方面，电子游戏也是要求有娱乐性，因此，就需要平衡，特别是多人模式中。如果你发现自己处于劣势地位，这是因为你做出了错误的选择，并不是游戏没做好平衡，而是最有技术的人获得胜利。所以在有深度体验的游戏中，像骑马与砍杀2霸主这样，有如此多的阵营，兵种，武器，地形等，做到一种微妙的平衡时很棘手的事情。我们的关卡和游戏设计师致力于让游戏尽可能公平又好玩。今天我们要采访的是关卡设计师和游戏设计助理，Paul Kaloff，让我们问问他现在在做什么。顺便说下，如果你觉得他的名字和脸有点面熟，你猜对了：你可能在18年科隆展的采访中中见过他！

姓名
Paul Kaloff

来自于
德国

2017年加入 TALEWORLDS

教育背景
游戏开发-游戏学院

官方职业介绍
关卡设计师和游戏设计助理

WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“My usual day to day business involves creating and maintaining scenes for both singleplayer and multiplayer. Other than that, I work on the documentation of feature designs and the multiplayer balancing sheet, which is huge! I also became addicted to Turkish çay (black tea) since moving here, so you will usually see me with a cup of that at my desk.”
你通常都会做什么？
我每天的工作就是创建和修复单机和联机的场景。除此之外，我还会写功能设计和联机平衡的稿子，这工作量可大了！自从我来这以后我还喝土耳其黑茶（çay）上瘾了，所以你看我工作的时候桌子上都有一个杯子。

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“Although the singleplayer portion of Bannerlord is shaping up to be a lot of fun, I’ve always been a multiplayer guy myself. I love the variety of the factions that we have and how differently they play. For the first match, I might be a Khuzait horse archer, shooting people in the back and then galloping away with a grin on my face, while for the second match I might be a Sturgian berserker, swinging my huge axe around in a melee encounter.”
你最喜欢霸主的哪一点？
虽然霸主中的单机部分占了很大部分乐趣，但我还是个喜欢联机的人。我喜欢各种各样的阵营，而且他们有多种玩法。像刚开局，我就会用库宰特骑射手，朝敌人背后射箭然后很愉快地疾驰而去，而在第二场比赛我还选择斯特吉亚狂战士，挥动巨斧和敌人近战

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“Tackling the task of balancing multiplayer. There is such a broad variety of weapons and different classes, each with their individual perks, that keeping them balanced can be quite challenging sometimes. Each faction, as well as, each class within that faction, should have their individual advantages and disadvantages, which need to be evaluated. It's certainly a buttery slope if you change one thing you affect basically everything else.

Although we have some great players in the office, the community will always perform better with certain playstyles or even find new ones. So we basically have to see into the future and do something we call ‘Metaprediction’, where we predict how a certain class will behave once it’s figured out by the community and then shape that class according to that and even think about possible counters.”
在霸主的制作过程中，迄今为止你解决的最大困难是什么
平衡多人游戏。游戏里有多种多样的武器和职业，每个职业都有独特的特长，如何平衡它们有时候听有挑战性的。每个阵营以及每个阵营中的职业，都需要有独有的优势和劣势，而这就需要进行评估。这就像涂了黄油的斜坡一样，如果你改变一个东西，那你基本上就会把其他东西也都更改了。

虽然我们办公室有一些优秀玩家，但玩家群体总是会在各游戏风格中更强，甚至还会有新的玩法。所以我们基本上就必须展望未来，做一种我们称之为Metaprediction（意为元预测），即预测冉家如何玩一个职业，并且将其进行适应性改造，甚至找到反制方案。

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“Besides my work on multiplayer balancing, I spend my time creating both singleplayer and multiplayer scenes. Multiplayer scenes have a slightly different workflow, which I will elaborate on.

After the first paper concept, I jump into the editor and create a rough whitebox version of the level with measured lanes, for walking/riding distances to the ‘Point of Interest’ from the spawn. After that, I go on to making a more detailed whitebox version, where I focus a lot on getting angles and sizes correct.

Having the level as a whitebox makes it very convenient to do layout changes according to feedback from playtests. It also serves to save me time and restrict myself positively during the following skinning phase, where we replace the white boxes with actual assets and focus more on visual features.”
你现在在做什么？
我除了在多人游戏上进行平衡，我还花时间创建单人和多人场景。多人游戏场景的制作流程有些不同，我到时候会再详细介绍。

有了概念后，我就会进入编辑器里创建一个有明确线路的粗糙白盒场景（即没有装饰，元素单一的），从出生点行走或者骑马到“兴趣点”（即可互动的地方，如市场，主堡等）。然后我就会继续制作一个更详细的白盒场景，在这我会更着重于角度和尺寸上。

有了白盒场景后，这就方便我们根据试玩中改变布局了。这还帮我们省了在贴图阶段的时间，也就是我们把这些白板模型换成实际的模型，更着重于视觉特征上。

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“I really like Vlandia. They have this worn down medieval vibe to them, which I would expect from a European inspired faction in the “dark ages”. It's great fun to create scenes for them, but once you see a line of Vlandian knights, the ancestors of the mighty Swadian knights, charging at you, it becomes more of a love-hate relationship!”

你最喜欢霸主的哪个阵营？
我很喜欢瓦兰迪亚。他们有一种厚重的中世纪氛围，这也是我所期待的来源于欧洲“黑暗时代”的灵感。为他们做场景很有趣，而你一旦看到瓦兰迪亚骑士，他们是斯瓦迪亚骑士的祖先，排成一条直线向你冲过来，那会让你有爱恨交加的感觉。

ARE THE DIFFERENT FACTIONS BUILT TO BE VIABLE ACROSS DIFFERENT GAME MODES, OR ALL FACTIONS EVENLY MATCHED IN MOST CONTEXTS? FOR EXAMPLE, WOULD ONE FACTION PERFORM VERY WELL IN SIEGE, BUT BE NEXT-TO-USELESS IN AN OPEN FIELD MAP BECAUSE THEY HAVE POOR QUALITY CAVALRY?
“We are working on making factions as viable as possible in any scenario. The way we designed multiplayer gives us a lot of opportunities to make that happen. For each Troop Class, we have individual item loadouts, items perks, skill perks, and armour + speed values (more about that in the next question). This gives us a lot more screws to adjust if units under or over perform. A more specific example would be that for siege we have specific maps for factions to defend. So while Vlandia might have a very tight castle layout, a Khuzait castle would have a wide courtyard, perfect for horse archers, and ways to sally out easily and harass/skirmish the siege camp.

With all that said, we still want factions to play differently from each other. Factions will require players to change up their playstyle and strategic approaches in team-based modes.”

不同阵营会不会随着模式不同而有变化，还是说所有阵营在大多数情况下都是势均力敌的？比如说，有一个阵营在攻城战里表现很好，但是在空旷地图上因为只有劣质骑兵而被压着打？
我们会尽可能地让阵营在所有场景都能发挥作用。我们设计多人游戏时就是要让这些发生。，每个兵种树里，我们有独特的装备，特殊武器，特长，铠甲和速度奖励（这个待会再说）。这让我们有很多空间去调整那些表现力不足的兵种。更具体地例子时，在攻城模式中我们有特定的地图让各阵营防御。所以瓦兰迪亚的城堡布局很紧凑，而库宰特的城堡有宽阔的庭院，有利于骑射手，也能很快突围或者去骚扰/游击攻城方的营地。

话虽如此，我们还是希望阵营都有不同的玩法。每个阵营都需要玩家去改变他们的游戏风格和战略方式来进行联机对决。

HOW SEVERE COMPARED TO WARBAND; WILL MOVEMENT PENALTIES FOR USING HEAVY ARMOUR/WEAPONS BE?
“As mentioned above, in multiplayer, we tie movement speeds to the class rather than weapon weights or armour. This enables us to, for example, make a berserker very agile, even though his weapon may be very heavy. Also, an important factor is that, unlike in Warband, we have a combat speed and a normal speed. This means that once you raise your weapon or block, you will slow down to a combat pace, which greatly reduced the amount of face-hugging going on and prevents players from constantly holding up their shield and turtling in combat. These speeds, as well as, the acceleration can also be set for each individual multiplayer class, giving designers (and eventually modders) an easy way to create unique classes without having the hassle to cross balance the weights of the armours for every small change.”

游戏惩罚上和战团相比如何，穿重铠甲用重武器有什么惩罚？
我之前说过，在联机里，我们更倾向于把速度加成放在职业上而不是武器铠甲的种类。比方说我们可以让狂战士变得非常敏捷，即便他们用的是重武器。还有一件事，不想战团，我们有战斗速度和普通速度。这就是说当你举起武器或者格挡，你就会变成战斗付吧，这会大大减少玩家脸贴脸，或者在战斗重一直举盾龟缩的情况。速度，包括加速度也会根据不同的职业有不同的变化，这就让设计师（包括mod作者）能很容易地做出特有兵种，而不会为了一个小小的改动大费周章去修改铠甲的重量。