jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginner's Guide

Some dos and don'ts

During the game, you want to give players the feeling that they made the right choices, outsmarted the system, and pulled the strings in their own favor. There are no hard rules, but let's look at some examples how you maintain enjoyable gameplay:

• Fairness is not the same as balance: Although well-balanced game mechanics include a weakness behind every strength, they avoid perfect symmetry. In a perfectly fair game (such as rock-paper-scissors) choices are arbitrary. You should offer a counterattack for every attack, but you distribute these resources unevenly. In other words, let the players know that "the counter-card is somewhere in the deck", but not whether it is in their opponent's hand this round. "I can prepare a counterspell ...