Practical Game Design

Define and balance the stats

The great thing about creating a new content for an existing game is that we have a solid starting point. In Overwatch, each character is defined by a set of basic stats (HP..), a weapon, and a set of abilities. Since we know our character's weapon is going to be a pistol, the first step to define its stats would be to look at every similar weapon available in the game. Once we have our benchmark, we could start balancing this specific weapon against it. We will discuss later in this book how to balance a game (and therefore its smaller pieces, such as weapons or characters).