Game balancing in Waven

In 2023, I worked at Ankama as a game designer in charge of game balancing for their latest game, Waven.

Waven is a tactical deckbuilding MMORPG set in Ankama’s Krosmoz, several years after the Wakfu animated series. Players control a Douzian inhabitant of this world, choosing their class from the usual Krosmoz classes, and engage in turn-based combat against monsters or other players. Each class has its own advantages and a deck of cards representing the class’s spells, from which players create decks. During combat, the spells the player can use are drawn from this deck. Once used, the spell is returned to the deck; and each turn a new one is drawn.

A battle in Waven

My job was to balance the game and ensure that there were no overpowered or underpowered builds. To do this, I developed tools to predict potential problem builds and the impact of modifying game elements.

In addition to spell cards, builds were also made up of items and companions, which were common to all classes. Changing one of these elements could have an impact on the builds of other classes. Modifications therefore had to be made very carefully, taking into account a large number of parameters, so as not to break other builds.

The character building screen

The aim of this tool was to avoid changing values at random, at the risk of wasting time dealing with unforeseen consequences and having to continually change the same values. It allowed to test the game more efficiently.

The usual workflow was:

  • Test the game to uncover potential problematic builds
  • Add the behaviors and statistics of the corresponding game elements (class, item, spell, etc.) to the tool
  • Reproduce builds with the balance tool and identify the impact of game element changes on the current meta
  • Choose new values which allowed for a better game balance
  • Test the game