Gamer's Room 101: the argument AGAINST balance

A bit off topic...

I dont care if there is balance in single player games. I do care if there is balance or not in Multiplayer games. Mostly, I hate how there is balance in multiplayer games especially in the world war 2 setting. BattleField 1942 for example is the worst game to balance things out. When a Tiger tank fires at a Sherman, it should be an automatic one shot kill, not 2 or 3, that is crap. When a Panzer can run as fast as a Sherman, that is crap.

Balance in multiplayer takes away realism, and the actualy tactics that were used in the wars that the games try to recreate. If there were balance in wars, there would be no wars. I want to actually see in BF2 tanks running away from Anti-Tanks. I want to see a plane die when a stinger hits them once, not twice. I want to see how a tank blows up in one shot when it gets hit by a anti-tank missile fired from a attack helicopter. I dont want to see someone with 20 parachutes coming out of one person.


I could definitely live without balance. For single player games, I dont really care.

I think you're misinterpreting linear gameplay with balance.

In RTS games, [over]balancing can really suck. Unit A is strong against Unit B, Unit B is weak against Unit A, Unit C is strong against Unit A, and so on. Essentially Rock, Paper, Scissors. A good example of that is pretty much every RTS that exists.

The upcoming game, Supreme Commander supposedly gets rid of the RPS balacing style, and uses phsyics or some such to determine damage.

For a FPS game, balancing would mean making your gun more powerful, but slow rate of fire. Or making your gun shoot faster, but less accurate. Your CoD2 example is merely crappy linear gameplay.

Battletoads - N.E.S.

I think I am in favor of a little imbalance as it keeps you on your toes. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when something overly hard arises out of place and when I am expecting something really hard and it's just a button combo (RE4), that's a nice relief. As long as things are not predictable.

But honestly who beat level 2 (the racing level, may have been 3) in Battletoads? Am I the only person who thinks this was a needlessly difficult level at the beginning of the game, or am I about to be thrown under a bus by the gaming community?

As much as I love retro games, that sort of balance doesn't have much of a place in modern gaming. Imagine how boring a game like God of War would have been had the developers not thrown in the occasional floor spikes of death puzzle or Minotaur to throw you for a loop. Those moments are what make gaming great.

Even a lot of older games would do this. Anyone remember in Final Fantast 2(the Japanese 4) when Golbez attacks you with his dragon, and the entire party is auto killed except your main character. Then Rydia shows up with a Summon to save the day, but you're still forced to battle this boss with most of your party dead from the start, and a very low level Rydia. These are the moments that make you feel accomplished when you are able to take them on.

There is still a place for balances games where the difficulty merely increases though. Look at Guitar Hero; one of the most fun games in the past few years, yet all it does it ramp up the difficulty of the same songs, which you in turn play over and over again. The formula works here. Developers just need to learn in what types of games balance is great fun.

@3 - I remember that Battletoads sequence, as well as a couple other games that suffered from similar problems. It can basically ruin an otherwise great game.

@4 - I think the difference between Guitar Hero and other games is how you skill improves. With God of War, my skill will improve slightly as I play, developing some new strategies and learning the control scheme, but my skill won't change much, so tossing new stuff at me is the best way to keep me entertained and challenged. We all died once playing the Minotaur or Ares because of the new challenges, and it made (at least me) enjoy it more.

However, with Guitar Hero or DDR or other such games, your skill is going to improve incredibly from first play to 20th play. They can afford to just ramp up the challenge linearly, because your skill level is doing about the same thing. I'll feel the same sense of accomplishment when competing a new song because I feel challenged.

@5 I agree with you entirely about Guitar Hero and DDR, as a huge fan of both. Every time DDR has tried to throw something new into the mix, it hasn't been received very well. The only things fans have clamored forn have been things like non-stop and Oni modes which though they seem unique at first, really only increase the difficulty of the game even more drastically.

It's a bit daft to strike the whole concept of balance - having the same balance all the way through a game is dull, but having erratic lulls and spikes in difficulty is far worse. Most games get the idea right - make the game flow fast or slow by tweaking the balance. And you can only tweak that if you know what the balance is.

a few simple words... halo1, halo2. halo1 was awsome... and rateh runballanced. Everyoen loved the magnum... it was difficult to use well... but man if you coudl nothing could stop you. Even an overshilded ass with a rocket launcher could be ripped appart if your aim was good enough. Halo 2... still alot of fun... but i cant think of a better example of "balance" just ripping the magic out of a game. the perfectly bisected weapons... needler=smg, carbine=battle rifle, sniper=sniper rocket=brute shot. oh and the poor vehicles.... my fondest memories of halo usualy involve ramping a ghost off a warthog or a scorpion and flying into some unsuspectign sniper on a roof top who never thought he woudl have to worry abotu gettign run down... then "realistic" (stuck to the earth like a snail) physics came along and f$%&ed the whole thing up ... makes me sad.

Lets also talk about MMORPGs. Balance kills enjoyment in these games as well. Its a slippery slope with MMORPGs since you have to balance: Solo Play, Group Play, and PVP play for each individual class. Then you also have to balance each class against each other in all those situations. Then you have to balance the items you aquire in said MMORPG. Then in the case of some games (Everquest 2) you have to balance the Tier (quality)of the spell you are using. Dont forget you also have to balance the economic portion of the game as well otherwise you'll end up with game inflation that all developers fear.

Honestly the most fun time to play an MMORPG is when the balance is all out of whack. The longer an MMORPG is out the duller it gets in my opinion. The most fun I have in an MMORPG is when I can be clever and figure out a way to turn abilities or situations to my advantage in a big way. You might call this exploiting but I on the other hand think that out of balance abilities should be part of all MMORPGs.

RTS genre is dead to me beacuse of balance, Collectable card games are dead to me beacuse of balance, FPS usually have the same boring weapons beacuse of balance. I agree balance needs to go, I've been saying this for a while now.

I agree... balance is given way more credit than it's worth. Take a game like UO (way off-balance) and compare to WoW (ridiculously balanced to the point of being totally unrealistic). UO was always more fun for me, and even though it was unbalanced, it was still possible to take out other players with enough skill or tactics. Compare to a game like WoW, where there is so much balance that you can't even damage a creature that is unable to get to you (it would be impossible to shoot fish in a barrel). And yet a level 60 can come into a newbie area and slaughter to his heart's content and it would be impossible for anyone not near his level to hurt him. How does this make for a good game?

Uhm, bullcrap.

Balance means that there is enough challenge to be fun without too much challenge to be frustrating.

An easy game will have its balance set much lower, while a hard game is higher.

Imagine you picked up a game that you expected to be really hard, but had streaks of very easy and (ultimately) dull challenges in between the hard and interesting bits.

A game that is hard and acheives balance is Ninja Gaiden for the XBox. While the game is enormously difficult, the challenge throughout is evenly presented and progresses with the player's skill. Try backtracking in the game to a point you had previously completed to see this: you tear through enemies.

If the game were streaky in the easier direction, people would be hurrying past the boring parts to get to the good parts. If it were streaky in the harder direction, even MORE people would put the game down because it just wasn't any fun.

I don't think we should confuse 'balance' with 'difficulty' its 2 different things.

FYI, the read links are backwards. The read link for the pro balance article points to the con balance article and vice versa.

it's funny because i always thought of 'balance' as having to do with gameplay. as in, not doing the exact same sh*t for 10 hours. adjusting the challenge is one way, but not the best, because you are still performing the same tasks, they just get harder. but presumably your skill is increasing so it kind of evens out.

"the game goes on, players end up doing the same actions, fighting the same enemies, at the same difficulty level. From the first ten minutes to the last, the game is perfectly balanced."

this sounds entirely UNbalanced to me. maybe it's just a question of interpretation.

Hmm...I have read probably 20-30 books on electronic game development. I would say about 6-10 of those were "design" focused. I have also done a lot of research into designing both role-playing (PnP) and strategic board games. Nowhere have I seen "balance" described as it is here.

Whether you are playing Dungeons and Dragons with pencils and dice, playing a stategic war simulation board game that will take months to complete, or playing the latest next gen what-have-you, the concept of "balance of the game mechanics" is the same. It is ensuring that your game mechanics and systems work with each other and as a whole.

I also don't get the 'degree' of balances arguments above. Either a game's systems and mechanics have been balanced, or they have not. Halo's pistol broke game balance. Still my all time favorite game in recent memory, but that doesn't change the fact that that weapon made it unbalanced. (I would definately agree that the impact on the game experience would not be static, but this distinction does not seem to be made in posts.)

To me, the true question is how do designers (this has nothing at all to do with developers) get their balance. For the multi-player gripes above, I agree that making everything the same but just changing the skin is a rediculous and shameful cop out. The trick: make the Panzer stronger and the Sherman faster and add other elements so that while each has their strenghts, in the end neither is a sure thing (maybe overly simple example, maybe the Sherman is a waste of the energy required to climb into it but there are other things that the Allies can employ to even the odds).

The issue I have is what I percieve as an misinformed and forced coorelation between difficulty and balance. A game can be CRAZY difficult (Ninja Gaiden for me) but still have sublime balance. Saying "this game is hard, therefore it is unbalanced" seems to misunderstand several concepts. I as the game designer can decide to make my game insanely difficult; yer, as long as I give you the player the tools and abilities to meet the challenge, how have I broken balance? Likewise, my game can be truly 'easy' (is there anything "easier" than driving around a track N times?) but still be perfectly balanced. Difficulty and balance are completely different. Difficulty can be affected by balance, however, it is not necessarily. Regardless of how much advantage the pistol has over the other weapons in the universe, you put Halo on lengendary and it is still darn difficult.

This is my simple understanding, however. Perhaps I am just being too anal for the conversation and such a 'technical' definition completely missed the true point...which would not be a first for me.

"players end up doing the same actions, fighting the same enemies, at the same difficulty level. From the first ten minutes to the last, the game is perfectly balanced, and extremely boring to boot -- as players, we feel there's nothing new in store for the next 10 or 20 hours' gameplay, and we abandon the game early on feeling we've seen it all."

This isn't the definition of balance, that's the definition of being unoriginal. You know that after the first 10 minutes of Call of Duty 2, you'll have hours of the same old stuff in store for you. Fun for some? Sure - for me I can't get past the first 10 minutes without a story - a hook - something to grab my attention and not let go. What today's games lack are the element of surprise.
There is either nothing left to surprise us with - or developers are just getting lazy. I would like to hope that ideas are not dead in this world.

Take FEAR for instance. I played the demo, and when the freaky girl was walking near you in the dark, I thought...okay, I can live with that. Then there were grunts whose AI was stunningly realistic - Not bad at all, I thought, but it was when I jumped out of my chair after turning to go down a particular ladder...and then my heart went boom at the bottom from the double shocker, that FEAR had my vote - and my dollar.

Another good example is Shadow of the Colossus. A game that is completely unbalanced, as it is 100% boss fights. Now that is the coolest idea ever!

Go ahead and get rid of balance, just be original please....

I think the biggest issue brought up in this debate is the lack of solid terminology for games.

As gh0st pointed out, a designer's description of balance has little to do with a gamer's description of balance.

By itself, the word "balance" has no meaning to me, in terms of video games. After reading the arguments for and against it, I gathered what they meant as "balance" and commented about that. So when I said balance I meant something like maliable difficulty. It was inspired by a post on Jesper Juul's blog:

"Jonathan Smith’s point ties in with Noah Falstein’s article in Steve Rabin’s 'Introduction To Game Development,' where he describes the ideal game difficulty as one that shifts between being hard and easy. As I recall, the basic argument is that as a player I should first try something very hard, and then a bit later get the experience that a challenge has become easy because of my newly acquired skills."

I like that idea, even if "balance" isn't the correct word for it.

Overall, though, I think we use words like balance, immersion, even gameplay without having a universal understanding of them. I'm surprised we've been able to talk about video games this long without some kind of common language.

Back in my WoW days, and in fact during the early days of WoW itself, I made an impassioned post on the official forums entitled something to the effect of "Balance: The Golden Calf of Game Design." The post spawned from my realization of where Blizzard was leading the game with its patches and updates. Each set of changes only further sterilized an already beige game that needed, if anything, more variation. These patches were fueled by the constant outcry from the player base for more "balance." And indeed, the patches addressed what were called "Balance Issues."

I spoke out against these changes, and argued that what the game needed was less balance, not more. There was quite a bit of response, even from Blizzard forum mods, and most disagreed with my points. But I still hold by them.

Game balance is not the be all and end all of game design. People do not play a game because it is well balanced. If this were the case, then gaming reached its pinnacle with Pong. No, games have gotten better because of diversity. Overcoming this diversity to create an advantage is what challenges the gamer and forces them to think.

The above "argument AGAINST balance" doesn't even address balance. In multiplayer, it's balance. In single player, we call it "difficulty." Here, instead, is a short argument against balance.

Take a look at some of your favorite multiplayer games, and ask yourself if they're fun because they're balanced, or because there are so many unique challenges. I'm willing to bet it's the latter.

Now I'm not saying that balance isn't important, and that it shouldn't be a consideration in multiplayer game design. I'm saying that it shouldn't be the biggest consideration. That should always be 'fun'. Games should be challenging first.

Diversity and balance are not mutually exclusive. Look at Starcraft, arguably the best RTS game ever made. They were able to achieve three distinct, complety unique races, and yet none had an advantage over another. In any matchup, the player that won was the better player. This is the holy grail of multiplayer game design.

However, the more variety you put into a game, the harder it is to balance it all. What game designers need to remember, though, is that perfect balance is not important. Get it close, but don't go overboard. Keep it varied, but make it fun for everyone.

The most fun I ever had in an MMO was in Shadowbane. Now, that game was not balanced in any sense of the word. And the majority of players built characters using the strongest races and classes. But not me. I built the weak classes and made them strong.

The character development process was so involved that there were literally thousands of builds that had never even been tried before. So I dug and dug into the guts of the game until I planned a workable build that I had never seen attempted before. Sometimes, it failed miserably. Other times, it worked beautifully. Suddenly, I had taken a class thought to be weak and was able to defeat stronger classes. Fun for me wasn't dominating others, and winning all my fights. It was challenging the system, defying the consensus, and surprising people.

The feeling of accomplishment I received from that is not possible in a "balanced" game. You'll never be able to achieve that in a game like WoW. Balance is most definitely not the key to game design. I just wish the rest of the gaming community would realize that.

"As much as I love retro games, that sort of balance doesn't have much of a place in modern gaming. Imagine how boring a game like God of War would have been had the developers not thrown in the occasional floor spikes of death puzzle or Minotaur to throw you for a loop. Those moments are what make gaming great."

Perfect example of how people confuse linear gameplay with balance. The timing of GoW was amazing but notice that the enemies are never more than you can handle.... why is that? It is because of balance. A balanced game shows progression. Shining examples of balanced games are the games in which the enemies level up as you do, or an AI breaks down your style of play yet in both situations the game doesn't become impossible. The devs use balance to make certain genre's more challenging.

Just because a part in a game is hard doesn't mean that the gameplay isn't balanced.

Balance is very important in multiplayer games. Meekrob, I respect your opinion that "perfect" balance is unncecessary, but I disagree 100%. If balance is even a little bit skewed to one side, the top players will not be able to have an even match. Sure, a mediocre player using the "stronger" race might lose to a better player using the "weaker" race, but once you reach the top echelons of skill, balance becomes a big problem.

I agree with you uniqueness is important. If three RTS races feel like the same team with a different skin, that's no fun. On the other hand, if you deviate far enough from balance, online play can be completely ruined, since the best players will have such a head start already.

@ Meekrob

"Diversity and balance are not mutually exclusive. Look at Starcraft, arguably the best RTS game ever made. They were able to achieve three distinct, complety unique races, and yet none had an advantage over another. In any matchup, the player that won was the better player. This is the holy grail of multiplayer game design."

Wait... did I miss something.

"They were able to achieve three distinct, complety unique races, and yet none had an advantage over another."

you mean? .." bal·ance, n. : A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design" or "A state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces"

"The feeling of accomplishment I received from that is not possible in a "balanced" game. You'll never be able to achieve that in a game like WoW. Balance is most definitely not the key to game design. I just wish the rest of the gaming community would realize that."

Why on earth would these so called weak character be even in the game if the designers never thought they can beat a stronger character? It is accepted that characters have thier own places and roles and that just reminds me of the grid system in FFX. You were given the freedem to change the predisposed classes that were layed on your characters by breaking the linear progression layed out for you. I highly doubt that a game designers of shadowbane are that narrowminded.

I left a giant comment but for some reason i couldnt submit it and lost it so heres a tag line instead of the page of arguments I posted:

Creativity left up to the player is more important than the over all balance of the game.

Games are most fun while you are still experimenting with them, balance doesn't necessarily negate the learning process, but it can change it from a creative endevour to simply figuring out what the devs intended (single path).

Who cares what die hard competetive gamers are playing 2 years after the games been released. Non-competive people have already moved on. The more interesting the short term gameplay is, the more units you will sell. It doesn't matter if the balance is totally lop sided.

Its far too easy to release better balanced copycat games. They will never be as fun as the uniqe experience you had with the original. You will mostly attract the competive pros with these.

ok...lets see if this saves..i wish the original post made it through but oh well its just a stupid blog.

@Staticneuron I agree with you by that interpretation of balance, I simply got a different interpretation of the term from this particular debate. I took balance to mean slowly increasing difficulty such as what is seen in retro games like Galaga, or modern games like Guitar Hero. By your definition of balance, I agree completely that it would definitely be the appropriate way for most games to go.

More than anything I feel RPG's need to revamp themselves. I've grown bored with being able to barely even level my party and beat any boss jsut by casting my strongest spells over and over again. I yearn for an experience like Final Fantasy Tactics where even if I leveled every character to their max, there were still battles that required an intricate strategy in order to win them. Anyone else remember the Marquis with his 2 dances trying to save Rafa? Or even Wiegraf right before that? That's the perfect example for me of why the type of balance spoken of in this debate needs to be avoided for the most part. We need more thought and challenge in our games, especially the Role Playing genre.

Sure fighting games and online shooters need balance, but for the best single player experiences, most genres need to remain unbalanced to keep you interested. Unlike multi player games, all you have to keep you playing is the ever changing battles and AI, you don't have evolving strategies and new players to play with, so the developers need to compensate by giving you a single player experience that taxes your mind enough to keep you playing, but rewards those exploits enough to make you want to come back for more.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, are we? You're getting linear balance mixed up with game balance. The game mentioned above by #3, Battletoads, is a great example of broken balance. On the other hand, games that too carefully tread the line aren't nearly as satisfying. There's a sweetspot to balancing the game

This is what bosses are for, incidentally - they ramp up the game difficulty, and it's why they've been so popular as a mechanic.

Besides, if a game is giving you only one thing to do and basically making the numbers bigger, it's Diablonot a particularly creative game, and perhaps the 'balance' is not the reason you should get rid of it. (Incidentally, really creative games will often have uneven difficulty simply because some ideas don't work without things that make it really hard (or easy).)

@Staticneuron

Perhaps I was a little unclear. I didn't mean to say that balance wasn't important. What I meant was that it's not the most important thing. A game should not be built with the mindset of "first, we need to make it balanced, and after that we make it fun." Balance should be one of the very last things you look at. Otherwise you end up with a fighting game of nothing but Ryu clones.

With Starcraft, I seriously doubt they started with one race, and slowly divided into three, maintaining a balance at each stage. Instead, I imagine that they had really cool ideas for the three races, and upon first implementation, the balance was completely out of whack. Then, through a series of testing and retesting, the game was balanced with as much caution as possible so as to not dumb down the spirit and uniqueness of the races.

And sure, you can have great games that have major balance issues. Take a look at Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Some of the characters and teams are so out of whack to go beyond "imbalanced" and be utterly broken. However, there is so much to do and so many different ways of countering, that the game is still one of the best 2D fighters ever made.

I disagree, to an extent, with the roles idea as well. Sure, some classes may be more suited for a role than others, but that doesn't mean they should be relegated to them. In Shadowbane, for instance, I had a priest that was a pure healer. Yes, that's what the priest "role" was. But a friend of mine built a priest that had no practical healing ability at all. Instead, he discovered an interesting combination of skills and subclasses that turned him into one of the strongest melee damage dealing characters I had ever seen. He was able to do this because of the sheer diversity in the game. Was it balanced? Hell no. But the balance was based on the player's decisions, not the games. It was deep enough that the onus was on the players to figure out how to counter things, not the developers. Sometimes it may not have been possible, but the game was still fun.

Balance is still important, I don't mean to say that it's not. It's like graphics. Some of us would like to say graphics don't matter, but of course they do. If I can't tell whether a gray blob on the screen is a power-up or an enemy, then that hurts the gaming experience. Balance is like that. It's a key ingredient to a solid game. I just feel that there has been an overemphasis from both the player community and the developer community on balance over depth. They have the order backwards.