Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[Nifft]

On a right-here-and-now basis you're quite right; but what about the long term? You're forgetting the time factor.

The choice you make might show "win" now, but in 6 levels you could be on the short end.

Over in the other thread, I call this Amortized Pwnage. It's a form of balance that is no longer well thought of, but which seemed to be popular in early editions.

I wrote a lengthy post on this a couple of weeks ago about a problem with the underlying assumption of this statement--because when people talk about balance in this context, 99.9 percent of the time they're talking about "balance in combat."

That's probably because balance in combat is easy to talk about, because it's easy to verify.

But all your follow-on assumptions are invalid: I'm not only talking about combat. I'm talking about the ability to solve any obstacle, any conflict, any problem just-plain-better than another PC.

But that's not really balance. That's just multiple points of imbalance.

You suck for six months and then I suck for six months means that someone is sucking ALL THE TIME.

At no point in time, should the mechanics of a game sideline any character through absolutely no fault of his own. Forcing a player to ride the pines because of a choice he made six months ago is very poor game design.

Over in the other thread, I call this Niche Protection. It is another previous attempt at balance which now I think isn't very good.

A little creativity nets you whatever character you want without forcing the DM to rebalance all the encounters around having a wet noodle in the party.

Your example is hilarious. I kind of want someone like that in my campaign now.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Neonchameleon]

Monopoly is a balanced game. The only variables are luck and player skill.

And who goes first.

RPGs are built upon a different concept, that each of the players get to play by a different set of rules. Imagine playing Monopoly where one player was allowed to steal from the bank, another was able to land on any square desired instead of rolling dice, and another could send other players to jail each turn. Now imagine trying to balance these abilities against each other without removing them completely.

That's a little extreme for an RPG. Few short of Mage or Exalted let you break the laws of physics - and your party is equivalent to a martian, a hivemind, and a Cray Supercomputer. On the other hand it might be possible to balance a similar game with characters with personality. E.g. The Speculator gets to roll three dice and pick two, or to adjust one of his dice. The Crooked Cop sends people to jail on any double unless they bribe him. And the Scum Landlord gets d6*5 income per property from the bank every turn but on the roll of a six goes to jail.

Once you've got sane-ish rules like that then balance (based on starting cash) is looking practical.

It is impossible to balance RPGs. No matter what approach you take, you can never make all players equal without removing the essence of the game.

If we're going to give up on attempting something just because a perfect form is impossible, we can throw out truth, beauty, and justice as goals. Thanks, but no thanks.

The true balancing factor in RPGs is the Game Master, although even the Game Master cannot establish true equality. It is simply his/her job to make sure that everyone is having fun, contributing, and enjoying themselves. Game designers should spend less time trying to create "balanced" games and more time creating fun and interesting ways for players to play the game.

Except that BMX Bandit might be an inherently fun and interesting concept. But not in games where someone else gets to play Angel Summoner. The mere presence of Angel Summoner has destroyed what would be a number of fun and interesting ways to play the game.

The one exception would be games like Ars Magica where the imbalance is made extremely explicit - and the player who signed up for BMX Bandit did so knowing there would be Angel Summoner there. (The Buffy and Dr Who systems have good answers for this).

All balance really is is providing accurate information on the expected in-game utility of the game elements. And then providing this to the GM and PCs to make the choice (there's nothing inherently wrong with a mismatched party - as long as everyone knows in advance).

A lack of balance means one of three things: 1: The game has been taken outside expected parameters, 2: The game designer didn't know enough about his own game to provide highly useful information, or 3: The game designer didn't care about providing information that would help the GM and the other players. In the first case this might be bad, it might be awesome - but in both cases a different system would probably work better. Cases 2 and 3 are inherently bad.

 

[Garthanos]

Your example is hilarious. I kind of want someone like that in my campaign now.

I think the incompetent fighter may end up on the list.. Joxter might or might not be hybrid warlord.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...non-combatant-princess-how-abuse-warlord.html

 

[awesomeocalypse]

If there's a clear choice between "win now, lose later" or "lose now, win later", or "kinda be in the middle all the way along", that's not imbalanced overall...and in fact might give the players serious pause for thought. It's certainly far better than forcing everyone into the "kinda be in the middle all the way along" bracket whether they like it or not.

Question: I understand why players who are in "lose now, win later" mode would stick with the game--the prospect of something better down the road. But why would someone playing a "win now, lose later" character stick with the game once they got to the "lose later" section? They know its all down hill from there and they have very little to look forward to, what keeps them motivated? Simple obligation and sense of fairness to the guys who played losers for the first half of the game? That doesn't sound fun.

I perceive a real lack of motivation with this balancing mechanism. if the game reaches a point where it would, simply, be more fun for most of the players to go back and restart at level 1 (when they were awesome), then to keep battling and battling for the right to become increasingly irrelevant, you're going to have issues with player apathy.

 

[Nifft]

The thing is you knew exactly what you were getting into when you made your character. Some people will make characters that they believe will be effective but will end up sucking. That's a problem.

Very good point. It's great if you want a character of that type, but if the system is built in a way that lets players fall into "traps" such that their character is ineffective when they don't want them to be, that's a problem.

I recall that people used to talk about the necessity of "System Mastery" as though it were a good thing.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Nifft]

Question: I understand why players who are in "lose now, win later" mode would stick with the game--the prospect of something better down the road. But why would someone playing a "win now, lose later" character stick with the game once they got to the "lose later" section? They know its all down hill from there and they have very little to look forward to, what keeps them motivated? Simple obligation and sense of fairness to the guys who played losers for the first half of the game? That doesn't sound fun.

I perceive a real lack of motivation with this balancing mechanism. if the game reaches a point where it would, simply, be more fun for most of the players to go back and restart at level 1 (when they were awesome), then to keep battling and battling for the right to become increasingly irrelevant, you're going to have issues with player apathy.

1/ Because, back when this was thought to be a valid form of balance, people hadn't thought about it in terms like "suck now, win later". Our modern perspective includes implicitly discrediting this form of balance.

2/ Like the parable of the frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, those doomed to suckage did not feel their lameness come upon them, because it crept slowly, with paws quiet as the fog. They did not notice that their damage output scaled linearly while the spellcasters scaled geometrically, because if they were good at math they would already be playing a Druid.

3/ Many games did, indeed, not play out all 20 possible levels before starting over at level 1. In fact, there is a whole school of game designers who deliberately limit all PCs to levels 1-6. This school of design is -- at least in part -- a reaction to the overwhelming late dominance of "suck now, win later" classes.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Odhanan]

The problem comes from a misnomer.

Game balance is actually something different than Rules balance, where the former is the act of balancing the game as it is being played at an actual game table, versus the latter which balances the mechanical elements used in this game and written on paper.

Some amount of Rules balance in a game is a commandable goal. It ensures that players have choices to play the characters they want, and yet do not get a mechanical upper hand that would rob other players from their own thunder. That's all fine and good.

Game balance does not solely rely on Rules balance to happen, though.

Good communication and cooperation between the participants in the game, whether DM and/or players, is paramount. There's a informal rule for this: "don't be a dick". Don't rob other players from their moments to shine, cooperate with them, don't try to be the best at everything all the time, don't try to break the rules on purpose... these kinds of things are part of the Social aspect of the game. No amount of rules in the world will ever be able to stop some selfish player to break the game or spoil it for the others involved if he just wants to.

There's also the way the DM uses the rules and challenges specific characters. If a character is noticeably more powerful than some other character(s) in the group, it makes sense for enemies knowing the party's layout to want to take that powerful guy out first, to make him the target of powerful spells and ranged attacks, etc. It should not happen all the time of course, but it completely makes sense, as the characters rise in the world, for the world to react to their specific makeup, attitudes, powers, and so on, so forth.

There's obviously more to it than this, but really, the bottom line simply is: Rules balance should not be substituted for Game balance. Some amount of fairness and relatively equal choices in the game's design is good, and beneficial to the game. Obsessing over the "fairness" of choices on the written page, and thus reducing, limiting these choices while exponentially increasing the game's codification and complexity to reach some theoretical "fairness" on said page, is not.

It is all in the excluded middle, to me, here: some amount of Rules balance is fine; Mistaking Rules balance for Game balance isn't.

 

[M.L. Martin]

"HERO-ization"? Yes, when I encountered 3e it seemed to me designed for people who would (or perhaps should) have been playing Champions instead of AD&D in the 1980s-90s. In the early 2000s, though, WotC's D&D won them over. I think the Hero System is more flexible, more robust, and easier to balance. Complex character builds and long combats: Hero Games since 1981!

Take a look at Monte Cook's resume.

And this is why I gave up on 3.X: If I'm going to deal with that level of complexity and detail, I'll take HERO and get the precision, flexibility and transparency it offers in exchange, rather than being limited by D&D's 'black box' mechanics.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It occurs to me that "niche protection" is a form of short-term "suck now, win later".

It seems to me, also, that how hard "niche protection" in particular blows, or does not blow, is based on three factors:

(1) How involved are the players of the "suck" characters while their characters are "sucking"?

(2) How much "win" vs. "suck" is there?

(3) What is the difference between "suck" and "win"?

Item (1) is affected by expected game play. In a "challenge the player" game, even if the character sucks, the player can contribute with advice or problem-solving skills. Thus, for example, in 1e, I have played many magic-users without feeling that I was ever not contributing. I always felt vital to the party's success, even when my PC had no spells left and was relegated to tactical advice, observation, and inference. In a "challenge the character" game, sucking means you suck.

Item (2) s strongly affected by how long it takes to resolve any given encounter. Assuming a four-hour play session, in Game A it takes 15 minutes (average) to resolve an encounter, in Game B it takes 1 hour (average) to resolve an encounter, and in Game C it takes 4 hours (average) to resolve an encounter.

Players of Game A can afford to suck sometimes, so that they can shine at other times. After all, with an average of 16 encounters per session, no single encounter bears the load of that session being "fun" or "unfun". Conversely, the players of Game C must be able to contribute well to every encounter -- if they "suck" during the encounter, the session "sucks" for them! Players of Game B have a trade-off. They cannot afford as much niche-protection as players of Game A, because each encounter bears 1/4 of the session's "fun load"....but a little suck for a lot of win is probably a good trade-off.

Item (3) is, AFAICT, the "modern" focus of niche protection. It is okay to suck a little now, and win a little later, but you should never suck too much (and consequently can never win too much either), for a game to be "well balanced". The theory is that, even if taking away the lows also excises the highs, you can get a consistantly acceptable experience. Sort of a "win a little all the time, suck a little all the time" approach to game design. This seems quite popular right now. I suspect that the current "bad-assery" of PCs in various games is an attempt to make the median feel more like "win" and less like "suck".

We can call this balance by hiding the median.

----

In conclusion, it is difficult to fully explore balance of any type without examining how other systems/design philosophy impacts the experience of play. Older forms of balance are not "implicitly discredited" -- they are victims to the fads of our times, and design philosophy that makes a game hostile to their inclusion.


RC

 

[Garthanos]

Most of what you said was awesome on awesome good stuff.

Older forms of balance are not "implicitly discredited" -- they are victims to the fads of our times, and design philosophy that makes a game hostile to their inclusion.

Calling something a fad is an attempt to implicitly discredit... ie implying the new is bad or intrinsicaly temporary. I reacted negatively to the old balancing methods... 30 years ago... this is not a fad response.