Musings on ALL RPGs and balance.

[Evenglare]

I've been thinking about this question a lot and I haven't come up with an explanation.

Why do tabletop games invariably mess up balance to some degree, while the vast vast vast majority of Video Game RPGs seem to put out decently balanced games almost every single time. Even more bewildering is that there are hundreds if not thousands of completely different systems (system as in what the rules of the game are like tabletop has the d20 system). So let's be honest here. D&D and many other tabletop games have been around for decades and most of those games have new editions which usually corrects some balance from the previous edition. D&D is over 40 years old and it STILL doesn't have that balance that people clamor for.

So whats the deal? Why can hundreds of video game rpgs get balance correct on a myriad of different systems. While tabletop rpg creators can't get it quite right? I also admit there are some horribly broken games out there, but compared to the sheer number of them, they get the balance correct. Why is it so easy for them and so hard for tabletop to achieve? Especially when a game is built from scratch with a brand new system and rules.

Im not trying to criticize any developers or anything. I'm genuinely curious why the balance aspect is so different from each side.

Is it because games are restricted to pure numeric rules? Well it can't be that, because as a tabletop player the things we gripe most about are classes and combat. Both of which are defined by numeric rules. Very very few complaints about balance are made against the social roleplaying aspect.

Is it because video games can be patched, tweaking the balance? Well that can't be it because D&D and other games essentially patch the game through errata.

Perhaps it is that you are playing alone and need not concern your self with other people? Well, not really. Many games like MMOs and Diablo etc etc are played with other people and, again, are fairly balanced within those games.

So why is it so hard for tabletop? Perhaps we, as tabletop gamers, are blowing things out of proportion? IS the ranger beast master completely inferior in every way? Is it that big of a problem, and if so why are the devs incompetent compared to Video Game devs, with regards to system creation? If it's not that big of a problem, then why scrutinize it and blow things way out of proportion, why not ignore it since the problem is so miniscule?

 

[delericho]

Part of it is the nature of the beast: RPGs are much more open-ended than video games. Consider that your campaign may well have nothing in common with my campaign, even if both are D&D 5e.

Part of it is inertia: caster supremacy, or the underpinnings of it, goes right back to the earliest versions of the game. To fix that balance, you have to change the game radically... which is very likely to see your new, fourth, edition rejected by a significant portion of the fanbase.

And part of it is simply budget (and therefore time). The budget for even a fairly modest video game very likely dwarfs that for D&D 5e, and that probably dwarfs that of any other RPG or edition, ever. Of course, a lot of that goes on graphical design, but good video games will also take the time, however long it takes, to get the gameplay working properly.

 

[Jhaelen]

How do you measure balance in a video game RPG? Name a single one you consider to be balanced.

 

[Raloc]

In my experience, very few video games of any complexity are actually balanced. Those that appear to be balanced tend not to have much actual complexity (e.g., Starcraft's rock paper scissors, vs the obvious brokenness of something like Skyrim as it relates to "balance").

Almost every game that does feature complexity that can go outside of what the developers specifically intended (as in TES games) are almost always unbalanced - after all, if the devs don't even know a thing can happen in their game, how can they possibly ensure it's balanced?

 

[Bagpuss]

Why do tabletop games invariably mess up balance to some degree, while the vast vast vast majority of Video Game RPGs seem to put out decently balanced games almost every single time.

Well this is clearly incorrect, if you consider the number of patches and nerf's most video games, with any multiplayer component go though once they go to general release and that's not even counting the ones in the Beta phase.

You can't compare Video Game RPGs that are single player as there balance isn't really and issue, since you don't compare yourself with anyone, so there isn't the same drives to patch and fix unbalanced stuff.

Where you have multiplayer experiences there is normally an extensive playtest phase where classes are balanced, and even then once released into the wild players discover exploits that means they have to be patched again. Note this is when they are using computers that can actually track information like which classes are most popular, do the most damage, make the most kills etc. Unlike paper rpgs that don't have access to either the large playtest groups or instant data on performance and play styles.

Patching on a PC is straight forward, patching on paper requires errata (which not everyone sees or uses, and pre-internet days didn't even happen), or a new edition. Even then PC games go through new editions Morrowind isn't the same game as Skyrim for example, and in Skyrim some character builds find the game easier than others.

And we haven't even got started on the comparison between the limited options in a CRPG, compared to the unlimited ones in a tabletop RPG, the inventive uses for spells or even mundane equipment the players come up with.

So really I'm not seeing the issue, I think you are coming from a false assumption.

 

[Morrus]

Video games are much more self-contained. There is far less flexibility than in a tabletop game, and video games aren't as splat-book dependent for revenue streams. Plus they get patched - very many video games are deluged with issues upon release.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Game balance is not inherently necessary as a criteria for good game design. Internal consistency is, but several RPGs make a big thing of having PC groups that are deliberately unbalanced. It mirrors fiction in literature and elsewhere, and the 'balancing mechanisms' often lie in story influence and the like.

Video games require balance because of the nature of their gaming, but tabletop roleplaying frequently has a different set of goals.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Why do tabletop games invariably mess up balance to some degree, while the vast vast vast majority of Video Game RPGs seem to put out decently balanced games almost every single time.

Basically I think the issue is that video games are a very different medium, with RPGs being so much more flexible and open to any action and any focus the group wants. They are played differently and video games don't have human referees, they are run by computers. Another issue is RPG fans simply don't agree on the issue of balance. One only needs to look at any thread here on fighters versus wizards or optimization or class parity to see that players have wildly different expectations of balance in play.

 

[Celebrim]

Why do tabletop games invariably mess up balance to some degree, while the vast vast vast majority of Video Game RPGs seem to put out decently balanced games almost every single time.

I disagree with the precept.

First of all, most video games are single player. In a single player game, balance doesn't matter much and balance in single player video games bear that out. It's all over the place in single player games, depending on the degree of system mastery that the player has. Often there are strategies or classes or builds that are just flat out better.

In competitive RPGs, balance is also dependent on system mastery. Diablo III and World of Warcraft certainly weren't balanced out of the box and anyone with even a little familiarity knows that continual balance adjustments are made all the time in those games and those like them. They certainly weren't better balanced initially in their classes than 5e classes were on release. Without system mastery, different builds have widely varying utility. With sufficient system mastery, what you tend to see is that there are a handful of builds considered nearly balanced or sufficiently balanced. But even then, there are often very large differences in balance. For example, many games have difficulty balancing melee characters with ranged characters, as ranged characters gain so much tactical flexibility.

So I deny the precept, that video games actually are balanced. I'm struggling to imagine a good example. Street Fighter II is widely considered one of the most balanced video games of all time. Team Fortress 2 likewise earns accolades for being one of the most balanced shooters of all time, which is part of the reason it remains relevant years after being released. Even so, by balance what we are saying in TF2 is that every class potentially has a role, and not that every class is of equal importance. Games like StarCraft and League of Legends deal with lack of balance through complex rock/paper/scissors metagames where overpowered strategies often have critical weaknesses against certain responses, meaning that even if an individual unit is overpowered, over reliance on the unit exposes you to a counter-strategy. Consider the amount of time however games like that spend tweaking maps to try to get balanced win rates depending on starting position. (Many skirt around this by having perfectly symmetrical maps.)

Lets for the moment assume that there are at least some good examples of balanced video games and that there is at least some validity to your claim.

What's going on here?

The most important answer is I think pretty simple. Video games are vastly less complicated than pen and paper roleplaying games. A typical video game only has to balance combat options. But in 3.X D&D combat balance is actually the least salient and import part of the game's lack of balance. The big problem in 3.X D&D is lack of out of combat balance. Conceivably both Fighters and Wizards had the ability to overcome many sorts of combat challenges effectively. The biggest balance issues concerned the lack of options Fighters had compared to Wizards to solve non-combat problems of all sorts, as well as the lack of ability Fighters possessed to self-rescue and self-protect themselves from specific problems. For example, Fighters actually had bigger problems being grappled than Wizards did, despite representing something that was a 'better' combatant. That's because Wizards could self-protect themselves with absolute powers like Freedom of Action and Teleport, whereas Fighters had only small relative advantages that were easily overcome when faced by very large foes with massive grapple bonuses. Likewise, Fighters had fewer options to self-protect themselves versus things like Force Cube or Invisibility and other spells with absolute characteristics. Fighters had to rely on Wizards to buff them. Wizards could find solutions that didn't depend on having a fighter around. Again, the big problem with the balance here is that Wizards have viable strategies in the face of rock, paper, or scissors challenges (and dozens of others) and Fighters comparatively are just rocks.

Combat is the least of the concerns in many cases. In the case of D&D, one of the biggest issue in creating balance is that the desire for balance play is contesting with the desire to have a spellcaster that seems to emulate the abilities of the magicians of fiction. A wizard in an RPG is a character in a story. A wizard in a video game is just a different sort of combatant. A simple video game combat simulator is really only concerned with spellcaster direct damage spells or very short term debuffs or damage over time. And because the focus of play is going to be on simply repetitive combat, and because those sorts of things are among the easiest to balance, you tend to get better but not perfect balance in the combat engine between characters. But even then, it's not perfect balance. You rarely see perfect balance between fast and slow characters, or between ranged and melee characters, or between characters with additional 'magic' powers that tend to be more absolute in nature (teleports, for example). Often the balance only occurs between players of moderate skill, where as very high skill players find ways to break a character with a steeper learning curve but eventually more upside.

Again, I know of no video game with perfect balance. That I have to reach back as far as Street Fighter II shows how hard it is even in the simpler case of video games.

That said, video games do have a few advantages unique to them that pen and paper doesn't have.

1) Increased granularity. Did you ever notice just how much bigger the numbers in video games tend to be? Hit points in the 10's of thousands rather than 100's aren't unusual. What those big numbers give you is a lot of granularity to tweak the balance. In a game with a fortune range of 1-20, a +3 bonus is fairly large and changing the bonus +/- 1 changes it by a fairly large amount. Video game designers like large numbers because it gives them the option to do things like tweak bonuses or values by plus or minus 3%, a level of granularity that pen and paper just can't achieve because the players have to do the math.

2) Easily Obtained Statistics: It's usually very easy for a video game designer to gather very detailed statistics on build balance, class balance, and so forth. If the designers of World of Tanks want to know whether a tier VI tank is unbalanced, they can easily look at the win rates and average damage of the tank over 10's of thousands of games and even break those numbers down further by the experience or skill of the players to note whether the tank just might have a steeper learning curve than another one. The same is true of Blizzard looking at class and build balance in Diablo III. A pen and paper designer just can't obtain nearly as detailed or comprehensive of a data set for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that each group might not even be playing the same game or same scenarios. Also the range of challenges each group may face and prioritize is widely different. And obviously, recording all that data and collecting it is basically impossible anyway. So one of the problems here is that not only would you need more iterations to balance the more complicated PnP game, but those iterations are much slower.

3) Greater Interchangeability of Concept: The more different the concept of play is, the more difficult it is to balance all types of play against all other types. Multiplayer video games often have single concepts of play. A single player game doesn't have to balance the stealth/infiltration build versus the melee build versus the ranged build versus the summoner class versus the build that talks there way through many of the problems. So long as you can win by each method, you have effective 'balance'. A multiplayer game often has a single concept of play where each class simply acts as a combatant. As long as each class is just doing damage, and has a single concept of play, balance is pretty easy. If you allow each class to 'cast spells' in some form by having moves and spendable resources and cool downs and what not, it's pretty easy to balance classes. If you are looking for a D&D example of this, pay close attention to the design of 4e which very much did try to obtain complete balance (and to a certain extent succeeded) by having only a single concept of play, and a single template from which classes were built. The fluff changed, but the actual abilities of each class (or each type of class) were very similar. The more varied the concepts of play, the more difficult it is to balance them. This is the reason you often here multiplayer games talk about Player versus Environment builds compared to competitive Player versus Player builds. For a PvE build, it just matters that you can win. The fact that it is inferior in PvP play is less important. For PvP, games often only have a very few viable builds, and often one build that is considered slightly the 'best' at a given point. Remember that PnP games are trying to do something you rarely see in video games - balance the PvE play.

Pen and paper games on the other hand have a huge advantage that video games don't have. PnP games have a human moderator that can dynamically respond to balance issues in any number of ways. Arguably though, that advantage itself makes balancing the game less important and more difficult to do, because there is no objective starting point for balance.

 

[Umbran]

So whats the deal? Why can hundreds of video game rpgs get balance correct on a myriad of different systems.

Is it because video games can be patched, tweaking the balance? Well that can't be it because D&D and other games essentially patch the game through errata.

Perhaps it is that you are playing alone and need not concern your self with other people? Well, not really. Many games like MMOs and Diablo etc etc are played with other people and, again, are fairly balanced within those games.

Well, I think you have your answer there. How many times have there been balance-related patches for Diablo 3? video games do *not* get perfectly balanced games all the time, at all.