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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9465772" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Except that none of those things is true.Rules actually do matter quite a lot. That's why we write them in the first place--for any game. Just because rules can be written badly doesn't mean they don't matter. Rather the reverse: it means that because they matter, we should take seriously how we write them.Game balance, which you have so much venom for, is in fact very important, because it is what avoids both "nothing matters, do whatever, it won't have any effect" on the one hand, and "there is one correct answer that you have to calculate, and once you have it, you never need do anything else" on the other hand. Both extremes cease to be games; the first isn't a game because it's formless blob of nothing, just shouting into the void, while the second ceases to be a game because it has become a fixed, inviolate puzzle.A well-balanced game, on the other hand, nixes brute calculation because there are multiple valid paths to success, while nixing the "formless blob of nothing" because not all paths to success are valid.When the rules do not matter whatsoever, the results don't matter either. When the rules resolve to mere calculation, creativity dies. It is only when you actually do achieve balance that the decision of what to do becomes based on the qualitative, not the quantitative, that you can reward creativity without robbing it of that vital spark of actually mattering.</blockquote>

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