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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fieari" data-source="post: 3112983" data-attributes="member: 16221">Let's consult the master of game balance, <a href="http://www.sirlin.net" target="_blank">David Sirlin</a>.  He writes articles on game design in general, and video game design in specific, and COMPETITIVE video game design in more specific, but his words on balance work no matter what the game or medium or genre.Here's the definition he offers: (from his article "<a href="http://www.sirlin.net/archive/game-balance-part-1/" target="_blank">Game Balance, Part 1</a>")The basic thing he says is that variety is the bane of balance.  The more variety you have in a game, the harder it is to balance it.  Go is the mother of all balanced games.  Every peice is identicle, and there's basically only one thing you can do anyway... put a peice on the board.  It's a VERY pure game.  But although the strategy and depth of Go is deeper than any other game I can think of on the planet, there isn't a lot of variety in what you see.  Just dots.Chess offers variety, but balances it by making both players identicle.  When both sides are even, than clearly there's balance.  Chess is also a good game, but these days, we look for more in the way of variety.  We look for ASYMMETRICAL variety.  Where one player has something that the other doesn't.  I'm a fighter, you're a wizard.  My fighter does stuff the wizard can't, and your wizard does stuff my fighter sure as heck can't.That creates imbalance right from the start.Let's assume a hypothetical situation.  Just assume that two players have assymetrical options, but are in fact, 100% perfectly balanced against each other.  Now give one of those two completely different yet balanced creations a slight edge... let's say, one can now move 5 feet faster.  A slight change, and one that would likely get overlooked in all the craziness of the asymmetricality, but given our first assumption that they WERE balanced before, now one of the two is clearly better than the other, due to this extra little thing that would be practically impossible to see.That's the challenge of balancing.  And that's what makes variety the bane of balance.  And that's why pure perfect balance is practically impossible.Wizards isn't trying for pure perfect balance.  Wizards is offering variety, and variety in SPADES.  Now, they're trying for some sort of balance, but it's mostly eyeballing things, nothing all that rigorous (as can be seen many times; if they were rigorous, Pun Pun wouldn't be possible!)Wizards is following what Sirlin calls "The Capcom School of Balance", which I'll quote here:And you know what, for the most part it works.  And D&D players have a huge advantage over console fighter players: We have DMs that can say "No!"Are things balanced?  Heck no.  Do we have variety? Heck yes!  Is the game fun?  Oh yes.  Is there still some semblance of balance?  Yes.  Is the game unsalvagable even if broken things are found that make the game no fun anymore?  No, because of DMs.I don't worry too much.</blockquote>

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