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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5825488" data-attributes="member: 54877">I'll go further than that. I'm a "dual extremist". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> I think both of these are true: 1. The game should not work too hard for perfect balance in particular mechanics. The pursuit annoys plenty of people (due to side effects), it cuts out lots of flavorful material that would otherwise be available, and ultimately it won't work anyway. (If not curbed, you ultimately get something that really is World of Warcraft related, and not in a good way--endless, fiddly patches that do not accomplish anything short of alternating who is happy and who is not.) You make the main engine as robust as you can, and whatever rough balance you get out of that is mostly the balance you are going to have (for good or ill). Then you do some judicious polishing around the edges for the most used stuff. (Where to stop that last bit is part of the real art in the design work.) 2. On the other hand, the game authors should work really hard to tell you what is balanced, how it is balanced, why it is balanced, how you can adjust it, where potential problems are, etc. You can never get too much of this, and are basically limited by practical concerns--i.e. page counts, most people will only read so much on this topic, etc.  (Some people won't care at all, of course, and this becomes largely wasted page count for them.  However, even people who don't intend to do anything mechanically about balance are often interested in areas to keep an eye on in play.) It is not that you throw your hands up on #1 completely, and merely provide advice on #2. That's abdicating responsibility, and a game designed that way is one that you'll have to do most of the work yourself. (So why are you paying for it again?) My claim is not that the focus switch from one to the other--or that we drop the effort as a bad business--but that there has been entirely too much focus on #1 at the expense of #2. A good game design needs some of each--especially if it is a game designed to be customized.</blockquote>

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