Balanced Game System: Imperative or Bugaboo

[Fanaelialae]

Well, despite the argument that all history is "revisionist" as you are perceiving the past through the eyes of the present, I suppose I should have been more precise.

In my personal gaming experience, in no group I ever played with, through all of the 80s and into the early 90s, did a discussion or argument about "balance" ever come up. It simply was some ethereal understood concept that did not play into player choice or decision. It's conception as a "game design necessity" or simply and element of play, in the way it means today, did not cross our minds.




Well, I never had the privilege of talking or playing with the man. But nice to know it was a concern...as I said (or meant to insinuate, at least), I always thought things were "balanced" in OD&D and AD&D. It just never came up as a concern.




Well, this goes to my original point, for "Balance" nowadays. It is as important/necessary as thsoe playing deem/create it to be.

If your perception is "Balance is like oxygen"...then that's what it's going to be for you and your game.

That's the thing with balance though. Until you're aware of it, you can only see its shadow.

It might manifest as the wizard player saying that he doesn't enjoy playing rogues. Now, I'll grant you, he might legitimately prefer magic users over thieves. However, it could be an indication that the wizard player doesn't find the rogue properly balanced.

We play this game, assuming the roles of adventurers and heroes, in the pursuit of fun. In that light, most players would obviously rather play Magnus, Master of the Mystical, than Joe the Useless Dirt Farmer. They might not explain it in terms of balance, but I suspect that balance is nonetheless a significant factor regarding that choice. No one wants to think halfway through the campaign, "Why did I pick the Useless Dirt Farmer class? I feel like such an anchor in this party...". If the classes are balanced, odds are the player won't have to.

Another reason that the importance of balance is often understated is, somewhat ironically, because of fantastic DMs. For these DMs, nothing is impossible. They could probably make a Haven campaign great.

In the first 3rd edition campaign I ever played, our DM didn't understand the xp system. So he decided to use the 2nd edition xp system instead. Rogues were on the 2nd edition Rogue table, Wizards used the 2nd edtition Mage table, and monsters were assigned an xp value based on their HD and special abilities. Believe it or not, despite that there's no reason it should have, it worked.

He was (and still is) a fantastic DM. He's taken completely cobbled together systems, which look a mess, and turned them into some of the most fun campaigns I've ever played in. He's the kind of guy who could run a Rifts campaign with a Dragon, a Juicer, and a Regular Joe, and make it amazing.

That said, not everyone can be of that caliber. My players enjoy my games, but every time I try running fast and loose, the way that that guy does, my games crash and burn. I'm not in his league.

Balance is largely irrelevant for a fantastic DM. They find workarounds for a system's limitations almost by instinct. It's for the good (and not-so-good) DMs for whom balance is important. Not everyone can run a game for a Dragon, a Juicer, and a Regular Joe, and guarantee that everyone has fun. For DMs that are less than fantastic, balance helps greatly with these issues. If all choices are equivalent (not the same thing as being the same), then a DM doesn't have to worry about trying to build encounters that challenge the Dragon without flattening the Regular Joe. The system does that for him.

A good system should be balanced, because designing a game that only a fantastic DM can run competently is setting the bar unrealistically high (IMO). A balanced game aids a good DM in running a good game, and can help a not-so-good DM learn how to run a good game without throwing him in the deep end and hoping for the best. As for the fantastic DMs, they will be fantastic regardless of what system they run.

 

[Umbran]

Ya know...I can never remember what this means. I've been told and just don't ever remember (an indicator, I suppose of how often I, or a point I'm trying to make, am/are called a "Strawman".) All I recall is that it is somehow derogatory, implying a "weak" arguement. Is that correct?

"A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of (often false) assumptions. To 'attack a straw man' is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet nonequivalent proposition (the 'straw man'), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. Generally, the straw man is a highly exaggerated or over-simplified version of the opponent's original statement, which has been distorted to the point of absurdity. This exaggerated or distorted statement is thus easily argued against, but is a misrepresentation of the opponent's actual statement."


Basically, he's saying that you overstated the position of others - nobody said anything equivalent to, "...my character should be 'just as good' as you character in all things, except I use magic and you use a sword...."

 

[Hussar]

RPG's are games. That's self evident. Games require some element of balance or they don't work. Even incredibly simple games like, say, Rock, Scissors, Paper are balanced. (Although that darn Rock keeps telling me to nerf paper. )

Whenever a system is not balanced, one option will become more advantageous than another option. I like to point to the 2e two weapons rules. It made very, very little sense to not use two weapons - you effectively doubled your damage per round at the cost of a single point of AC (lose a shield) and a proficiency slot.

Complete no brainer. Two weapon fighting was just that much better than all other options.

Now, you could ignore that and make a character that didn't use two weapons. Sure, no problem. But, the guy standing next to you is doing twice as much damage on average than you are. While there are people who simply don't care about this, there are quite a few people who do. It's hard to just let it slide when you see the other guy doing your thing twice as well as you do.

So, IME, pretty much everyone who could took two weapon fighting in 2e.

Which resulted in cookie cutter characters - everyone did the same thing. Even the clerics were getting in on the action as well.

That, to me, is the primary problem with unbalanced systems. Whenever you have one option that is better than another option, the better option will become the default. It should become the default - it's outright better. There's a reason D&D characters use a longsword and not a shortsword given the choice. The longsword option in most editions of D&D is just better. And you'd tend to see fifteen sword users for every pole-arm user. (ok, I just made that up I don't know the actual numbers. But how many Voulge's did you ever see used by a player?)

While you'll never achieve perfect balance, that's not the point. Just because you cannot reach some sort of Platonic ideal of game balance doesn't mean that we should take the RIFTS approach and chuck game balance out the window. Balance is important. Balance means that more options become viable.

I've always maintained that it is far, far easier to unbalance a balanced system than to try to balance one that isn't balanced in the first place.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you make an interesting argument Hussar but why must a game be balanced so every option is equally viable in order to work. There are different ways to approach balance. While I think balance is important, i still argue it needs to be weighed against plausibility and flavor. I want balance but I also want some level of realism and for my decisions to matter.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I see having game system balance, itself, as an unmitigated good thing. If you can have a transparently balanced system, then everyone at the table knows it. If this is important to that table, you will enjoy it. If it is not important to that table, then at least everyone will have a good gauge to determine how much they want to diverge. (Joe might be reasonably happy playing a rogue 2 levels below Jane's wizard, because that is an amount of imbalance he is willing to tolerate. If it was 4 levels lower, not so much.) That is, this kind of balance is a measuring stick, and no one wants a set of rulers where the inches or centimeters vary from ruler to rule, and even over a single ruler.

People that say they want deliberate system imbalance to reflect a world imbalance, or other such arguments, are thus answered. Nothing is stopping you!

And as already said a couple of times, anything that cuts out DM work helps. This is my main reason for wanting a certain amount of balance. The players at my table will want it. To the extent that the system doesn't provide it, I must. I'll take some of that as going along with the job, but it is "work" for me--i.e. not fun.

The pursuit of game system balance, however, is not so much the bed of roses. Thus, the fair gripes with "balance" are always against not the end itself, but the means and discernment. If you make a system significantly harder to run because you try to exactly balance Joe's secondary blacksmithing profession with Jane's basket weaving hobby, then your discernment is probably lacking. (I suppose there could be a system where this was important. I doubt it for D&D.) It just wasn't important enough to cause that much trouble in the core system. If you try to do this by tying it to some more critical part of the system, then your choice of means is also bad. You've risked imbalance where it matters to get "more balance" where it doesn't.

Then when it comes to more playstyle oriented decisions like risking balance to maximize flavor, I prefer sharp application of the 80/20 rule. Say that you have a D&D system with 400 spells. We'll arbitrarily say that 300 of them are no problem either way--they are well balanced and flavorful just the way they are (or more likely, "good enough" on both counts). Chances are, of the 100 that are a problem in either balance or flavor, there is probably a handful of things that can be done to the system to move them into the "good enough" category. So you'd evaluate that handful of things and determine if those means are ok (i.e. no serious side effects on others things that can't be handled). If so, include those 80 spells. Drop the other 20. Doesn't matter if the flavor sucked or they broke balance. Just drop them. You've got 380 good enough spells. That's plenty.

So things that can be easily balance but weren't--that bothers me. It makes me do work that should have already been done. But things that are balanced at heavy cost, especially when not all that relatively important, also bothers me. That effort probably had an opportunity cost that prohibited more important balance elsewhere.

 

[Neonchameleon]

First, hey Neonchameleon! Long time no see. Hope all's well.

It is (Other than my PCs having wrapped up a campaign a session early recently through Darwin Awards). And with you?

In my personal gaming experience, in no group I ever played with, through all of the 80s and into the early 90s, did a discussion or argument about "balance" ever come up. It simply was some ethereal understood concept that did not play into player choice or decision. It's conception as a "game design necessity" or simply and element of play, in the way it means today, did not cross our minds.

This I can well believe. I'll get on to why in the rest of this post - but the quick version is that OD&D and AD&D (1e) are in their way (and a different way from 4e) pretty well balanced for the types of games they are designed for. Because the designers had done the work balance didn't become an issue at the table.

Well, I never had the privilege of talking or playing with the man. But nice to know it was a concern...as I said (or meant to insinuate, at least), I always thought things were "balanced" in OD&D and AD&D. It just never came up as a concern.

Quite a lot of work had been put into balancing OD&D and (1e) AD&D. Of course there was a lot that wasn't balanced (Cavaliers, 1e Barbarians). But a lot of balance was woven into the metagame with things like the wandering monster percentages and giving fighters castles and followers at the time when the strategic resources wizards got (4th and 5th level spells) was going to start leaving fighters in the dust. This was even why there were the differing XP charts by class - all subtle balance tweaks that weren't too intrusive because they more or less worked.

2e groups so far as I can tell had many more issues if they weren't continuation 1e groups than if they were - the metagame balancing factors were subtly removed or changed (for example 1e's scale sheer surface was changed to 2e's climb walls - a substantive but subtle nerf) but 1e groups didn't really notice because it was never highlighted.

Well, this goes to my original point, for "Balance" nowadays. It is as important/necessary as thsoe playing deem/create it to be.

If your perception is "Balance is like oxygen"...then that's what it's going to be for you and your game.

My point is the opposite. Balance doesn't appear important until it breaks. 3.X was the edition where Pun-Pun was (dubiously) possible.

Ya know...I can never remember what this means. I've been told and just don't ever remember (an indicator, I suppose of how often I, or a point I'm trying to make, am/are called a "Strawman".) All I recall is that it is somehow derogatory, implying a "weak" arguement. Is that correct?

Umbran had it. A strawman is taking your opponents case as being an absurd one that no one on the other side believes. Almost no one argues for perfect balance.

About the only game I can think of that is perfectly balanced is Wushu, which means that someone armed with toothpicks is precisely as deadly as someone armed with an Uzi. And stating you run through the hail of bullets adds precisely the same to your defence as stating you hide behind a concrete pillar. (Wushu is a great game as long as you embrace the absurdity of over the top action movies).

No one's arguing for that. What we're arguing for is what OD&D actually had, although spread over different timescales. What balance means is that no one should feel like a supernumary, overshadowed by everyone else in the party. You can do this a number of ways; making everyone equal is only one. Giving everyone a limited number of occasions to be the best in the party at what they did is another, and trying to make sure they are all roughly as frequent as each other.

Again, a matter of personal preference and perception. To my mind, if something is "futile" then no, by definition it is not a "worthy goal." It is a white whale.

That depends whether getting close helps In the real world I want a just legal system. I know this is impossible. But this doesn't mean that it's not a goal worth pursuing. Even if you can never get there, most philosophical goals are like this - being closer is beneficial. Physical goals - close only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tac nukes. Balance is to me a philosophical goal.

As far as I understand it, I believe it was yon latter days of 2e. Apparently, from what I've read here, was further corrupted in 3e. And completely blown out of the water in 4e.

2e was when the designers really stopped paying attention to balance, which meant that it became a serious issue on the tabletop (an argument can be made for Unearthed Arcana). 3e followed from 2e and has seriously screwed up balance by removing almost all remaining limitations on strategic use of casters, destroying the saving throws of fighters, opening up most of the rogues exclusive abilities, and removing the diplomatic game. 4e threw the whole system out and started from scratch with balance baked in even harder than it had been by Gygax. And didn't give castles away at high levels because it made it a more setting neutral game not to.

I think you make an interesting argument Hussar but why must a game be balanced so every option is equally viable in order to work.

It doesn't. No one is arguing for Wushu. No one is arguing that a toothpick should be as deadly as an uzi in D&D.

There are different ways to approach balance. While I think balance is important, i still argue it needs to be weighed against plausibility and flavor. I want balance but I also want some level of realism and for my decisions to matter.

I'll drink to that. So will everyone else I think. We're now into haggling over the details.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No one is arguing that a toothpick should be as deadly as an uzi in D&D.

4Ed Monk?

 

[Smoss]

I like balance in a system - A system where the effort put in by a character and their experience determines their ability in an "encounter". A lot of my system design was based on a built in balance between options.

Certainly you can take it too far. Balance without flavor is boring. It is still only one small part of a greater whole in most systems - A system that is nothing BUT balanced won't be played.
Smoss

 

[Bullgrit]

In my personal gaming experience, in no group I ever played with, through all of the 80s and into the early 90s, did a discussion or argument about "balance" ever come up. It simply was some ethereal understood concept that did not play into player choice or decision. It's conception as a "game design necessity" or simply and element of play, in the way it means today, did not cross our minds.

Just because one doesn't notice something or personally care about it, that doesn't mean it didn't exist or that others didn't care about it. Gygax and others talked about game balance (written rules and DM rulings) many times during the AD&D years. He even talked about balance in AD&D in recent years on this forum:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...d-d1-designed-game-balance-5.html#post5024751

But we were young, (what? 15 years old? Younger?), and didn't care about game design theory.

I'd bet dollars to donuts, that if you ask a 15 year old new D&D player today about game balance, they don't notice or think about it any more than we did 30 years ago. It's not something that just recently came into being; it's something that we just recently came to think about.

Bullgrit

 

[Janx]

In software development, it is generally known that there is no true perfect program that has no bugs. Especially the larger and more complex it is.

The aim of software testing then, is to find and fix the most serious of them.

In a game, especially the more complex it is, the harder it is to truly balance all the classes, skills and abilities.

Yet, like software testing, the goal is to do so in order to have a playable game (that is one where all players are contributing and having fun).

The most perfectly balanced RPG would have 1 class with no customizable skills, advancement or equipment. Then every PC is truly the same. And boring.

Obviously, players want variety. hence all the rules and stuff.

But balance ensures that what Timmy wants doesn't stomp on Bobby's fun.

Now Wushu having the same math for all PCs is like that silly example I gave. 4e making everybody have differently named powers that all have the same effect is more of the same.

Conceptually, it's balanced if my PC gets more attacks, but does less damage, compared to your PC that does fewer attacks but more damage.
It gets fuzzier outside of combat if my general combat skills are worse than yours, but I have great social skills. Social skills that never get used because we spend all the time in fights then unbalances things.

People talk about the old days being balanced. And of nobody talking about balance back then. Recall that until the 90's, Game Design wasn't even a field of study in college. While subconciously, designers may have had ideas in their head, it was never a formal concern.

And the much vaunted 1e balance over time wasn't. If a campaign only lasts 1 year, and it takes a year to get to level 5, then my wizard is going to suck for the entire campaign, while your fighter kicks butt the entire time.

There were always problems. They just may not have been apparent or encountered by everyone.