How balanced should a game be?

[Morrus]

By "balanced" I mean "every character design choice bring equal". It's a theme I've seen crop up both in discussion of things like D&D and in feedback on my own game design.

As a preamble to the discussion, my thoughts are as follows:

1) I do not subscribe to the school of thought that character choices should all be equal.

2) I believe character optimization is a fun part of the game for many. As long as it doesn't dramatically ruin other players' fun, it's fine.

3) There are different things to be good at. Balance is too often a codeword for "good at single combat".

4) I don't think it's so terrible to sacrifice early power for later potential, as long as the player is cool with that.

5) I think it's OK to say. "That weapon is worse than that other weapon". I don't feel a paper knife has to be mathematically equal to a bazooka. The bazooka is better. Same with ability choices etc.

So my position is fairly clear - balance is OK to an extent, and extreme imbalance is a problem. but when it is the dominant factor in a game, it starts to bore the heck out of me.

What do you think?

 

[GMMichael]

By "balanced" I mean "every character design choice bring equal". It's a theme I've seen crop up both in discussion of things like D&D and in feedback on my own game design.

What do you think?

Sadly, I need more explanation. What's "equal" in terms of character design choices? You sort of hit the nail on the head earlier by mentioning that "balanced" isn't "equal in single combat."

"Balanced" should mean that two characters present the same amount, wait for it, of FUN to the players. Now the focus shifts discreetly toward GMs. If GMs design their games around combat, then players looking for non-combat fun simply won't find any - regardless of how "balanced" their characters are.

Now, without further ado, my answer to the question: how balanced should a game be?

All players want to have fun. That's why they're playing games. So I really don't care if one character can destroy a TIE-fighter single-handedly (or empty-handed); that could be really fun for one player, and completely boring for another. A game system needs to present the POTENTIAL for all players to have fun equally. To do this, since a game can't be good at everything, the game must be forthcoming about what sort of game it is. This is to help players realize what they're getting into. For example, the 3.5 PHB spends 150 pages (out of 320) talking about combat and spell-casting. What would you guess THAT game is about? So if a game says "I'm about combat and spells," then all players interested in a combat and spellcasting game should be able to have similar amounts of fun while playing that game (and following its character-creation rules).

tl;dr
How balanced should a game be? Balanced enough for all players to have similar amounts of fun.

 

[Cronocke]

By "balanced" I mean "every character design choice bring equal". It's a theme I've seen crop up both in discussion of things like D&D and in feedback on my own game design.

As a preamble to the discussion, my thoughts are as follows:

1) I do not subscribe to the school of thought that character choices should all be equal.

Yeah, I'm pretty much in favor of equality - if one choice is inherently worthless, and another is highly useful and versatile, why does the first even exist?

That's on the extreme end of the equation, but my point still stands, why should there be inherently "better" and "worse" choices?

2) I believe character optimization is a fun part of the game for many. As long as it doesn't dramatically ruin other players' fun, it's fine.

I'm fine with each character specializing in different things, and I'm fine with the generalist being worse than the specialist at their one thing, but better at other things. It's when you can be a generalist who outperforms - or obsoletes - specialists that I balk.

3) There are different things to be good at. Balance is too often a codeword for "good at single combat".

Sure. But those other things besides single combat should be equally useful, and used just as often, or else it's still a worse choice.

4) I don't think it's so terrible to sacrifice early power for later potential, as long as the player is cool with that.

I prefer immediate tradeoffs to long-term ones, as when you trade early power for late power, the people who didn't do that lag behind as a direct result.

5) I think it's OK to say. "That weapon is worse than that other weapon". I don't feel a paper knife has to be mathematically equal to a bazooka. The bazooka is better. Same with ability choices etc.

But why is "paper knife" even an option in this example? This is the thing that I don't understand - it's fine if you want things to be inherently Cool, but why not make all the things Cool? Why not pair the bazooka with the Dagger of Sudden Teleportation or the Infinitely Extending Laser Sword or something? You can have things be nice and flavorful without them having to be mechanically bad.

 

[Umbran]

I add my voice to the others who are noting that "equal" isn't helpful here - we must be sure we are comparing apples to apples. In what sense are we to consider a sneaky rouge "equal" to a tank fighter? Clearly, they have different operation, so they cannot be equal in *every* aspect. It is like saying my toaster is not equal to my car - true, but not helpful.

So, give us some sense in which they are supposed to be equal, or not, and maybe that becomes a useful discussion.

My personal notion of balance is akin to DMMike's - options are "balanced" if, in the broad sense, they have similar potential to be useful in the game. They don't need to be "equal", except in their overall ability to contribute. In essence, options need to have similar ability to take good spotlight time.

If your game is mostly about killing things and taking their stuff, then the combat-oriented definition comes rather closer to holding than you seem to suggest. I know some folks do like to play support roles (I tend to be one of them, in fact), but in the long run, being able to have spotlight matters, and giving everyone a +1 to hit simply isn't *dramatic*. It doesn't get spotlight.

If your game really is honestly varied, and combat *doesn't* take up any more of your playtime than anything else, then notions of balance can be broad. But to serve your players well, you need to be honest with yourself about that. If it is D&D, for example, look at your adventure design, and figure out how many of the XP are bound up in things that the majority of folks really are going to just fight their way through.

Some will blithelly respond to, "Well, they don't *have* to fight it! They could find another way around, if they are creative." That's kind of like saying that since your artwork is in black and white, you cant' see the skin colors, so your racial representation is good!

*Design* for non-combat, rather than "combat can be avoided if you work at it," and then you get to say that combat equality doesn't matter.

 

[Stormonu]

Balanced as far as "everything is useful". They don't have to be useful in the same arena, either. An ability that gives you a bonus to a skill you'll use outside of combat can be balanced against something that gives you an in-combat bonus, for example. Likewise, it's only balanced if you'll only get use out of it in the game, and to about the same degree as something else. Some feature that gives me a +20 bonus to basket-weaving will probably never be worth even a +1 bonus in combat, unless you're running some crazy japanese RPG about school kids and their banzai 9-week "versus" class projects/tests.

And I can see there are still ways to balance things like a bazooka and a knife (maybe not a paper one). When you factor things in like it takes two folks to load a bazooka, it's fairly inaccurate and you wouldn't want to pull one out in a hand-to-hand combat vs. a knife's usefulness in combat and out (for cutting rope, using it as a improvised lockpick, etc.) - it can even be balanced in that fashion, without having to make both deal 6d6 damage every time it's used.

 

[Campbell]

Games are ultimately about choices that should have a meaningful impact on realizing the objectives of the game. My preference is to tilt the weight of the impact of choices towards actual play rather than character creation or between session prep largely because I'm a believer that games should be played when you're actually playing the game. I think the general principle for character creation should be to determine the types of choices you'll be forced to make in actual play rather than determining the overall effectiveness of a character.

I'd also say that the difference between one character choice and another should be a bit more situational and thus different under divergent circumstances. Obvious choices make for a fairly dull play experience. For instance I find the differing costs for abilities in Classic World of Darkness between character creation and character advancement pretty detrimental to game play because its immediately obvious which character creation strategies are more effective.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] We could debate it in vague terms or formulate some kind of a metric (which might indeed be interesting), but I think it will boil down to this:

The answer to "HOW MUCH and WHAT KIND of balance" varies for different segments of gamers, and thus should vary by different games.

 

[steenan]

I believe all games should be very balanced. But what the "balance" means depends on the game in question.


If a game mainly focuses on PCs facing and overcoming challenges, all characters should be balanced in how well they overcome these challenges. If different kinds of challenges are present, a character may be better at some of them and worse at others, but on average should be as useful as any other.

That means that two characters may be balanced or not depending on what challenges are present. If the game does not communicate clearly how challenges should be presented (or the GM decides to ignore it), balance may be destroyed. And if a game is to be balanced for any mix of challenges - thus giving the GM more freedom in building adventures - each character must be useful in every kind of challenge. It is doable, but requires a lot of skill in the design to avoid a feeling of sameness.


Of course, efficiency in overcoming challenges is not the only measure of balance. If a game focuses on personal, moral choices and relationships, then character "power" does not matter much. What is important - and has to be balanced - is being connected with other PCs and NPCs, being able to make meaningful choices and have them affect the situation. Here, balance is expressed less in numbers and more in rules to ensure that each player isn't denied their creative input.


Another thing that may be balanced is the spotlight time and ability to express the character. For example, one character may have lower numbers than another, but the game introduces interesting complications on failed rolls instead of blocking PC's attempts. Thanks to that, the weaker characters has a lot of fun mishaps and complications, while the stronger one succeeds and gets what they want, but not much else happens. Both have opportunities to roleplay what the players like: one a flawless victory, the other various misadventures they live through by crazy luck and improvisation.


In other words, to be able to balance a game, a designer needs to have a clear picture of what the game is about and how it works in play. Otherwise, they may end up with a completely inappropriate kind of balance that ruins players' fun.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I started replying before fully reading the initial post, and I agree that not all choices should be equal.

Being bad at things often makes for better games and stories than being remarkably good at a small skill set and terrible at everything else.

To me optimization = overspecialization.

Weapon comparisons: As long as you put an in-character reason together with the mechanic reason. "The flail has a higher fumble range" is the mechanic reason. An in character reason would be something like "sure, you'll do a lot of damage, but stand a good chance of hitting yourself."

I think a lot of the issue with the "holy game balance", is people not thinking of creative solutions. For example, you're a wizard (pre 3E), and you only have one spell left and it's not a combat spell (but could creatively become one). You're facing a horde of monsters, your party is pretty badly beaten up, and your enemies aren't as badly wounded. You use cast your last spell at the ceiling, to bring it down on the monsters.

On the other hand, if by "balance" they mean "I need to do something awesome every round", then I am not the GM for them.

 

[GMMichael]

I'd like to note that the most common calls for "balance" that I've heard have come from the D&D arena, and these were usually in regard to the number of damage dice that a PC could throw, on a per-class-level basis.

Lots of assumptions in there, especially the class-level part.

But I'm glad to see that ENworlders are taking balance to a higher level.

And by the way, the 5e PH seems to have 100 pages of combat and spells, out of 320. So...improvement?