How balanced should a game be?

[Umbran]

... why not? Why can't the obvious choices be just as good as the esoteric ones? The difference between "effective" and "optimal", to my mind, should be razor-thin, and nothing should ever be "ineffective".

Because, as a practical matter, the rules are too complicated, and too open ended to extension in the future, and the definition of effectiveness *WAY* too vague/subjective, to have the expectation that someone can't put together something more effective.

It is actually a relative of the "Halting Problem" in computer science. Once a system of rules and procedures hits a high enough level of complexity, it is not possible to be sure you've debugged it completely.

 

[Li Shenron]

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?

I generally agree with your points, but they really need to be bounded somehow... unequal choices do not spoil the game, but the gap cannot be anything. When is it too much? Probably when you start getting the sour feeling that you're being "taxed" to play a creative (but not outrageous) character concept. It's subjective, so it's hard to tell, but you'll know it when it happens to you.

I don't agree much with point 4), because IMXP the level at which you play don't always go from 1 to 20. I've started campaigns at 10+ level just because the DM had a published adventure requiring that, so the whole "early sacrifice for later advantage" becomes "advantage now". And likewise, there's no guarantee when you start a campaign that you'll reach the level of later advantage. Thus I prefer this idea to be very limited.

For weapons, the bazooka is not always better (otherwise every soldier would carry a bazooka, and none would carry a dagger). That's the whole point for me. OTOH if there are indeed 2 weapons which are identical in everything except 1 single numerical detail, or one of them has an extra, then I want a counterbalance. Example: a game has a half-spear and a short-spear, completely identical (including price) except one of them has an extra benefit or higher damage. That's bad balance for me, the lesser weapon shouldn't even be in the list because people would have stopped crafting it a long time ago. But just make it cheaper, and I'm fine, because at least there still is a reason for choosing it, no matter how small.

And that's a more general issue of mine with micro-balance: if the game gives me two choices, one of them strictly better (not just most of the times better, that's still ok), then I hate it.

Besides that, there is obviously a macro-balance issue, i.e. if some characters are largely dominating the game, but that's more theoretical since I didn't even experience much the CoDzilla problem in 3e.

Certainly, I do not mind characters being superior in a pillar of the game and inferior in another. That's actually a feature I want in a roleplaying game!

 

[Morrus]

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For weapons, the bazooka is not always better (otherwise every soldier would carry a bazooka, and none would carry a dagger). That's the whole point for me. OTOH if there are indeed 2 weapons which are identical in everything except 1 single numerical detail, or one of them has an extra, then I want a counterbalance. Example: a game has a half-spear and a short-spear, completely identical (including price) except one of them has an extra benefit or higher damage. That's bad balance for me, the lesser weapon shouldn't even be in the list because people would have stopped crafting it a long time ago. But just make it cheaper, and I'm fine, because at least there still is a reason for choosing it, no matter how small.

But sone things are worse, and people don't stop making them. The real world tells us that. Some stuff is better than other stuff. Sometimes the worse stuff even costs more!

Maybe the game world had cultural or economical or fashion-based reasons for certain items to exist, despite not being exactly equal in potency to other items. Maybe the goblin katakanaback really is a crappy weapon. Maybe an older style weapon is rarer. Or ceremonial.

Everything being forced into an artificial equal economy just seems bland to me.

 

[Li Shenron]

Maybe the game world had cultural or economical or fashion-based reasons for certain items to exist, despite not being exactly equal in potency to other items. Maybe the goblin katakanaback really is a crappy weapon. Maybe an older style weapon is rarer. Or ceremonial.

Sure, as well as broken, rusty or defective weapon makes sense to be found now and then. You just don't put them on a PHB equipment table however, because they don't make for good player suggestions.

 

[Morrus]

Sure, as well as broken, rusty or defective weapon makes sense to be found now and then. You just don't put them on a PHB equipment table however, because they don't make for good player suggestions.

I guess you can mark them as non-optimised if it feels better; or assume players can see that. Maybe I want my character to use a goblin kacha-whatever-it-was. And having it in the equipment list is convenient for me.

 

[Dungeoneer]

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.

I don't think that the situation you describe of every character design choice being equal is something that crops up in very many RPGs. Even RPGs that emphasize 'balance' generally acknowledge that different types of characters are going to do different things. If you are playing a computer hacker and I am playing a mercenary we will probably both be okay if you are better at hacking and I am better at shooting. A system where your hacking did just as much damage to opponents as my shooting would be silly. Conversely, I shouldn't be able to hack things by shooting them.

Of course, this brings up the question: what percentage of the game is going to involve situations where hacking is useful as opposed to situations where shooting is useful?

If the game is going to take place in a futuristic war-torn city where the power is out, suddenly the hacker gets a lot less useful. And I think this is where we run into concerns about 'balance'.

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.

I think [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] hit the nail on the head: there's 'effective', there's 'optima'l... and then there's 'ineffective'. When a player suddenly comes to the realization that their character is 'ineffective' and that they are not having fun, then we have a problem.

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

This is true in theory. In practice, games and the people playing them will often tend towards combat. If a game's rulebook has twenty pages of weapon choices and two pages on hacking, I think it's safe to assume that combat is going to be a bigger part of the game than breaking into computers. In which case we need to think about how hackers can feel like they are contributing in combat situations.

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.

How about, so long as the player is AWARE of that. I think this is where the problem lies. Games where the character types have power differentials at later levels have the potential to feel like traps for inexperienced players. Players pick a character because they think it seems cool. They seldom think to ask if it will be rendered ineffectual at later levels. A game where character types make a trade-off between early and late power has a good chance of turning into a trap for players who make the 'wrong' decision at the very beginning.

Here's a completely hypothetical scenario: in my cyberpunk game, hackers are weak at low level but can achieve godlike abilities near the end of the game. Meanwhile, mercenaries are cool early on, but will ultimately become more or less obsolete. A new player rolls up a merc. Six months later as the party is battling virtual demigods in cyberspace he is looking at his upgraded machine gun and wondering where it all went wrong. The worst part is that he has six months invested in this character, so the idea of scrapping the merc and rolling up a hacker is not very appealing. The 'choice' of early power has turned into a trap for him.

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.

I think the question you have to answer is, if bazookas are better, why doesn't everyone pick bazooka all the time? Are there costs or limitations to bazookas? Are there any scenarios at all where the paper knife would even be useful? Is the paper knife a 'trap' for new players?

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?

Here's what Dungeoneer considers 'balanced':

- Characters of all types should be 'effective' in the ways that players expect (i.e., hackers should be good at hacking)
- Characters of all types should be useful in the scenarios that occur most often (i.e., the hacker should be able to contribute in physical combat if there is going to be a lot of it)
- The game should avoid 'trapping' players with characters that will become ineffective over the long term (hackers should not suddenly become greatly inferior to other character types 10 levels in)
- Choices that are always going to be inferior should be removed or clearly marked as such ("we've added paper knives for flavor, but don't expect them to be much good against mechanized infantry!")
- Giving the player the ability to adjust their characters for changing scenarios would mitigate a lot of these concerns ("My hacker just got trained in Advanced Plasma Rifles!!")

 

[Cronocke]

Because, as a practical matter, the rules are too complicated, and too open ended to extension in the future, and the definition of effectiveness *WAY* too vague/subjective, to have the expectation that someone can't put together something more effective.

It is actually a relative of the "Halting Problem" in computer science. Once a system of rules and procedures hits a high enough level of complexity, it is not possible to be sure you've debugged it completely.

All of which sounds like it's derived from D&D, and none of which sounds like it's a good thing.

The core rulebook of whatever your game is should intentionally be designed such that no strategy seems inherently superior to any other - they're just useful in different situations.

Sure, you can introduce later homebrew character options and break the game that way, but nothing in the core rules should be that different in terms of effectiveness. Different flavor, sure. Different power levels, absolutely not.

I guess you can mark them as non-optimised if it feels better; or assume players can see that. Maybe I want my character to use a goblin kacha-whatever-it-was. And having it in the equipment list is convenient for me.

If you want to use a goblin catchopper or whatever, fine, but your character using that should be as effective as the other character using the bazooka. If that means you're using magic (or your dagger is enchanted) and he isn't, so be it. But intentionally designing choices to be bad makes no sense to me.

If you picked that because you want to play a less-powerful character, then your game should have power settings where everyone plays at the same level, or you should play a different game that's designed at that power level. But just flat out saying there's a high power option next to a low power option and you can take both in the same game...

 

[GMMichael]

Let's put on the game-designer or game-editor hat here:

If an option is clearly UP (under-powered, sub-optimal), then very few people will choose it. And if you have a block of text in your book that very few people use, you've probably wasted valuable art-space on your page.

This is the only reason that weapons belong in a game-balance discussion. If a PC picks up/buys a weapon that obviously stinks, even after a few uses, he can just get a different one. However, if a PC picks up a character feature that obviously stinks, then depending on how the game is written, he just might be stuck with it.

Stuck with UP feature = having less fun.

So 1) game balance should really be a discussion of more permanent or persistent game features, and 2) on the character creation side of things, you -need- to be looking at making all options viable (not UP). From the game mechanics perspective, any rule is a balanced rule, as long as all characters have access to it or to equally balanced rules.

Example: if a game has rules for fighting with weapons and without weapons, and fighting without weapons is clearly UP, then any characters who don't have access to the with-weapon-fighting rules should have access to other options that are just as useful as the with-weapon-fighting rules.

Is the horse dead yet?

 

[Zadmar]

I remember wanting to play a knife fighter many years ago, I don't even recall what system it was now, but I do remember that (after reading the rules) it wasn't really viable; I had to decide if I liked my character concept enough to play a second-rate fighter. I think I compromised with shortswords in the end.

My current favourite system is Savage Worlds, the difference between most weapons isn't too significant, but there are still some that are clearly better than others. So I ended up putting together guidelines for designing my own weapons, assigning different values to different abilities - and I've noticed my players now seem to be much more diverse in their weapon choices.

I'm not too fussed about realism, I prefer cinematic action, so I'd rather see people choose weapons that fit their character concept rather than picking the weapons with the best stats.

 

[Janx]

... why not? Why can't the obvious choices be just as good as the esoteric ones? The difference between "effective" and "optimal", to my mind, should be razor-thin, and nothing should ever be "ineffective".

The obvious choices need to be held as the standard. If I make a fighter and put the statistically "best" stat on Strength, and choose the obvious weapon of Longsword (because it's obviously a decent weapon), then I should expect (aka Obvious) results from fighting a basic monster (ex. Goblin).

that's a whole lot of assumptions, but it is a framework on which to compare other things.

By your preference then, if a "better" weapon exists, it should not be hugely better than the Obvious Fighter (ex Level 1, 15 str, 1d8 damage). If we got 5d8 damage out of using a Cloven BattleWidget, then that weapon has created an imbalance by most people's reckoning. especially if they both cost the same, have the same availability, etc.

Now an inefficient selection possibility still exists, as in I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make it drink. If a player chooses to wield a sword made of stuffed animals that does zero damage, what are the rules supposed to do? It's not even remotely obvious that it would be a viable option. But it exists.

Now hopefully, there aren't crappy weapons like that on the equipment lists. But one must allow for undiscovered exceptions. Things you'd prefer not to see happen, but don't realize they are there.