The word “balance” gets thrown around so much in todays discourse around games that it has really lost most meaning. Let’s talk about that.

Games are designed to provide a ton of different experiences and ways to play for people to enjoy. Let’s take a game like Smash. There are fast & slow, long & short range, etc. Lots of different styles! But are they all “Balanced”?

A common tactic when players want to object to a games balance is to simply list the things they do, and act in shock. “How this Jigglypuff character has 5 jumps and can kill someone at 45% with a single move!! How is that fair?” This kind of statement is immediately dead, and doesn’t provide any actionable feedback. It’s simply complaining about the experience the game is trying to provide. You see this kind of statement EVERYWHERE.

Instead, if you really want to talk about game balance, you have to discuss the push/pull around the mechanics and discuss ways that can retain that core experience that the game is offering. An example here might be “While Jigglypuff is an aerial character, the downtime between frames of his aerials is too short, allowing him not enough moments of vulnerability in the air.” This keeps the vision of Jigglypuff alive, and could give the designer something to work with if they agree that Jiggly is too strong. (This is a rhetorical example btw).

The other way to have your feedback dismissed, is to claim something with tons of balance levers is “Unbalancable”. TFT gets this a ton, and it’s kind of silly. Let’s say you have an item like the new artifact we previewed yesterday Mittens. It’s a VERY simple item, giving 100% AS and 20% DR. I saw a comment that said that this would be a “Balance nightmare”. But consider for a second something Wittrock once said:

-There’s a number between 0 and Infinity where it’s balanced-

Wittrock

Sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but for a game with numbers, it’s very clearly true. If the item has 100% AS and is too strong, but 15% AS and is too weak, clearly there’s a number in the middle that will work. It has a solution, the devs just need to find it!

I know sometime it’s fun to just vent about how KSante has 4700 HP 329 Armor etc…and sometimes these vents aren’t about feedback. But to really get good at a game is to understand it, and all of it’s levers and mechanisms that go into it. That’s the part of design I love, really breaking into a games various parameters and finding the best version possible for players! So consider that the next time you look at a game and want to talk about balance.

Ok, time for breakfast. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the new patch today! I managed to get a 1st with Shen hero augment. Until tomorrow, take it easy 🙂

Link to Mortdog’s original post