Game Balance

 Ian Schreiber {Notes}

"Balance" is the term used when someone is talking about how well or bad they are doing within a game. Balance, much like fun, can mean many things within a game environment and is often overused in most cases.

Balance is something best left until you have a good set of core mechanic's, this is because their is no point balancing a game before it is meeting its design goals. E.g you want jumping, running and collecting as your core mechanic's, you cannot balance the levels or mechanics until you have them working according to your design needs.

In a two-player setting, balanced usually means that all players have equal advantages and disadvantages therefor making it fair and balanced.

In a single-player setting. balanced is determine by many factors such as player skill and different difficulty modes. Any unfair advantage the game may have could be considered a challenge and not unbalanced.

4 types of game balance

Balance in Single-Player Games

In single-player games, we use “balance” to describe whether the challenge level is appropriate to the audience.

Simply playing the game and getting experience with it, your audience will eventually become more skilled at the game. For this reason, games usually get harder in latter levels to match the players experience. Another reason is so that game play matches the dramatic tension in the narrative. We call this PACING in single player games.

The best way to understand the appropriate challenge level and pacing for your audience is to playtest.

Using play testers as much as possible will give you oversight on how challenging your game is, overtime you will get a feel for the type of audiences you are aiming for and will require less playtesting to achieve the appropriate pacing. Sometimes using less play testers but knowing their skill level with the game or similar games can give you just as good results.

Even though through play testing you will gain some idea of how to balance your game it is a good idea to aim for mid level skill of your audiences so you can cater for as many people as possible. You can add different difficulty modes, handicaps or alternate rule to support those that don't fall in the middle. 
  
Balance in Asymmetric Games

In multi-player games where there is asymmetry (that is, where players do not start with exactly equal positions and resources), we use “balance” to describe whether one starting position is easier to win with than another.

Balancing an asymmetric game requires much more play testing that most other types. Even though the players start of equal in all aspects (location, resources etc) their may be conflicting elements that can determine a unfair advantage later on or shortly after the game has started. These things can be strategies or if they are different types of units that leads to unit balancing between different classes or races (usually seen in RTS or MMORPG PvP systems)

Sometimes players are so different that direct comparisons are impossible. Sometimes different players can be given resources, positions, tasks or rules. The more different the players are, the harder it will to balance and compensate for any unfair advantage.

Balance between Strategies in a Game

Within a game, if there are multiple strategies or paths to victory that can be followed within the game, we use “balance” to describe whether following one strategy is better or worse than following another.

 If a game that allows multiple strategies, there may be one dominant strategy.  This will usually mean players will opt for this strategy and ignore all other sub optimal strategies in the effort to win therefor making anything that doesn't involve this dominant strategy irreverent and unneeded in the game.

Its wise to make several potential winning strategies in a game, this will make your game much more interesting when these strategies are balances. This requires play testing and taking note of certain strategies that seem to be used more often than others, and which ones seem to win. 

This can take form in items within a game, some items may be bought before others and some not bought or used ever. 

Sometimes players will use certain strategies because its easier or more obvious than others. Some strategies could be to complex or require more experience with the game to master. Play testing will give you a good signal of the balance within the game but due to the users it cannot always be totally accurate.

Balance Between Game Objects 

 Within a system that has several similar game objects (such as cards in a trading-card game, weapons in a role-playing game, and so on), we use “balance” to describe the objects themselves, specifically whether different objects have the same cost/benefit ratio.

 Preventing any game object from being so weak that it is useless in comparison with other objects, this is a false choice for the player because they might be able to gain or purchase a certain object but they will quickly find that it is not worth using. This will mean the object is wortless to the player and a waste of time for both the players & designers time.

Preventing a game object from being too powerful. Any object that is dominant over all others means it will become the only strategy and make all others useless in comparison.

  

Balanced objects have the same cost/benefits ratio. This doesn't necessarily mean every item has to be the same but they have to have the same or similar drawbacks or more usually benefits to one another. E.g sword or spear, depending on your choice they will both give different benefits and drawbacks but by the same amount and as they cost the same they are balanced.

Transitive Relationship (Cost Curve)

• Most Direct way of balancing objects
• Linear proportion of costs to benefits (twice the price, twice the power)
• Progressive increase in cost vs power
• Bulk discount
• More abilities, the higher the cost

Intransitive (Rock-Paper-Scissors)

• Some objects are superiors to others and inferior to others
• They may not have a direct relation with cost and benefit
• These object can counter one another
• Some objects may be againest the stronger counter but have more cost = more benefit
• Transitive and Intransitive can be combined (more cost, more benefi)

Fruity (Apples Vs Oranges)

•  Making the objects unique from eachother, to where direct comparisons are impossible
• Only way to balance is playtest

The Challenge

For transitive relationships, everything relies on the designer finding the correct cost curve. If your math is wrong, it will be wrong for every object in the game. One object that is unbalanced will probably mean having to change everything. Transitive relationships are much easier to develop after play testing since so much relies on getting the numbers right and also tends to take a lot of trial and error.

Intransitive relationship takes a lot of balancing in terms of cost vs benefit for each different object taking into account of counters to each object and when adding more objects to the mix, they to have to be balanced to previous and new objects (upgrades etc)

Fruity relationship have no hard math behind them and have to be balanced using play testing as they have no relation between each other.

More Game Balance Techniques

When you change something in your game, you should return to :-

• What is the core aesthetic, does this change support this?
• Will this change have a effect on existing elements
•  knowing the relationship between the system and objects is key in predicting secondary effects. 
• Make one change at a time
• Learn to love excel
• Organize game objects and thier stats
• Weapons lists
• Items
• Monsters
• Tasks & statues (Play Tested?,  Development?, Implemented?)

• "Rule of 2" if a stat or number is to low, double it. If a stat or number is to high, half it.
• Doing this will give you a better scope on how your objects are related and help you fine tune them to be balanced

• First-turn advantage or disadvantage
• Rotate who the first player is in multiple rounded games
• Give the disadvanaged players some extra resources
• Reduce the effectiveness of early turns, slow build up start into the game. 

•  Write down your own rules as you learn them
• Learning from your mistakes and successes, writing them down to review for later projects to help you find a law of game design or a new game balance technique. 

 Balance is dependant on the game and your design goals. Some games are well balanced, others not and in some cases they are intentionally unbalanced. lets the above techniques be your tools, but not your master...every game is different.