Balance notes

Game balance:
Balance can mean

1. in single player games that the challenge is appropriate to the audience.
2. in asymmetrical games that neither player begins with a advantage
3. Whether one strategy is better or worse
4. Whether different objects have the same cost benefit ratio.

In single player games:

As a game goes on generally the difficulty of the game increases. In a single player game this is generally referred to as pacing. In games the problem of whether a game is too hard or too easy is solved generally by play testing. To account for the individual skill of each player you may need to have many testers. as you become more experienced at testing you will be able to better judge peoples skills and therefore require less testers.

Your game will always be too easy or too hard for some people. It is best to aim for the middle of the bell curve  in order to please the most people and use challenge modifier such as difficulty election and handicaps to allow the player to alter the difficulty.

Balance in Asymmetric Games:

Games that are completely symmetric are rare even with games like chess and go one player has to go first. In a symmetric game both players start with the same resources and positions so it may not seem like balancing is needed but other types of balancing are needed. one strategy should not be dominant.

In games the player expectation is that player should be on a equal footing unless the game itself suggests otherwise like in the Great Dalmutti. Asymmetric games are naturally harder to balance. One way of doing so is to link the player resources in some way. With games that have very different play styles between players designers should perform much more play testing to compensate.

Balance between Strategies in a Game:

 Although this might be considered a negative thing since finding the best strategy is how a game is played but the problem is that once a optimal strategy is found all other strategies are ignored. There is nothing wrong with the game having 1 winning start but then the other starts need to be removed to streamline the game.

it is worth having many viable strategies it makes the game much more interesting. Balancing strategies is mostly done with play testing by seeing which strategies are used  most and produce wins the most. Play testing does not necessarily show which games are unbalanced but they do give strong signals as to what to look at.

Balance Between Game Objects:

 Example of game objects are trading cards, units in strategy games and weapons in RPGs. There are 2 goals in balancing these objects. The first is for it to not be too weak so that it is considered useless and the second is to stop it from becoming too powerful and therefor becomes the dominant strategy.

Objects are balanced if they have the same cost/benefit value.

Three Ways to Balance Game Objects:

 There are 3 ways to balance a game. The first is a Transitive relationship more commonly known as the cost curve. This is where you try and find a desirable proportion of costs to benefits which may be linear or curved.

The next step is to try and compare the costs and benefits to see if they are where they should be. This method is most often used in trading card games. In MtG the stats of the card are balanced with the cost of the same card.

The second method is a intransitive relationship between objects. This is often known as a rock-paper-scissors relationship. In this case there is a relationship between objects such that 1 is intrinsically strong against some and weak against others. Transitive and intransitive relations may be combined which is very common among rts.

The third method of balance is to make each object so different from each other that comparisons are impossible. Since comparisons cannot work the only way to balance them is play testing

each method has associated methods. For Transitive relationships the designer has to find the correct cost curve. Intransitive relationships unless done carefully can turn into rock paper scissors and can turn into  guessing game.The third relationship is really hard to balance because you cannot use maths to balamce them

More techniques:

1. Remember the core aesthetic of the game
2. Look at the interconnections between systems. Check if one change effects others systems

Make one change at a time. If you make multiple changes it can be hard to see which change had which effect.

Comments:

A lot of the information in this reading is stuff that I have come across in following popular rts and card games. It is interesting to see all the things you must consider when trying to balance a game.

Of the three methods of balancing i prefer games that focus on the Transitive method. Games balanced around the intransitive method have a tendency to seem fine at first but in the meta transform into a game of who can predict the opponents next move. In Starcraft 2 for example the end of the game often becomes the players quickly switching builds until the opponent slips up. This isn't always the case though and only tends to happen in very long very even games.