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> "balance" is antithetic to "interesting" That's an unusual opinion, would you mind explaining more? Unbalanced games tend to, in my view, be less interesting

> "balance" is antithetic to "interesting" That's an unusual opinion, would you mind explaining more? Unbalanced games tend to, in my view, be less interesting, because imbalance removes choices from the game. For example, if you changed the rules to Rock-Paper-Scissors so that paper no longer beats rock, that's not an interesting game anymore. Paper is now clearly the worst choice, since it has no chance of winning, and Rock is now clearly the best choice, since it will draw in the worst case. Put another way: There's nothing about a balanced game that keeps you from going on the journey that you feel is interesting. But with an balanced game, that journey is mandatory; with an imbalanced game, it's superfluous. You're playing strictly sub-optimally, which is a fine choice, but it's hard for me to see how it's more interesting.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
> would you mind explaining more? Sure, we're using a slightly different meaning of balance I suspect. In the case of Smash Brothers, and World of Warcraft, the 'actors' each have different capabilities, some are offensive, some are defensive. In both of these cases the abilities can be "enhanced" by in game power ups. Thus if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa. If an actor A has offensive capabilities that can overpower every other actors's defensive capability, then that actor is referred to as being 'over powered'. What the original article discusses, and I certainly resonate with, is that there is a third balancing factor which is the environment and sometimes more subtle properties of an actor which are not specifically 'offense' or 'defense' related. So to re contextualize that in terms of the argument you put forward, rock-paper-scissors is balanced at the actor level and the environment is irrelvant, so it plays the same way in all environments and is boring. If you add the environment, say underwater paper becomes mushy and can't be cut by scissors, or in volcanic environments paper catches on fire and can't wrap rocks, Etc, you create a more interesting game. One in which a strategy that works well in one environment, fails in another environment. I realize that is a bit contrived, I was trying to stay with your use of r-p-s as the analogy which is imperfect to the task. The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me. That is done by spreading the notion of 'balance' beyond just matching actor skills to include effects from the environment as well.
- baddox 12y ago
  > Thus if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa. That's a very different definition of "balance" than what I have ever heard used in the context of competitive video games.
- anonymoushn 12y ago
  I don't think that's what 'balanced' means. I would say a 1v1 competitive game is 'balanced' if for any pair of actors A and B, a top player piloting A wins a substantial proportion of games against a top player piloting B, and the sum of all matchup advantages and disadvantages for any character isn't very big. So for example this is a matchup chart for a really balanced game: http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Chaos_Code/Tiers http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Chaos_Code/Tiers And this is a matchup chart for a really not-balanced game: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50f14d35e4b0d70ab5fc4f24/t/53f1bc0be4b097fb5adac03e/1408351252284/ThridStrikeDiagramCropped2.jpg?format=750w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50f14d35e4b0d70ab5fc4f2... For instance, in StarCraft, it's reasonable to say that the races are balanced even if Zerg and Protoss have no analogues to the Terran ability Scanner Sweep. This isn't a very useful post for me to make though; it looks like you are already on the right track and you meant something like "homogeneity" when you said "balance" initially.
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  >if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa But that's not what balance is at all. I'm going to go to some fighting games here, because I really like them and it's an easy way for me to contextualize balance. I apologize if I'm referencing a game you're not familiar with, but I'll try to be clear. Guilty Gear (and its various sequels; right now I'm thinking of Guilty Gear XX Reload ^ Core, but that's super long to type) is generally considered to be a fairly balanced game, but the cast of characters is incredibly diverse. Venom can place pool balls on the screen in various formations, and if he hits them with any attack, then they bounce around and hit the opponent. Zappa can summon random creatures to give him access to new attacks (seeded by the clock, which skilled players can use to their advantage). Eddie has a secondary effect where he does one attack when you press a button, and a second attack when you let go of the button. Chipp has teleports and a triple jump that lets him move around the stage quickly. You can't say that each character in Guilty Gear has an equivalent defensive action for every tool that every other character has, because there are just so many characters and so many different tools. Instead, each character has a generalized set of defensive options: a double jump and air dash for mobility, an attack that has upper body invincibility (and so can be used as a defensive move against air attacks), an attack from blockstun that has brief invincibility but costs a small amount of meter, and a rechargeable 'burst' that can break out of an opponent's combo. So now, even though every character has a myriad array of ways to attack you and there's no way to say "My burst is equal to Venom's pool balls, my dead-angle attack is equal to Zappa's dog, my anti-air is equal to Chipp's triple jump", the game is still overall balanced. I would say that your example of R-P-S with stages is still unbalanced; in underwater environments, there's no situation where you don't want to choose rock. In volcanic environments, there's no situation where you don't want to choose rock. The addition of the stage has removed all the strategy from the game. > The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me. This part, I absolutely agree with; I feel like you just took it in sort of a weird direction. You don't want to give everybody an equivilent set of tools, because that doesn't widen the problem space at all (because the characters are all equal, so the choice doesn't matter). And adding in effects from the environment is a way to widen the problem space, but certainly not the only one; you can go the Guilty Gear route and make sure that the system itself gives characters some good ways to get out of trouble, and then give each character an incredibly diverse set of offensive options and the problem space is sufficiently widened that way.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

> would you mind explaining more? Sure, we're using a slightly different meaning of balance I suspect. In the case of Smash Brothers, and World of Warcraft, the 'actors' each have different capabilities, some are offensive, some are defensive. In both of these cases the abilities can be "enhanced" by in game power ups. Thus if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa. If an actor A has offensive capabilities that can overpower every other actors's defensive capability, then that actor is referred to as being 'over powered'. What the original article discusses, and I certainly resonate with, is that there is a third balancing factor which is the environment and sometimes more subtle properties of an actor which are not specifically 'offense' or 'defense' related. So to re contextualize that in terms of the argument you put forward, rock-paper-scissors is balanced at the actor level and the environment is irrelvant, so it plays the same way in all environments and is boring. If you add the environment, say underwater paper becomes mushy and can't be cut by scissors, or in volcanic environments paper catches on fire and can't wrap rocks, Etc, you create a more interesting game. One in which a strategy that works well in one environment, fails in another environment. I realize that is a bit contrived, I was trying to stay with your use of r-p-s as the analogy which is imperfect to the task. The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me. That is done by spreading the notion of 'balance' beyond just matching actor skills to include effects from the environment as well.

baddox 12y ago
> Thus if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa. That's a very different definition of "balance" than what I have ever heard used in the context of competitive video games.
anonymoushn 12y ago
I don't think that's what 'balanced' means. I would say a 1v1 competitive game is 'balanced' if for any pair of actors A and B, a top player piloting A wins a substantial proportion of games against a top player piloting B, and the sum of all matchup advantages and disadvantages for any character isn't very big. So for example this is a matchup chart for a really balanced game: http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Chaos_Code/Tiers http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Chaos_Code/Tiers And this is a matchup chart for a really not-balanced game: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50f14d35e4b0d70ab5fc4f24/t/53f1bc0be4b097fb5adac03e/1408351252284/ThridStrikeDiagramCropped2.jpg?format=750w http://static.squarespace.com/static/50f14d35e4b0d70ab5fc4f2... For instance, in StarCraft, it's reasonable to say that the races are balanced even if Zerg and Protoss have no analogues to the Terran ability Scanner Sweep. This isn't a very useful post for me to make though; it looks like you are already on the right track and you meant something like "homogeneity" when you said "balance" initially.
CocaKoala 12y ago
>if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa But that's not what balance is at all. I'm going to go to some fighting games here, because I really like them and it's an easy way for me to contextualize balance. I apologize if I'm referencing a game you're not familiar with, but I'll try to be clear. Guilty Gear (and its various sequels; right now I'm thinking of Guilty Gear XX Reload ^ Core, but that's super long to type) is generally considered to be a fairly balanced game, but the cast of characters is incredibly diverse. Venom can place pool balls on the screen in various formations, and if he hits them with any attack, then they bounce around and hit the opponent. Zappa can summon random creatures to give him access to new attacks (seeded by the clock, which skilled players can use to their advantage). Eddie has a secondary effect where he does one attack when you press a button, and a second attack when you let go of the button. Chipp has teleports and a triple jump that lets him move around the stage quickly. You can't say that each character in Guilty Gear has an equivalent defensive action for every tool that every other character has, because there are just so many characters and so many different tools. Instead, each character has a generalized set of defensive options: a double jump and air dash for mobility, an attack that has upper body invincibility (and so can be used as a defensive move against air attacks), an attack from blockstun that has brief invincibility but costs a small amount of meter, and a rechargeable 'burst' that can break out of an opponent's combo. So now, even though every character has a myriad array of ways to attack you and there's no way to say "My burst is equal to Venom's pool balls, my dead-angle attack is equal to Zappa's dog, my anti-air is equal to Chipp's triple jump", the game is still overall balanced. I would say that your example of R-P-S with stages is still unbalanced; in underwater environments, there's no situation where you don't want to choose rock. In volcanic environments, there's no situation where you don't want to choose rock. The addition of the stage has removed all the strategy from the game. > The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me. This part, I absolutely agree with; I feel like you just took it in sort of a weird direction. You don't want to give everybody an equivilent set of tools, because that doesn't widen the problem space at all (because the characters are all equal, so the choice doesn't matter). And adding in effects from the environment is a way to widen the problem space, but certainly not the only one; you can go the Guilty Gear route and make sure that the system itself gives characters some good ways to get out of trouble, and then give each character an incredibly diverse set of offensive options and the problem space is sufficiently widened that way.