{"id":111,"date":"2011-05-02T11:07:36","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T15:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2011-05-19T11:20:41","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T15:20:41","slug":"how-to-properly-imbalance-your-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"How to Properly Imbalance Your Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Balancing Act<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the past couple of years I have been working on character-based\u00a0competitive\u00a0games. These are the kind of games where the word “balance” is repeated ad nauseam. \u00a0As a (somewhat) competitive fighting game player myself, I have strived tirelessly to make our games as\u00a0balanced\u00a0as possible. \u00a0I have created\u00a0complex\u00a0tables to value character\u00a0abilities, poured over win\/loss data, and charted every balance change I have made and the corresponding results.\u00a0\u00a0I have seen the delicate balance these games have, the\u00a0slightest\u00a0adjustment can take a character from best to worst. A little nudge back the other way take the worst\u00a0character\u00a0to incredibly overpowered.<\/p>\n

It’s been said that true balance in these types of games should be a designer’s goal, even though it’s impossible to accomplish. However, after working on these games, and watching the players and\u00a0communities, I have come to the conclusion that not only is perfect balance impossible, a perfectly balanced game is not as good as a somewhat imbalanced game.<\/p>\n

Emotionally\u00a0Imbalanced<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are more factors at play in\u00a0competitive\u00a0games than just numbers, there are emotional factors as well. An imbalanced game benefits from this. When a game is imbalanced, it creates stories. There are\u00a0villains\u00a0(the overpowered) and underdogs (the underpowered) and all\u00a0manner\u00a0of journeymen in between. People love to see underdogs win and champions fall.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you have seen this Street Fighter video<\/a> of Ken defeating Chun-li. There is a lot of factors behind this video, the players, the pressure of the tournament, the technical skill of the feat but there is also the emotional factor for players of the game: \u00a0Chun-li is overpowered. Granted, Ken is top-level character as well, but seeing Chun-li lose feels good. Now imagine that video was the most powerful character defeating the least powerful character. The emotion would go the other\u00a0direction\u00a0entirely.<\/p>\n

Imagine a game that was truly<\/em> balanced, there would not be the strong stories of pulling out a win when disadvantaged. Players would not be able to\u00a0shrug\u00a0off losses against overpowered characters, thereby retaining\u00a0their\u00a0sense of self-worth. Much of the underlying emotional responses to these types of games would be lost. Players claim to desire a perfectly balanced game but this mythical game would remove a great deal of what they love about character-based\u00a0competitive\u00a0games.<\/p>\n

Goals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eschewing\u00a0the concept of a perfectly balanced game is rather freeing for a designer. Since we are now ignoring the concept of a perfectly balanced game, what are our design goals?<\/p>\n