Game Balance

Some of the games that I like most are multiplayer. They let me and my friends get on together and play together. I've covered before how I like teamwork in games, when done well. There is a lot to offer in games where two or more real players interact. RPGs and other such games can focus more on the story and let the game play slide a little if needed. Team based games aren't so luck. How players play and the levels of skill required are essential to note in design. This leads me to the main point.

Balance is key, but so hard.

In games where there is competition, you can bet that the players will exploit every bug and function in a game. Many hours get put into finding the best locations, oddest map hazards, and most random rule loop holes. The first thing many gamers try to do is break the games distinct rules. This comes to the forefront in many online games, fighters and shooters usually, where characters and classes with skills that can be abused are often used and dominate the others, making the game not fun.

Designers have to find how to balance a game so that no one class or skill makes all the others useless. If there is, it is basically a win button for the player and the experience suffers for everyone involved. Some games have stun locks that keep the opponent from moving or being able to retaliate, some weapon sets change the nature of a class and allow it to dominate in ways that it shouldn't, and some moves just get spammed repeatedly. With patching and online updates, these exploits can be fixed, but they are still sign of design flaw.

Fighting games are an interesting thing with this. Many players break it down to a science, calculating things like hit boxes, attack range, damage output, speed, frame rate, attack priority, and more. In these games, there is usually a breakdown of the best characters known as tiers. Top tier characters are the best to use in tournaments and competitions, while bottom tier characters shouldn't even be played in practice. With such precision breakdowns, it is a wonder that developers still add over powered characters with ridiculous moves to their games. Some characters dominate if their combinations are put together correctly. This isn't necessarily skill on the players part, it is more exploiting various status effects and not even giving your opponent the chance to fight back. This is just not a good way to play. Even entry level players will often see that certain series are unfair. Developers in this field need to listen to their audience, many of whom have broken the game down more than the developers, and help face down problems in balance.

I appreciate shooters in this regards, as they are sometimes the most well-balanced. Team Fortress 2, one of my favorites, is probably the most well-thought out game I have ever played. Each class is balanced with specific goals and play styles in mind. Even the updates, while sometimes a little off the mark, try to maintain balance while offering variations on the typical play styles. Valve is very good at listening to their community and knowing what kind of variations to offer and when. Some changes the community doesn't like, but is often done for the good of the experience as a whole (I know my favorite gun got an update a while ago, it saddened me). While these games are still huge and still have many chances for players to exploit, more often than not it instead asks the player to think and find a new solution.

What needs to be done is proper play testing. Some exploits and over powered moves should be easy to find. If developers brought in more of the players who were seriously dedicated and could identify these failings, then I believe that the over all product would be that much better. The work in production can save a great deal of effort in patching and updating post production.

Still, we'll always have those dirty hackers to deal with.

Just something to chew on.