Continued from Part 1, of course…
The left and right sides of this diagram are balanced.
The left and right sides of this diagram are also balanced.
These, too.
…but what of these?
Or these?
So, that in mind, how about I change a couple of labels up there? Here’s where Street Fighter 2 comes in.
A is T. Hawk
B is Zangief
C is Ryu
D is Dhalsim
I know I grossly oversimplify here, but there’s minor method to the madness. T. Hawk and Zangief are both mostly one-trick ponies; their strength lies primarily in grabbing the opponent and squashing them. Ryu is fairly well-rounded, with a decent air and ground game, as well as a few basic throw options. Dhalsim is also well rounded, albeit in different, tricky ways.
Every single one of those diagrams uses the exact same base, the same “piece of the pie”, I just sliced them up differently and pushed pieces around a bit. It’s largely an asymmetrical balance, but the variety is generally a good thing. Strictly speaking, if balance is only a measure of how much black each character gets, they are very precisely balanced.
…but then, that’s the key. The metrics I’m using for balance let me state that the balance is precise. This is critical. Balance functions best when the measurements and means of measurement are very clear. (Tangentially, this is why so many science experiments flat out ignore tangential data and assume things like a lack of friction. It’s a way to clean up the signal and set the terms of measurement.)
Y’see, if we want to get picky, the letters also contain black. The right side of the figure also contains a measure of black in the slight grey background. Those are just noise, though, because I deem them such. That inverse image mirror Zangief match actually does the Yin-Yang sort of balance, white vs. black. These corner cases exist, surely, but they aren’t part of the finely crafted balance I care about. Oh, sure, someone will nitpick about them, but since I’m the one crafting and defining the balance, those arguments don’t matter.
While we’re talking Street Fighter, though, look at the following comparisons between Ryu and Zangief:
The ground game:
The throw game:
The air game:
If you isolate the part of the game you’re seeing to a particular slice of the overall design, it’s easily argued that these two characters are imbalanced. Zangief is the clear favorite in the throw game (though it should be noted that a solid block of color like that looks more impressive than it actually is), but Ryu dominates the air and has a small edge on the ground. Overall, we can argue that they are balanced, but in particular situations, they most definitely are not. When considering balance, then it must be asked: “what is the big picture?” Or, more precisely, “what metrics are these systems using for the overall picture that this design’s balance exists in?”
Speaking of slicing up perceptions, though, there’s another way to do it. I’m calling it role slicing, but it’s really just a subset of situational slicing. Compare World of Warcraft’s Druid to the Warrior. Overall, the Druid looks like it has a significant edge over the Warrior, after all, it has a bigger piece of the action in the big picture:
And yet, if you look at the role slices, (noting that there are indeed overlaps, just by the nature of the game), Warrior and Druid tanking are remarkably similar and nicely balanced:
…and their melee DPS options are reasonably balanced:
Yes, I know, Druid melee DPS is more akin to a Rogue, but for the sake of this (oversimplified) argument, it might also be suggested that all classes that specialize in melee DPS are balanced, just with some tweaks and different approaches. You get up in the bad guy’s personal space and bring the hurt. Similarly, a Mage and Druid could be compared in the ranged DPS (when the Druid is in Balance spec, anywho), blasting baddies from the peanut gallery.
These role slices are balanced as opposed to the “big picture” being balanced, and I believe that’s the way it should be for something like WoW with its relatively inflexible roles. (You cannot switch from offense to defense in a flash like you do with Street Fighter 2’s gameplay.) This produces some quirks in game design when compared to SF2.
For one, there are more ways to interpret things, so naturally, more excuses to nitpick. Two, even the designers can slip into thinking that the overall sense of balance matters more than the role, and wind up hobbling the multifaceted Druid in an effort to balance the big picture. For WoW’s design, the role is key, since that’s what gameplay is designed around. Tanks tank, healers heal, and DPS…ers kill stuff. You just can’t generalize and shift roles effectively at any moment. Three, the “metagame” and “class identity” really do matter to players, but mechanically, when it comes to balance, the function of moment to moment play (the roles) are more important. Those can clash sometimes, especially since so much of the gameplay is decided by the initial choice of class… and that’s a remarkably unchangeable choice made early in the game with little good feedback.
So, lots of words to say “balance kinda sorta really, well… depends on how you look at it” with a subtext of “each game does it differently, for good reason”.
Oh, and I’d be terribly remiss not to point out the following:
Sirlin on balancing Street Fighter 2 and multiplayer games in general (since it was his job, he knows far more of the particulars than I do; it’s a great series of articles on a great site)
Just to throw some gum in the works, BBB reminds us that:
“Class balance is not a fundamental RPG trait”
Because sometimes, throwing “balance” out the window is actually a smart design choice. Shunting it off of center stage makes room for different sorts of play. Or different types of balance.
…and then there’s oddments like crowd control, buffing, out of combat utility like teleporting, crafting suites, cosmetics, racial traits, location modifiers, dice rolls and the hairy topic of randomization and its sometimes deleterious effect on balance…
Oi.
Follow the link tied to that picture to find a fun LEGO spin on Escher’s work. I love Escher’s art. Remember… balance depends on how you look at it. It’s all… relative.
Edited to add, because I forgot it but really shouldn’t have, as I meant to work it in…
This talk of balance reminds of a concept I came across in pen and paper games. Sometimes you get a group in which one player is a min max combat monster and another player really likes playing an underdog class with no useful combat skills.
The goal of the GM is to balance them all for spotlight time. So put in some combat where the combat monster can shine, and put in some scenes centering on the ethical dilemmas of the emo poet character too.
In many ways, I think this is the goal of a non-combat balanced MMO. It’s ok if some characters are stronger than others in combat but not if everything in the game is all about combat all the time.
More important than whether something is balanced is the question of why something should be balanced.
Balance is a means to an end. Don’t implement the means without knowing the end.
I just read this right before dinner, and now feel a lot less hungry. Took me a while to get what you want to say…
The examples are nice if we talk about PvE. This is also the reason why I think some games should have no PvP, as then the whole “PvE balance” concept simply no longer works. Try to balance for both, and you have a huge problem. This is also why Guild Wars fairly late in its development on separated some skills in pve and pvp versions, wonder how they will handle this in GW2.
Excellent post, and a very unique visual approach to the discussion! Nils brings up a great point though about the questionable necessity of balance in certain game aspects. I agree, believing that if the context and dressings of a game are engaging enough, small imbalances in gameplay mechanics may be forgiven, or at least glossed over.
Sounds like a concession, but every game reaches a point in development where testing and additional balancing gives diminishing returns, and you have to pull the trigger at some point.
Additionally, too much balancing can threaten the context of a game or game element. It’d be much easier to reduce each class’s abilities to numerics and balance them as such, but would you rather play a slightly imbalanced RPG or a perfectly balanced contextless number crunching game?
Thanks for the comments, all! I find I agree with all of you. It might be worth noting that I’m not really advocating or denigrating balance here, just blathering a bit about the word itself and some ways to think of it. I find that visuals help sometimes.
I happen to like it if a game flirts with imbalances; that’s why I love Magic the Gathering and its “broken” cards, and the heart of this old article of mine:
Broken or Brilliant
Balance is overrated, I think, in a great many cases. I like the variety of an imbalanced game, but it’s definitely a matter of taste and just how much imbalance we’re talking about. Imbalanced to the point of being unplayable is bad, but perfect symmetrical balance is usually boring.
And then there’s the trouble with reducing things to numerics… how exactly does one measure Polymorph against Victory Rush? It’s like comparing apples to psychotherapy and hoping to find some number that adequately reflects the subtleties of each in a common denominator. They just don’t work that way.
I often wonder if balance is as important to Joe Average gamer as it is to the designers and the vocal forum minorities. I used to run a lot of pen and paper games. Classes and races that were mechanically much weaker than other choices would often get chosen happily by the players. Min maxers would get really ticked if their character turned out to have a glaring weakness, but most players were more interested in the story we were building together than number crunching.
Of course MMOs and CRPGs in general are a different beast from PnP. I’m much more of a min maxer when I play CRPGs, I will spend ages digging through FAQs to figure out how to make a party that practically breaks the game. Contrast with my last PnP character, a librarian and historian with little combat ability to speak of.
When I play DDO, I absolutely shudder at the though of playing one of the gimped out pre-made builds they offer you on the character creation screen. However, I also know anecdotally that many players take those pre-mades to the cap happily, caring little that they could be squeaking out 20% more DPS.
Ultimate balance is a coin flip.
I think nethack shows, with it’s series of classes of varying power (right down to the crud tourist) who can ALL be used to beat the game, that balance is not an issue.
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[…] Balance, Part 2: Asymmetry and Art […]
I agree with much of this, comments included.
PnP games have many moments that have nothing to do with combat. MMORPGs, far less often. As such, if an MMO class doesn’t fare well in combat, there can be a feeling of being cheated as you waste 2 whole minutes plinking at a boar’s hide, and watching in horrible fascination as a co-player is now picking his fingers atop a mountain of corpses, when you started the quest together.
In a PnP game, maybe you’ll shine during the investigation of the corpses while he’ll be drooling in a corner, munching at a carcass he teared with his bare hands.
Also, as fighting occurs all the time with as few downtimes as possible, characters are often overpowered compared to beasts. Hence the problem when PvE occurs.
PnP games have combat “sometimes” with opponents following the same rules as you. Monsters in MMORPGs are one-trick ponies like our Zanghief, only less powerful. They have one, maybe 2 special abilities, and that’s it…
I heard of the distinction GW finally made between PvP and PvE versions of the skills. How did it end?
Longasc would be better suited to wax long and detailed about the GW skill split. My impression is that it was a good move, but it does make for more for people to learn and more for the devs to tweak.
[…] Balance, Part 2: Asymmetry and Art […]
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