Game balance is a tricky thing. Psychochild has a good article up about it over here:
I’ve also been pondering the nature of Final Fantasy games and game balance. In nearly every FF game, players have the option of outleveling the game’s difficulty, effectively toning down the challenge by investing time in lesser challenges. (That’s also what WoW winds up doing as well, at least until the “endgame” where the core play changes anyway.) Thankfully, the games are usually fun enough to make that sort of “grind” enjoyable, and it’s often incentivized with side quests. Of course, this blows the designer’s carefully crafted pacing and balance out of the airlock, but one of the cardinal lessons that good designers learn is that the player’s experience (including the ability to do crazy things the designer didn’t intend) is paramount, not the designer’s ego. Games should be about letting players play, not trying to force them into the designer’s vision.
In FFTA2, like its predecessor, there are some midgame/lategame abilities that can be learned that make for “broken” gameplay. The prototypical example is the “Red Mage/Summoner with Doublecast and Blood Price and Juggler with Critical:Quicken and elemental absorption gear”. It’s a rather “degenerate” combo that allows the player to use two units to take infinite turns and bounce around the map, blasting foes with elemental summons (powerful large area magic). There are those who use that as an example that FFTA2 is “broken”. A quick YouTube search will produce more than a few results to that effect.
I think it’s brilliant.
As Mark Rosewater of MTG fame might say, I’m a Johnny. I love finding those sort of absurdly overpowered combos in a game, using game mechanics in synergistic and explosive ways. It’s a bit of a metagame puzzle for me, plotting out the most interesting and effective way to completely dominate the game, or maybe just do something interesting that the good little hamsters on the designer’s wheel might not have thought of.
And who doesn’t like that at some level, anyway? Games are many things, but close to the gamer’s heart is the desire for a power fantasy; the ability to completely bend the game to our whim and demonstrate power unheard of in our petty little “real” lives. If we’re just actors in the designer’s little “movie”, especially if we don’t know our part, we’re not going to really enjoy playing the game. We might enjoy the satisfaction of finally figuring things out and reading the designer’s mind, but that’s an entirely different psychological fix.
FF games allow for that sort of customized playing experience, especially in the Tactics games with their expansive stable of Jobs and abilities. I love that they offer that sort of choice. If I want to play the game “the purist way”, I can just suck it up like a man and beat my head against the wall until I develop a sufficiently thick cranium and neck muscles to plow my way through the challenge. If I don’t want to deal with repeated failure and stupid “do it again, stupid” gameplay (thanks for the phrase, Shamus!), I can just go out and level up a few times and come back with more beefy avatars.
Of course, the trick is to balance things sufficiently that such game breakers don’t show up too early, and to give challenges to even the elite (hello, Ruby/Emerald Weapon, meet my Knights of the Round via WSummon).
To be fair, the FF lineage does have a penchant for “one shot” gear or items that can only be found if you don’t open a treasure chest when you can in the first three hours of the game and come back to it just before the final boss, or some other obscure set of procedures. I’m not a fan of that sort of option, since it’s only available to those with a FAQ or replay OCD. I’m most interested in the “toolbox” sort of design that makes all of the pieces available to players, and their skill or devotion at putting together the puzzle unlocks interesting gameplay, above and beyond what the “main story” requires for completion.
Bottom line, though, I do think that FF games strike a decent balance between allowing nearly anyone to see their lovingly-crafted stories (the quality of which can be debated, of course, but here I’m talking about gameplay access) and still offer challenge to players of all levels. It does make for some “broken” combos, and some nonsense “optional bosses” that could have eaten the Big Bad for a snack, but when it boils down to gameplay, it’s about letting the player make choices in how they approach the game. Those who want a challenge can try a FFX “no sphere grid” game (no upgrading the characters as they level up), and those who just want to see if Yuna and Tidus finally get over their angst can just mosey on through the game, creating superheroes that can destroy the final boss with a glare. That flexibility is a good thing.
(And, as should be noted, this does change between single player games and MMOs, where combos need to be kept reined in a lot more, given PvP and the inevitable whining pity parties. Still, giving players different ways to do things and have fun playing is a good thing.)
Tish Tosh Tesh 
The big drawback is that some people feel the pathological need to have the most powerful characters possible. They then can’t understand the concept of not abusing the “broken” combo to maintain challenge in the game.
One of the reasons I love computer RPGs so much is because you can find these little “broken” aspects so readily. It’s neat to have an “I WIN!” button in your back pocket if things don’t go as well as they could (or if you just want to get through the repetiive battles and see the ending of the story). I love finding these types of things, and it’s helped me identify unbalancing aspects as a game designer, I think.
The big trick is that players don’t often know when they’re ruining their own fun by abusing something like this. (Or, in an MMO example, when they bottom-feed to get to max level then complain they had to fight so many boring low-level battles.) People then turn around and blame the designer.
Such is life.
One of the saddest things about transitioning from cardboard counters and papers maps to computer/console games is the loss of imaginative gameplay.
“House rules” used to be totally common among board and wargamers (and maybe still are) but video gamers just seem really resistant to them.
So a player wants a “permadeath” option in a game, and needs the developers to code it, rather than just deciding “If this character dies, I’m starting over.”
And if they find an perfect combo that makes the game “too easy” rather than just making a “house rule” that the combo is off-limits, they start slamming the game as broken.
And yeah, I’m just repeating what you both just said. Heh.
It’s too bad, though, that this attitude is so prevalent because it means devs need to ‘lock down’ a lot of variables that could otherwise be tweakable. (Or so it seems to me.) They can’t allow ‘custom rules’ that will potentially unbalance the game, because if they do, the game-playing audience will use the custom rules to unbalance things, then jump online to talk about how broken the game is.
Imagine if more games had settings like “In this game, magic will only be 80% as effective as it usually is.” or “In this game, bosses will move 20% slower.” or “All healing spells will do damage, all damage spells will heal.” Just as ways to mess around with things, to explore the impact on gameplay.
Aye, that’s what I’m getting at. “Fun” is a nebulous thing, and letting players define it for themselves (even if we as designers or other players think their definition is idiotic), is key to making the game appeal to more people, and I think, more interesting. In other words, rather than try to dictate what is and is not fun, we should be giving people tools, and letting them derive their own fun.
To be sure, it’s nice to have a “golden path”, or at least a “dev’s ideal” for players to really experience what the dev thinks is good, and to provide direction for those who want it… but games aren’t movies. Devs shouldn’t be out to force the experience, trying to manufacture a response. We should be providing the opportunity to *play*, giving the player power to do things that we might not think to. Otherwise, why use an interactive medium? Just go make movies.
I see those little “broken bits” as nuggets the designer put in there specifically to find and use, a toolset to play with.
Yes, some people will “optimize the fun out of the game” as Raph might argue, but that’s out of our hands as devs anyway. Those who blame the devs in your MMO example aren’t pointing the finger in the right place, and if devs try to bend over backwards to cater to them, they are assuming responsibility with no good reason to do so.
Since Pete posted at the same time I did, I’ll ninja in and add this to my comment:
Indeed, Pete, devs lock down things that may be interesting (“house rules” is a great phrase to frame this with, thanks for that, especially in the death penalty argument) in an effort to homogenize the experience to dodge criticism. It’s a democratic form of “design by committee” where the lowest common denominator is the driving force, rather than freedom to explore the outliers.
I’ve seen some people bash Master of Magic as having some balancing issues. It certainly did, if the goal was to make everyone the same. Thing is, I *like* that there are some strategies that are naturally harder or easier, and units that are better or worse. It lets me tailor my experience in the game by making conscious premeditated choices about what units to use. If I want an easy game, I make Paladins. If I want a more tactical game, I go with the Dragonite race. The point is that I’m making the choices, rather than having a dev tell me what to do, or trying to make choice irrelevant by making all choices equal.
As always, in games, I want to be making the important choices. Devs that let me do so make me happy.
This is why I never understood the early bannings given out by Blizzard when MC first opened. Someone figured out that if you pull a certain way with hunter freeze traps, you could divide a multi-pull encounter to make it easier. Banned almost instantly. Then someone figured out that you could stealth through Molten Core, receive a summon via a warlock, unstealth, pull a boss then take the summon and the boss would run to the instance entrance where everyone waited. Banned instantly.
I don’t think things like this should remain in a game once found, but to punish people for finding them, even if they use them two or three times, is stupid. They eventually made it so you had to be out of combat to accept a summon, so that one’s fixed, but to ban someone due to creative thinking for pulling using mechanics given to them as a class? Stupid.
There are some bugs and ‘sploits in EQ that were never fixed because they’re so remote that few people ever made use of them. I think that’s fine *shrugs* It’s FUN to go to a new zone and abuse the drop mechanics because you KNOW the tables are going to be messed up 😛 Verant never banned anyone or took away the loot for doing so. They shut down the zone and fixed it.
The ONLY time I was ever pissed at Verant for ruining a loot situation was when FOH killed the Veeshan council in Plane of Sky, got like a 2 delay weapon with 150 dps and turned it NO-RENT without letting the player know they were doing so. He logged out and poof, sword gone. And you didn’t get kicked out from being afk too long in EQ either, so he could have held it indefinitely *shrugs*
This is the nice thing about singleplayer games, balance is not so much of a problem. The Heroes series has the tendency introduce a super weapon, artifact or skill later in the game, and the different factions are very diverse in playstyle.
They are only so-so balanced for multiplayer, and the more “serious” players take the game, the worse this is.
But I think Brian pointed out something very important:
Classes have become very similar in WoW. Unique buffs have been reduced, something similar to the Warlock Curse of Elements for example can now be applied by Moonkin druids, many classes offer the “replenishment” mechanic, and even tanking has become very similar: Protection Paladins are no longer the AoE tanking kings, they are probably still the best, but Druids and Warriors can do that now easily, too. Rogues got a so-so AoE attack, as instances are a lot about AoE damage mass nuking nowadays. Ghostcrawler’s Mantra “bring the player, not the class” is something everybody agrees to, but the way they want to make it meaningless which class a player is has drawbacks – class identity and diversity get lost.
Master of Magic was a very cool game, they should make a remake. I loved it even more than the Heroes of M&M series, and many other players really loved this game. But the industry seems to prefer to copy from their contemporary copycat games following pretty simple formulas, unfortunately.
The spell “Crack’s Call” (25% chance to kill ANYTHING, regardless what it is) was probably not balanced, as was creating armies out of thin air with high Sorcery.
Anyways, my suggestion for modern MMOs would be to completely forget about PvP. It brings so many issues and limits creativity of designers and the options of players how to fight mobs in PvE. For the simple reason that you cannot allow skills that have really powerful effects to exist in a competitive environment, all kinds of PvP basically. They still do, as it is next to impossible to balance a MMO based on gear and classes like WoW for PvP so that everything is in balance. WoW does not make a good PvP game, EQ had PvP servers, but it was focused on cooperation between players rather than competition in terms of killing each other.
On the other hand, some temperance is needed. Guild Wars introduced some PvE only skills with the latest expansion that soon replaced many other builds with “normal” skills, because they were simply too good to be true.
In fact, even 1,5 years after the latest and final expansion, no new skills and classes being added anymore, they are still fiddling around with balance and nerfing and buffing skills. Skills that are perfectly fine or even underpowered and useless in PvE are often huge problems in PvP, which is often more Build Wars than Guild Wars. The next skill update will probably come with or shortly after the 4th anniversary on April 28th.
I always feel so useless at FF games because I never spot those broken combos until someone else points them out to me ;/ And I thought I was doing well up till then.
Balanced diversity is a wonderful thing. The trouble comes when a dominant strategy is found; at that point that’s what everyone uses (once they know of it) because it’s clearly the best approach in all ways, not a tradeoff.
@ Wiqd: I think it’s insane to punish the explorers who find these loopholes. Shutting down dominant strategies is of course necessary, but punishing people who try to find ways around the design is self-destructive. These people are a skilled and motivated resource to test the game’s design. Don’t ban them, challenge them.
@ Longasc: Removing PvP is problematic as a solution for two main reasons. First and foremost, a lot of people enjoy PvP – so it behooves designers to find ways to make PvP work. Second, dominant strategies and imbalances can arise in PvE just as they can in PvP. Perhaps players focus less on the interclass issues in PvE than in PvP, but the problems still arise and need to be dealt with by designers.
We definitely run into weirdness when this gets into MMO design. At least, modern MMO design. Players get invested in their characters, and changes to a class cause more waves than a tweak to a gun in Counterstrike or a boost to a Mario Kart vehicle.
That said, despite the fuss that comes up, such investment does tend to temper the “build of the month” notion just a bit, since that’s often tantamount to a complete reroll of a character, and that’s an investment that many don’t want to deal with. (Especially if there is a precedent for shifting design without warning.)
My notion of imbalance being completely OK (within some reason) does wind up undermined by the inevitable whining of players who use other players as metrics for their own enjoyment.
…there’s something philosophical there to be said about playing your own way, not comparing yourself to others, but that’s perhaps too obvious at the moment…
I agree it’s fun to have broken elements like this in your game, especially in single player games, where they won’t be causing frustration to other players.
But, I disagree that those things should be separate from a designer’s intentions. It’s the designer’s job to know about every possible thing that can happen in the game, and limit it if need be. Which is why those examples from WoW are frustrating: players were getting banned because the designers messed up and were embarrassed.
In single player games, go ahead and build cool combinations and uber abilities into your game for players to find, but always know what and where they are, and how powerful.
In multiplayer games it’s another story. It’s one thing to add in advanced tactics that are very hard to pull off but the most rewarding, but simply building uber combos of abilities is just asking to have every other venue of gameplay ignored.
Mike, I don’t think we disagree; I think I’ve been unclear. Yes, devs absolutely should be aware of what combos might do, anything less is shoddy work. When I say “not the dev’s intent”, I’m talking about a “golden path” to the game. Devs who railroad players and force them to try to read their mind are those who wind up making “do it again stupid” games like Shamus is so fond of blasting. They would be better off making movies.
I’m not saying that devs should make a bunch of random stuff and hope nothing breaks, I’m just saying that they should make games to *play*, and that includes powerful and less powerful options, even and especially if it’s not what the dev would consider optimal game play (whether that’s based on pacing, storytelling, or whatever). Overwhelmingly large power bands aren’t good either, but it’s OK to have some such “broken” elements in a game.
But yes, MMOs are different beasts. The power band really should be smaller to avoid a polarized player base. (Which is one of my big complaints about the DIKU system, actually.)
Ah, yes. Multiple avenues of advancement are always great. I just got hung up on the phrase “including the ability to do crazy things the designer didn’t intend.” It’s our job to intend everything that’s possible, or to make what’s unintended impossible.
The reason I am perhaps defensive about this is because a lot of bad designers don’t ever think about what consequences will result, and then chalk up whatever does happen as Emergent Gameplay!, which these days is often just a euphemism for bad design.
Agreed. Devs really need to think things through. 🙂
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