Balance does not mean what people think it means.
It simply refers to the idea that something is or isn’t an interesting alternative to its peers, but it’s often misconstrued as “being exactly statistically equal” or even just “not fun” for some (looking at you, Grognards), which is a position I could not take seriously if you put a gun to my head.
See, the argument goes like this: players like feeling powerful but balancing brings things into parity, which reduces how powerful they feel and the only time you should do that is in multiplayer games, since you’ll be making some players feel weak either way due to them either having been strong and getting weakened or having been beaten by the stronger option.
Fairly simple, very common-sensey kind of argument.
Unfortunately, it’s wrong. Both in how balancing things works and in player motivations.
To explain why fully, we need to delve into both what balance is and who its detractors are. So without further ado, let us beignet begin.
This is the Law of Equivalent Exchange
So, like I mentioned above and in a previous post, balance is about making sure the options available to the player are in parity with each other. The reasons for this are pretty obvious when you think about it: why would anyone take objectively inferior options when they don’t have to? To resolve that question, you either have to remove something or modify something to bring the remaining options into a competitive range with each other.
This leads some folks to believe that everything has to be exactly as powerful as the weakest option, but that really isn’t the case.
What you’re trying to balance around is a good rhythm of play, if that means making options stronger across the board, so be it! Balance is as much about making things weaker as spear-fishing is about swimming: it’s a part, and a notable one at that, but it’s not the reason you’re doing it.
The reason you balance the options you offer to the player is to not waste those options. If you make 15 different weapons but 2-3 vastly outstrip the rest, what’s the purpose of the 12-13 left? Either you rebalance or you have effectively wasted the time and resources making any weapon that wasn’t “one of the good ones”.
Now, note that I haven’t been talking about what makes the player feel powerful, because that’s not what balance is actually about. Balance is ultimately orthogonal to how powerful you want the player to feel. Options can be excellently balanced while still making the player feel like a badass and they can be wildly unbalanced while still making the player feel utterly ineffective, in fact, these are both very often the case!
Part of the reason people get tripped up about this is because Balance works in multiple dimensions. Options need to be balanced both with other options (Peer Balance) and with the encounters they are to be used in (Encounter Balance)! Options balanced with each other and not the encounter will all be very competitively useless amongst themselves. Options balanced with encounters and not each other are going to be weird because either some of them are not balanced for the encounter or they’re Keys for Locks and are individually useless outside of the one encounter they solve.
Note: I’m including other players in multiplayer games with “encounters” here. While there is an argument to be made that, since you have to balance one player’s options against another’s, that it could be considered more like balancing something with alternative choices, the approach is different because peer balance is about making things compelling choices, and encounter balance is about making sure the encounter runs as intended. In multiplayer, it’s generally assumed every player should have an equivalent opportunity to come out ahead so you want to make sure no one gets hard-countered (again, generally speaking, I’m all for doing weird shit).
To give credit where it’s due with regards to criticisms of balancing, a very cheap way of balancing is to just make everything exceedingly one-dimensional since that effectively negates the extra work balancing would otherwise create. That said, that is very obviously extremely half-assed design and doing something wrong, especially that wrong, is not a reason to denounce the entire concept. This renders the ‘critique’ nothing more than simply saying “Suck Less”. Which while possibly necessary to state, is of ambiguous value.
Ultimately, the criticisms of Balance as a design concept are less rooted in concrete fact and more an ideological statement. They’re based in older design sensibilities and principles, and not necessarily ones that have aged well.
I, of course, am referring to the Grognard.
“Eh Bien, En Fait-”
“Grognard” is a French word meaning “Grumbler” and in gaming circles (usually tabletop/‘traditional gaming’ but certainly show up elsewhere too) is used to describe a particular breed of gamer who might charitably be described as having a preference for older games (and uncharitably described as having a strident opposition to the passage of time).
Grognards (at least our current crop) generally came of age during an era of game design far more centered on mechanical difficulty and minimal margins of player error, austere in sensibility if not ruleset, and have carried those preferences forward.
As such, modern design burns them like holy water burns vampires.
See, while there is A Lot to take from earlier eras with regard to design concepts and principles, we generally fuse those with more modern ideas. An example of this is Doom (2016) compared to the original Doom: they both have expansive levels with lots to explore and hyperkinetic combat that keeps you on the move, but 2016 handles things very differently while trying to preserve the feeling of the original, not the structure.
From Firaxis resurrecting XCOM games to the Boomer Shooter Renaissance, there are loads of folks wanting to bring the past forward, to give another shot to ideas that might’ve been ahead of their time while updating ones that genuinely failed.
That’s not what Grognards actually want to do though. The Grognard position is that insofar as we should make new games, those games should be as close to the old era as possible, warts and all.
This is because Grognardism is a reactionary position.
I mean this specifically in the context of design, Grognards are reactionary in the sense of opposing changing design philosophies because it’s changing at all (the politics of Grognardism is a whole ‘nother discussion).
Now, you may be wondering why I’m laying into this crowd, so I will explain: Grognards are actually very important to that era of game design and are deeply tied into it. They talked about the nuts and bolts of it, they homebrewed and modded rules and systems. So their beliefs and opinions had real influence on how games were discussed and as such have lead to numerous misunderstandings of modern design concepts, not least of which being balance.
Where the Past meets the Future
The Grognardian position on balance is that games are better off without it for a plethora of reasons: it’s fun to be overpowered, super-powerful bad guys make games more challenging, leaving nonviable options in pushes players to learn the game, etc.
The problem is that these are either untrue or not actually impacted by balance.
The reason we changed the way we approached systems from Grognard glory days was because we saw the outcome of that approach and it sucked: being overpowered gets boring fast, especially when the only alternative is getting your ass beat by overpowered bad guys. Leaving pitfalls exclusively for new players is a dickhead move and a surefire way to get them to leave and never come back.
That design philosophy was awful, it was the realm of sophomoric power-tripping and narcissism masquerading as high skill requirements.
We left it in the past for a reason.
Change is central to design, we are constantly adjusting and modifying things to improve and expand, to leash ourselves to the past does not make sense. To go back and take inspiration, to reassess and reclaim, sure. But not to just glorify a history loaded with the mistakes of inexperience and the insecurities of youth.
We grew up and we cannot act like that itself was our great mistake.
Not to wax too poetic, but that’s what balancing is about: taking the good ideas we had and making them work better, not just saying they were perfect in their initial form.
It’s an act of maturation.
We have a choice in front of us as designers: we can tinker and fiddle with that which we already know intimately or we can look farther afield, bringing that which we know to bear on new challenges and taking that which we learn back to our old stomping grounds.
I can’t make that choice for you but I can give you my advice.
Don’t be a Grognard.
Don’t be afraid to grow up.
Don’t be afraid that the things you loved won’t grow up with you.
They will if you let them.
For Auld Lang Sine.
Happy New Year’s, y’all.