Sierra Kilo

Nerfbat and Psychochild are going to duke it out over game balance. I touched on the subject a little in my latest MMO Ideas article, but this subject is hard to solve.

I think both gentlemen have good points. Nerf says that systems can’t and shouldn’t be balanced for the sake of fun. Think about chess. If every piece was able to move the same, the strategy would be less difficult. It would be like checkers, basically. Still fun, but simpler, less advanced. But aren’t both games still balanced? Each side has exactly the same advantages and disadvantages. The only differentiator would be the side that moves first. (Ooh, I wonder if real-time chess would be fun?) I bet it would even be possible to “solo” a chess or checkers game, though. With the right combination of moves, a rook could pwn the board.

So, it’s quite possible to have balance in a game. The problem is that the rules must remain static once you’ve balanced them. You can’t expand without rebalancing. Hence, the “nerfbat” definition. You log in one day and your sword does half as much damage as it did yesterday. All because someone else’s club didn’t do enough damage. You never know how well your balance is going to be, though, until you’ve seen some test results. So that means that you’re still balancing after you release to the public to get enough results. So, perhaps the best explanation is that balance is possible, but extremely difficult to perfect.

Part of the difficulty is that 80% of your playerbase will be the classic “fighter”. It’s an easy class to play. Find something to kill, kill it, repeat. So do you give more power to the classes that make up the remaining 20% so that they can kill fighters? 2 wizards vs. 8 fighters of the same level would be an even match? Sure, but should one player wield so much power as a wizard? Possibly, but it should be more difficult to wield such power, right? These are the questions that designers must ask themselves when attempting to balance their rules. Is it possible? Sure. Difficult? Definately.