Balance Is Impossible
One of the many unsolved mysteries of online game development is balance. It’s one of those words that everyone always uses to argue one thing or another. They feel their class isn’t balanced. They feel a dragon battle isn’t balanced. I believe that without imbalance, that encounter can’t be fun because there is no longer a challenge to overcome. Further, if all classes are 100% balanced, the game is not fun. This discussion spawned in the MMO Round Table forums, and has recently picked up some steam.
Glazius: “Balancing skills isn’t just hard, it’s impossible.”
Balancing classes isn’t just hard, it’s impossible. 
My current take on this debate: Neither class nor skill systems can be balanced. Further, they shouldn’t be completely balanced, because balance is not fun. Skill systems favor player choice. Class systems favor player distinction.
That last point there may be confusing, but basically what I’m saying is that in class systems, you know what your role is. You choose that role, and it is (or should be) very different from other role choices.
My stance: Hybrid, in either direction. Depending on the game itself, a class system can be better than a skill system, and vice versa. But in both systems, I believe it’s important to lean toward the middle (that is, allow a player to make a number of choices in a class game, and allow a player to define their role in a skill game).
Sorry if my initial sentence seems sarcastic. It’s not directed toward you, but toward my refusal to accept “balance” as an argument for or against either system, because I have yet to see a balanced game using either system. I also believe true balance is a whole lot of not fun, but that’s another issue altogether and is something that I’ll save for a later entry.
Feel free to join the discussion in the MMO Round Table forums.
agreed.
balance is stupid. it’s impossible. so developers should stop wasting their time trying to achieve it, and start spending time on developing more interesting and immersive systems.
another thing which irritates me to no end is when players ask for melee to be balanced with ranged.
you can’t balance a knife against a gun. they function in completely different ways.
Unbalanced characters are usually the most fun to play, at least until they get fixed/nerfed. The folks playing the balanced characters (aka the boring ones) gripe until that nerfing occurs. What we need is for every class to be unbalanced in a different way, but all of them fun.
Saying it a different way, even if balance is impossible, fun isn’t. Make all the classes (or skill choices) fun.
The term balance is actually misused. Balance means that while Joe might be better at one thing, Doug is stronger at another, and George can’t do much of either, but has a little bit of skill in both. Ideally skills might be given a weighted value and those values will balance out. That is, they should, until someone comes along and complains about inbalance. Unfortunately, most people who complain are talking about homogeneity.
At Atlanta’s Fan Faire (I still maintain the bards were smart enough as a whole not to open their mouths) I listened as a Druid complained, quite emotionally, that she should be able to heal as well as a cleric during the class balance discussion. By definition, class balance says, no – she shouldn’t heal as well as a cleric, however people will always want something more, they will always want what their neighbor has and often times forget what’s in their own backyard.
I wholeheartedly agree and developers continuing to use that word contributes to the problem. Players think of balance as true equality and expect that from their classes. While we realize that the equality is there but relative, they tend not to see the nuance and as you stated, always want what they neighbor has. The grass is always greener for most players =)
So rather than debate balance, as we all I think agree with Blackguard that it is perhaps the largest red herring in gaming, let’s find a better word to describe what developers mean when they use it.
Balance is possible…
The Grouchy Gnome was at it again, boldly stating that Balance is Impossible (http://www.nerfbat.com/?p=154).
That’s what you get for letting a community manager play with design. Stay tuned for my community article, “Winning friends and influencing…
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Repeating what I’ve said elsewhere: Balance is about making each class be a good choice. If no one plays a cleric, because you can heal just as well as a druic plus do all this other stuff, there is no balance. It’s not about getting your damage to be the same as everyone else.
[...] Count Dooku: It?s silly. Wat Tambor: It?s very silly. Darth Vader: It?s impossible! Obi-Wan: Is not! Han Solo: Fight Fight! (P.S. Is not!) Darth Vader: Uh huh! Is too! Princess Leia: Look, this is how you do it. Jek Porkins: But what about … [explosion] [...]
[...] What began as a debate about whether balance is even possible between Psychochild and I (See: Balance is Impossible | Balance is Possible | Balance is Still Impossible) turned into an email conversation between the two of us. We’re both going to pull pertinent points from our emails, which really stopped arguing whether balance is possible and started talking about balance in general. [...]
this has always been a hot topic with me as well. I feel that a lot of players react negitively when playing an MMO because they feel that their chosen class in not balanced as soon as they start losing battles. They feel that they should have the best class, the strongest the fastest etc. I have a hard time on the forums convincing people that sometimes you have picked the weaker class. Things should not be “balanced” that would be boring.
PvP also brings this into hot debate as well because then people can really measure their class against others, which is why I tend to cringe when I hear a MMO is adding PvP, cause I know then that players will cry and protest on the forums, the devs will cave in and Nerf the class that is too strong.
Usually it boils down to most people not truly knowing how to play their toon/class. It really is sad. Take EQ2 for example, I though the game was perfect when it first launched as far as balance goes, then they had to change a lot because people had in their own mind what their class should be like and how strong they should be.
I say, don’t make every class balance, keep the diversity, but make one class specialize in an ability to the utmost degree.
What began as a debate about whether balance is even possible between Psychochild and me (See: Balance is Impossible | Balance is Possible | Balance is Still Impossible) turned into an email conversation between the two of us. We’re both going to pull pertinent points from our emails, which really stopped arguing whether balance is possible and started talking