Do you think balancing a game is an unrealistic goal?

Samflash3·Jan 27, 2017·3 votes·772 views

Just want to hear your thoughts.

Edit: Also, how were game companies able to release a game like Super Smash and it's still the same without no one complaining about balance?

8 Comments

QuephaJan 27, 20171 votes

Brawl had a huge balance problem, a lot of tournaments saw metaknight taking 6 slots in the top 8 and no one could think of a good reason to play anyone else except for hipster points. Melee had a pretty well-defined tier list, a lot of fighters were considered to be simply unviable if you wanted to win without putting in much more time than your opponents and Fox was considered the best character if only by a slight margin.

JbelsJan 27, 20171 votes

Back in the day, game devs knew they only got one shot when designing a game. There was no live patching back then, so they knew if they slacked on the code, there would be hell to pay. But that's still with all of the experimentation and passion that used to go into games like Smash. Look at any recent nintendo game today and tell me you feel like Nintendo 100% tried on it and were passionate about making it

Samflash3Jan 27, 20171 votes

What about a game of chess? Why does it seem so balanced despite having different characters?

101100111000Jan 27, 20171 votes

lmao what. Chess is balanced because there's strictly no rng involved. Both you and your opponent play with the exact same elements in nearly the exact same position. The only difference inherent to chess is who goes first. No crits, no build paths, no pen options, no DIs.

Samflash3Jan 28, 20171 votes

So does it mean that a game like LoL will never know true balance?

101100111000Jan 28, 20171 votes

No, it never will. League will be inherently "RPS" in nature that champions will always have good and bad match-ups due to the nature of kits, items, etc.

At the very least, the game can reach a point where Rock doesn't beat both Paper and Scissors, so it can reach healthy balance, but they would actively need to work and progress to that point, progress which constant semi-annual class reworks and yearly jungle reworks will never fail to fuck up.

101100111000Jan 27, 20171 votes

Yeah, don't pretend like Smash 4 (and in general) doesn't have its fair share of balance criticisms and outcries (Bayonetta on-release was fuckin brutal). Every competitive game is subject to balance issues, and how balancing teams for these games handle those issues affects how the playerbase feels.

Balancing League immediately is rather unrealistic because of the sheer amount of elements they have to work with. But the game could be balanced over a period of time (if they'd stopped changing the fuckin jungle every season).

NiyumiJan 27, 20171 votes

Balancing a game isn't hard to do, despite what Riot will tell you. But, thing is, balancing a game isn't lucrative with how games work these days. In order to make money, Riot has to keep some champions broken, and has to rotate in other broken champs.

If Riot gave a fuck beyond money (like they say they do), then you wouldn't have to worry about balance, since every champion would have strengths and weaknesses and reasonable power levels. That's not how things work anymore though.