PSA (to riot and summoners)

deadlychuck·Sep 16, 2016·1 votes·284 views

FUN =/= BALANCE FUN =/= COMPETITIVE

A game can be competitive and balanced, but when you prioritize balance and valid competition over fun, you might lose what made it fun. Gamers tend to play fun game competitively, don't make the mistake that it's the inverse.

4 Comments

RcGjWO640wSep 16, 20161 votes

You've obviously never actually studied game design and how mechanics correlate to fun. Competition is probably the single greatest factor in whether or not a game or sport can reach international acclaim.

Competition is human in nature. Even in inherently non-competitive games, we always find ways to make it competitive. Speedruns and skillruns for example. Humans crave a sense of dominance over the fellows of their species.

And a game can't be competitive unless it's balanced. If there's a certain strategy that wins every time, like in tic-tac-toe for example, it's not competitive and the competitive audience who do try to grow on it will find it blatantly unbalanced and in return, leave the game.

So yes, for many, many, many people, competition = fun.

deadlychuckSep 16, 20161 votes

Here's the thing, people create competition in things they find fun. That is natural, and competition and fun experiences are highly correlated.

However to assume that where one exists so does the other, is fundamentally invalid. A game like smash, isn't balanced, and rarely are there balance changes to make it so, but there is still a community around playing it competitively

RcGjWO640wSep 18, 20161 votes

No game can or will ever be perfectly balanced unless every single player is playing by the exact same rules and the very idea of "pick your own character" completely invalidates that.

The reason Smash is competitive is because it's balanced enough to be competitive. Ofc there's still going to be a meta. There'll be a meta in almost every competitive game ever created. That's simply the nature of the beast. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not balanced. An unbalanced game would mean that a certain hero or champion is blatantly overpowered and in that case, most competitive groups will actually BAN those characters from being played in the first place. There are a ton of games where characters are completely locked because it's well known that they cause balance issues with the rest of the game.

Even if a game isn't perfectly balanced, people will find a way to make it balanced, regardless.

And even if a game is literally completely unbalanced and all characters are wildly out of wack and some are broken, some are worthless and others are just all over, more than likely you'll have competitive scenes turn up for the 1v1's. Smash tournaments love 1v1's because it shows off the skill with a certain character versus your opponent. They have the same tools as you and are thus, balanced and competitive.