How Games Get Balanced

It needs to appear to be extremely unbalanced, without actually being unbalanced. You need to make it so there are truly powerful characters that are total garbage if you don't use them correctly, but they are devastating if you use them correctly. You also need weak characters that don't have much potential, that are really easy to use. It creates the dynamic where you get annihilated by someone using the hard-to-use character, then you try using it and find how awful it really is.

The most balanced game is chess xd

Incredible video, very well written.

genshin is well balanced bc any character can beat the hardest content

Don't play street fighter because against Islam

Symmetra took her themes of symmetry seriously too much, she became too balanced.

starcraft 1/2 are in an objective way the most balanced games with broodwar being the oldest esport and still having each of the 3 races capable of winning championships all this time later without having any balance patches during that time

can you do a vid on counterstrike's balance? it has been tweaked for over 20 years now but it still seems moderated by honor among players. Why isn't autosniper used much competitively?

yeah smite lol. started out really balanced, then went to shit real quick. dont get me wrong, love the game to death but all these new "hands" theyre adding was one thing but to go in and change 90% of the throws too , well you should see for yourself. almost no way to get out of crowd controls even with the game cap of 40% they can still pick you up mid air, off the ground or whatever, and pull you into their base for an auto death. what makes a good balance is for the devs to actually watch the plays. look at the items, or abilities picked, and make minute changes until the people who are x'd out with 50 damn stars on one character rely more on actual skill rather than oh, youre playing this person you need this item to do anything.

I want a multiplayer game where every character is deliberately broken op

just let players decide evolution from zero point and add random AI, if it gets unbalanced their choices are to be blamed, if they choose better they will face stringer ai because of natural selection

I still have a soft spot for the original Unreal Tournament (UT99). Except for maybe the given (dual-)enforcers /impact hammer), every weapon was viable and had its place for racking up kills.

If we buff more than nerf, that leads to POWER CREEP. Whoever condones power creep is a fool.

Honestly I think paper rock scissors is the most balanced. Chess is probably 2nd on that list regarding that white gets to move first. Other than that, the rest of the game is balanced.

One thing I've noticed with single player games is that, even when the players are seeking out difficulty, they tend to like updates that make the game easier, and dislike updates that make the game harder. So, ideally, you want to pair updates that make things harder with cool new features to make players excited, while being able to make things easier whenever you like. I think games becoming "too hard" for a little bit after a major update is often somewhat deliberate.

i know only unbalance company as WarGaming !
never care about balance - only money

Most balanced game is chess lol

Glad that you’re giving Arms it’s due because it’s honestly the most balanced game I’ve played, without a doubt
They somehow managed to make the fighters and gloves feel like tools rather than iron man suits like in other games. As in it feels like it’s not the tool that wins the game, it’s the tool user. Whenever a plumber fixes a pipe with a spanner you don’t go “oh that must’ve been a good spanner”, you think that the plumber did a good job. Whereas when Tony Stark beats up the Hulk you think “damn that must’ve been a good suit”
With most tcgs for example I feel like I can copy the best deck I find online, learn the combos and then fast track my way through the ranks. And with other fighting games I feel like I can learn the best combo with the best character, keep spamming that and rank well. But in Arms no character or glove combination is gonna do the work for you; if you’re not good you don’t rank good
I think they managed to do that by making the game based heavily around movement. So it’s hard to say to someone “pick this character, use these gloves and punch here” because what if the opponent isn’t there? With other games you can predict roughly what your opponent is gonna do beforehand so you can pick a winning strategy but you can’t say for sure where your opponent is gonna move in Arms beforehand. So you can’t rely on knowledge, you have to rely on skill and in the moment decisions. So you choose your character and layout based on what you think could maximise your skills and help you make the best in the moment decisions
And because the game is based heavily around movement, there’s no real way to make a character better than the rest unless you just make them faster than everyone else or something. But instead everyone moves in unique ways rather than moving in better ways than others
Here’s a rundown of the cast because I wrote this far

Springman is an all a rounder who creates a repel when you move while charged. So if you move at the right time you can deflect your opponents attack. Also gains a boost when he’s on low hp. No particular strengths or niches but a lot call him the best in the game because he has no real downside and is just a good solid pick. Can’t go wrong with picking him

Ribbon Girl can essentially float so she’s an aerial character. If you find aerial attacks hard to deal with then she’s a nightmare, if not then she has no particular strengths. So use her if you’re good with/like using aerials ig

Ninjara teleports whenever you move while charged. So if you’re good at using the teleport he’s good, and if not he’s not ig

Master Mummy is the typical heavy. He has the most health and deals the most damage but has the worst movement. But to make up for it he has a rly good ability where he heals whenever he uses his shield. So it’s a prediction game with him. If you can predict anything that can get disturb your shield then you can, in theory, sit behind it and heal the whole game. Imo he’s the best character in the game but is the hardest to use
Min Min is the fan favourite. She’s pretty speedy and does a deflect kick when she jumps that blocks a shot, but you have to time it right, so you have a rly good defence option. Tbh I never rly understood the playstyle with her but I think she’s supposed to be played as a zoner. But anyway you play her, you can go on on the offence with her while staying defensively responsible if you’re good enough with her

Mechanica is the most underrated character imo. She’s a heavy like Master Mummy but instead of the healing shield she has a jet pack that makes her mobile for a couple of seconds when it’s charged. So you can reap the rewards of being a heavy while not having to pay them if you use it well enough

Twintelle moves slow but has a rly good ability where she creates a force field that freezes any attack coming towards her. She can also float for short periods of time. She’s a rhythm based character. If you can get into a rhythm with her she’s rly good or if you find it hard to break rhythms she’s also rly good

Byte & Barq are my main but I’m drifting away from them at the moment. They’re another all arounder but with below average speed. Their gimmick is that you have a lil robot that throws punches occasionally and you can also jump on it to jump higher and as you do that it creates a shock wave that repels shots. You can also use the robot as a shield if go about it right. The general consensus is that they’re the worst in the game but I think they have potential and niches that are overlooked. Like you can overwhelm your opponents, create an awkward rhythm for your opponent and make good use of the jump. I think their quirkiness gives them an edge. But tbh I don’t think the work is worth payoff. But pick them if you want an all arounder with a quirk ig. They’re good for learning the game at least

Kid Cobra can move backwards and forwards rly well and is also the only character who can duck under shots but he slow at moving laterally and has the lowest jump. So he’s a good pick if you want to sacrifice defence and control for offence and aggression

Helix is unique and moves rly slow but to make up for it they can shapeshift and be hard to hit for that reason. This is a character for the pros; it’s a hard character to learn but there’s a good payoff for doing so. So being rly hard to hit might sound op and hardly being able to move might sound terrible in a movement based game but if you combine them the character’s balanced

And sry I gotta stop typing but you probably get the point. The characters have strengths but they don’t mean anything on their own; just depends on how good you are at using them. And because of that 1 characters strength isn’t inherently better than the others

Starcraft reference!!

holy heck starcraft 2 is a game of rock paper scissors on capitalist wartime manufacturing on steroids!

Surprised Splatoon wasn't mentioned. With how many different weapon types there are in the latest game it's super impressive how many of them are decently viable.

This video is a MASTERPIECE

Spoiler: They don't

I honestly think one of the biggest mistakes they make in balancing is listening to the squeaky wheels. Diablo 2 back in the day kept releasing bad patches because the whingers would win out time and again and all but the second to last patches were very disruptive to the flow as it was largely played and serviced a vocal minority of people that were never happy until their particular build was firmly in the S tier and stayed there. Most of us didn't even duel FFS.

I think we don't talk enough about the trade-off between balance and self-actualization
League of Legends is the perfect example. You have a huge very complicated system that has it's balance issues here and there. Champs getting too strong on release, shutdown system being weird, bugs, broken interactions, forgotten champs all over the place, even some that then turn out to be op after a patch. But these are all solvable with, idk, a few months of dedicated problem-solving
The issue then is, only half a year later, they make huge changes that put the whole system back in imbalance. And this has gone on for years. So while their balance team is probably doing a good job, the fanbase doesn't really see it because the meta is constantly doing backflips. Not only that, some issues stay in the game for months or even years because they're literally too busy, most famous of all being bringing forgotten champions to modern standards and giving them life in the game again.
There's a tendency to be constantly bringing huge changes and new content to online competitive videogames nowadays, which is good and fun if done correctly, but I feel like most companies are bombarding their games with new stuff and caring the minimum amount about stability, and that's just frustrating for a lot of people

i think it's rather sad you didn't even mention how League of legends has just come out and said "we are balancing the game for the .01% of players that compete in E-sports."
just making the game super unbalanced for 99% of their players ever since.

is mark's online username "britishgaming"?

when the demon seed first came out in hearthstone it was terorising both standard and wild. it was a tier 0 deck where the decks that didn't run it were tier 2 because their winrate against it were closer to 40% than 50% and after the demon seed got nerfed some of those decks became to overpowered they were just overshadowed by the absolute degeneracie that was the demon seed.

Smash ultimate and sf6 are really great examples of balance

God I haven’t heard Infinity Blade in a long time

The fact that you didn't talk about Dota2 is weird.
It is the most balanced game I have ever played, unlike League of Legends, Dota2 has items which counters attacks, spells, etc...
Specially in the recent patches, the game is very balanced. There are some heroes that you dont pick in certain patches but still there are far more options to counter because of items.
In League of Legends, once a champion gets enough kills, they are unstoppable but in Dota you can still counter.
Honestly worth studying Dota jsut because of it. I wont recommend playing it, it is a Lifestealer. :)

TF2 is very balanced for a 15 year old game

Starcraft 2 got balance quite close to right. Even though that at highest level you see some races being more dominant, what matters the most is player skill. Therefore there is pretty much no better race, what matters is only how you play.

A game where balancing is done poorly? Yu-Gi-Oh!

awesome intro song

I like how elden ring is so unapologetically unbalanced

First starters, a dagger is a worse weapon than a glaive. That’s a fine decision to make

And then they have their own mechanics for certain weapons being far far more powerful than others

It’s probably the least balanced game I’ve ever played. Because the difference is so radical

You can shred tough bosses in 5 seconds with the right weapon—as opposed to spending minutes dodging and whittling them down

Remember Odjob in Goldeneye 007?

A good game developer only nerf or buff something once, in a very strict environment, it does it secondly. But more than 2 nerfs or buffs are too much. For example, in today games, game "Developers" always doing something up something down, so annoying, they call it "Balancing" Imagine the balancing on a game where classes exists = World of warcraft, now you want to duel with someone for 50K gold, you and that person promised each other the duel 2 weeks ago of the nerf or buff-->

You go to the duel area, and, in the middle of the duel, you notice something: "Oh no, i have only 3 charges of a stuff instead of 5" "Oh no, my damage is 25% lower".

And whats happens next? Personally, i quit the game. I really don't like it when something just weakened in PVP because of some bad reason.

This thing can be said to other things also. Players complain about lose, developers listen to them, and thats bad, because it will cause an infinite nerfing buffing circle.

The second thing is when someone complains about smurfs in cs2. They are completely legal, and it doesn't matter if you play against a smurf or not, because it will stop no one from winning. What if you are a beginner and play against a smurf? Nothing, ACCEPT IT or if you got a problem, keep your mouth silent.

The reason why smurfing should not annoy people is:

There are people who loses acces to their main account, or someone in their network accidentally ran a virus, and the ports was open, now all of their stuff gone. Then people get a new account, and they getting called "Smurf what are you doing here" I hope the people who complain about smurfs going to get 10 million smurf and lose 10 million match in a row.

All of these thing are connected to nerfing and buffing, the cause of the problem, is the developers and the complaining players.

"The Meta" and constant rebalancing in pursuit of better balance are ruining games. Get it right at the beginning and leave it alone. But I'm an old fogie and entrenched in the old ways.

Melee is perhaps one of the most unbalanced games around and yet the meta is still finding characters that are more viable than they thought

I think an interesting discussion would be wether games decide to balance for high skill players or low skil ones. On one hand you want the game to be as balanced as possible for the skilled players as they are most familiar with and mechanics and most likely know exactly how much a balance change affects gameplay. Or you can balance for low skill where most of the player base is but at the risk of leaving a broken option for high skill players.

I think obvious balance can be pretty dull and is better hidden behind intricate multilayered mechanics. Path of Exile does a good job of making you feel your latest build is your most powerful yet it is often just knowledge and luck of the game. Some people like balance some don't.

We can all agree that riot doesn’t know anything about balance.

nah ganandorf my ace

Smash Ultimate with one glaring exception is incredible for balance. With over 80 playable fighters, the margin of difference between most of them is so thin that any character can upset almost any other in competitive settings. Low tiers commonly make waves through brackets and occasionally win them.

Multiplayer has completely ruined games. Unless you have some sort of mechanic where only players of the same tier go against each other, you have to completely remove the concept of progression. But even single player games take "balance" too far. If all options are equal, then choices don't matter. "Balance" should come from the fact that what is OP in one scenario might be a handicap in another.

My favorite example is the iconic shotgun. Every game that has ever used shotguns has made them useless beyond five feet. The reasoning being that they are too "OP" otherwise. But the truth is that shotguns ARE OP. They are shoulder-fired artillery that completely destroys threats with a single shot. They are an order of magnitude more powerful than any pistol, lethal at ranges comparable to some rifles, and versatile enough to be used in a range of scenarios. The tradeoff is that they are bulky, slow to reload, and don't carry a lot of ammunition. So if you expect to encounter a lot of enemies at close range, you may prefer a pistol or even a carbine for the maneuverability and extra ammo capacity.