In Depth: How to Define and Discuss Balance

not really no. most of the time, quite to the opposite, the one game you could perhaps apply this to was starcraft II and it was just trying to copy the playstyle invented by the Stracraft brood war competetive scene, witch was unimaginable when the devs originally made it, one can tell they had in mind a way of playing it which was night and day with the way it was actually played.

And this is what I believe applies to the vast majority of games, and trying to adopt a correct design in anticipation for the way it will be played is a bad practice that will lead to deteriorating the game's quality.

I think the good approach is leaving all the UI elements in there for any road to be viable to take for the masses (they don't choose one, it's just unpredictable).

as for balance it doesn't factor quite as much. you may think you balanced "towards" a certain meta and then it ends up being that a whole other strategy is the best and most successful option.

You forget that science never takes place in a vacuum. Pressure from peers and superiors, the logic pulling you one way, money the other. There are a ton of factors that go into the human element. One of them is what you say or think is possible. If you are surrounded by an environment of people telling you a hyperdrive is impossible, you will never invent it. If those same people rushed in and said that China was about to launch a prototype, you'd have one done in a week.

You cannot balance this game correctly based solely on numbers. Can you get close? Yes. Absolutely. But humans break all the rules by introducing them into the game. If two AIs played eachother in such a game, they would be bound by the rules, and balance would be perfect.

I agree with your point about emotions in balance. Beauty and creativity are a fundamental part of our society and we should never forget that.

Just because science never happens in a vacuum doesn't mean you can't remove subjectivity. In fact, the foundation of good science is recognising your bias, but suppressing it.

Try telling the people who made the large hadron collider that discovering the smallest component of our known universe, the Higgs boson, is impossible. Or that we could detect and quantify the residual gravity waves from the Big Bang. Science is always progressing, in spite of current opinion, that's kind of the whole point.

Anyway, I digress. There is a place for both subjective and objective assessment of balance, but I agree that an objective standpoint should be more important. If that's even what MadSci was getting at, which I actually don't think he/she was lol.

I'm going to be unfair and refer to the Planetary Vanguards as a single entity for a moment. Can you all stop being so "important" in the way you present everything? It may be a coincidence, in which case I apologize, but it seems to be a common trait among a lot of the vanguard members to have posts that are along the lines of "here is my badge of official-ness" followed by essentially a "soapbox post" with a lot of sensationalism and little substance along with a "lynch mob" knee jerk reaction to topics and a "self attribution" of whatever was said (even when it's just a poor repetition of points already brought up). This seems to happen only if it's a "controversial topic," (albeit most seem to be that way recently) balance topics being the worst. This thread is no exception.

I'm just saying this to point it out, nothing more. In your bio you have presented yourselves as a group working towards the betterment of the community, please be conscious that acting as a group has very dangerous negative consequences given the wrong direction. You are a group, and the only community one at that, what do you think "negativity" + "biased sense of justice" = ? in a group where (at least from what I see) nobody has authority or takes responsibility for the group's actions.

Back to the topic...

-

@opening, if your post is a rant on people talking about balance

(this is somewhat a reply to @cwarner7264 as well)

Chess is a game. Chess doesn't have numbers. Chess doesn't have invalidation or counters. Chess has randomness in the "map" (starting position imbalance, one player takes his turn first) and yet chess is almost universally accepted as "balanced." In your rant chess does not exist and neither does your post explain how chess could exist.

Chess is not the only very common game with, from the perspective of your rant, "alien" attributes, games like poker are even weirder still by your definitions, and games like shogi/mahjong from the asian side might as well be from another dimension.

Have you ever considered that "numbers" and your entire notion of "stats" on things is merely a distinction between mediums, like pixels are, rather then a distinction between how the meta works. By your rant the meta is defined by numbers and players defined by the meta. But in chess the players clearly defined the meta and there are no numbers. The only thing chess defines for the players are the rules by which they may take action. We can always remove numbers, so is that game you use as reference (which everyone has one), really balanced by numbers or balanced by the possibilities defined by it's implicit rules?

ps.

I find it ironic that everyone is abusing the word "balance" when the whole point of the game is to "imbalance" the game in your favor.

@opening, if your post is intended as a definition/reference

Here's my too-long-to-read-feedback to your too-long-to-read post. (hope you have thick skin)

You made a very long post(s). I won't say you're wrong but I'll ask you "rephrase" if possible the following which I'll be quoting, as they're either incorrect or controversial in the way they're worded. I'm assuming the purpose of the thread is to act as a evolving definition, and I believe you agree for the sake of correctness it should not:

• boast ones personal opinion
• highlight a singular point of view while ignoring other angles other people's views eg. focusing on numbers as a single unit of measurement
  
• be confusing
• use redundant or inefficient wording
• be clear in it's point only to people who already have the same "singular-opinion" express within it

etc.

[Side note] your post is just plain too damn' long to be useful at the moment, even if it was 100% correct (which it isn't as far as I'm concerned), remove any unnecessary sentences, provide a summary, start with a general one paragraph conclusion if possible, etc. Readability is just as important as writing everything down!

Legend

• rephrased text
• added in, no equivalent in original
• proposed for removal

Are vanguard's forum mods? Regardless please remove self referencing and change the tone to neutral. Either move your "who I am," "why you should read this" to the end or just plain remove it. They add nothing to the topic, and therefore can only subtract.

This is unnecessary poetry and makes no actual point; even though it takes a few seconds to read. Metaphors are unnecessary. Replace it with a ToC.

Don't ask to ask just ask, don't say you're going to talk just talk. Also, words like "obvious" and such when used as you are doing there are more or less insulting your readers intelligence, regardless of which way they get interpreted.

Don't declare abbreviations before you even use it once; don't spend a sentence on doing so either

"Chance" is inappropriate wording. A game of chess has no "chance" in it. A game of dice has "chance" but nobody can say it's player action that determines it. A "random chance" is merely neutral territory between "unfair" and "fair." If you believe in "luck gods" (literally) you may consider it "fair" but for everyone else it's technically "unfair" in the sense that "by no fault or action of their own they may end up in a completely unrecoverable position"

Don't go into specifics like "what if one player had a special unit" when you haven't even presented your point yet. Trying to "rub a point in" is simply removing any meaning from it since you're "poor man's analogy" now replaces the clear wording before it. Only use an analogy or example when it actually clarifies a situation that can't be expressed with wording or takes too much space to express with wording

To some people even the act of "winning" is irrelevant, but more importantly "to win" doesn't actually cover all situations; in a team setting where players take turns to play one player on the team might play not with the intention of winning but of exploiting or revealing some other aspect in another players playstyle. When the game is played as a piece in another game you can no longer claim that the point is "to win" necessarily. In addition sometimes one might have a valid reason to play for a stalemate after a certain point in the game rather then winning, because winning might not even be a valid option. When a player helps his enemy conquer his other enemy he again is not "winning" he's merely dictating what he perceives is a more favorable course of the game for his personal objectives. I'm sure there are other situations even beyond the examples I just gave.

"CB is important because it appeals to our sense of fairness." your own personal bias/sensationalist-writing here; a definition does not need any "important" or "unimportant" label on it, the only goal in your wording should be "this is what it is" not "this is the important text," the more you move away from a neutral presentation the more you're just furthering your own agenda with your writing

Don't use "all encompassing groups" such as "humans;" I don't agree with your statement there at all, yet you "included me" and put words/thoughts into my mouth with out my permission

"If we feel that the test unfairly biases itself towards one player" scientifically you prove a test by (a) proving your test methodology is valid (b) having a control in your test to determine factors not considered by your test criteria are not affecting your test (c) properly determine the sample size if applicable for your test. The weather and how you feel today does not matter. Your wording there is bias towards "self importance." This is extremely dangerous wording as all it does is provide ammunition for everyone in a bad mood to "rant" about things. In addition the definition of competitive balance has no need for a tacked on definition of "balance scientists."

"If you play to test yourself, then there is no reason to play if the test already has a pre-disposed outcome." Makes no sense and adds nothing. Reword or remove.

You failed to mention the use of "randomness" in "competitive games."

Avoid stalling your point and writing redundant sentences. "So how does this apply to PA? Well in one sense PA is easy to balance from a CB perspective. All" translates to "In PA" no matter what angle you read it from. Just write the short version, it's faster to read.

If you're going to use "meaning" after an explanation the way you did there just rephrase the original explanation. In your case there isn't even the need to rephrase, since the added text is just insulting peoples intelligence.

"However, this does not mean that CB is assured." starting with your conclusion in that context is bad practice. Too personal as well.

Removed your sensationalist news writing in the map generation part. It's not your place to decide if it's good or bad (in that context) and it merely colors your point to do so.

"leading to being attacked on two fronts" don't draw conclusions on fictional contrived situations, it's silly.

"All of these are possible." sensationalism again. Also you completely focused on all the negatives and presented them in such a way as to suggest that anyone playing the game somehow can only be in either a "fair" position or "unfavorable for them" position, when it's actually logically impossible for situations where the player is positioned in "highly favorable position" to not exist while "unfavorable positions" exist. I've left the biased negativity as-is but frankly the point there should be presented in a favorable/unfavorable neutral presentation as "you will always be positioned unfavorably" as it suggests originally is an utter lie.

"However, as PA goes forwards, these can be improved by refining map generation, spawn placement algorithms and the creation of spherically symmetrical maps (for those who wish to use them). The competitive balance will never be perfect, but it can certainly be good enough that most people don't complain. For many, it already is." Unscientific conclusion based on your own bias. Your wording should be neither pessimistic nor optimistic. Those things may never happened and might never happen, or they may just as well happen tomorrow. Means nothing to a definition. All you're doing here is de-railing the definition to present your bias-ed point of view and use "I wrote a lot of text and started with pretty headers" as a soapbox.

"However, a lot of the time, this isn't the kind of balance that people are talking about. That is something a little more subtle." self-praising your intelligence while insulting everyone else's.

Bad title. You are trying to color people's opinion rather then present something.

Proposed alternative: "Game mechanics: finite viability of pieces"

"Let’s move onto the next possible interpretation of balance." self glorification, also ALL interpretation are valid within their context assuming they're logical so using "possible" there is placing "legitimacy labels" which you should avoid. If say the interpretation was invalid you should justnot mention it at all.

"This is probably the one that people use the most on the forums" insulting people using the uber forums. Also you need to avoid "grouping," in this context you've created you've placed yourself in the position of "author" and placed everyone else in the position of "them" even though we, the so called stupid forum goers in your sentence, are (a) your audience, and you shouldn't insult your audience (b) different from each other.

"although it often gets mistaken for CB" insulting the people using uber forum's intelligence

"I'm going to refer to this as Content Invalidation, or CI." Don't invent terms in a definition. If it doesn't exist and can be proven to exist don't mention it. You can not self reference your research.

"For example, if nukes were buildable straight by the commander, and cost 100M, then they would invalidate almost every other part of the game." contextual bias. I actually even fail to see your point there. Recommend rephrasing into

'The winning strategy, would almost certainly be "build nukes, scout enemy commander, win".' self-sourced preformed conclusions with no scientific basis or testing. Recommend removing.

"To be sure, this would still be a game that is playable, and may even be enjoyable to number of (every odd) individuals." preferential treatment towards a certain part of the community while insulting your readers again. What's the point you're trying to make here that if you like X you're odd? Recommend removal.

"However, the majority of the game would be pointless if we assume that the player's first and most immediate goal is to win." preformed conclusions.

"The reason why this form of balance violation is bad is a little more complex to break down (although it is intuitive to see that it is bad)." insulting part of your readers again. Basically you're belittling the people that dont agree with you while "raising in high standards" the people that supposedly would.

"Fundamentally, we play games for interest and enjoyment." unfair assumtions

"However humans also have a tendency to get bored if they are exposed to the same situations repeatedly." Using "humans" is only really attempting to indirectly say that if someone is acting opposite to the sentence they have a mental handicap or are stupid.

From the above sentence to the end of your paragraph to go on a complete tangent and make no point at all as far as the title you used for your section is concerned. If you want to "talk about fun philosophy" then section appropriately otherwise your original section of "content invalidation" lacks a conclusion and your new "fun section" lacks a beginning.

The tone is kind of acceptable there however you should open into that with a clear "here is my personal take" if you want to use such personal language. You should also structure it better in your section there.

Alternative, neutral tone:

"We have to think of the invalidation as a more analogue concept rather than a binary one, and ask how much of the game does this thing invalidate, and when?" You're digging too deep with your wording into pseudo-anology-science. This is a slippery slope since any conclusions you bring up will inevitably be based on your "imagination" rather then testing, sources, etc. You may end up being proven correct at a later date however that does not make the statements any more correct in the context and their current presentation (even after being proven correct).

Remove the "rule of thumb" that's personal bias. The sentence imediatly after has too much "merketing" and "promises" to it; you might as well have used Soon(tm) there. Other then that this one is fine.

Be more humble.

The issue with not being humble with your wording is that you essentially ask for an "attack" on your "cut thought" statements.

Same problems as stated for the previous post. Omitting detailed explanation since it would just repeat points already said. Also you're creating so many pseudo-groups and attacked them verbally I don't even want to touch it.

All opinions are equal.

Your entire premise seems to be that this is some sort of "official" Vanguard sanctioned topic. It is not, nor do I understand why you think it would be. If I'm wearing my vanguard hat, then I will make it clear that I do so. This has always been the case.

Secondly, the vast majority of your points are stylistic disagreements based on some perception of pretension. I write the way I do because this is the style in which I enjoy writing. If you find that style offensive in some capacity, then I'm afraid that's on your head.

You completely missed my point, sorry.

You replied to MadSci's post with a frack ton more arrogance than I saw.

If anything, MadSci is sure of himself because of how many hours he has spent flushing his opinions out with some members of the Realm, including myself.

Bias is always present, unless you are a robot. If you want to consider candy to be trash, don't expect me to follow you around.

Cm'on. Some Self-control, please?

This feels like getting a chapter of my PhD back from my supervisor. Only less fun.
I think I will read it more thoroughly after some sleep heh.

Heh sorry, I shouldn't multitask.
I agree with you that this game can't be balanced solely with numbers, if that helps

I didn't want to offend anyone.

My point is that everyone is entitled to say if he's having fun playing a game, or not. There is no math that can tell you if I'm having fun or not. There is no method that can invalidate my opinion about a game being able to entertain me or not. Therefore the following text:

Made me think that what MadSci is trying to achive here is to shut up who doesn't have his very method to analyze the current issue in PA. But I, for one, do not play PA thinking about stats. When I play I do what it feels right doing. I do not know much about numbers behind the scene, but I can still tell you if a unit is over powered and suggesting solutions. And surely I can tell you if I'm having a good time playing or not (that is what it really matters).

Apart for that, PA doesn't need to be based on Science. PA needs to be fun to be played. And, to take the example of Chess, we do not find amusement in the mere structure of the game, but at a deeper, emotional level. If you ever played Chess, you know it. In fact, balancing a game doesn't necessarily make it more fun. I think we all agree on that at some degree.

As for racing games (read what follows at your own peril)

Mine was more of a joke. But since you point it out, I can tell you that (around 13 years ago) I've really spent time on racing games. Do you remember Grand Prix Legend and Nascar Racing from Papyrus? I played those games so much that at some point I entered in the Top 20 of the online players in Italy (and we are a nation of a hell of a drivers). It was an awesome time, we had Live Streaming and online Tournament races with up to 40 human players in one single circuit, endurance events (3 hours driving) and various ladders for more or less experienced players. Also three different typologies of Tournaments, from classic to Nascar. Before I quit, I finally made it in First Division.

I remember my last race, where I made the Pole (fastest lap). I made it like I was driving in a dream. For weeks before I've never got it right on that circuit, I was keep failing badly. And then, magically, just when I thought that it was going to be a disaster, the day of the race, I emptied my mind, I let it go and drove almost without looking at the screen, simply doing what felt right doing, bend after bend, gear after gear... and when it was over I couldn't believe I made it to the first row. Damn it felt good driving that lap!

The pleasure in driving has never really been in the millisecond more or less on a time lap. Of course we spent hours a day practicing to make the best lap we could. I couldn't be in First Division otherwise. Time was a benchmark. Driving gives you pleasure in itself. It's really an emotional thing. It doesn't really matter what time you're doing, unless you need it for qualifying, or winning. You do not drive for the time, you drive because it gives you pleasure.

Just like watching PAStats after a tournament match of Planetary Annihilation is not the reason why you keep play it. Am I wrong?

ps. Those sim games were so good in simulating a racing experience that when we were meeting at a real awesome go-kart track outside Milan time to time, the rapport between players was still the same. For the record, we had also professional drivers in the community and they were awesome. We learned so much from them.

Meh, you shouldn't offended arguing on the internet We're cool.
I think there is place for both types of appraisal of PA. Objective number tweaking followed by subjective intuition.

Exactly!