While many game makers want their games to be balanced to an extent, what balance means varies from designer to designer. In a "Three Pillars" design, as used by Dungeons & Dragons and its many derivatives, balance can mean that each class or character could be poor in one pillar, but strong in the other two. Balance could also mean that a class or character is equally useful in all three pillars relative to other classes and characters. Even though these two are different in their approaches, both qualify as forms of balance. Regardless of the type of balance desired, there's a variety of different approaches to reach that balance. Today, I will be talking about balance through homogeneity.
What is the Purpose of Balance?
In my eyes, balance takes has two primary purposes. The first is to facilitate competition by ensuring that all players have a relatively equal playing field regardless of what they play or other external factors. People desire fair competition, and thus balance is used to provide a degree of fairness. The other purpose is to prevent degenerate strategies (where the decision-making always results in the same choices) and promote complex decision-making. If choosing one character in a MOBA or Hero Shooter is objectively better than choosing another no matter what, then that second character might not exist. Optimal player decision-making will be boiled down to the non-decision of defaulting to the first character. As players will optimize the fun out of a game, this will result in wasted development time in addition to reduced decision-making.
In a balanced environment, there is almost always a choice between the two characters that will be better in any given situation, that choice will not be the same in every situation. In addition, the choice may be so complex that even masters of the game may not agree on the "best choice" for a given scenario. Even then, the "best choice" can vary from player-to-player, as each player has a different set of skills to bring to the game.
What is Balance Through Homogeneity?
This is a method used to balance a game by making the various choices in a decision more similar to one another. This is primarily utilized to balance downtime decisions, such as choosing which character to play in a fighting game or choosing what gear to equip in an MMO. This could be done by making the uptime decisions created by the downtime decisions more similar, giving fewer unique options that spring from downtime decisions, or simply balancing shared numerical values that are derived from downtime decisions. I have divided balance through homogeneity into two distinct categories: input homogeneity and output homogeneity. Input homogeneity involves making player decision-making more similar between options. Output homogeneity involves making the outcomes of different choices end in a similar result.
Output Homogeneity
In a controlled game environment, output homogeneity is both healthy and necessary to a degree, but requires a measurable outcome to achieve. A clear example would be balancing multiple damage-dealing classes in an RPG by giving them similar damage outcomes each turn. This can be done by creating a target damage goal, and then tweaking the numbers on how each class achieves that goal until each falls within the acceptable damage range. Even though each class deals damage in a different way, they all reach similar output numbers.
Now, while this solution results in a fair balance, players who seek to optimize may still be funneled into the option that does the most damage within the acceptable range, resulting in a non-decision. However, the different methods to achieve the similar outcome can allow for an enormous array of optimization opportunities in emergent choices. Each damage-dealing class might synergize best with different adventuring parties, influencing the decisions going into assembling a party and combining abilities during play. In addition, playstyle differences can create enough variance on a player-by-player basis so that the optimal class to use changes depending on how well the class playstyle gels with the player.
Input Homogeneity
Input homogeneity, like output homogeneity, is necessary to a degree in order to make a cohesive experience, but its value is much more subjective. It's much easier to use for balancing purposes than output homogeneity, as by making choices more similar to one another, there's fewer emergent outputs to worry about. However, it also results in casting a much smaller net to grab players with. If every character in Overwatch, for instance, had the same movement options and effective ranges, then players who jive with a now-non-existent type of character will be left utterly disappointed in the game's variety. In addition, the resulting reduction in emergent choices causes a cascading reduction in overall decision-making in a game, giving players far less to explore in the mechanics.
The Relationship Between Input and Output
Generally speaking, input homogeneity leads to output homogeneity when sufficiently balanced, but there is more to the relationship going on. Both forms of homogeneity actually accent the differences present in the other half. Games with high input homogeneity, such as Final Fantasy XIV, result in players focusing on the output of choices. In FFXIV's case, the tools available to jobs within the same role are similar enough to the point that raid DPS is the primary metric that jobs are compared with, as no class-specific utility is unique or strong enough to generally warrant discussion. The high level of input homogeneity directly results in players focusing on the balance differences of output.
Similarly, games with high output homogeneity such as Pathfinder Second Edition result in players focusing on how the inputs differ. As character statistics tend to fall within a tight range of values at a given level, player focus is primarily placed on the different abilities each character has unique access to. Since players can always count on having relevant statistics be in an effective range, they instead focus on the options that actively give them new input decisions to make.
How Homogeneity Hurts
As one of the main goals of balance is to ensure players have a wide variety of somewhat equally valid decisions to choose from, input homogeneity is actively detrimental to a game. If all choices are functionally similar, then the most optimal decision is much easier to determine. Games need a layer of complexity so that players cannot quickly and immediately evaluate the best decisions to make in any given moment. After all, part of games is the challenge of finding the most optimal way to play. In addition, input homogeneity is the quickest way to ensure that a suboptimal decision is completely disregarded. After all, if the options available to a weak character are similar to but worse than the options available to a strong character, then why choose the weak character at all?
In addition, "variety is the spice of life." What's the point of a bunch of different decisions if they are all ultimately similar? One of the greatest strengths of class systems and character rosters is the ability to support a wide array of playstyles. If all classes or all characters play in a functionally similar manner, then what's the point beyond aesthetics?
Furthermore, homogeneity actively decreases player tolerance for imbalance, as playstyle differences between two characters is often enough to create decision-making on a player-by-player basis. In addition, players are much more likely to accept relative imbalance when the choices to choose from are radically different. Part of this is because radically different choices are much more difficult to analyze, but a considerable part of this is because it satisfies player craving for divergent gameplay. By having a wide degree of supported playstyles between choices, players are more likely to find a choice that they enjoy despite the presence of imbalance.
An interesting case of this in action is Dragonball FighterZ. As characters are rather similar to one another, the game is, on paper, quite well balanced. However, because the characters are so similar, the balance differences between them are pronounced to the point that a character who is functionally fine is deemed "unplayable" or "irrelevant" simply because multiple other characters do the same they the weaker character does, but outright better. This is even reflected in community tier lists, where characters are often ranked from S+ to A-, but A- characters are considered "worthless."
Concluding Thoughts
Ultimately, there's an enormous balancing act between homogenizing choices enough to be digestible and numerically balanced while still maintaining a high degree of variance between choices. This is a difficult tightrope to walk, especially when juggling player perceptions of balanced. In the end, I think the best course is to start with a complex system with many different avenues of decision-making, and then tweaking the complex system to achieve balance as time passes. After all, it's much easier to balance a complex system than to add new ideas to a controlled ecosystem while maintaining existing balance.
Next time, I'll be covering the balance implications of Three Pillars design of D&D-derived tabletop games and modes of play in general.
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