The Most Balanced Games
Please help me with a personal project. Tell me what you think "the most balanced games" are. Don't include sports. Stuff like Chess and Backgammon, while true, isn't that helpful either. These should be competitive multiplayer games that have demonstrated they hold up to high level play.
It seems like the games I'm looking for have to have the concept of different races/classes/characters/sides to qualify. Otherwise, it doesn't mean much to say something like Settlers of Catan is "balanced." It's a great game and all and we could study it to learn how to make a great game, but not really how to balance a competitive multiplayer game.
My nominations:
- StarCraft
- Fighting Games:
- Street Fighter (Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo)
- Virtua Fighter
- Guilty Gear
- Soul Calibur 1 (yeah, I said it)
- Magic: The Gathering
- Puzzle Fighter: HD Remix (??? I don't even know, but I can nominate it at least!)
StarCraft probably requires no explanation. Guilty Gear designed defensively by including many self-correcting balancing features, as well as lots of tuning over the many versions of the game. Virtua fighter has relatively low variety (compared to Guilty Gear) but extreme care has been taken over MANY iterations (over 14 versions of VF so far, maybe way more, I lost count). Soul Calibur 1's parry system does a lot to level the playing field, and it was pretty balanced in general anyway (SC2 and 3 maybe not so much and ruined by bugs on top of that).
Magic: The Gathering also has a defensive design with somewhat self-correcting balance. I realize this one is probably very controversial because there are times in the history of the game that it was pretty unbalanced, but I also lived through long periods where the so-called type 2 environment was healthy, had no banned cards, and a diverse set of viable decks at top-level play.
Does Counter-Strike belong here? Team Fortress 2? Halo? Enemy Territory?
Please add your own nominations.
--Sirlin
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Tribes…the first one. I loathe most first person shooters and this is one of my favorite games of all time. There are three classes of characters, which all have distinct uses. Almost all of the weapons and accessories have good uses. It’s an incredibly deep and competitive game. And like many great games, a few bugs were found that made the gameplay infinitely better than the way it was originally intended to be played. Oh, it’s also noteworthy as the only FPS I’m aware of where people were never able to develop an aim-bot for it.
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I was going to say Team Fortress 2, but then I realised it probably doesn’t fit the criteria. The 2 sides are identical, and most of the maps are mirror images of each other, so the only balancing that is required is to make sure that the 3 maps that aren’t mirror images of each other (Gravelpit, Dustbowl and Hydro) are balanced in other ways (which in my opinion they are).
So while TF2 is perfectly balanced, it’s because the designers took “the easy way”, rather than a game like, fot example, Starcraft where there were 3 completely different races to balance which is a lot harder ( as far as I am aware).
I was going to nominate Dawn of War and it’s expansions, but I haven’t actually played them seriously for a while. Given that the next expansion will take the number of different playable races up to 9, just achieving a solid amount of balance will be an achievement for an RTS though.
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Disgiea: the 1st, but more so the 2nd installment of the franchise. This is one of the most balanced games I’ve played to date. Numerous ways to level up, but gameplay is consistent in every option. Most, if not all character classes and skills are useful and full of surprises. Everything from the characters, story, “Dark Assembly” , and “Item World” -to understanding the “Geo Panel” system, serve the purpose of carrying out the games narrative.
Its nearly perfect in its design:)
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Emperor: Battle for Dune.
Aside from the Ordos having the Eye In The Sky, instead of something useful like everyone else, I found the game to be consistently balanced, despite a huge variety of forces.
Eternal Champions.
Clunky as hell, but as far as I recall there weren’t any obviously broken characters, yet all remained somewhat unique.
Dawn of War.
Well, it wants to be balanced anyway, but each patch shifts balance wildly. That said, the latest Dark Crusade build seems pretty solid, though the Necrons are kind of auto-broken by nature.
Aliens Vs. Predator (Gold Edition).
Sometimes I still play this, and wonder why the sequel ignored what it did right. Very unique strategies for each side, wonderful maps, and so on.
Sins of a Solar Empire.
This one may be pre-mature, since I’ve only been playing it for about a week, but so far the balancing is elegant and impressive.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Halo 3. The holy trinity of gun, grenade, melee makes for varied and exciting tactical gameplay. Maps are designed such that there are almost no safe camping positions. Top teams win through strategy and not individual skill.
Ordinary weapons are balanced by altering their range, accuracy, rate of fire, and effect. For example, the plasma rifle will almost never kill someone, as it does very little health damage, but it will drop shields almost instantly. In comparison, the assault rifle takes longer to drop shields but will kill an unshielded opponent much faster. The battle rifle is arguably the “best” weapon, as it can kill in 4 bursts even from medium range, but achieving such a kill takes skill. Basically, when the correct tactic is applied, almost any weapon can beat any other.
The power weapons (rockets, shotgun, sniper rifle) and power-ups (active camo and overshield) are balanced by making their respawn durations quite long, normally three minutes. This focuses combat around these areas of the map at those respawn times. Power-ups only last a few seconds, to give a competitive edge in one firefight. Power weapons have limited ammo, and the sniper rifle’s instant-kill headshot is very difficult to use.
At first glance the game seems balanced to reward individual twitch skill, but in practice the best players are not those with the best reactions or aiming ability. Top teams win instead by controlling the flow of the map, communicating and team-shooting, and out-thinking their opponents, which is for me a sign of a well-balanced FPS game.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Super Mario Kart (SNES) - The balloon popping mini game.
In this game both players were each given three balloons or lifes. Then you would drive over ? boxes to get one shot weapons.
- Stars makes you invulnerable and can pop one balloon by driving into your opponent.
- Banana peel is dropped behind your car. Any who drives into it will lose a balloon.
- Green shells is shot in a straight line ahead of you. It will keep bouncing at the walls until it hits someone. They can also be dropped behind you like a banana peel.
- Red shells are heatseaking and will be destroid if they hit a wall.
- Ghosts steals your opponents weapon and makes you invisible for a short time.
- Mushrooms gives you a nitro boost.
Of course red shells and ghosts are the best. But red shells can be countered by standing still and dropping a banana peel or green shell behind you. Beacose weapons that hit each other will cancel out and be removed from the game. Ghosts can be countered by using a green shell since your opponent does not really want to steal it.
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Advance Wars, specially the last one, Days of Ruin. Except two commanders, who are simply broken (think of them as Gill and ST Gouki), and serve as a way of making the vs CPU play harder, the rest are pretty balanced. And the game itself has been refined to a point in which there’s no unit at all really overpowered, as all units have a counter, and better units (with less counters) are also countered by higher price. The luck factor is pretty much nonexistent, also.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I want to state Dawn of War.
Actually, I was a bit surprised that someone (Fargo) mentioned it already.
I don’t know if it serves your purpose, but the thing with DoW is, that it has 7 extremely different races (the number will be raised to 9 in the next expansion “Soul Storm”). And nevertheless it is really playable. Ballance shifts to one race or another all the time, but Relic manages it really well.
While there was a lot of inbalance and really heavy balance changes with every patch, it has gotten better and better since then…
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
On the subject of FPS:
- Team Fortress 2: Classes are extremely balanced. All of them have their own overpowered ability and all of them counter other classes (except for the medic, which is overpowered in his own special way).
- Counter-Strike: bad, bad example. It has only a handful of useful weapons and prices mean very little (the most expensive SMGs are not better than the MP5, for example).
- Halo 3: It doesn’t have classes, weapons are weak and the game is boring as hell, so who cares.
- Enemy Territory: this is hard to say. Being much more objective based than any other game, classes had their function and that was well done. Stilll, there were a few imbalances, specially with the medic. RtCW was much more balanced imho.
- ETQW on the other hand is much more complex (asymmetric teams) and it’s still really well balanced, although balance it’s still being reviewed in the last patches.
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
in response to Alisdair - I’d just like to say two things: Needler, shotgun. You can say that they’re balanced because they have different ranges, but if you’re in that range there’s little way to win unless you’re really lucky and the other guy hasn’t spotted you yet (Or you could get a lovely grenade stick, but at the end of the day you’ll probably still end up dead)
I’d say TF2, if it can be counted. I’ve never once heard someone say “This class is overpowered!” neither have I thought it, and i’ve many a time seen people thwart my seemingly perfect plans with sneaky tricks.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Garou: Mark of the Wolves always seemed really balanced to me. I’ve heard it hold up well at high levels too.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Quakeworld
CPMA
I don’t think you need to be ashamed about Soul Calibur 1, that certainly belongs
Magic the Gathering’s balance has (historically) been a bit wobbly, but recently they’ve gotten things down pretty darn well.
I rather like the Guilty Gear XX series, probably AC as the most balanced? despite the craziness it works pretty well, especially considering how close together the characters are considered to be.
Similarly i rather like the King of Fighter series, but individual games all too often have some… problems. I’m not sure which one is the most balanced, but even just by trial and error there has to be something good in there.
I’d say yes to Halo, but i don’t know which one to include. Halo 1 seems wrong (hello, generic pistol of death) but i don’t have enough experience with 2/3 to tell which way to go.
I DON’T think Counterstrike fits, because i think there are a lot of design decisions that make it a bad game in general. (Cue the flaming, i know. I’m not going to argue the point here as this is the wrong place for it.) However, in terms of the balance (particularly the t vs. ct balance) it seems pretty reasonable.
I think it’s too early to call Team Fortress 2 balanced. (Although it’s probably the only TF with ongoing development, so balance issues can get wrinkled out.) Similarly, calling Team Fortress 1 (QWTF) balanced is slightly silly. Q3f is the most balanced, but nobody has ever played that in the history of the world.
Regarding the question of “are team fortress games balanced in the sense Sirlin is looking for” i think the answer is “not quite”. In the case of TF the balance is clearly not which side is better (as they are identical) but in terms of a slightly different kind of balance. If, like in QWTF, one of the options (all soldier team) beats all of the others then i think that’s “not balanced”. Similarly, Magic the Gathering might have one deck that beats all others (let’s say pre-banning Affinity) but it might be “balanced” in the same way QWTF is: both players are free to pick the best option or losing options. In fact, even fighting games and Starcraft are balanced in this manner as well: both sides are free to pick the best race/character and abuse the broken thing or to pick suboptimal strategies.
It just so happens that these are examples of cases where many different choices are balanced against each other.
For a case where this is not necessarily so, look at Defense of the Ancients. (Or more appropriately, though again nobody plays it anymore, Tides of Blood.) In the non-allpick/allrandom modes one side has a VERY different set of options as compared to the other. In DOTA each team had about 40 heroes to pick from exclusive to that side. Both Sentinel and Scourge teams had to be at least ostensibly balanced against each other, as you couldn’t have both teams be Sentinel! I think DOTA didn’t quite make it, though, which is why i suggest Tides of Blood. But nobody knows about Tides, so that’s irrelevant. It’s a good example of a game that’s actually different from the others.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Counter-Strike does not belong in that list. You want the concept of races/classes/etc, and CS has just two - rifle (AK/M4) and AWP. The money system also leads to unnecessary slippery slope.
TF2 by far deserves to be on the list. It has nine classes, all of which seem slightly overpowered in their own ways, but in relation to each other tend to mesh in really fun ways. That’s far more fun than classes that are balanced with sheer amounts of nerf.
I used to think Starcraft was the be-all end-all of RTS’s… but after seeing Relic’s work (Dawn of War, Company of Heroes), Starcraft seems old-fashioned and archaic in comparison. Blizzard did a hell of a job balancing the game, and hence deserves to be on the list, but RTS’s should be moving in the direction that Relic’s pushing for - less focus on uninteresting base management/tech trees/etc, more focus on tactical-level combat (instead of macro-level combat) and map control.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Halo 3 is pretty well balanced, much as it annoys me. There are half a dozen useful guns and abilities. Again, this was established through a very large public beta and several iterations.
Virtua Fighter is quite well-balanced - the “low tier” is exactly two characters, both of whom were top or second tier in the previous game.
Supreme Commander is balanced on a micro level - there are no ultimate tactics to build towards - but not on a macro level, because all the sides are 90% the same and so even trivial differences are magnified.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Seconding Advance Wars: After banning whichever COs are broken on the map you are playing on (and there are really only a few culprits), it has near perfect balance.
Also, although I doubt anyone here has actually heard about it, Vantage Master V2/Online. It’s basically a tactics game where you summon creatures to take over ‘Magic Stones’ which give you the MP to summon more creatures in an attempt to kill your opponent who is doing the same, except /he/ had placed his creatures in the right position so that they kill you first. At least that’s how my games tend to go.
Although each player has the same units, there is an ingenious system to make the sides differentiate: The elements: Every unit has an element, and gets 2x damage versus the next element in the list.
Here’s an example. Player one summons a cheap air unit at the start of the game to steal stones at the beginning. Player two could do the same /or/ summon a ranged fire unit to kill the air unit. He does the later. Then player one summons a water unit to kill the fire unit, and then two summons an earth unit to kill the fire, and which happens to be weak to the first air unit. It’s like Yomi Layer 3, except it happens over time rather than simultaneously.
And as for the units, none dominates, especially because the elements give every unit a foil. But more than that, aside for a few exceptions, every unit has a use somewhere.
It’s too bad no community for it formed over here in the US, because it’s a really good game.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:16 am
As much as I love Guilty Gear, Samurai Showdown V Special is probably the most balanced fighting game I have ever seen. This is based not just on personal experience, but also Kohatsu and various other Japanese tourney results. No one or a select few characters dominates a tourney; I have seen every character win a high level tourney and the selection variety is always huge.
Sure there are tiers, but the worst matchups are probably around 6.5-3.5, of which one was intentionally done by the programmers as a running gag (Genjuro has a damage bonus against Rimururu in almost all SamSho games.)
Why is it that balanced? I think it’s the same reason as Guilty Gear; the system balances any discrepencies to the characters to the point where everything is roughly even. You can literally play whomever you want and potentially win a high level tourney. Yet the characters are each unique enough such that there’s a huge variety in strategies between each character.
I have no idea why they screwed that all up in Tenka though :/
February 24th, 2008 at 2:49 am
As soon as I read the article, I also thought Super Mario Kart for SNES. I don’t play many RTS or FPS games, so I can’t comment on the others, but it seems like every deadly weapon in Super Mario Kart could be countered by a defensive item: banana peels for green shells, feathers for red shells, stars for everything, etc. My brother and I used to play that game for hours, and at the end our won-loss record would be something like 28-26. The fact that it wasn’t 3D made it easier to control and navigate too.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:54 am
While Starcraft is undeniably the king of realtime strategy, you have to give Blizzard more credit. Their great care in supporting their games causes all of them to be extremely tightly balanced. Most notably Warcraft III which is played on a high level, but even Diablo and World of Warcraft are highly balanced.
I´d also like to comment on Counter Strike (Source): I disagree with some posters stating that it should not be in the list. While the gun dynamics might be less than stellar (the sniper rifle does not suffer at close range like the TF2 one does, and seems to be very powerful in the hands of a skilled player because of this, although that same skilled player might use a regular gun with comparable precision anyway), the real power of the game lies in the maps. CS maps are non-symmetric yet seldomly seem to favour one team over the other. They are also brilliantly constructed to not have any truly safe spots or best routes.
Apart from those and Street Fighter I can´t really think of anything truly balanced. I thought there´d be more. You pose an interesting question! :)
February 24th, 2008 at 3:02 am
In CS high level play, many (if not most) maps do break down and favor one side or the other (usually CT, except for dust2). The balance is regained solely in the fact that both teams switch sides at half.
But really, Sirlin wants to look at how to balance a competitive game, and I doubt he’d learn nearly as much from CS map design (which is incredibly specific to shooters) as he would from TF2’s class system (which can be applied more generically).
February 24th, 2008 at 3:42 am
warcraft 3 is pretty balanced id say, despite many people complaining about things like towers or night elf. Skill in the end wins it as shown by tournament wins by all the races. Although its probably not as balanced as starcraft.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I’d put in a vote for Civilization IV which allows for diverse strategies, many victory conditions and actually requires you to balance things on many sides, ranging from military to economy/science to diplomacy. Unique units also add another angle to which strategy you’d go for.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:57 am
M: TG is in no way balanced. Most of the time a few decks dominate, out of the total cardpool only a small number are playable, and entire colors can dissapear for long stretches of time. This varies a lot on what you consider balance to be but M:TG cannot qualify under any reasonable definition.
You probably have to define balanced much better in order to get meaningful results, unless your intention is to get lists of games that people perceive as balanced based on their own unknown criteria.
For example, a team of all medics in ET is not good. Is that a sign of poor balance? In addition ET can balance across classes but also across sides. All the classes are useful (good balance) but on same maps one side has a big advantage. (Beach assault most obviously) Starcraft has balanced sides but on a side individual units are not balanced at all.
You need to define “holds up” better.
My own personal definition of a game that holds up at high level play is that the number of viable “moves” at high levels is not extremely restricted compared to lower levels.
In constructed M:TG at high levels the number of viable moves (decks and cards) is extremely degenerate. In Starcraft you can use any of the three sides you can use in lower level play and many of the same strats, so that’s pretty good.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Disgaea is one of those games that is so horribly broken and imbalanced that all the wackiness some how cancels itself out and you are left with a very fun deep game that strategy/stat freaks will love. Really there is just so much to that game its unreal. Easily my favorite SRPG of all time.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:42 am
I would say Balance does need a more formal definition. I’ll try one:
Given a strategy X, X has no reasonable counter other than itself.
If high level play of a game is dominated by strategy X it is balanced around skills other than decision making.
To use an example in Halo (1 or 3, I didn’t play 2 much): If two good teams are playing against each other, they are forced to pick up their sniper rifles. Why? Nothing can kill a sniper before he can kill you (assuming he is very talented). There is however one thing that can stop a sniper — another sniper. Now we enter the realm of Halo being balanced on other skills namely ‘aim the crosshair’. I’m not implying that this is a bad thing but simply a different style.
If high level play of a game is dominated by a few strategy X’s it is probably balanced around decision making.
To use fighting games as an example, two opponents are fighting each other. Player 1’s character has a very nasty fireball trap. Player 2’s character has excellent cross-up mixups and rushdown pressure. Player 1 knows if he can pull off the FB trap, he could probably win on that alone. P2 knows the same about his rushdown ability. Now both players are playing outside of strategy X — they play in fear of the opponents X being used so do everything in their power to stop it. Hence, the game is based around the ability of players to make decisions to prevent strategy X.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:48 am
To everyone nominating Disgaea: You can’t nominate RPGs because RPGs don’t fall into competitive gaming.
Similarly, if something is balanced only after banning certain races/classes/characters/sides, then it’s not balanced.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Debunking time.
Guilty Gear: No. At the moment, Potemkin, Slayer, and Testament are far better than other characters (considered S tier (Super)). Anji, Bridget, and Johnny are considered D tier. There are some relatively imbalanced matchups as well, such as Chipp vs. Potemkin. (Chipp loses badly here). Would be a *much* better game if moves (why the HELL is potemkin buster a move that requires TWO half circle motions?!) were easier to pull off.
Starcraft: Balanced? Yes. Is each individual unit balanced? Oh hell no. Siege tanks = appear ALWAYS. On the other hand, the Protoss arbiter is a rare sight indeed, and many units are very specialized (read: RARE) while units like the siege tank are ubiquitous.
M:tG: The furthest thing from. Due to the nature of permission spells and creature kill, just about any card costing more than 6 mana should more or less read: “If you cast this and untap, you win the game.” A vast majority of cards are inviable at high level play, and furthermore, need I mention all of the bannings that WotC has implemented, the most recent in my recollection being the travesty to the Mirrodin metagame. Skullclamp, which made far more strategies viable, and then the entire basis of the block (the artifact lands) and arcbound ravager/disciple of the vault (which embodied the strategy of sacrificing artifacts) also were banned. And in other formats, need I mention all of the restrictions/bannings as well? And what of the “Power 9″? Clearly, this should stand as a testament that WotC can’t balance for shit.
At the upper end of competition, I do not think we have yet to see a truly balanced game, as by nature of high level, there are strategies or characters that make large chunks of the environment completely inviable.
I feel that a game can truly be balanced, if this condition is met: given an infinite amount of time for pro players to find the dominant strategies, each individual unit of strategy (whether that be a card in M:tG, a unit in SC, or a character in Guilty Gear) is equally viable at the highest level of play–that pros are unable to form a “tier list” or a “metagame”–and that the only real “dominant” strategy is to adapt to each individual opponent, rather than smashing the entire environment with a metagame deck, an S tier character, or siege tanks+complement of vultures/goliaths vs. marines/medics. (Not that the last one can’t be beaten, but it’s a sort of one-strategy-vs. all)
February 24th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Excuse me…not Potemkin, Testament, and Slayer, but Eddie, Testament, and Slayer.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I think a couple people are missing the point on VF and GG. Both games have tiers, in the literal sense that you can go out and look them up. However, in both games every character is considered highly playable and has recorded tournament wins. The tiers are just so thin, that they don’t mean much in practice. (Also note, Sirlin: VF5 is highly regarded for having more unique charcter interaction that any of the previous iterations, so they’re definitely trying to move toward the GG model, in a way).
Honestly, I feel like a want a slightly better definition of “balanced”. ST is balanced in the sense that skill is still enough to determine ultimately who wins or loses. That said, the character tiers, and individual character matchups are far more one-sided than in VF or GG. Are we looking at games that fortunately happened to end up balanced (ST), or games that were actively designed balanced, and we can potential learn how they did it (VF), or maybe both?
As regards Halo, as much as casual players disliked the pistol, the word seems to be that generally be that tournament players felt the first Halo was far more balanced than either 2 or 3.
What are your thoughts on TF2, Sirlin? Everyone’s right that it took the ‘easy way out’ in a sense, in that all 9 classes are available to both teams. However, there’s a clearly defined balance between classes… sniper counters heavy, pyro counters scout, demo counters engineer, and so on.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:50 am
>>In constructed M:TG at high levels the number of viable moves (decks and cards) is extremely degenerate.
Both Standard (Type 2) and Extended have between 10 and 20 deck archetypes right now that are viable for high level tournaments, depending on how strict your definition of ‘viable’ is (i.e. if you consider or not Tier 2 decks that are good choices in a given meta but aren’t ‘the best’ choices in a generic metagame). That’s huge! I can’t think of many games that have that many viable strategies at a high level. Until around Ravnica block, the usual number of Standard viable decks was about 3 Tier 1s, and 3-5 Tier 2s. That’s about 33% of the current number. I hear that Legacy is also pretty diverse these days, but I don’t play it so I can’t confirm. The Power 9 is unavailable in all formats except Vintage, which does not have sanctionned tourneys, so it’s irrelevant to the discussion.
There’s also the little fact that you change about 4-5 cards in a deck, and even if it is the same basic archetype it’s *an entirely different deck* sometimes. Pre-Morningtide there was *at least* 3 different Green/Black archetypes that were viable: G/B Elves, G/B Doran and G/B Rock. These play completly different even if they share a core of at least 50% of the deck.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:47 am
@Ilya:
If you’re going to “debunk” something, having the facts would be pretty sweet. You caught one of your errors and corrected it in a subsequent post, but the fact you made it at all indicates you probably don’t know as much about the game as you’d like to think. Also, Potemkin Buster is two half circles? What? Potemkin Buster is half circle back, forward, and Punch. Not sure how that is two half circles. Heavenly Potemkin Buster is two quarter circles forward and Slash. Again, not exactly two half circles there. If you think those are tough, you must freak out at 360 or 720 moves in other games.
If I recall correctly, almost all match-ups in Accent Core are pretty even. The worst it gets is like 7:3? And there’s only 1-3 of those at most? Which means every other match-up is 6:4 or 5:5. I don’t recall precisely, so I’m not stating it as fact. Zappa used to be the bottom tier closer to when he first came out, and there was a guy in my hometown who just destroyed most people (playing against the other really competitive players, not scrubs). The tiers aren’t miles away from each other like some games. Every character in Accent Core is viable. How many fighting games you know of like that? Nothing personal, but you might want to learn the game better before you decide all this stuff about how it’s unbalanced (how to do the special moves correctly would be a good start, just a heads up).
February 24th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Whoever says that MtG metagame in T2 and Extended is unbalanced, obviously hasn’t played in, like, 4 years.
I think that the real balance in MtG is shown in limited. Bomb cards are only so in the hands of skilled players. All the luck involved in the randomness in packaging is out weighted by card evaluation and guessing what the other players are doing.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I will say the God of War series. Personally, of all the action games of this type, (Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry), this series is the most balanced to me. When I first played the game on Normal, I felt by the end, I was just starting to grasp the depth of the combat. So playing it again on the next highest difficulty felt like a smooth transition. I never felt overwhelmed by the difficulty. Once I defeated that game on Hard, moving onto to God mode, while much harder, was again a smooth transition because by then I completely understood the finer technicalities of the attacks and the spacing of the attacks.
Where Ninja Gaiden starts off at an extreme difficulty, I much prefer the learning curve the God of War gives the player.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Ilya>>
Attempting to label GGXX as broken (or even unbalanced) simply because it has a top tier and bottom tier is an exercise in ignorance. As far as power rankings go, GGXX—both as a whole but with emphasis on its latest instalment, Accent Core—is one of the closest games on the market (or perhaps ever, thus far anyhow.) I had a whole neat little writeup prepared regarding the game’s worst matchup being documented as 6.5 to 3.5, Top tier vs. Upper tier (or S vs. A) but between not being able to easily find the source on that and the fact it’s a little dated, I decided against it.
In short though, if you want to call GGXX imbalanced, next time be sure to provide an alternative for us all to gaze upon.
P.S: Potemkin Buster only requires one half-circle motion—not two.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Okay, as I was typing BlackBloc said most of what I was gonna way better than me. The only thing I want to add is that, yes, the Mirrodin fiasco was a travesty. But it was pretty much the only travesty in the past ten years or so.
Also, due to the nature of the business model WotC has, almost all the cards aren’t designed for tournament play; they make it for the casual crowd. Yes, most things over 6 mana aren’t useful in tournaments. Good thing over 2/3 of the cards are less than 6 mana.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I’d like to say that all Quake games, besides QuakeWorld, when played in 1v1 (Duel) mode are incredibly well-balanced, simply by recognition of the concept behind the entire game.
As far as weapon balance? Not so much, in all iterations, a number of “main weapons” (Q3 and 4 have the Rail, Rocket, and Shaft) do emerge because of the way they work, and get used far more often than the others. However, excluding QuakeWorld (where only the Rocket and Shaft have any value whatsoever), most of the weapons have at a good value in their own right as tactical choices. However I do understand that this doesn’t constitute “one of the most balanced games”.
Where does the mystical “balance” come from then? The resource system. Rather than “choose a loudout” (Fighting Games + Class-based Shooters), or “performance reward” (Counter-Strike), it relies on a “pick up” system very akin, but with key differences to the standard RTS “gather” system. By the way, if there are official names for these systems, and I’m fucking them up, please by all means correct me.
With the pick up system, both players have access to all the resources (guns, ammo, health, and armor) available in the map, but do not have immediate access to use them. They have to be actually picked up. Both players can use the rocket launcher, but you have to grab it first. Both players have the opportunity to have an extra 50 armor to their HP stats, but you have to pick up the Yellow Armor first.
Since these resources respawn at set time intervals which can be calculated at the time they are picked up, both players are given many, many opportunities to grab them. This creates a centerpiece in the gameplay of “controlling” these resources whenever they respawn, with a key focus placed on the major powerups: The armor jackets (Yellow and Red), and the MegaHealth. This “control” situation creates its own tactical questions that have many ways to answer, but depend on what you want to try and do.
I could go on and on, though. But I don’t want to get too complex since it’s just a blog post. Sirlin, if you’ve got access to the email field I’ve put up, get ahold of me and I can go in further detail.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Single-player game lovers>>
I love 1-player games, but they’re not competitive, so there’s no point in listing them.
Disgaea fans>>
See above, but it’s worth noting that IF Disgaea had a battle mode, it’d be absolutely broken up the wazoo.
Mario Kart players>>
Super Mario Kart is about as balanced as Texas Hold-Em.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Yes, all characters in GGAC are viable. It still doesn’t mean that some are not visibly better than others. At the top level of play, for instance, Eddie (Ogawa’s Eddie anyway) clobbers everyone I’ve seen except perhaps Shonen’s Testament.
Yes, those are extremely talented players but why those characters? And why did the best Sol player in the world (Isa) *switch* to Eddie?
If at any point a pro switches characters to gain a competitive advantage, there is something wrong with the game.
Madfrog and Deadman in fact did that twice upon each other. The matchup was initially deadman’s night elf vs. madfrog’s undead, but in order to gain an advantage, deadman switched to orc during the countdown and immediately after while he still could, madfrog switched to night elf, again for the matchup advantage.
While it is impressive in guilty gear that skill trumps character selection and that character selection is not such a huge factor in GG as it is in say super smash brothers (call me when you see someone win a tourney with bowser, mewtwo, or pichu), it still *is* a factor, and any game in which anything *but* player skill is a factor is an unbalanced game.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:19 am
People are using a horrible definition of balance in MTG. Everyone knows a vast majority of the cards are unplayable in a given format. That’s because there are like 350 cards per large set! Of course you’re not gonna be able to play them all! Some of them are ONLY playable in limited (a large amt. actually, but that’s balanced as Zegim is describing), some in older formats, and some are designed for bizarre casual formats like 2HG (example: Imperial Mask from future sight.) Some are made uncompetitive on purpose because there are people who love to play with awful cards. It simply isn’t fair to pretend that these are all supposed to be balanced in standard.
There are many wildly varying competitive decks in formats like standard. Playskill is a really important factor too - I’ve seen good players playing terrible fish decks top8 in tournaments basically full of rock, mannequin, and dstorm.
This isn’t a case of “needing a stricter definition of balance” as it is being way too picky and ignoring the bigger (and more relevant) picture.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Note on what is even feasible to nominate. My original question is about balance between asymmetric stuff in games, such as races in Starcraft, or characters in Street Fighter. For purposes of this question, all single-player games are disqualified, and all symmetric games like Chess and Backgammon are disqualified. MTG *is* feasible to nominate because type 2 constructed decks can be viewed as “characters” in a fighting game. There’s several viable choices. I do think Team Fortress 2 is feasible to nominate in that the different classes do need to be balanced in a somewhat similar way as MTG cards. Your team is like your deck. Whether or not TF2 is *actually* deserving is another question (you tell me, I don’t know) but it’s at least feasible to nominate.
I was originally not asking at all about symmetric games, but some of you suggested some, so at least label these as nominations for “category 2: symmetric games” or something. The criteria here would be that even though both sides are pretty much the same, there are a reasonable number of options both sides have. This would include Chess as well as “pick-up” games like Quake 1on1 and Mario Kart. Well, I guess the different characters in Mario Kart are different, but as far as I know it’s *mostly* about the various pick-ups that are available to all characters.
Something Ilya said I found strange. When you see a top player in a fighting game change characters, I take that as a sign of nothing at all. I wouldn’t say “I play Bison in ST.” I would say “I play ST.” I play the game. I happen to use the Bison piece in the game often, but I use whichever character I feel like at the time, and whichever one gives me the best shot at winning in that very particular situation vs that particular player. Sometimes it’s Honda. Sometimes it’s Vega. It’s even been Blanka before. I play the *game* and do not limit myself to one piece in it. I certainly wouldn’t hold it *against* a player or against the game itself when I see someone switch characters.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I nominate Super Smash Brothers Melee, and possibly Brawl once i get a chance to play it. I think the whole essence of the game makes it competitive. The fact that the more damage you take, the higher your percentage goes, and as a result you are knocked farther. This adds different kinds of strategies at every “point” in the game, and you must constantly adapt and change the way you play based on how much damage you have in comparison with your opponent. Of course, its only competitive with the right settings, such as stock instead of time, and all items off.
Smash games have always been a blast to play and extremely competitive, with one of the larges communities ever. It was the best selling game on the GC and Brawl is selling like hotcakes in Japan. The more popular the game, the bigger the community, and therefore the more potential to practice and play the game competitively against others. With the addition of WiFi and sites which can arrange specific matches like WiFi wars.com, I think Brawl will reach new heights competitively. I don’t like that they took out many of the glitches from Melee, and in general the game seems much slower paced, but its core is still there and over time I think new glitches and techniques will be discovered, and players will have to play slower and think more about their attacks before using them.
Another piece of evidence for Smash’s competitive nature is the consistent tournament results. In 2006 MLG held 10+ tournaments, and the same players (Ken, Mew2King, Isai, PC Chris, Chu Dat, etc.) appeared within the top 10 almost every tourney. Ken, known as the King of Smash, got first place in at least 4 of those tourneys (don’t know exact number). With such consistent results from tourneys with 200+ players at times, I think Smash is quite a consistent and competitive game, and deserves a spot among the greatest competitive games of all time. Who’s with me?
February 24th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Personally, I’d argue that Quake 1on1 doesn’t quite fit in the symmetric category for various reasons, not the least of which is the tendency for the initial spawns to create a very distinct resource advantage and disadvantage after the build-up phase of the game.
That could just be me though being butthurt that my game doesn’t “qualify”. :(
February 24th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I think TF2 is the only FPS that can even be considered on this list. And even then, you’re only talking about the classes balance towards each other and not individual team’s balance towards each other.
In a fighting game, RTS or any game where you can choose a specific race/side/character, that’s where the balance comes in. Non-class based FPS is all about your skill in aiming and your strategy in grabbing pick ups (if non-WWI/II style I guess). Of course its balanced! You’re both on EXACTLY the same playing field (if initial spawn points are already balanced of course).
And this is where TF2 has that grey area, because both teams start with the same playing feild. Even on non-symetrical maps, you switch sides (attack/defend) after some time, so its fair that way.
So, I don’t think FPS can be considered here, unless Sirlin is looking for a fairly broad example of the term “balanced”.
I personally don’t play enough games to be able to objectively rate one as balanced, but I’ve heard Super Mario Strikers is pretty good, even with some of the dodgy things in it. What about Virtual On? Was that balanced? I played it, but by no means at any high level, so am unsure of how balanced it is. Also, people are hammering on MTG, but anyone played Pokemon TCG? I played it very little when it first came out, but was never able to invest enough money/time into going deeper into it. So I’m unsure of its balance.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Company of Heroes is a very balanced game.
You hear a lot of belly aching on the forums but the top players in that game seem to win with whatever 4 factions they are playing with. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there is only the online ladder system with few tournaments held.
Notable features that contribute to balance:
-Cover system provides almost all infantry and some vehicles with large defensive bonuses allowing them to hold on and delay allowing a player time to respond if they are facing a hard counter to their units. Cover is directional so units can be flanked to negate the cover.
-There are 2 tiers of gameplay. The metagame of hard counters and the micromanagement portion which can mitigate the effects hard counters, for a while atleast. Ex. Anti-tank guns are very powerful against tanks but have a limited firing arc, are slow moving, and have setup time before they can start shooting. So you might have built the correct counter to tanks but if you are stupid and leave it exposed, a tank can just eat a few hits and waltz in behind you to circlestrafe it to death. When he brings that 2nd anti tank gun up to cover the first, its time to retreat.
this encourages skillful use of units where even if you are countered, you can hold off enemies with superior micro and tactics buying time.
-All sides have access to infantry that have can counter almost anything, including tanks, but have high costs associated with doing so. Almost all infantry get some form of improvised anti-tank measures that usually cost a lot of a particular resource (ammunition) to perform. Typically they do not kill the vehicle (unless the vehicle is badly controlled), but instead immobilize or slow the opposing vehicle. It allows you to trade resources for time to get real counters out (like AT guns or your own tanks).
ex. American riflemen can get sticky bombs and throw them at enemy tanks and vehicles (that are supposed to counter infantry) at 35 munitions a pop. If you get into range your tank is going to get immobilized. Enough sticky bombs can kill a tank. So if you made a mistake and was late getting anti-tank equipment, its not an instant lose.
-All infantry units can “retreat” for free and gain defensive bonuses while fleeing back to the base. It helps a lot with the slippery slope syndrome. Units come in squads of soldiers and replenishing lost casualties within a squad is typically much cheaper (50%) . As long as you retreat before a squad is critically low in health, they often survive and you pay a small fee return them to full strength.
-3 Resources, Manpower is the primary resource in the game and is a continuous flow that cannot be cut off by the enemy. Munitions allows for special abilities and must capture and protect points to accrue. Fuel is used for vehicle and tech upgrades, also must be captured and accrued.
End result:
An RTS game which has many safeguards available to a player but all of which cost resources limiting the number of times you can lose a mind game or loss of critical territory which generates income (like fuel which stops your teching if you don’t have any). Your primary resource which is manpower can never be cut off so you can always build infantry which almost always have some form of delaying tactic that can be used as long as you have munitions at your disposal.
Lose enough mind games and you will run out of munitions to defend yourself and you will get rolled.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
After reading through these comments, nobody said the first thing that came to my mind. I think Shadowrun for the 360 is one of the most balanced, and asymetrical shooters to date. Granted, a lot of the maps are symetrical, but it has 4 distinct races with all kinds of abilities and a great cash system that is, in my opinion, better than Counter Strike’s. That’s just my 2 cents. : )
February 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
ST is balanced? Really? I mean we all love it, but does a T Hawk player have the same chance of winning a tournament that a Vega player does? And if it’s so balanced then why are you rebalancing it?
February 24th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Shadow:
If the players are allowed to switch characters, yes. If not, no. The “balance” comes from being able get access to a counter. M:TG is “balanced” because one card can be beaten by another card, and there is no rule requiring players to bring none, either, or both.
A similar situation comes up in WoW. A guy on my server holds “rogues-only” dueling tournaments. Since rogues are so far “out-there” in WoW and really not compatible with other classes in a dueling tournament, it makes sense to only match them against each other. If they played in a tourney where anyone could play, the rogues would get crushed except against the worst players in the tournament.
Sirlin:
There’s a few “multiplayer turn-based browser games” out there, one example is www.gang-wars.com. It’s odd, but I would call it “balanced”.
Each player is given a character, and his stats are rolled. Then, he is given X amount of “turns” to do things, which can be used for anything: enhancing the character’s stats, gathering resources, attacking other players, etc. When you’re out of turns, you can’t do anything until you get more. Everyone gets Y amount of truns every so often, say “50 turns every 10 minutes” or something similar.
It’s a very rudimentary game (oddly, almost all that I’ve seen involve being a criminal of some sort. maybe we should call these games “criminal sims”?), but every player is given the same amount of resources, provided they start at the same time. Also, there are specialized “career” paths. For example, one player would be a “drug dealer” and invest all of his resources in making and using drugs, or a “thug” that specializes in recruiting and using manpower and muscle.
Each of these styles has an attack (the thug can simply rob another player. the drug dealer can spoil another player’s resources [the gang gets high]). The attacks are not inherently equal, but the game allows teamwork, so you can always find another player to bring to the table whatever you can’t.
In short, it is effectively Starcraft without resource gathering. You get whatever the rules of the game give you, not what you gather for yourself. So, skip the economy aspect and focus on producing and marshaling your forces.
I don’t find these game too interesting myself (personal opinion), but the Iron Law Of Giving Everybody The (Exactly or Almost Exactly) Same Stuff, Then Seeing What They Do With It, seems to keep a game’s playing field level, but not necessarily what makes the game “good”.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
HF is actually more balanced than ST I think, in the sense that HF has fewer counter matches. ST has more counter matches (which is something I can help reduce) but it has a lot of viable characters. Just because I can help compress the tiers doesn’t mean that it’s badly balanced to begin with though.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
StarCraft and Guilty Gear XX are the two most balanced games I’ve ever played. They totally deserve to be on that list.
As Sirlin wrote in his article about balance and variety, 100% perfect balance in an asymmetrical game is next to impossible. However, just because a game is not 100% balanced, doesn’t make it “unbalanced”. In this sense, balance is relative, not absolute.
In GGXX (Accent Core), there are “S-Tier” characters like Eddie, Testament, and Slayer, and there are “D-Tier” characters like Anji, Bridget, and Johnny. However, the distance between S-tier and D-Tier is not as vast as it is in many other fighting games. A Johnny player can face an Eddie player and still stand a good chance to win. Despite the existence of tiers, GGXX has so many viable options at high level play that it can be called a “balanced” game.
~Z
February 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Was discussing whether or not Quake was symetrical with Amp a few hours ago. After first saying that Quake WAS a symmetrical game I quickly changed my mind. When a map starts players start a one of a set of spawn locations which naturally give a player an advantage over a certain set of spawns.
For instance Player A has easy access to the Rocket Launcher, Shaft, and some health where as Player B will have easy access to the Rail, Nades, and some Armor shards. Also a player has an ability to choose between a few different sets of pick ups he could go for before the initial confrontation over the mega health or red armor spawns (which naturally happen 30-60 seconds after the game starts.
As players die, respawn, and use up their resources the balance of the game is always shifting. There are times where a player can be dominating their opponent and stacking their deck against theirs; however in a game with good weapon balance as well as being played on a map which has good balance in it self; the situations where this becomes overwhelming are only limited to when there is a large gap in skill between the players.
To put it into contrast a game like Gears of War where everybody spawns with the Lancer (machine gun/chainsaw) and shotgun then only fights over the sniper, grenade launcher, or crossbow for an advance it becomes a much larger symmetrical based game. A game type which many Quake and Unreal Tournament disciplined players would remark to its very shallow and narrow gameplay options.
I would say that the balance in Quake is more dependent on the maps that you play on rather than it’s core gameplay; however a solid balance core gameplay (i.e. weapon balance in relation to movement schemes) is a pre-requisite for good maps to even exist. Often maps are rejected and modified because weapon/armor/health locations in relation to player spawn points do not yield balanced and interesting situations.
So really vanilla Quake (unmodified) turned out to be not so balanced; however Quake 3 OSP/CPMA with it’s community maps has demonstrated the gold standard of Weapon, Movement, and Map balance which all other FPS dueling games are held against.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
By “counter matches”, you mean a matchup where character A has a heavy advantage or disadvantage against B, right? Sorry, but fighting games I know next to nothing about.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Shadowrun is THE pinnacle of FPS variety and balance. Then again, 2 1/2 years of team-based QA can do that to a game.
And whoever called Melee balanced…wow.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
i208khonsu: I’d say that still makes Quake symmetrical. While the random starting location is significant, and can change how each players plays, that location is not a choice. It’s very different from starcraft, where I actively decide to use Protoss against a zerg player, instead of also playing zerg. That is, random differences that occur once a particular game starts don’t have anything to do with whether the overall design is symmetrical or not.
I’m finding TF2 really hard to classify. The problem is that a player can choose to change classes at any time. So, even if you try to consider competing team’s of players with different class makeup, you often see a particular player changing classes depending on what’s currently going on in the game. I guess that makes me learn towards saying it’s symmetrical, since there’s no choices made before the game starts (i.e. class in WoW or race in starcraft).
February 24th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I’d say that Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is very balanced game, thus far we’ve seen every race win some major tournament.
And there’s a custom map for Wc3, called DotA, which is an amazing hero defense map. I’m sure this ought to be one of the most balanced mods ever. Besides, there are 2 high-level tournaments going on: MyM pride and MyM prime nations. In my opinion numerous dota leagues have proved that this mod is capable of high-level competiton.
February 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Claytus:
My (and now khonsu’s I think) argument is that Quake’s resource system is only symmetric when taken at bare face value.
The only thing that could qualify the game as truly symmetric, in my opinion, is the fact that you spawn with the same statistical resources. (Machine gun with equal ammo, 125 health, no armor) Even that symmetry is broken within seconds after the game starts, and well before active combat takes place. Then factor in that you spawn at different, random locations on the map, which vary on positional advantage and then you have position symmetry broken before the match even begins.
Look at it like this, take a fighting game. Both players in this fighting game start with what is symmetrical characters, no special moves, only the six base punches and kicks of Street Fighter. 2 Seconds into the game, both players get “randomly assigned” a new special move, one gets a fireball, the other a dragon punch. Suddenly, they’re no longer symmetrical characters. 2 more seconds, and they get something new, one player gets a hurricane kick, the other gets the Third Strike parry. Few more seconds, one person gets the fireball that was given to the first player, but the other guy gets a roll dodge.
I know there’s plenty of holes in my analogy between Quake and a psuedo-parallel fighting game, but it’s the best I could come up with on short notice. :(
My argument is that in Quake, the apparent symmetry in resources is broken so much more quickly and drastically than standard symmetric games like Chess and Checkers, that could you even really call it symmetry?
February 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Counter-strike 1.6.
Asymmetrical map, asymmetrical weapon selections, yet decently balanced between counter-terrorist and terrorist teams.
It is important to note that it is not PERFECTLY balanced. in competitive play, the team that plays as terrorists for the first half, plays as counter-terrorist for the second half, and visa-versa. This is because most maps give at least a slight advantage to either the counter-terrorist or the terrorist team (although in competitive play the least slanted maps are obviously chosen). It is important to note that whether it is balanced in favor of counter-terrorists or terrorists is which map you are playing.
This brings me to one reason why I think Starcraft is so famously balanced. Players can make their own maps. This allows the community the ability to fine-tune balance not only by making maps, but by agreeing to play on a particular map on a game by game basis. Eventually, consensus is reached on which maps are the most balanced, and those will be the maps everyone plays. For instance, the map to play a random 1 vs. 1 on right now is “python,” a wonderfully balanced map. This works less quickly in proleague, but still applies (the poorly balanced map: “demon forest” was kicked right out of OnGameNet Starleague after the first round).
The power of putting this element of balance in the hands of the community cannot be underestimated. When blizzard makes it’s own maps, they are almost always poorly balanced, sometimes to the point of being downright laughably exploitable like “king of the abyss,” a map from the starcraft tournament of blizzcon 2005. Lost Temple is the only decently balanced starcraft map I can think of that blizzard has ever made on its own, and even that map is falling out of favor due to the balance issues created by the cliff artifact over the natural expansion.
Imagine if blizzard applied this approach to world of warcraft arena! (ignore for a second the fact that it is technologically possible). It would allow the player base to affect game balance subtly through consensus rather than attempting to change it drastically with knee-jerk nerf-crying!
The biggest balance issues for hunters is that they have a minimum range which makes it nigh impossible to hit someone running around a circular obstacle at the exact same speed as you to interrupt your line of sight. The biggest balance issue for druids is that they can run away in travel form and drink water somewhere, making them too powerful in a drawn out fight. The biggest balance issue for paladins, and to a lesser extent, shamans, is that running around a circular obstacle is such a potent defense that having to stand still to cast a heal (unlike a priest or a druid) is HUGE.
These balance issues could all be fixed with creative map-making!
February 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I think Arathi Basin of World of Warcraft is fairly balanced. What keeps it from being a good example is a) players are stuck to one class (and talent choices) b) Matchups are determined by the server (not by players)
What makes the classes in Arathi Basin balanced is that every type has something special to add to the team, but none are necessary.
Probably the best setups for teams require a varried amount of classes. This makes most classes viable. On the other hand: it restricts teams from having too many of one class.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Regarding MtG: This is probably the worst time to complain about Magic being just one deck, as there have been SO MANY decks over the last year or two that it’s difficult to analyze them all. Go read some of Flores’s tournament result analysis if you don’t believe me. It’s CRAZY right now, in a way that i don’t think it has been since people started figuring out how to play the game correctly.
Regarding Quakes: Amp said:
“I’d like to say that all Quake games, besides QuakeWorld, when played in 1v1 (Duel) mode are incredibly well-balanced, simply by recognition of the concept behind the entire game.”
I think that PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE is the case: Quakeworld is the absolute pinnacle of both Quake and FPS competition. Even now, years and years after it was released, three are still regular tournaments for it. Its balance was mostly an accident, but it very clearly provided a superior platform to all other Quakes. Only CPMA, a Quake 3 mod, really comes close to duplicating the magic (in large part by wholesale theft of the QW gameplay) and that’s not really a “real” Quake.
Furthermore, Quakeworld is not just great 1v1 but it’s also really great in team fights. Maybe not quite as great as CPMA here, but better than every other game like this except maybe Halo(???) or something. (I’m not counting class based FPSes here, just fyi.)
One game i forgot to mention is Kohan. Kohan comes with two HUGE caveats though:
1. It has two game breaking exploits, or maybe one and a half game breaking exploits. The developers have expressed their desire to fix them, but they do not have the time or money to do so. I think it hasn’t been decisively proven one way or another whether these should be allowed, but they’re slightly subtle and dangerous.
2. Although there are two identifiable problems, the Kohan community (or as much as one remains) believes there are more like a half dozen to a dozen different ban-worthy issues.
The problem is they can’t decide on which ones.
So the community is broken and fragmented, and it has mostly eaten itself.
I guess there’s kind of one more thing that did this game in: Blizzard. You see, Kohan was in large part a response to the success of Starcraft. the makers set out to fix a lot of problems with Starcraft too (for instance, broken UI or ludicrous micromanagement demands) and largely did so. But as soon as the game was released Blizzard sent out a Starcraft patch fixing a bunch of things (if you like Starcraft replays you can thank Kohan) and Warcraft 3 (not yet released) was tweaked in large part designed to eat Kohan.
So as an example of a successfully balanced competitive game Kohan may fall a bit short. But if you want an example of a game that reached for greatness and fell just short i think a look at Kohan might be instructional.
To Sirlin: Type 2/”Standard” MtG might in fact be symmetric, but there are Magic formats that are definitely NOT symmetric, like block draft. If you want an absolutely TOP NOTCH example of Draft, go look at the recent PT Kuala Lumpur videos. (Located here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/ptkl08/welcome get the “Top 8 Draft”, “Quarterfinals”, “Semifinals”, and “Finals” videos–be warned, they’re LONG but they have commentary to try explaining what’s going on.) Aside from being historically important, it was a great top 8 and the whole thing is essentially self-contained so you don’t need to worry about them bringing cards in from outside what you get to see.
Regarding DOTA: It’s true that there are “high level tournaments”, but the problem is each tournament is basically held under its own bizarro-rules, none of which are the REAL rules of the game. In one tournament you can share certain kinds of items but not others–in another you can still share certain kinds of items but not others, but the items are totally different. In yet another you can’t share items at all. But if you play TDA you can share as many items as you like no problem. It used to be that some heroes were banned based on the perception that they were too powerful, yet no tournaments would allow those heroes (for fear of degeneracy) so nobody REALLY got to find out! Sometimes “backdooring” is allowed, but often times (like the Redcoats) you’re only allowed to line up and fight out in the open–even in top tournaments!!
Because of all this nonsense it’s very difficult to tell if DOTA is “balanced” or not. A given tournament may OR MAY NOT be balanced, but it’s again difficult to tell. Furthermore, even the top players play more based off hearsay and rumors than on hard-won skill because of the fragmentation and continuously evolving nature of the game.
I think there might be a good game in there, but i’m not comfortable saying “yes there is” (or even “no there isn’t”) at this point.
I’d argue Quake, but this is long enough as-is.
Let me also note: when balancing multiple options against each other i have two rules. I may have even mentioned them before, but i’ll bring them up again:
Rule A: No option should be so useful that it is the “standard” answer to any or nearly any situation
Rule B: No option should be so powerful that it is the only reasonable answer in situations where it is useful.
Let’s say, for instance, Zerg rush in Starcraft had a 90% win rate even at high levels of play. (As people seem to think it does.) That would violate Rule A: you don’t need to actually play the game, just Zerg rush.
Let’s say in GGXX your instant kills were free and did not require you to be in IK mode (you could just do the motion and get the IK, no penalty if you miss). That would be a violation of Rule B.
When i’m trying to analyze whether options are balanced relative to each other (say, races in an RTS) i look for obvious violations of Rule A or B, and if i don’t find any i accept the game to be balanced unless i find some sort of counter-example. (On the other hand, if there’s some big violation i get pretty suspicious.)
Taking a real-world example, in CPMA i argued for a long time the rail gun was “unbalanced” because it violated Rule B. (Let’s just gloss over the details.) Because there is a large contingent of Quake 2 players in CPMA they STRONGLY resisted any power reduction in the rail gun, and in fact often argued (especially certain groups) the rail gun should be improved. Eventually, though, the top people agreed with me (and, let’s be honest, a LOT of other people) and the rail gun was nerfed subtly. I think CPMA players will by and large agree: the game is better for it.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I wanted to mention Worms because of the variety, but It’s pretty symmetrical. Plus I have no idea if any sort of serious competitive environment exists for it either.
SC1 I think is the best in the series IMO, but I’m not sure if it deserves to make the list. I think the SC model deserves it though. It has MANY different attributes for each character to mess with, plus ring outs and GI make for a nice safety net. But they’re not so strong as to become an overly major focus.
I think this is the problem with Sam Sho and Garou. Despite wonderful character variety, these games break down HARD at high level. Further, they both have a TON of over-arching systems like GG, only they aren’t executed well. In Garou, matches come down to landing a short jump into a super. Ironic as the cvs2 groove that comes from SS and Garou is the same way.
I used to think that if you gave a character something that didn’t break them, then it was OK to add. But I’ve come to not think this. Even if the character isn’t top tier, they may become too much like another character, or boring in some other way. Marduk in T5 wasn’t top, but one move made him incredibly boring to play, because it was almost always his best option. This is d+1. It gave him an insane frame advantage, forced crouch on the opponent, was fairly fast, and created a 50/50 mixup that involved that same move (it was also a mid and an elbow making it difficult to reverse)–thus making the situation easily repeatable.
This brings me to one of GG biggest weaknesses. I feel that a lot of the mixups in that game are symmetrical. The jump from Slash to AC made this worse I think. So many followups for so many characters lead to the same thing. I think GG provides the best variety and balance out there, but suffers from this and seems to be pushing in that direction even harder unfortunately. What’s even worse, is that a lot of GG is pushing your opponent into that forced 50/50. I don’t mind this too much, but a lot of characters seem to play exactly the same in certain situations once they get optimum momentum.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I don’t know how you can say Guilty Gear XX is extremely balanced when characters like Eddie and Testament get junk like meter-less unblockable set-ups and huge combos off of random hits.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I’m going to agree with you on:
1. StarCraft
2. Street Fighter (Super Turbo only)
3. Guilty Gear (XX Slash or A-Core… I’d like to say A-Core is the most balanced but I believe Testament is noticeably overpowered - not that I care, since I’ve always been a Testament player)
I don’t know Virtua Fighter or Soul Calibur 1 (I started at two) well enough to comment.
For Magic: The Gathering I’m going to have to ask that you clarify what format you think is balanced; Legacy, Vintage, Extended, Standard, Block, ect. I’m going to say that Extended (past 6 blocks) and Legacy (also known as type 1.5) are balanced but that Vintage (also known as type 1) and Block are not; standard varies too often for me to keep track. The problem with Vintage is that although all obviously game breaking cards (like Tundra, a basic land that can be tapped for either red or green) are banned, there are only a few viable deck options that mostly revolve around a mana loop, heal loop or instant kill. Sure there are allot of decks that can be formed out of these options and a few tweaks but the play style is in effect the same. It’s like having 9 different versions of Ryu and nothing else. Block’s problem is that your card pool is extremely limited and depending on what’s in the block and how far along the block is a good player can tell what their opponent’s deck is after seeing about 3 or 4 cards. In most blocks there are maybe 3-5 viable decks.
I’m going to agree on Puzzle Fighter: HD Remix for X’ and Y modes only; however I’m not so sure it’s on the same level as any of the games listed thus far.
That said my case is for DotA, or DotA Allstars to be exact. I’m sure someone has already brought it up and I’m also fairly sure you have little interest in playing it since it’s very much a team game but it’s an extremely well balanced game with more variety than anything else I’ve played, which is extra impressive since it’s a free modified map for WC3:tFT. The best way to describe the game is a competitive real time RPG. The goal of the game is attempting to gain as much gold/exp as possible as quickly as possible so that you can become strong enough to destroy the enemy base while preventing your opponents from doing the same. I’ll spare you the details of how this is done but will say that there are 3 ways to do all of these things.
As of February 23rd there are 90 heroes each with 3 basic skills and 1 ultimate that combine together to define that hero (some of these skills are passive and require no impute from the player). You can level 1 skill each level or invest in stats. Many of the skills are rather basic; stun, slow, poison, invisibility, blink, make images (a lesser copy of the hero), ect. Most of the heroes have rather unique abilities; a hero who’s moves and speed increase dramatically at night, various heroes with a global version of a normal skill, a hero who can teleport to any point on the map at will, a hero that can make full clones of himself, a hero who is always invisible, ect. With that many choices this seems like a case of balance by chaos and would end up with a limited but acceptable number of options based on chance but…
Each hero has 6 item slots (except for one) and there are over 100 items that can be easily and readily bought at your base. This gives the game something closer to how you describe Guilty Gear; it has a core of basic things that any hero can get to allow them to adapt to the situation or enhance their own abilities. This allows almost any hero to be viable in almost any situation. Compound that with the fact that each team has 5 heroes and you’ve got an incredible amount of depth and balance with insane variety.
That’s why DotA should be on that list.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I’ll give another nomination to TF2. Each class is distinct to the degree which it feels like you’re playing a different game when you change classes. Furthermore, they are balanced. Easy class has several classes they have distinct advantages over and distinct weaknesses against. The real key to TF2’s balance is that even though this RPS style exists between classes, any class should be able to overcome its weakness and kill a counter-class, it will just be difficult.
Also, Steve is right on in his explanation for why Starcraft is balanced. It’s all in the maps. Without the mapmaking community, BW would’ve broken down and become imbalanced long ago.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Response to random comments: just because a game has tiers, doesn’t mean it’s not balanced. Calling out GG is particularly nonsensical. The distance between Eddie/Testament and the D-tier is miles shorter than most fighting games even hope for. The only problem I have with the game is that I’m really bad…
Anyone who claims M:tG is not balanced is either too jaded (read: burnt-out) or hasn’t played enough. It has had its dry spells in tournament play, but in recent history, things like Urza block have all but disappeared. Since the game is constantly changing, imbalances work themselves out. Once you get to the very tip-top levels of play, the big winners often use strange new decks (”technology”, as we call it) that go on to influence the metagame, sometimes sweeping aside the cooke-cutter piles that used to be considered the best, and the process starts anew.
Anyway, I nominate DotA-Allstars. There are 90+ heroes, as already mentioned, and in competitive play, there remain a dozen or three viable choices. Given the massive number of other variables, the largest being item selection, the variety of different strategies and teams that can be constructed is quite large. Probably the most standard way to play an organized competitive match is have each team take turns drafting heroes, as well as banning heroes from being selected by either team for that game. I suppose I could go on and on about why it’s a well-balanced game, but I’m just going to say that the proof is in the pudding. The DotA community is large and growing, and has been featured at several different high-profile gaming competitions.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Steve: Great points about community created and judged maps.
bbobjs: Great explanation of Dota. I don’t know why I left it off my original list. I guess both it and Warcraft 3 belong there too.
Incidentally, if someone would like to, um, work as a software engineer on a small game very similar to dota that has a little bit of money behind it…contact me. But only if you’re pretty badass.
Regarding which sub-game of MTG I meant, well I meant type 2 and extended constructed. Vintage and block are way too extreme in my opinion. I always thought the block format existed only for marketing reasons and sucked as a game compared to type 2. Regarding limited formats, I personally really, really, really do not like them. Yes they are skill-testing, yes they are real competitive games. But in constructed, I can make a focused deck analogous to playing Zangief or Dhalsim. Limited decks are always a bunch of janky creatures and a few spells. You can’t even get close to making interesting decks like Domain, Skies, a full U/W control, Nether Control, or other decks that date me to the Invasion-expansion era, ha. That type 2 and extended constructed have so much diversity in deck types and STILL end up in a balanced game is very impressive.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:06 am
Hello,
Firstly, I think the distinction between “assymetric” and “symmetric” games is quite arbitrary, and cannot hold if you dig deep enough. Several reasons have already been given, mainly about Quake being assymetric (which it definitely is!) You say that an assymetric game has two sides that differ notably, giving a deck of M:TG as an example of a “side”. If you consider an FPS or RTS, the resources available to you on the map (ie close to your spawn location) can be considered your deck.
And it’s true that you don’t choose your (initial) resources (or deck) in Quake; they are chosen for you. But even if we consider a Starcraft game in which your race is chosen randomly for you, I’m sure everybody will still agree that it’s an assymetric and balanced game (if enough games are played in one “matchup” to level out the possible advantage of getting a good random race-map combination).
In Quake (which I’ve played for YEARS competetively, both 1-1 and 4-4), the initial spawn location is of paramount importance to your initial strategy. For example, if an opponent spawned near a red armor or another essential asset (this depends on the map), you are often forced into a defensive game of hit-and-run, until you can take control.
I’m sorry, but I really can’t think of a definition of symmetry in games that makes for a sensible distinction. You can’t say “a game needs to be 60% assymetric to qualify”, because you can’t measure it. Even chess is not 100% symmetric. So because I think the distinction does not make sense, I’m ignoring it, and I’m qualifying Quake 3 anyway.
The competitive history of Quake 3 speaks for itself. Only a handful of games have surpassed the level (and scope) of competition that Quake 3 achieved. Quake 3 is extremely balanced (on the good maps, that is :)), there’s no doubt about this. The game is well-balanced mainly on two fronts: control and weapons. All of the weapons in Quake 3 are useful and good in their own right. Of course, some weapons are used more than others, but there’s no problem in that, they each have their purpose. Control is another important aspect in which Quake 3 is balanced. Usually, one side is in control of the map, which means they protect and collect the most important resources and keeps the opponent from getting them. But there is always plenty of possibility for the other side, either through smart play or superior aiming, to turn the table and take control of the situation. Usually, control shifts a couple of times during an average game, which makes for exciting games.
Quake 3 was seriously plagued by problems, even though none of them had anything to do with balance. At the end of its life-cycle, it had become so incredibly difficult to set the game up (you had to install a whole bunch of mods, some of which were very difficult to configure correctly, and I still have nightmares about punkbuster), that influx of new players became nonexistent. Out of the box, support for competitive gaming was also severely lacking. The game was pretty much saved by the excellent OSP mod and the creation of some great custom maps.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:11 am
By the way, I also support Michael B.’s nomination of DOTA. DOTA is an excellent game, both on the casual and competitive level (even though gameplay differs greatly between these cases). It’s impressive that a game so diverse as DOTA actually manages to be kind of balanced. It’s hard to think of a game in which you have more initial choices to make than DOTA.
I’ve been a huge fan of this game for a couple of years.
February 25th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Because I’m working on the actual code in Street Fighter, I can tell you there are thousands of variables that make Zangief different from Chun Li. The same is true of races in StarCraft. I can’t even imagine counting spawn points in this same league. It’s not helpful to look at a game where everyone is the same except for some pickups and starting location, and learn about how to set thousands of variables differently for different characters/sides/races. Unless you mean that spawn point A has weapons 1,2,3 and armor two inches from where you start (turning you into Zangief) while spawn point B has weapons 4,5,6 and speed-up right next to you, turning you into Chun Li. And that you get to choose which “character” you will be.
Quake and Starcraft are a million miles apart in this respect. Am I saying Quake sucks? No. I’m saying from what I know of it, it sounds not in the ballpark of what I’m asking about. Also, telling me that Quake is a good competitive game is irrelevant. So is Chess and that’s not what I’m asking about ether (unless you are answering in category#2: symmetric games). We could also call category#2: games that have to care about being good and fun competitive games in the first place, meaning the players have a large number if viable strategies. Chess, Quake, possibly Mario Kart, possibly Tetris fit in that.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Regarding the analogy that your team in TF2 is like a deck in M:TG, I don’t think it quite fits. In M:TG you pick your whole deck while in TF2, to carry the analogy over, you only pick one card in the deck.
Maybe team play is one of the reasons why it’s been hard to pick a definitive FPS game to count as balanced in comparison to the other genres?
In the other games commonly mentioned (Magic, Street fighter, Starcraft, etc) most of them are played 1v1, while the teams in FPS games are often much bigger than the biggest teams seen in other geners (4v4 is commonly the max in RTSs AFAIK)
February 25th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Team Fortress 2 really is one of the best-crafted games of recent years in terms of keeping the classes well-balanced. Really, every class is useful and there is no dominant tactic you can use, and even in a 1-on-1 scenario, any class can fight any other class and win. The only thing that determines who wins is which team was better.
Pokemon Diamond/Pearl is worth mentioning. While you can’t send just any pokemon to fight against anything else, the game’s massive move pool, elaborate elemental system and long list of pokemon make the game highly strategy-oriented.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Oh, and you can’t not mention Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Probably THE best-balanced fighting game ever.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Raveler: Sirlin basically answered but to put it another way. The distinction is purely that you get to choose your race in starcraft. If you make up some alternate version of starcraft where is randomly chose as you start a game, then it becomes symmetric. All the players start out even as the game begins (1 race chosen randomly), and then have to adjust to a strategy based on which race they happened to get. Exactly the same as Quake, where all the player’s are even until after they spawn. Quake is still slightly more symmetrical I’d say though, since you respawn again whenever you die, unlike starcraft, where your race is permanent for the duration of a single game.
DOTA I’ll support. The problem I generally hear with vanilla wc3 however, is that the game doesn’t have enough options. That is, many fairly good players have accused the game of not even forcing you to scout your opponent. If you know their race, you have about a 90% chance of being right if you just guess what strategy they’ll employ with no other information available. I guess it’s still balanced and competitive… but it ceases to be interesting (in comparison to something like starcraft). Is it still allowed on the list?
February 25th, 2008 at 4:16 am
So I think we’ve run into the key arguments here on whether Quake is symmetric or asymmetric.
Sirlin and Claytus argue that because Quake is not as asymmetric as Street Fighter or StarCraft, it must be symmetric.
Myself and Khonsu argue that because Quake is not as symmetric as Chess or Mario Kart it must be asymmetric.
hmm…so where do we go from here?
February 25th, 2008 at 4:33 am
I nominate Heroes of Might & Magic III, because:
It has asymmetrical races which are fairly balanced. Some are of course more powerful than others, but just like ST there are many viable choices for competetive play. Excluding the expansion race, which was overpowered.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:42 am
“Limited decks are always a bunch of janky creatures and a few spells.”
You are short-selling limited decks. Good limited decks often have a lot of interesting interactions and combos, and at various times odd decks like mill and counters have been very viable. Even in decks that have a lot of creatures, there can be huge differences in approach, from stompy to creatures that stall for a money card.
When you watch replays of top limited decks they often play like constructed decks. For example I saw a guy who managed to put together a very reliable reanimator deck.
Most people, including most pros, prefer limited for a variety of reasons.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:55 am
i wouldn’t play a game if i wouldn’t thought they are VERY WELL BALANCED, so add Battle for wesnoth and DOTA to the list.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I don’t know why magic is consideres a balanced game, well, it gives you hundred of options and only a few are available.
I don’t know what sirlin consider balanced there. But Magic use something like capocom vs strategy, they throw tons of good cards and tons of bad cards, some stuff good comes up with and it ends with a lot of variety.
Do you know that in magic most of the tournaments , or at least the nonluck part is won BEFORE the tournament even begin? i mean, building the right deck is the most important decision you can make in magic, i don’t know how that’s balanced really. Considering that inside the game, you need a combination in luck of Cards to come and right matchups.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Nominate: Star Wars CCG by decipher
February 25th, 2008 at 6:07 am
@Kicks: How hard does Garou break down, exactly? I’ve always heard that it was practically perfect.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:13 am
@waterd103:
on MTG: If that were true, that building the right deck is much of the key to winning, how do you explain that the same people continue to do well at large world tournaments, when vast multitudes of other people playing the exact same 75-card lists barely ever win? To claim that, once in the tournament, luck and matchups are the deciding factor, you clearly have never played tournament-level magic. In fact, I would imagine that’s true for many people debating the balanced-ness of magic. I’ve seen people say some things that would make any magic player worth his/her salt cringe.
In contrast to the first post, i’d like to nominate tribes 2. That game was awesome, precisely because the guns all sucked. you had to be actually good to get kills. I think that in tribes 1, the sniper rifle was a bit over-good, as it is in many games, and it gets a little nerfed in tribes 2. Who ever heard of a game where a headshot doesn’t kill a light armor in one hit? And yet the sniper rifle was still used.
And, as a contrast to quake, the fact that there were inventory stations where you could switch to whatever custom loadout you wanted, and they were almost always very near the spawn points, makes tribes N have a much similar thing to character selection than quake.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:44 am
War3? DOTA?! I have to give a Vader sized NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
at that.
This is why:
War3: the game on a whole is degenerate and every single matchup devolves into basically the same one or two strategies that immediately get noticed before the hero is even out of the altar. All war3 games (at least 1v1) are so identical that it’s more or less a micromanagement arena. In fact, some things are extremely imbalanced, such as human tanks (hint: if you want to win in any blizzard RTS, pick the human race, build lots of tanks, and support them with whatever the situation calls for) and towers, which is even *more* pernicious in free for all which is why, as a night elf player, I make it a first priority to decimate the human player due to this, as one player’s account so aptly put it:
TowerTechTank
And if I may add a fourth…
TowerTechTankTeleport
Whether or not the game is balanced statistically, it is not a game that at a high level, is enjoyable to play.
As for DotA: ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is also an absurdly degenerate game, with the same small fraction of heroes chosen at the highest levels, and the game mechanics at high level HIGHLY favoring ranged heroes to melee heroes. The latest patch was a testament to just how degenerate the game in fact was (bottle+boots+dagger=WIN).
On a personal pet peeve of mine, both of the demon hunter characters are not amongst the most powerful characters and have no hope to be, which makes me further despise the game. For being the theoretical antimage, the antimage is one of the worst picks you can make against a mage-heavy lineup. Soul Keeper is item dependent to the point that if you win the game with a soul keeper, you could have won the game with another hero 30 minutes earlier.
A dota-like game that WAS far better (but due to severe nerf-chains completely stopped being good) was called Enmity Campaign, up to .73a, after which it completely turned horrible and fell out of favor. Why it *was* good:
A soft rock paper scissors system and *extremely* gratuitous flash in the animation.
By soft RPS, I mean that if two players both played to their hero’s strengths, then one class would always beat another. However, if the countered class adapted and used ingenuity, he would beat his supposed counterclass.
However, the creator decided to make sure that never happened, threw all ingenuity out the window in favor of teamwork, and the game lost all of its good players, and that was that.
Sadly, I can’t take what little good was in the future versions and transfer it to .73a due to map protection.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:47 am
@spuds…
If the game didn’t have supers, it’d be a lot more balanced. If GC was easier, it’d be a lot more balanced. They assumed that GCing would be like a parry, but execution and viable moves became too weighted in certain characters’ favors. The problem with the supers is that most characters build meter, then try and short jump > super or c.B > super. I think the game is fairly balanced (not as much as people like to boast), but too much of its intended (squishy i know) variety is lost IMO because major damage comes down to landing a super and almost all characters can simply short hop / c.B mixup. Of course backdashing can beat this, but that is another problem with that game… backdashing is so safe that it ruins the pace of the game and too few characters have good anti backdash tactics that are safe. Another problem is that it could be the case that the developers depended too much on all their safety nets (GC, bdash, uoh, uaair, feints, etc…) that they thought they could unleash a bunch of different types of characters on each other. It sort of ‘works’ but too many of the characters (all the top btw), cause the rest of the cast to lose too many viable options and the game breaks down to top vs the rest while the rest plays super cautious and boring, while the top plays simply boring. Not too say that gap is very large however, there can be wonderful variety in that game, but the top characters cause it to break down (kevin, gato, jae, kain, grant–that even seems like a decent number, but they all play the same). Another problem is that a lot of situations in that game cause the game to reset back to neutral. Backdashing, resets, airJD, they often don’t provide any real benefit other than resetting back to neutral. It really ruins the pacing and potential variety.
Someone mentioned that a conundrum has occurred because they think quake is less symmetrical than mario kart, etc… I don’t see it. Too me, mario kart has more asymmetry than quake. Prove me wrong.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Re: Limited tournaments: Sirlin, it would make sense that you think of limited decks as a bunch of creatures and a few spells because in my experience that’s how most people thought of limited before onslaught block or so. The core set still looks like that imo. Most block formats, however, with their various theme mechanics and particularly in draft where you can try to jump into a color or theme that others aren’t going for, lets you build some really weird overall strategies. I remember in onslaught/onslaught/legions where I had a “conventional” w/b deck with all kinds of ridiculous bombs (Exalted Angel, Graveborn Muse, Jareth) and a decent mana curve that just rolled all over the other “conventional” decks, but almost lost to the guy that drafted mono green elves (and this in a format where it was “common knowledge” that every good deck had to be black/x or red/x). This doesn’t sound like an endorsement of his strategy because I won, but the games went Game 1 I lose in a blowout, Game 2 I win with one turn left to live, Game 3 I kill him with Jareth (who, let’s be honest, was unstoppable by basically any deck) and still needed the help of Exalted Angel lifegain, and, even THEN, he knocked me down to 1 life the turn before I won just to prove that he could. Then Scourge comes out and Nick Eisel writes an article about how people can win by drafting a bunch of silly creatures in the same creature type here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/5605.html
I don’t know of any wacky Mirrodin deck types unless affinity counts, but then there’s the Dampen Thought deck that showed up in CHK/CHK/CHK draft:
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/8513.html
I haven’t played since Future Sight due to money/time considerations, but based on what I’ve seen limited magic strategy has shifted away from “is this card good?” to “Is this card good in my deck?”
Oh, and while I’m at it, any definition of game balance that requires a certain percentage of “characters” be playable or whatever is fundamentally flawed. Otherwise we would be able to “balance” a game by removing an unplayable character, and that seems ridiculous; removing Dan from Puzzle Fighter should be a balance-neutral action by any reasonable standard, not balance-improving.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:35 am
There’s no point in trying to get me to like limited-format MTG. No matter how cool a deck you can manage to make, you can make such a better-realized deck in constructed. This should be obvious by the nature of the whole thing. In one case, I make what I want. In the other case, I…can’t make whatever I want. Yes there are other skills that are tested instead, and they are real skills, I just don’t personally enjoy them even slightly. I want to play Zangief and Dhalsim, not watered-down limited Zangief with one SPD, sort of.
The card game I’m making *after* the Yomi card game is a customizeable card game that is intended to be sold such that you get a well-tuned constructed deck out of the box. You are picking a character, so to speak, that is already fun and balanced. You can *also* buy a set that has every card in the game and deck-build all you want. I don’t care if it makes zero money, it’s the right thing to do.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:44 am
“There’s no point in trying to get me to like limited-format MTG. No matter how cool a deck you can manage to make, you can make such a better-realized deck in constructed. This should be obvious by the nature of the whole thing. In one case, I make what I want. In the other case, I…can’t make whatever I want.”
And? Would Chess be better if you could move pawns however you wanted? Or SF better if you could give Ryu Honda’s headbutt?
Allowing the player to do whatever they want is not a hard and fast rule of good design. My experience is that forcing players to operate within certain boundaries can be much more fun. And every game has boundaries anyway. You can’t do whatever you want in constructed, you can’t include 8 copies of one spell or play a card without paying mana for it.
I understand your personal preference, but that it is all that it is. A lot of people prefer limited, it’s worth understanding why that is the case even if it doesn’t appeal to you.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Those analogies don’t help anyone. You can’t fly in Street Fighter or deal 10,000 damage in one hit either. There are limitations on each character, and they are similar in nature to different kinds of constructed magic decks. Limited decks are like gimped characters that don’t fully work. I see why people like limited, though. The main thing is that it tests Valuation skills on the fly. That’s a big plus, and enough of a reason for lots of people to like it. Playing a gimped Zangief when the actual Zangief is readily available is too painful for me to even consider.
This is not useful to the thread anyway. Type 2 constructed MTG does seem to qualify here, so that’s enough to include the game. Incidentally Waterd, Kai Budde won something like 12 huge tournaments in a row he did not lose a single game in all the Day 3s (finals days) of those tournaments. His playtest team of at least 10 people played the exact same decks in those tournaments, not to mention very similar decks played by other players. The evidence seems to show that even though MTG has randomness, the same players show up in the finals again and again.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Sirlin, while making a game that doesn’t make money seems like the right thing to do, it costs money to make it!! How can you realize that ambition if you come out negative?
February 25th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Amp: Quake is as symetric as chess. You’re arguments mostly boil down to tempoary advantages at certain times in a single game. In chess I can pin one of my opponent’s pieces, preventing them from moving it temporarily. In Quake you can control a certain pickup for a while, giving a similar temporary advantage. In both games, players need different strat