Mechanics: Systemic Games And Balance

Balance is a hard topic. Even in a PvP game, where defining balance is the easiest, the process of balancing a game can be harrowing. But what does balance mean in a PvE game? What exactly makes choices in such a game feel like they are balanced against each other? Another article on request, not necessarily based on my own game.

I’ve already spoken about this regarding combat design in PvE RPGs (Mechanics: Tactical Combat – Part I – Part II – Extra), but not every game is one, and it’s not always about combat, to begin with. There is a more general design space of so-called “numbers games”, where the mechanics revolve around the manipulation of numbers, of course. Such games offer a broad range of possibilities, but being so focused on mathematical (including stochastic) processes they can also be very easy to disrupt.

First of all, before anything else is done with a game of this sort, the designer of the game (that might be you b.t.w. so I might as well just refer to you as such) has to establish a systemic core. Now, this design might change over time, but it’s essential to start with a developed framework for everything else you do because that’s the only way you can find and fix problems. And sometimes that will influence you to alter the core of your game.

The core of any game system is a maximally stripped down subset of rules, mechanics, interactions, models or whatever else used in your game. It is the point where no other element can be removed from it, least everything falls apart, and you are no longer capable of describing what is happening in the game algorithmically. This is actually very important – the core of your game must be expressed in a language understandable for a machine. There is very little room here for uncertainty or guesswork.

Secondly, you must understand an unfortunate fact about human beings. People cannot intuit mathematical models. Our guesswork about numbers is generally incorrect. And if it isn’t, it comes from intimately understanding the systems in question. Due to this, when designing a numbers game, it is not possible to guess at proper interactions between things. However because of the straightforward nature of the systemic core such games use… it’s not that hard to math it out either.

Using simple tools, like programming and spreadsheets, you can model interactions within your game before they even make their way to the game and make pretty precise calculations and models predicting outcomes under different circumstances. These will, in turn, let you make informed decisions about the mechanics you implement and especially the more minute details and choices allowed by the game.

1) What are you even balancing?

In a PvP game (or a mock PvP game, that is to say, one where the AI uses the same choice/design space as the player) balance is very clearly defined. Better choices should lead to victory. The better player always winning when all else is equal, etc.

In PvE games, this isn’t so clear. Balance isn’t even about conflict. It’s about choice. Once more this is a topic I’ve written about before.

Because of this, you need to have a good understanding of what experience you are presenting to your player and what experience you want to offer. To first reconcile the differences between the objective mathematical truth of your system vs the subjective intuitive expectations you have about it. Only once you understand the actual functioning of your system can you begin to expand and work with it. Only with such understanding can you judge anything else you implement in your game.

What is being balanced in a PvE game then? Access to elements of the game and the time spent on achieving certain milestones in the game. Questions of balance thus most often fall into the domain of time.

• How long will it take the user to finish this game?
• How long before the user unlocks access to X element?
• How much time does it take to accumulate Y resource?

Sometimes these answers are clear-cut, the random elements of some games can easily be ignored. For other games, stochastic processes are the driving force of the mechanics it’s best to figure things out at least with reasonable certainty.

The point is that all of the numbers you put in your game need to come together in a way that accurately reflects the vision of your game. It’s easy to say that there is some way in which you imagine your game played. That does not have to hold much water to how the game actually functions. Dominant strategies may arise and disrupt the flow of your game. Exploits, even of the accidental variety, may throw things off. Primarily though, you might just not think of something or notice how some elements of your system interact.

Because of this, it’s good to have some back of the envelope calculations that will establish some lower and upper bounds for things. And then verify if they make sense.

2) Throwing balls at the curve

Once you wrestle out a basic understanding of your own creation, you can move on to the next part – expanding the core. After all, you’ve started with the very basis for your game, the minimal product so to say. There’s no point in keeping it like that forever. An essential part of game design is spicing it up with things the player can interact with.

What do I mean here though? Mechanics. Mechanical choices. Gameplay. Regarding numbers driven games – providing the player with satisfying ways of manipulating the numbers. Something that doesn’t make the game, shall we say, mindless. Here’s the catch though. How can you judge if what you are implementing doesn’t cause unwanted behaviours in the game? You plug them into the, we’ll be generous, simulations you have developed while considering the core. And see how that changes things.

Now you can observe the effects your additions have on the game and on how the game is played, once more, in an objective fashion. And the best thing is that all of the simulations you develop stay with you. So whenever you need to tweak something you can return to them and run them once more based on the new values.

Things to look out for are bizarre behaviours that overly shorten the time it takes to achieve specific goals, but also the exact inverse, choices that can make the player stranded in a self-perpetuating loop of misery. Though for some particular cases, there are also instances where the player becomes capable of achieving something that is supposed to be impossible, at least for the moment. Sometimes it’s okay to put this last type of quirky interactions in, especially if they are more obscure and don’t overall predicate some kind of dominant strategy.

Though it’s not guaranteed, viewing your systemic interactions in this way can sometimes inform the design of features or options that are not exactly obvious at first glance. Even pretty obvious design spaces like itemisation have a bit more to them than you might think.

In essence, to purchase an item is often about permanently (a sword in a classic numbers based RPG) or temporarily (a potion in much the same perspective) increase some numbers in return to lowering another one (the currency used to acquire such items). Based on interactions with other numbers you may then consider if buying the thing is actually worth the money, or maybe if it’s even mandatory. Thinking of this as an investment, when, if ever, does the player receive a return? Or is it just wasting money? A lot of games use various forms of gating based on resource expenditure as a way of pacing and padding out the content. A process that can be entirely legitimate. Remember: grinding is the point where the main gameplay loop stops being enjoyable and you force yourself to continue!

The examples above, however, are quite naive in assuming it is a simple matter of paying for an increase in some other field. More involved transactions may be based on lowering multiple numbers (permanently or not) to increase other parameters of the system (again, permanently or not). Sometimes it’s even possible to find equivalence in such transactions. That is to say, different options that lead to at least a similar outcome in the long run. From a gameplay perspective, in a numbers game, such choices are balanced against each other, regardless of the context.

So, to summarise, if you want to make a numbers based game you are inviting yourself on a trip to spreadsheet hell. Have fun and good luck.