Guide to Balancing

The Goal of Game Balancing

Balancing isn’t about making everything equal or eliminating all overpowered items. Instead, it aims to enhance enjoyment by removing elements that feel unfair.

Unfun Mechanics

The following elements typically feel unfair or unfun:

• Facing unexpected defeats with no warning
• Being forced into unwinnable situations
• Being completely unable to act

These often make gameplay feel frustrating, though some mechanics may include these elements without necessarily feeling unfair.

Improving Game Mechanics

These tips won’t guarantee perfect balance but can inspire better design:

• Favor Active Over Passive Abilities: Passive boosts (e.g., flat armor increases) often feel less engaging and fair than abilities players actively use. Active abilities also allow opponents to anticipate actions, making them feel more balanced.

• Avoid Hard Counters: Instant-win items or absolute defenses often make items situational and limit their use. Hard counters can be fun if well communicated but need to be considered carefully.

• Communicate Clearly: Losing feels unfair if players don’t know why. Make outcomes and counter-effects clear to help players understand what happened. This doesn't mean that you have to tell them everything, but after you have already lost you should be able to know what happened.

• Use Randomness Wisely: Consistent mechanics aid strategy and planning, while randomness can diversify rounds and close skill gaps.

• Consider New Players: Designing with new players in mind often improves the experience for everyone. Helping players feel in control enhances overall satisfaction.

• Encourage Fun Scenarios: Mechanics should add to the story and create enjoyable interactions. Elements involving many players should be more impactful to promote fun, emergent gameplay.

• Fair and fun should be powerful: Mechanics that are both fair, and fun to play with/against should be powerful. Mechanics that are unfair or boring should generally be weaker.

• Consider the rules: Rules and mechanics exist in a synergy. You should never include administrative enforcement as part of your design process, except for stopping players with malicious intent.

These are guidelines, not strict rules—deviate as needed to enhance gameplay.

Balancing Considerations

Balancing requires weighing goals against potential downsides.

• Removing convenient features can help balance but may also frustrate players.
• Some elements may need to be removed entirely, but consider cuts carefully to maximize benefits without excessive losses.
• Preserve power where it adds fun. A feature too closely balanced with its counter may lose its unique appeal or restrict players’ strategic options.
• Use the mechanic you are balancing and discuss changes with others. Balance affects both users and opponents.
• Communicate your goals and accept trade-offs transparently to avoid misunderstandings.
• Avoid setups where players are too easily stopped, as they’ll disengage. Mechanics should encourage players to create interesting scenarios.
• An item may be mundane in the hands of a crew member, but hold great value towards an antagonist who needs to steal it. Use this idea to create synergies between valuable items and the rules.
• Player opinions matter! We might be willing to overlook critisism from players who have not yet used a mechanic, but if we observe people struggling or see that a feature is disliked in-game, then changes will be requested and the PR suggesting the mechanic may be closed.
• The point at which you present the results of random chance to a player is important. If you have randomness that may destroy the plans of a player, the player should be able to know the results of the randomness before they may their plans (roundstart traits (pre-randomness) vs a die of fate (post-randomness)).