Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 2

Choice and the points systems

Ah yes choice, freedom, liberty. All good things yes? Well yes of course they are but for a games designer, choice becomes a necessary evil. You see choice of what force, faction or even side you take actually can sometimes be used as a tool to try and mitigate those natural imbalances that occur in rule systems... and they also add a further imbalance to be controlled. As I commented in the first part of this article into the theory of game balance we want our wargames to be an abstract representation of war with all its imbalances and brutal imperfections in a fair and controlled manor... and we'd like to pick sides. Not too demanding are we?

Lets be honest would anyone play the wargame where all sides are the same? It might be OK for chess or checkers or their ilk, but in a wargame we don't all want to be Dark Elves, Daemons or Vampire Counts do we? Oh right yeah, bad examples, what I'm trying to hint at is that people want an army that suits them. Some will want a defensive shooty army others a highly aggressive horde army and some might like small elite armies full of specialist troops designed to deal death in specific ways. So how do pretty much all wargames deal with our demanding and unreasonable ways? Points systems!

It is not perfect by any means but it is the best tool and system available to games designers for attempting to maintain balance and for that reason it is also extensively used. However again its far from perfect. Take Warmachine and Hordes as a prime example. In the first edition of both games units were pointed and costed in the 'hundreds', this allows for a greater degree of subtle variance than things pointed in the 'tens' which is what the second editon of both games uses. For instance in the old system Warjack A might have cost 132 points and Warjack B 145. In the new system Warjack A might now cost 13 points while Warjack B might cost 15 points. The disparity between the two units as a proportion has gone up but the relative effectiveness hasn't changed. Obviously the later disparity might be a fairer representation of each units true ability. However where do you stop? Should things be pointed in the millions or billions even? As ever its a judgement call and like all judgement calls its not going to be perfect.

Its from these 'points systems' where we get the 'underpointed' or 'overpointed' arguments cropping up that haunt our hobby like the sword of Damocles. When most gamers talk about balance in a game its this they're normally talking about. Yeah we all know these sorts of arguments and is there anybody out there who plays Warhammer Fantasy Battle that doesn't think the Dark Elf War Hydra is stupidly cheap? So far I haven't found them. You see those characteristic charts aren't as simple or as easy as well atribute A = 5 so that's 0.5 points cost because an attribute A of 5 isn't that great. Because if coupled with an attribute B score of 10 and attribute C score of 8 all of a sudden attribute A being 5 isn't a problem, in fact it might be a bonus because its kept the cost of the unit down. I've seen the mathematical equations that have gone into pointing units in various games, and what has always surprised me is how many times games designers break the rules of their own mathematical systems, why?

Well I once had a long chat with a games designer who told me he hated the pointing of units in any game system because you could never get it right, His exact words or words to that effect were 'reality is any points system is a fudge, a totally imperfect fudge because you can't point things right. What you aim to do via games testing is make sure that nobody notices its a horrible fudge because you've only got it slightly wrong rather that fucking horribly wrong, maths can only get you so far and give you a figure to work from' and never a truer word has been spoken. So how can you tell when its gone horribly wrong?

Well turn up to any tournament of any game system you could care to mention and have a look at the armies being used and those not being used. If there are clear biases I'd suggest that there is a serious case of imbalance in the system, to the point that we can all see how horribly fucking wrong they've got it. Or take a look at a certain faction and see if any 'no brainer' units jump out at you, i.e. things that are so good for the points you'd be a fool not to take them. I think almost every game system I've ever played has had 'no brainer' units in it, things you'd be mad to leave out. Thing is this isn't so bad if every faction or army has something similar and equally valid in terms of 'no brainer' units because although they might be internally unbalanced within that faction, across multiple factions it can be balanced out.

There are further tools available to the games designers out there, the chief one being availability of units. Most game systems have this to some degree, the really hard kick ass things in the game have a strictly limited availability. I'm going to use my current love Infinity as an example of how points systems, availability and rules can combine to lead to balanced forces. Not content with having one points system Infinity gives you two, the first system is your standard points system you see in every wargame pretty much. The second is a really interesting one, it attributes a second points cost for Support Weapon choices, or SWC. This also has to be managed as you have a limited amount and it stops your force becoming overpowered and you taking all the nice weapons and stuff. Next up certain troops have limited availability and to top it all off the game attributes every troop choice one order to the order pool whether its a 9 point grunt or a 120 point über TAG. Is it the most elegant or streamlined system? No, but it works.

However this is just talking about the differences in bog standard unit characteristics and the weaponry that they have. So what happens when you start throwing in special rules or abilities? Well for me you're in danger of overly complicating things and are on the brink of the horrible paper, scissors and rock effect. Don't get me wrong I like special rules as much as the next guy, it adds a bit of spice to games and a new level of tactical depth... but what happens when an army with the rock special ability meets one with the scissors special ability? Well it becomes a mess because those scissor units against those rock units aren't quite as effective as they once were and that adds to another nightmare for the games designer when attempting the art of the perfect 'points fudge'. Should it we avoid faction specific rules?

On the one hand I really do think that faction specific special rules should be avoided at all costs, I really, really do. However on the other hand they give character to a faction, but this character should always be tempered with rigorous games testing to the point of insanity. Now I'm not talking about universal special rules here, by all means have special rules like infiltration and so forth and so on and give all factions access to troops with these skills, but limiting certain skills and combinations to only one faction can breed imbalances in a game system that mean in certain match ups both sides don't have a fair chance. Its not acceptable in my book to then start saying 'yeah your army might suck against army A but its awesome against army B' because nobody wants that do they? Because then the game isn't about skill and the challenge of your opponent, its about who or what you're playing with and against.

You see for me its the army lists and points systems that different game systems use that really adds the biggest chunk of imbalance to any system, or at least the imbalances we all see and talk about. The more choice and variance you have the greater the risk of imbalance and unfairness creeping in becomes, simply because you've added more variables. Personally I still think many game systems struggle with this and I think its the games from the two largest market leaders that seem to struggle with it the most, Games Workshop and Privateer Press. Part of me thinks its a function of their popularity and that there are in effect more people out there trying to 'break' them than there are for other systems... but then part of me thinks some of the imbalances might even be deliberate, and that the playing field wasn't meant to be level in the first place, but that's a whole different topic for another day. Speaking of playing fields... Peace out!

Links to further articles


Game Balance: Part 1
Game Balance: Part 3
Game Balance: Part 4
Game Balance: Part 5