The Illusion of a Balanced Wargame
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ย. 2020
- There's a lot of talk about "balance" in tabletop wargames - which games are balanced, which games aren't - but what does the term actually mean? And is it even possible in the first place?
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Back in 2010, I participated in a Warhammer 40K tournament at a local games store.
There were 16 players, and the tournament had 4 rounds.
My force was vastly overpowered by everyone, and I lost each round by large margins. Despite the 'balanced' points system, I was badly beaten by everyone I played. However, it was the most fun I've ever had losing. I honestly had a good time. It was a lot of fun preparing for the tournament and playing.
Imagine my surprise when they announced the tournament winner--ME. I had received more points for sportsmanship, army composition, and painting--so much that losing every battle was irrelevant.
First prize was a $100 gift certificate to the store which hosted the event, which I delightfully used on some non-40K board games.
"... good, or no hair..."
Battle up front; party in the rear! Mullet Warriors, ASSEMBLE!
I dreamed i had mullet last night 😬
Skullet master race
@@peanutseltzer5724 don’t let your dreams stay dreams! In quarantine any hair is acceptable
I had a quarantine mullet until two weeks ago, was starting a new job and had to shave it off, the back of my neck is so cold 😪
@@NMahon I've got a Quarantine 'let. That's like a Quarantine Mullet; only there is no "business up front", just bald pate. So, really, more of a classic Riff-Raff cut from Rocky Horror. :(
The perfect balance is certainly unreachable, but the game designers have to aim at it. Because a too unbalanced game is also not much fun...
I think its important to have strenghts and weaknesses for every faction (or even unit), in order to have toolset for the player. And after that, it depends on the player, how she/he combines and uses it. The best balanced ruleset can bring utterly unbalanced battles if used/combined wrong. So for a balanced play is not only a question of the rulest, but also of the players. The rulset only has to support it.
An interesting solution is in Oathmark: everybody has access to every unit.
I humbly disagree, but to my knowledge table top gaming companies aren't taking advantage of AI or search algorithms to test their rulesets etc. to balance a game. But first to balance a game we should precisely define what it means to be a balanced game.
How are you not un Uncle. Youre our uncle by choice. You cannot go back now 😭
I have always thought the goal of points is to smooth over the social contract in a pick up game for determining how long your game is going to take. :)
This is why I use power rating in 40k, it's easier, even if it lacks the illusion of "balance" as granular points
I don't get the hate power level gets.
@@silver4831 i understand initially why, power levels in the beginning were fixed. Like a Primaris tank is “X” level. No matter how many guns it has, so why not take everything. I’ve experienced this first hand. But also people have played with a granular point system for ages and just refuse to change. Points due help with the “balance” but i find its a thing for go hards. I mainly play casually so power level doesnt bother me.
@@12neef largely agree. Would love a simplified points system or slightly granular power level. Thus basic tank(for example) X power level. Not change for swap out of 'free weapons' up one PL each for upgraded secondary weapons, primary weapon and any added trait. It's a sort of compromise Which is easy to call but will hack tournament gamers off. Also ban stupid (non-lore) allies EG Grey Knights and Xenos/Chaos. And limit detachment. Sorry started rant, no offense intended.
@@silver4831 It's inconsistant. One power fluctuates wildly within even single codices on how much it's worth.
"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you already messed up."
As someone who has been shot at and shot back, this is 100% accurate. Its the reason why Asymmetrical warfare is the direction of the military now.
I mean yeah. But is game. Games should be fun and steamrolling or getting steamrolled isn't fun.
@@samiezzi6143 True, but if you're not playing competitive, but narrative, you could with a bit of work balance even that so it becomes fun. Like, say, through how you score victory points and place objectives. Maybe the attacker has 125 or even 150 points to the defenders 100, but has to take it all objectives before the end of the game to win. Maybe the attacker starts out with a bigger force, but the defender gets reinforcements. Say, the defender can only place 50 points on the board, gets another 50 points of reinforcements at the end of movement phase of turn 2, and then his remaining forces at the end of the movement phase of turn 3.
Or maybe play on a bigger board, with defender, having more points, having to set up first, and then the attacker sets up, with victory conditions saying that the attacker needs to hold 1 of 3 objectives in the defenders deployment zone.
@@Tutorp I did comment "up" this comment section about your view on this actualy, because, during *YEARS* i was doing the same... And still winning.
I find out in the end how *BORING* it became for me and even more not only for my adversaries but friends... So i stopped.
Of course, you are absolutly free to do so, sometimes i even do it again [ I must admit... ] But there is something unsettling about this with time. [ And i cannot deny i still subtly use a *Bastardized "Meta" game style.* ]
Anyway, Have a good Day/Night, Sir.
[ Edit: When it comes, like you said, in a fully narrative game, i am absolutly "okay" with that if my adversaries aggreed with the "Story" and "Rules". ]
I love this take on balance. I'm a magic player and a newbie to war gaming and the premise that balance is too difficult to achieve is so relevant to both games. Players taking the initiative and coming up with ways to balance decks or army lists is a great approach.
Game by Games Workshop suffer from this greatly due to taking such an extended amount of time in releasing rulebooks for every army. Balance is already difficult but it is clearly thrown out the window when one force has rules that are years older than another.
They spend way to much time with space marines, and not enough on everything else :/
Yeah there is a reason I'm not into GW games much at all these days.
@@twitch1965 age of sigmar isn't as bad recently. I play skaven tho and they haven't have any love for a while. Acolytes and jezzails are 10+ year old models+ a bunch of others. especially clan eshin and moulder units. With ghb2020 they even got rid of wolf rats for clan moulder... I think broodhorror aswell cant remember
Yeah the fact that GW avoids taking steps outlined even in such a broad overview video as things which could improve balance is telling. But as long as Codexes are a way to charge players more money than what they could charge for access to the rules online, they'll keep doing it.
The moment you said "dial in" Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes came to my mind. And you are right, we should always aim for an entertaining session not only for a win.
One of the best discussions on the subject I've yet seen
Spot on. Historical gamers tend to have unbalanced games in figure terms but use objective/mission to balance it out. Bolt Action which also has game tournaments, has very few special rules.
Great video and some very valid points made. I am in total agreement, it’s more about the people you play, rather the faction/army you play, which creates a feeling of balance/fair play. 😃👍🏼
Welcome to Whose Turn is it Anyway, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter
Another great, informative video Uncle Atom!
Perfect balance is impossible. Balanced enough to be a fair competition is absolutely attainable, and desirable for all types of players.
There are so many more factors than the purely mechanical though. Just look at how much effect different table set-ups can have on the outcome of the game. There are even games (X-Wing and Armada spring immediately to mind, but GW recently tried to get into it too) where setting up the battlefield is a mini-gam in and of itself and can massively swing advantage if one player understands the ramifications of placement and the other is just putting things down where they look pretty.
Yeah. All I ask for is "balanced enough".
Even bloody chess isn't balanced, white has the advantage.
So you’ve finally come to the dreaded “balance” talk. Brave man. I dont have anything to say cuz im a filthy casual player. Just tired of hearing people complain about it. Keep up the great work!
balance, while unachievable in truth, should always be the goal for a good design team as a close second priority after making the game fun. losing is no problem to me usually but losing over and over again to the same broken bullshit mechanic tends to suck said fun out of the game for me. especially when i can't find what i'm doing wrong outside of not playing equally broken nonsense. once a game turns into an arms race of who can break the game more than anyone else i tend to lose interest pretty quick.
Actually no, as an aspiring game designer I can tell you balance is the last thing you want. If you balance anything, the slightest disturbance can topple everything catastrophically. This goes for games as much as it goes for physics. THAT's how you get losing over and over to the same broken bullshit.
Dynamic motions are much more stable. Keeping things unbalanced in a circular fashion like Rock Paper Scissors gets you to where things flow and players can act. Even if Scissors beats Paper much harder than Rock beats Scissors, as long as Paper barely beats Rock every time, the actual differences don't matter.
@@patrickkeller2193 oh I'm sorry I wasn't aware I needed to word a youtube comment like a lawyers letter. Of course game balance is more than a perfect equilibrium between everything and anything in the game. But if none of my army options have an answer to what my enemy brings to the table we can set up the game, shake hands and declare the Victor right then and there. For example when my enemy fields a heavy armor type army but my dudes have neither strong anti-armor options or enough cheap meat for the grinder than it's basically a foregone conclusion, so what's the point even in playing? (assuming official rules ofc, you can houserule everything and anything to suit your needs obviously)
this is the exact reason my Eldar are unplayable in current 9th edition 40k, and I have tested them in a 3rd edition game vs Space Marines. It was competitive for both sides and well balanced, both armies had their advantages but neither totally dominated.
Problem is some people are adamant that games cannot be fun unless it is very, very close to being balanced, or that the game must always be symmetrically balanced. More often than not these people are closet-competitive player that would always claim they're "a casual player".
It's why I prefer my own custom 40K games where it's games master + player vs player.
It's true that in chess the white has a slight advantage, which only counts between super skilled players, who play for a tournament or something. For casual playing chess, is quite balanced, compared to war gaming which uses dices to determine outcomes...
Having said all this, it has always been my belief that the turn sequence in 40k is entirely wrong, because here the first player has a significant advantage. The turn of sequence should allow both players to move alternately their troops, shoot alternately and so on.... I don't know why they cannot fix this simple thing.
It is such a simple fix that many other games have done. Even the semi random activation of Bolt Action would be a step up from “I go, you go”
Have to disagree that the first player in 40k has a "significant" advantage. There are plenty of steps before the start of the first turn that have a massive material impact to that first turn:
Army selection
Scenario selection
Objective & Terrain placement
Deployments, etc.
There are so many things a player can affect before the first model even fires a shot that first player advantage is just one of several factors.
@@03dashk64 I’ve played 40k casually with friends using a homebrew version of the BA order die version of activation, and it is super fun. Makes for very dramatic games, imo.
At a high level, losing with White in Chess is seen as a medium-sized disaster. Generally you look to win with White and draw with Black. (Actually at Grandmaster level, it seems you mostly look to draw 90% of the time, but that's another story).
I agree at the very casual level most people play, whether you are White or not is pretty immaterial.
@MarleyG I've found games of SW:Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol to feel much more balanced and dynamic because of alternating unit-by-unit activation than either 40k/AoS
Thank you for making this video!
A while ago I send
literally this question
Another issue with game design is that most of the time the designers have a bias towards how a game/rule/unit should be played, while competitive players are often more than capable of finding loopholes or other ways to take advantage of that bias. The Space Marine doctrines are a good example, which Games Workshop surprisingly admitted to.
So true. I tried the competitive rout in 40k for a while and realized that I just want to roll dice, move models and make sound effects when things blow up. I like the Power system for 40k. Points seems a bit too fiddly.
Good video and thoughtful as always. Balance is important for a few reasons a) most games are not asymmetric so there is no fun in playing a game where you can't win and get beat up turn after turn b) A well balanced game can scale with success over time c) many times when people complain about lack of balance sometimes it is the game and sometimes the player; understanding how a game works is also important even in well balanced games you need to understand your opponent and their faction to optimize your strategy.
Great video. It gets even more challenging as you go to armies and points. One army may be powerful or balanced at 500pts while another may not be even viable until 1500. For example, due to allegiance abilities and required synergies, Nighthaunts don't even play to their intended strength until you are over at least 1200pts.
Go isn’t balanced, like in chess the person who goes first has an advantage. However, because it is a points based game there is a system called Komi where the player who goes second gets some extra points. However, even this doesn’t perfectly balance the game and the amount of points given for Komi has increased over time and varies between tournaments in different regions.
This is about as simple a situation as you can get and balancing is still not easy.
Komi increases as players get better at exploiting the first turn advantage
@@tylerttinsley True, but there is still disagreement about what exactly it should be (and also since points are discrete there will still be a bias, if only a very very small one)
A mechanic used in some boardgames is where you kinda bid for the superior side before game starts. Saying I will give you 4 victory points in advance if I get to play X. The other player can then outbid and say 5... or say okay and you see if "4" was the magical number.
In miniature games like Warhammer I think we see over time, how people figure out how much "flying" or "burrowing" is worth in wether or not these units are chosen for peoples armies. It also can be totally situational! How much is it worth to be able to deploy a unit after everything else is set up?
While partially agreeing with you, mainly on the importance of having fun before anything else, I thnink balance is a crucial step in game development.
I don't think balance is an illusion.
I think of balance as a goal, like happiness.
In your life you can't max out happiness and be "all the happy all the times", but this does not make happiness an illusion.
It is a very concrete goal and you should strive for getting as close to it as possibe.
Same with balance in wargames.
Saying that "balance is an illusion and you should concentrate on having fun" is often an excuse for poor game design an lack of testing.
I've been drifing away from GW lately beacuse of this, and I fell in love with Infinity.
Despite the steep learning curve, it is a balanced enough game to make each and every match enticing, and it is very "break-resistant".
With all due respect I beg to differ. CB published the winning rates for each army/sectorial and they all were around 50%, give or take.
It used to have a problem with warbands spam, but it has been fixed in the latest edition with the 15 orders cap.
In the earliest historical versions of 'kriegspiel', designed for the Prussian military, they did work out that they had to play with unbalanced 'teams' to reflect the real world. In days past when i played tabletop i found it a lot more fun to play with unbalanced sides....and just to say that i often played a WW2 German army and as happened, almost always outnumbered.
on a historical scope I think it is much easier to make stuff like weapons working on "balanced level" in a wargame...the essential part in historical context to do give the troops the right numbers, morale, experience and command system... in comparison 40k have tons of different weapons and inhuman epic powers that is hard to figure out a balanced level...
Same. The moment a game starts off with a focus on 'balanced forces', it would usually end up in a pretty boring game for me. Feels methodical, number-crunching. The fluff and emergent story is there, but it feels very muted.
@@s2korpionic i was thinking that in a game in would be a lot of fun to create a game mechanic that would allow for and even encourage a kind of play against a massively superior force. Firstly i think it would work against the stupid looking gameplay where everyone just charges into the center and starts hacking away at each other.....oh so completely realistic not. I also really like the idea of not knowing what the enemy has on the table, just as was done in early wargames which also replicates the fog of war really well.
Man you bring up a valid point. Awesome video mate cheers!
My cat loves playing catchy handy with you. ☺
I'd rather play an unbalanced game so when I inevitably lose I can blame it on that.
Everybody would like a balanced game, until they realise that they are not so good at it:)
I came upon a lot of painted items including ork tanks. The person appeared to have painted without reducing or put on multiple coats of paint so the detail is totally lost. How do I remove paint frim plastic or resin figures to start over?
Great video
Will you ever do any videos on warlord games?
That pause cause of the car was abit funny
Thats a really interesting aspect, thanks for sharing. I am only playing casual too, and am mostly in the hobby because of the painting and building. Its insanely relaxing for me, and I am a fan of changing official rules for more fun anyways, so if me and my Romantic friend are playing, she gets to play a few hundred points of death guard more than my imperial forces, cause her death guard doesnt have much to say against my Russ Tank so far.
Chain of Command uses a combination of fixed army lists (each player starts with a historically organized platoon of infantry) and points buy system (the army lists discrepancy and the scenario decides how many support points each sides get, usually an attacker will get 2d6 and the defender gets half of whatever they rolled and then they spend it on medics, machine guns on tripods, fortifications, tanks, or utility things that interact with the deployment system to either mess with your opponents deployment or to help your own). The game itself is already somewhat predicated on having a good time and recreating historical combat with a sense of verisimilitude over competitive play, but it's surprisingly well balanced - to break a stalemate or stop a situation where there is just a big shootout you need to start using tools available too you, such as big ole mortar barrages, covering fire, tactical movement, smoke grenades... this puts an onus on the attacker to act, and it puts an onus on the defender to withdraw if they are taking too many casualties, as most of the time the game is played in campaigns, and the defender often has to reuse troops or can only refresh their platoon a set number of times so you have to pick your fights. This means that a lot of the time, the result of the game comes down to the decisions of the commanders and not as much on the dice rolls, however there is an element of randomness to the activation system that can really change things up. On the recieving end of this, it feels really unfair, but hey, that's war. You can't take anything for granted.
I feel like point values cover this as best it can in a board game. Love your channel btw!
One of my favorite ways historicals try to get to some sort of balance is making player victory some what differnt than army victory. Such as grand strategic European Theater of Operations WWII game where the German player let's a couple months longer
Why "Game balance" is important:
If you're a 'bad player' & 'your army is weak/bad' you get a double whammy of "no fun."
And if your army is OP, then it balances out right?
@@poshboy4749 no, more like; if your Army isn't crap you can at least trick yourself into thinking that you might stand a chance and have some fun...
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The problem with OP Armies is that a good player can/ will have one... thus doubling your loss.
Interestingly enough that's the mindset of a competitive player.
@@s2korpionic because always losing is fun! /s
Aton, the 3-1 thing is from Clausewitz and was his ratio required for an attacking force to over come a defending force in prepared fortifications.
Thanks for another good video, you might not be an actual uncle but I'd say you'd make a pretty good one.
I've found often that the people who howl loudest about balance usually want other factions to be "balanced" (i.e. nerfed) while their own army is perfectly fine.
I had so many Space Marine players whinge about how OP the Ork Warboss was it was not funny. One model in my whole 300 model army, and they whinged like whiney little gits. When they are sporting every OP model there is in the game, lol.
@@AndrewFishman I don't warhammer, love the novels, hate the game crowd, but if your one model costs say 50 points then
if you and every other Orc Player feel you need (note thats NEED, not want) that Orc Warboss then its OP.
if your opponent requires a specific counter that costs far > the 50 points, then your warboss is OP
if your army would be significantly weaker with any other combination of legal figures totaling 50 points in place then your warboss is OP.
if there is no counter available to your opponent then your warboss is OP.
if the only counter available to an opponent is out of print, limited edition or stupidly high price vs. warboss, then warboss is OP.
Likewise of any of the Space Marine OP stuff meets the above requirements its also OP.
@@jamesedwards6985 Not quite. If my warboss costs 50 points and is the only real useful model, while the 100 points spent to counter it also counter all my other models, then the warboss is not so OP. So, if that 100 points spent counters my 50 point warboss, and 150 points of boyz, then the 100 points of marines is more OP than my 50 point warboss and the boyz.So I have to spend 200 points to be nullified by the marines 100 points, and the WB is only a small part of that.
Real world example war between Croatia and Serbia. Croatia (my country) was outnumbered 4 against 1 and still won.
I love playing the underdog's army in the meta, opponents are sometimes overconfident and the extra challenge is fun, even if you lose.
There is always the fun option of Not Playing The Mission. Where, instead of trying to achieve the stated objectives of the game, you pick your own. Things like, "I'll be happy if I can kill the enemy Leader." or "If this soldier can make it to the other side of the table, he escapes to make it home and marry his childhood sweetheart." :D
As an uncle and someone with +2 savoir faire, I'd like to point out chess is the original tabletop wargame. Also, you're absolutely right ... have fun!
And it is perfectly balanced....
@@WH40KTurnierplausch Didn’t he just point out in the video that chess has a first turn advantage so is definitely not perfectly balanced?
OK, strike the 'perfectly' 😅
the Japanese game of GO, predates chess. in any game or simulation, you could make the argument that player 1 has an advantage. however, player 2 gets a boost from seeing the initial intention of player 1 and getting to decide how to respond.
11:29 The pause that refreshes.
This topic should be a series.. 1) Hot/Cold dice will tip any game balance.
2) Chess with a chit pull purse, 3 chits per, Bolt Action style.
3) Never an even up scenario. Both sides roll dice on ± point differential chart, with recorded secret points. Based on 1:1 meeting, 3:1 attacking, and x:X Raid/Ambush mission.
Point Values guide lines, Epic victories are for underdogs.
Remember "Name That Tune" game show where contestants bided down their "notes" to guess a song?
Use better tactics, not firing squads.
White has the advantage in chess, it's why people have strats just for when they start as black. And generally they are super defensive strats.
Agree on the strats but first move advantage is still very much an open question. Yes, I know about the winning percentage ratio in tournament play but we won't be able to prove white's mechanical advantage until chess becomes another "solved game". It doesn't look like that's about to happen anytime soon. I'm not looking for disagreement but consider this. Yes, the white player might have the advantage of the first move, but the black player then has an (arguably greater) advantage in seeing the beginning of white's development. White is always under pressure to act first, thereby giving away vital information to his opponent. The white player can never move with knowledge of black's first move but black will always have this advantage.
the game of Ur has a very subtle catch up mechanic which results in surprisingly tight games, right up to the end.
Came here for this, been playing Ur with my gf for years and it usually comes down to a dice roll
There is also some feeling of achievement associated with something being somewhat unbalanced. Triumph without peril, brings no glory.
One of the things we used to do from time to time, to just play the other army (or magic deck, faction, color, whatever). Especially if the people involved mainly derive their fun from winning the game instead of playing the game.
Although I would always recommend people to start learning to derive fun from playing any kind of game, so you are enjoying more than typically 50% of the time spent on said game, assuming a perfectly balanced set of games in a 1:1 setting. And this advice only becomes more valuable the more players are involved.
We can get pretty pedantic about rules and balance, but its not worth it if you sacrifice the fun.
I love playing asymmetrical games. A smaller force has to hold off against a larger one until x turn, special terrain rules, evacuating the VIP, all that stuff. They're fun and make a wargame more of what I like to do.
Bonus points, doing those kind of missions in crusade is REALLY fun, and were doing custom missions in my current crusade campaign right now.
This is an interesting topic. Personally, I just want to feel like I have an even chance of coming out the winner. If I loose, I blame my poor decisions, or my crappy dice rolling. The worst though, is playing someone who has to win,who has come up with a way to exploit some mechanic in a way that was clearly not intended by the designers to win. The rules lawyer type who uses selective interpretations and disputes the meaning of common words, to benefit their sophistic arguments, are what turned me off playing competitively.
Seriously though, if loosing a game of toy soldiers is something you cannot handle, you've got far larger problems.
Thanks again Atom.
Napoleon was consistently able to attack and defeat forces stronger that his, to a point where the Coalition forces would avoid engaging him in the field and concentrate on taking out his satellite armies commanded by his Marshals.
Something I found for balance isn't that it's unachievable, it's that perfect balance is never achievable, but having every army be overpowered creates balance while keeping things fun.
Leaving some armies behind while others get buffs after buffs creates a divide, while giving every army buffs of roughly equal size, then even if it's not perfectly balanced, it still will feel balance and more importantly, be fun. After all, power is fun, power fantasies are fun games.
Cough cough 40k
I had a go at this myself to create a simplified version of a game like 40k. It had the default stats and values for each variation. The abilities for things like the models and the weapons does get messy in terms of balance, but I think if you were to limit exotic units against basic units, then even if one is quite good, it isn't game breaking. If a heavy armor assault unit is a bit too points efficient, then it may be that only 1 of them can be on the table for a smaller game.
With 40k, I would much prefer more troop units on the tabletop with less exotic units. I think that would be less prone to heavily optimised lists.
There is a great magic the gathering design article which I can't find right now called balance is the enemy. Essentially balance is intentionally avoided because finding an unbalanced list is part of the game and the fun for some people.
Awesome job
the only way to play a 'balanced' scenario, is both players are using the exact same units. points are an arbitrary value to give an appearance of strength or weakness. but there is no way to quantify the values to be equal, when you have a large variety of forces within a given army.
There are a lot of ways that you can try to balance a game. Overall, the goal of a balanced game is that the primary determiner of who wins the game is player skill (hence why this style of play is so popular) - and if two players are equally skilled at assembling their force and playing the game, then they should have an equal chance of winning when the game starts. There are several methods of achieving this balance - at the ability level, where every little piece of a model is balanced against each other in some way; at the model level, where every individual model is, overall, as powerful as any other model; at the Faction VS Faction level, where every faction is on the same overall power level as every other faction in the game (though individual models may be more or less powerful); or an overall faction balance, where individual factions are not necessarily balanced against each other, but every faction has an equal chance of winning when compared across all factions that they could go up against. To further complicate things, you need to consider where you balance the game at - do you balance it around how players who know nothing about building or playing that faction will perform (skill floor), around how a player that has thoroughly mastered the would build and play the game (skill ceiling), or somewhere in between?
Overall, the more variables that you can tweak in whatever level you're balancing around you have to work with, the more accurately you'll be able to balance the game - but the more that players will need to keep in mind when learning the game. You can also end up with problems at whichever level you did not balance around - if you balanced around the Faction VS Faction level, then you can end up with a large swath of individual models that go unused due to being underpowered, but if you try to balance at the individual piece level, you may be overlooking over or underpowered combinations that could make individual factions vary significantly in power.
What all this means is that there really is no perfect way to balance a game, but you can end up with a really solid product that at least comes close to giving all players a fair shot at winning the game if done correctly. Personally, I think the best approach is to balance the game at the Faction level (though the overall win option is a heck of a lot easier to achieve), then focusing on getting the individual pieces balanced against each other so as much of the game is usable as possible. It's definitely not an easy path to follow, but it can be very rewarding to see if you've pulled it off correctly.
I know which game you're alluding to and I've always accepted that its a hysterically unbalanced game. My gripe is with the reason for its lack of balance, and that reason is: sales.
You can see a stark contrast between games that were designed to sell models and games that were designed as games.
In short: Go has a first-move-advantage, giving a certain amount of "victory points" to the player going second.
Balance isn't a destination, it's a journey. It's a goal that'll never be completely achieved, but the process leads to better games.
I think I often use balanced when I mean fair. I am not looking as much a 50/50 split, but fun often means to me that at least I can do something. I remember a board game, I think it might have been Lutzen, that me and my cousin played a lot until we noticed that one side could always win. It’s a bit the same here, I’d like a chance to at least win and as soon as you put something like dice in a game even the most math-class list can fall flat on its face. :)
Honestly i don't even play wargames but I still give this a watch...
Lol same.
Ooo, wanna know how y'all got here
Same!
You should tho
Great vid. Coming from rpg video games and MMO settings to the hobby, i always worry about being super underpowered and super overpowered to the point where the people im playing with arent having funuslessness,
Really agree with this. I think as gamers we don’t really want balance - we want the feeling of a fair game. If we really wanted perfect balance we’d all play the exact same army list and even then as soon as one model is removed the balance shifts. You add in dice rolls which then effect probability curves and balance is a myth.
Go, one of the most sophisticated war games in history is both balanced (no stats, just positioning) and imbalanced because of the skill levels of the players. There is even a method by which the lesser player is given a handicap (more pieces on the board to start).
Balance is a static concept, equilibrium is dynamic. Games that are looking to be sophisticated and complex should aim for equilibrium. Each faction having a play style that is unique but mathematically comes close to 50/50 win percentage against any other faction in individual games should be the ideal. What little I’ve seen of competitive pvp Starcraft 2 seems to approach this as well as anyone could. GW sometimes misses this mark by trying to be an octopus (fiction publisher, game maker, licensing business, poor app design company, etc.).
Another thing that should be accounted for in point systems is how two units might interface with one another. The synergy when two or more units with special abilities make each other better when used together can often make it seem that units are not accurately valued by the designers.
I love your vids!
Another thing that I don't think you mentioned in this video is the scalability of points. For some armies in tabletop wargaming, a 500 point army might consistently lose against other factions 500 point armies, but at 2000 points, they win against the the same factions that they lost to.
Interestingly in a lot of historical rulesets the designers have said in footnotes and appendices that they wish they didn't have to provide points costs for people to try and play balanced pick up games because balance never existed in history and they feel scenario led gaming is just better.
I played yesterday a Killteam Game....and It was fun. I played before, but now I really liked it. I looked up a list for Imperial Guard and I dont like it. I guess I will play it the way I want, and try to make it work as good as I can. I guess you really need to take what you love and make it happen, as good as you can, while havin' fun with it (withouth getting totaly stomped). But I wont have fun spaming plasmas...I want to replay Alien 2 and Starship Troopers.
Greetings from Chile!
I think it comes down to customization. The balance comes in thinking you have a chance to win with whatever list you come up with. If one or both players didn't think they had a chance to win with their list nobody would play the game (In a competitive sence). So the balance comes in the idea that you feel like you're list is competitive going into each match. When I was a tcg player, before switching to table top wargaming, my friends and I would build our decks and we'd "perfect" them to beat the other decks. One is more powerful until you "break" the other deck and then they "break" your deck and it goes back and forth, but as long as we were able to switch out components to attempt to break the other deck, you felt like you had a chance to win and have bragging rights for that week. If you play any game for fun then that fun for both sides is the balance.
Been trying to streamline this game for me and my 7 yr old. I am looking into range/mêlée dice combinations (no special weapons and rules; one gun and one sword per guy), basic movement rules (more for smaller guys and less for bigger guys, logic...), and then just create 3 tiers of character (1 hit point up to 6 for the leaders)... i am nearly there where we can play a really streamlined game of "40k"
I think part of the balancing problem too is that games try to use the smallest number possible. Your basic guardsman is 4 points for a model. If you want to go up or down a point it's a 25% change to the base cost. There's no way to fine tune it. If they were 40 points a model (and games were 20,000 points instead of 2,000) then you could do finer adjustments.
Has a score range setup been asked about ? Ie (15-25) and such, just a thought during the vid . You’d have an idea but no definite.
Just a random who watches occasionally no real clue on what’s what in any regard to the hobby except fractured lore
With Go often there is a points handicap for the person who has the 1st turn for trying to balance t h hat advantage.
The most important stat for a skellington? Spoopiness
I used to regularly play LOTR warhammer with my uni mates. I played Elves and i'm sure that the balance was off because i won far too many games. And this was despite almost always having the smallest force because Elves were so overpowered that their points value was ridiculously high. Whether Uruk Hai, Easterling, Rohan or Dwarves, i almost always won. Except i had one foe. The hobbits, an army of weaklings but in mass numbers, all with the raged weapon of throwing stones. My 12 Elves would advance on his 60 Hobbits, all throwing stones. Weak stones, but when 60 are thrown, in the 2-3 rounds it takes me to reach his hobbits, 120-180 weak stones could only kill maybe just 6 of my Elves, but that's half my force gone. And then i get swarmed in close combat 10 to 1. And with double attacks for trapping my Elves its more like 20 to 1. I rarely beat those damn Hobbits. And on the whole, games became so predictable. If i played Rohan, Dwarves or Uruk Hai, it was a guaranteed win. If i played Easterlings, it was tricky but often a win. If i played Hobbits, it was a guaranteed loss. And on one occasion i fought Ents. Those damn Ents were impossible lol. Also in 40k, i have never beat Space Marines unless i was also playing as Space Marines. The only exception to the rule was a very lucky game of Kill Team where my Tau, just beat them.
I'm going to take this with a grain of gunpowder.
O man this guy choked out a deer on the south side his shirt say so . lol awesome videos thank you
Southside Stranglers were a band that my friends were in that I liked a lot. I’ve never killed a deer. Thanks for watching!
O cool I I'll have to check them out and thank you again
Yep. Well said. Tic Tac Toe is perfectly balanced. If both sides play perfectly, neither side ever wins. Is that really what we want from a game? The more experience players have with a game the more likely they are to craft a reasonably fair gaming scenario. In the years before tournament moderators, game masters, who were typically themselves experienced players, sought often to create challenging and fun scenarios. Of course they were also often subjected to terrible abuse for reasons Atom well articulated: few games are ever truly balanced. But I ask again, if they were would we truly want to play them?
Some of this is balance, and some of this I would describe as "the meta".
If, for example, ranged armies are really strong in 40k, then it might be that a generally middle-of-the-pack Tyranid army that can rush/burrow/camoflage it's way into melee range becomes a lot better. The Tyranids are still average overall, but because they're good against the current cookie-cutter ranged army, they are now much more competitive.
This isn't just a thing in wargaming, it definitely happens in MtG too, decks become strong just because they kick ass against the predominate best, alpha deck type.
For me, those meta issues are separate from the issue of actually balancing your armies. In fact if you can get the core balance reasonably right you tend to get less of one army type dominating in the first place.
Another example of weird balance issues was World of Warcraft, where they really struggled (at least when I played) to make all classes viable in all roles without totally removing their individuality. How much single-target DPS - if any - should you lose for being the best at AoE DPS. But I've now written far too much and I feel like I should be making a video :)
I think the opposition to games being unbalances is more based on the expectation that they are supposed to be balanced, especially if there is a competative side to it. With GW especially, they have never spent much time and effort on this and yet they hold tounaments. Sometimes with nice prices. And when people who show up with the lastest army have a greater chance of winning, that pisses people off. A remedy would of course be for GW to hire a bunch of these "gamebreakers" to do the playtesting for them, but that takes time and cuts into their profits which is why it will never happen.
The biggest unsaid balance issue is the size of the board the minis play on. I love the scale, but even on a 4'x 6' or even a 4' x 8' game board there is no room for maneuver or flanking, even with abstract rules. Take Imperial Guard for example. If they don't get the first turn, they cannot employ their heavy artillery and other firepower fast enough to negate a fast moving melee army. So they soon are head to head with a swarm army that slaughters the poor guard who wear cardboard armor.
Guildball died precisely because they're too focused on balance. RIP
Disagree. Guildball died because they were to focussed on the tournament crowd and making each realse better than the last.
Then when they closed their game they blamed the tourney crowd for ruining the game they were supplying for.
They died because they saw that board games sold better
There's a blood angel in the thumbnail which is good enough for me
I always think a "movement stat" is the most difficult to give a value. It can give a player a lot of advantage, but can also backfire in a lot of ways. This means that the player is actually also worth an amount of points. But how could you ever give a set value to a player?
My value would probably be negative :(
Reminds me of the chain system in Key Forge. Decks are not customizable and each is unique. The more you win with your deck, the more chains you acrue which reduces card draw. In this case, since there is only one copy of each deck in the world, the chains reflect both the deck and your ability as a player with that unique deck.
yeah, some game metas are not about a game or experiencing a narrative full of character and carnage. Some so called games are more about tax evasion and loopholes to some people. I personally don't mind loosing as long as the game is super interesting and I understand a little more about why I won or lost. Sooner or later i tend to get better at the game regardless of how balanced something is and the dice and the opponent throw in a ton of random chance which often trumps the numerical stats.
Fun goes always over balance with my group. Our idea is purely have a good time and laughs (we are not competitors at all lol). Cheers guys!
I love when people complain about how X clearly wasn't playtested because it's so broken. I'm like "mate, you should have seen how it was BEFORE we playtested it." ;)
Base point value for the model and its data set.
Flat point values for "lateral upgrades", the different weapons that are mathematically similar but strategically variable.
Percentage of model value for applicable special rules. Fly on a cheap skeleton is of less value than fly on a squad of skeletons or a large monster.
A somewhat interesting video. I think your argument is correct, and what it essentially boils down to is the fact that Plutonic Forms are literally unachievable.
3 downvotes thought you ARE an uncle and now they are sad :D ^^
My armies are built for miniature variety, because I don't like repeated kits or twin models. I also play for fun, I enjoy building a thematic and varied force that just looks cool.
I don't mind if games are imbalanced as long as they're fun. One thing I dislike in 40k is the reduction of the fun of orks, tons of options were removed from 7th to 8th, or even from 6th to 7th. Still miss Looted Vehicles.
Even in 5th Orks were just another generic army. They lost all their flavour early in the piece. Looted Lemman Russ FTW.
I'm down with the savoiur faire and the no hair. :P
There's also the issue that different armies build different synergies as they expand, changing balances as the point limit rises. And there's also the effect that unbalancedness may be cyclical; A beats B beats C beats A. I do wonder whether GW is throwing machine learning at their rules to at least catch the worst abuses; ML is good at finding the edge cases and optimizing the hell out of them.