Player Balance

Design structures in a game which works towards players having equal chances of succeeding with actions in a game or with winning the game.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Most players want games to have the mechanics that give them the same or better chances to win or succeed with actions as other players. As this typically means that all players need the same chances to win or succeed, most games try to have Player Balance. However, this Player Balance does not usually consider the skill of players and usually only apply to the beginning of games.

Note: this pattern is categorized as a Subjective Pattern since players may have subjective feelings if the design structures in place are good enough (or too good) at balancing the fortunes of all players.

Examples

The symmetry in traditional board games such as Chess or Go guarantee a high level of initial Player Balance, although being the first player to do a move usually has some advantage. Go has handicap systems to even further balance starting positions by giving stones (points) to the player that is not the first player.

Fighting games, i.e. the Mortal Kombat series or the Tekken series, can allow players to modify individual attack strengths or how much damage their characters individually can take to counter imbalances in the skill of damaging the opponent.

Racing games such as the Mario Kart series and Super Monkey Ball series have mechanics to provide benefits for those not leading races. In the Mario Kart series leaders cannot get all power-ups and some power-ups specifically target the leaders. In the Super Monkey Ball series leaders have lower top speeds (which can make certain jumps more difficult or impossible).

Using the pattern

Many patterns that can affect Player Balance do this by having modifying the fortunes of players opposed to each other. That is, they are applicable in games with PvP or TvT gameplay. Balancing Effects, Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment and Handicap Systems are all generic ways of doing this with Symmetry being the most generic. Team Development can provide Player Balance if the possibility for development or amount of development is affected by the relative position of players. This can work both in games with TvT and PvP gameplay since a player may control a whole Team in games with PvP gameplay. Team Development can also let players modify their Abilities, Powers, etc. to be better suited against the other players' strategies. The same applies for games with Drafting.

Player Balance can also be achieved in PvP games through having Evolving Rule Sets so differences in power between different ways of playing can be evened out over time (one example of a game that does this is Magic: The Gathering). Sanctioned Cheating is another way in PvP games since those players that are disadvantaged often can have bigger gains from engaging in Sanctioned Cheating without necessarily suffering bigger losses if their cheating is revealed. Killcams in PvP games can let players learn about what they or other did to get killed (or to kill someone else) as well as expose killers strategies and locations. Specifically for TvT games, differences in strengths and weaknesses between individual team members can be mitigated through Orthogonal Differentiation within the Teams so the total effect is that the Teams are balanced and therefore a version of Player Balance is achieved (one has the same chance of belong to a winning team). Regardless of if games have Teams or not, Self-Facilitated Games can have Player Balance since the players themselves can modify game states and ignore rules for the purpose to balancing the gameplay.