Balance, part 2

This is a continuation of my previous thoughts on balance. In part 1, I gave a brief summation and outline of what I consider to be "balance." Re-reading it, I note that I allowed for some wiggle room in my definition: because it is not possible to guarantee that two factions are "balanced" with mathematical accuracy, the threshold for acceptable balance should be where individual player skill and dice become more important.

Upon reflection, I do not believe that is a stringent enough definition. A good player with Wood Elves will beat a bad player with Skaven in Warhammer Fantasy today. I do not believe the armies are balanced. Similarly, a player running eHaley with bad dice rolls will lose to a player running eMorghoul with good ones. Those casters are not balanced either.

My modification, then, is as follows: balance between factions is achieved when two players of equal skill, with equal mean and standard deviation for their dice results, will achieve a win ratio over time of between 45 and 55 percent against each other when using the factions.

Obviously, this is not really measurable, and I just sort of pulled the 5% margin out of my ass. Still, tournament results give pretty good indicators, as can be seen here:

http://confounding.net/2009/02/26/is-warhammer-balanced/

(An excellent article, if a bit dated now due to the changing metagame).

Within-faction balance is, in my mind, easier to define. Simply, if each choice available to a faction appears with relatively even distribution in high-level tournament lists-- semifinalists and finalists of that faction-- then the faction is balanced. If a unit appears in only 5% of competitive lists, that is a sign of poor in-faction balance. If a unit appears in 90% of lists, that is similarly poor. It should be noted that many armies allow for "core troops" and "specialized troops." For example, taking a Skaven army with no clanrats is extremely unusual; not because Clanrats are overpowered, but because they are simply cheap and reliable and form minimum core choices required in list construction. For this reason, I would argue that a certain degree of common sense is required in interpreting these data.

So this time I am going to talk about why balance is desirable. I argue from two perspectives.

First, from a moral standpoint (or a gamer's perspective), balance is an end in itself. We play a competitive game, and we want it to be a fair competition. Balance is in that sense is desirable for the player base. This is an easy position to take.

Companies, however, must make a profit. They may love their players, they may try hard for balance, but in the end they are focused on the bottom line. Extensive playtesting and mathematical evaluation of various units' performance on the table may lead to better balance, but it is expensive and seems unnecessary given the existing level of in-house playtesting that already goes on.

I would argue that increased balance need not be expensive, and it could lead to financial rewards. By balancing all of the factions against each other, companies are encouraging competitive players to spread out instead of clustering around the good choices. On one level, I am sure that hundreds or thousands more boxes of Karax would sell if they weren't terrible. That's an easy call to make.

But on a more subtle level, increased competitiveness encourages acquiring a second or third army. Most wargamers I know play multiple armies for the same game. (Incidentally, I'd love to see data on the average number of armies for a single system owned by a given gamer.) By making every army competitive, companies are encouraging players to try a new thing, secure in the knowledge that they are not stepping "down a level." Balance between factions means that no army will go unbought, and it means that players will more readily take to a new army. Moreover, balanced factions are a boon to organized tournament play-- a topic for a later post, but one that holds a great deal of financial promise for companies willing to seize on it. Balance within factions has a more obvious payoff, as mentioned above: if I play Skaven, I am going to buy every good thing the Skaven can field for more options. If the army book had no clunkers in it, I would be buying everything available.

Next time, I will talk about how companies can achieve balance, and do so cheaply and effectively.