Balancing is a problem seemingly no one exactly knows how to tackle. Should you calculate it all? Should you tinker with values until you're satisfied with every detail? Should you turn to focus tests? I aim to propose a different approach and treat balance as something inherently systemic. I'm going to talk about structuring systems and content around a balanced framework. I will elaborate on my experience with such an approach in Phantom Doctrine, focusing on solutions we utilized and effective techniques required to master the balancing of a lengthy campaign in a complex game.

1. Designing Balance

2. me
Kacper Szymczak
11+ years of design experience
●Ancient Space, Hard West, Phantom Doctrine
○ Lead Designer @ CreativeForge Games
●Call of Juarez 1, 2 & 3
○ Multiplayer Designer @ Techland

3. Disclaimers
Won’t talk about:
●Fine-tuning
●Playtesting
●Statistics
●Probability
●Player perception bias
○ (see Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design from GDC2010)
●Multiplayer

4. Part I.
Simplicity

5. A game designer hits puberty when he is able to and
loves designing robust systems.
A game designer matures when that love turns into
dread.
- me

6. Hard West weapons sheet (abridged)
I was asking myself: how do I make all the Hard West guns balanced?
There’s a ton of parameters. How do they correlate? What are the weights of each parameter? How important
is effective range? What about reload speed? Do I boil it down to damage per AP? Damage per turn? etc.

7. Hard West weapons sheet (abridged)
I was looking for a pattern, hiding behind the numbers.
I created formulas calculating damage output, versatility, all that combined.
I calculated “value” from all those numbers. I added, multiplied, squared, square rooted.

8. Hard West weapons sheet (abridged)
I’ve seen patterns emerge and reflect my gameplay experience.
The high value guns were indeed better than the low value guns.
Alas, I was wrong.
The answer was pretty simple.

9. Hard West weapons sheet (abridged)
Damage.
The answer to all that is damage.
The gun with the highest damage had a lot of drawbacks, but who cares, it dealt the most damage.
Players could work around other limitations.

10. Designers
But designers love their complex systems.
There’s a valid reason for that: building a complex system is a great learning experience.
I think mainly because the best lessons in life are derived from failures.
But here’s the secret: big systems for balance are usually redundant.

11. Consider this example problem: You’re working on a first person shooter, with loot crates added to it.
Your job: make sure every looting is rewarding; so that every time player opens a chest, the contents are
satisfactory.

12. Loot director!
You could design a loot director!
It would consider all the loot you can get, gather all sorts of data from the level, monster stats and placement,
paths, and distribute loot across all chests very wisely based on a very, very smart algorithm

13. or... Collectibles!
Or you could add collectibles to the game.
Random chance for items that can be collected and build complete sets would trigger the monte carlo fallacy,
make the player addicted with crates!

14. Bioshock - the loot you find is what you need right now.
So here’s a probably better solution than these: In Bioshock, crates give you what you need.
Need health - you get first aid kits. Low on ammo - you get ammo. etc.
This balance trick does the job. Nothing more. You usually don’t need more to solve simple problems in
balance. Often complex problems require complex solutions. But simple problems often require simple
solutions.

15. Part II.
Disconnecting game parts

16. Enemy design, ideally
1.Gameplay concept
2.Abilities
3.Concept art
4.Model
gameplay
concept
abilities
visual
concept
art assets (for each enemy)
In the perfect world, if you have nearly unlimited resources or don’t mind crunching or you’re working on your
own, the creative process goes like this:
First create a concise idea about an enemy character -> Based on that you define abilities he’ll utilize ->
Based on that concept art is being made -> Based on that art assets are created

17. Enemy design, disconnected
● Concept art
○ Models
●Abilities
○ Implementation
Next:
Create gameplay concepts
from what you’ve got
gameplay
concepts
abilities
visual
concepts
art assets
POOL
So here’s a different approach:
At the same time: Create visual concepts for varied characters and design a range of abilities
Pick the best ones, and pair them
(And then model the best ones, And then implement the best ones)

18. Things we disconnected from their effect/role
●Weapons
●Buildings
●Abilities
●Items
●Characters
A great example are guns. In Hard West we started with a list of guns we want - a wide range of visually
stimulating (ie. cool looking) guns were first modelled and then made sense of in the game.

19. Part III.
Transmission systems

20. Direct gameplay stat access
PLAYER
HP
movement
AP
sight range
...
skillpoints
If you can, never give the player direct access to gameplay stats.
You don’t want the player to have direct access to gameplay params.

21. Problems with direct gameplay stat access:
●Imbalance of stat value
●Mixed-up stat scales
●GUI
●A lot of stats to learn on first contact
Problems with direct gameplay stat access:
Some obvious choices, some useless choices (aka. imbalance) creates Uneven stat progression (bigger
spread in possible character builds)
Difference in number scale (eg. max 100hp, max 5 movement range)
Changing GUI (every time you add a stat, you’ll have to modify your character sheet)
A lot of stats to learn on first contact; there is no easy way out of this: you have to inspect all of them to
spend your first skillpoint

22. Transmission system
Create a transmission system.
PLAYER
HP
movement
AP
sight range
...
skillpoints
Primary stat A
Primary stat B
...
formulae
Create a transmission system, where there is something in between player and gameplay stats.

23. Transmission stats - benefits
●balanced importance
●Evenly scaled stats
●Fixed GUI
●Small number of stats
Benefits of a transmission system:
All stats are evenly important (and, subsequently, a smaller spread in possible character progression)
There’s the same scale across all stats
You have a fixed number of stats to present on the main character sheet
Small number of stats to learn on first contact, vague understanding of these stats is enough to play;
for example: you don’t have to exactly know Dexterity does, to invest in it

24. Take all gameplay stats
1. Take all your gameplay stats

25. Sort by gameplay importance
sort
2. Sort by gameplay importance

26. Distribute among transmission stats
sort
3. Distribute among transmission stats (ABCD, ABCD, ABCD...)

27. Group as primary stats
4. Group as primary stats. (You can primary stats now, NOT EARLIER)

28. Define ranges and create interpolation formulas
5. Define ranges and create interpolation formulas.
Note: the range of primary stats you use can be shifted.
eg. We use 50-150, so everyone looks badass. No one goes below 50 (they’re all above average) and go
beyond what seems possible (100+).

29. Part IV.
Rock, paper, scissors & beyond

30. RPS: every strategy has strengths & weaknesses
●Rock beats Scissors
●Scissors cut Paper
●Paper covers Rock
RPS ensures each element of a game has both a strength and a weakness

31. RPS: omnipresent
●Slow strong punch beats Fast weak punch
●Fast weak punch beats Counter punch
●Counter punch beats Slow strong punch
In one form or another, you can see it every game, in a beat’em up:

32. RPS: omnipresent
●LMG beats Rifle (long distance)
●Rifle beats SMG (medium distance)
●SMG beats LMG (short distance)
In a shooter:
(note: sometimes with influence from other gameplay layers)

33. RPS:
●Effective tactic against every move
●A way out of every losing battle
the reason RPS is so omnipresent is that there’s an effective tactic against every enemy choice.
You always have options when losing.
This creates a much appreciated dynamic, where players force each other to change behavior (or: enemies
force the player to change behavior) which makes for an interesting gameplay.

34. Let’s suppose you would like to have more than 3 moves in your game.
Let’s expand RPS a bit.
Combat balance around RPS can be expanded into something like RPSLS

35. But that’s really hard to understand and memorise. You have to remember the complete ruleset to play.
Its also very inflexible. How to add another one? How to adjust just 1 relationship?
The problem is exactly that this revolves around objects and their relationships.

36. Case: Starcraft 1
Here’s a classic RPS system from Starcraft 1
You can see unit size types and damage type against them.
And here are the problems:

37. Case: Starcraft 1
●size category ~ sprite size
●only a few medium-sized units
LARGE LARGESMALL LARGEMEDIUM
Unit size is only loosely correlated with the size of a unit's sprite and the amount of space a unit takes up in a
transport. Only a small fraction of all units are medium-sized.

38. Case: Starcraft 1
●most air units are large
○ all terran air units are large
■ BUT even small wraiths are large
●most anti-air units deal explosive damage (effective vs large)
○ BUT mutalisks, scourges, interceptors, and observers are all small
■ BUT queens and corsairs are medium
Most air units are large; indeed, all terran air units are large, even units which would be expected to be
relatively small and lightly-armored, such as wraiths (compared to battlecruisers). Most powerful anti-air
attacks deal explosive damage, as a result. But zerg mutalisks and scourges, protoss interceptors, and
observers are the other small sized air units. But zerg queens and protoss corsairs are medium sized.
The balance level achieved in Starcraft with these tools are is seriously impressive, but must have been a real
pain. Everything is interconnected.
No single 1-1 relationship can be adjusted without changing much of the balance.

39. Part V.
Tags

40. Tag system
●Rock
○ Strengths: Hard
○ Weaknesses: Coverable
●Paper
○ S: Covering
○ W: Cuttable
●Scissors
○ S: Cutting
○ W: FragileHere’s RPS represented as a tag system: objects are described by their qualities

41. Tag system - scalable!
●Paper
○ S: Covering
○ W: Cuttable, Edible
●Scissors
○ S: Cutting, Decapitates
○ W: Fragile
●Rock
○ S: Hard, Crushes
○ W: CoverableFrom this, you can scale it endlessly.

42. Case: Starcraft 2
Tags:
●Air
●Armored
●Biological
●Heroic
●Light
●Massive
●MechanicalStarcraft 2 features tags

43. Case: Starcraft 2
Tags:
●Air
●Armored
●Biological
●Heroic
●Light
●Massive
●Mechanical
And attacks rely on those tags.
This is so much more flexible and easy to use.
A relationship between two units can be adjusted freely. Worst case scenario - add one more tag to the game,
give a bonus against this tag, done.

44. Part VI.
Balance over time

45. Range of possibilities must allow for flow.
What’s dangerous to balance is spikes: Anxiety and boredom; too hard, too easy
Sidenote: Too hard is more risky: only a short period of too hard can be enough to turn the player away
It’s one thing when your game is linear and scripted. But how do you achieve this when contents of your
levels, or encounters or enemies are generated?

46. Ideally, campaign flow will look like this.
By Power I mean a sum of health, armor, weapon damage, abilities, reusable items etc.
You encounter powerful enemies.
You grow steadily to surpass them, reach a showdown where you encounter slightly more powerful enemies.
The big red dots are act-ending story missions where a fresh challenge is encountered.
The better you prepare, the smaller the gap.

47. After critical missions, new possibilities unlock and you’re able to catch up and overtake what you encounter,
and eventually meet a new serious obstacle. And so it goes.
Note that in a game where player controls progression (game allows for grinding) player skill is strictly
correlated with player progression and, effectively, campaign time. Player will not move forward to bigger
challenges without some measure of confidence.
But this is still impractical: game time isn’t continuous: it’s sliced up into encounters, levels, missions.

48. A RANGE OF
CHALLENGES
As the game progresses, challenges change. Enemies have more powerful guns and more health.
There’s a range of what you can encounter.
In a given quantum of time or campaign stage, you encounter a given set of enemies.

49. MAX OBTAINABLE
POWER
Player is able to follow with his own tech, stats and weapon firepower.

50. We call each slice a campaign stage.
Campaign stage defines:
● Max reachable tech (powerful weapons, armor, health upgrades, etc.)
● Range of enemies to be encountered

51. TIME
ENEMY POWER MAX
ENEMY POWER MIN
PLAYER POWER MAX
PLAYER POWER MIN
NEXT BIG CHALLENGE
Zoom in on a campaign stage: Player progresses, surpassing enemy power.
(how exactly these lines align is up to the time of the game you’re making, could be made easier than this)

52. Campaign stage
●Range of enemies encountered
●Weapons that can be bought
●Tech that can be developed
●Challenges that can appear
●Loot that can be found
●etc.We change these once every couple of hours of campaign gameplay, after a big story mission.
Finishing a story part gives the player the possibility to unlock new upgrades.
But if need be, we can add more to anticipate flow more accurately.
Player will eventually run out of unlock options if he delays finishing the story act (or they will be much more
difficult to obtain).

53. Part VII.
Bonus content - tips & tricks

54. Input/Output params
Always have a balance measures on input (cost) and output (power).
Input:
●Cost
●Cooldown
●Limited uses (discouraged)
Output:
●Damage
●RangeProblematic example: Ability that kills an enemy who’s unconscious.
In this case you have no control over the power of the ability itself.

55. Easy way out of balancing choices
●Complex choices
●Incomparable
●Unclear consequences
●Postponed effect
Every now and then, player will come to crossroads.
And if one gameplay choice is better, it will be selected.
Even if there’s moral weight to this choice, it’s bound to create the ludonarrative dissonance.
And simply put blow up in your face, where the narrative veil is shredded by the gameplay.
One fix is to have complex choices: when playing chess, or poker, or civilization, you can predict all the
outcomes, but there are a lot of options and finding the optimal one is complex
exactly even, incomparable, unclear consequences, postponed effect.
Another fix: incomparable choices (comp. Heroes 3: gold or exp)
Another: unclear consequences (ie. gameplay effect unclear, comp. King of Dragon Pass)
Another: postponed effect (comp. Telltale Games)

56. Avoid using multipliers
Never have multiplying effects.
Only use additive effects.
I highly recommend the only formula you use for effects and modifiers on a param (for example - damage) is
sum of all modifiers.
Increments are clearer to the user.
With multipliers - when does this get multiplied? Is it base damage, or the final damage? What if there are
several multipliers are they added? when?
Multipliers are problematic - they allow things to easily get out of hand. They can be very small and do pretty
much nothing, or slightly bigger and explode exponentially when stacked.

57. Don’t make bigger damage an option
yup.
Because everything affecting damage is the default choice.
And we don’t want default choices.

58. Unified space
●Distances
●Size
●Complexity
Unified levels governed by the same rules of construction you can later rely on with confidence (distances,
size, complexity).
Movement, sight distances aligned to map constraints.

59. Divide params into balance roles
●campaign progress
●RPS
●play style / tinkering <- room for irrelevant changes
Narrow down what needs to be balanced with what.
For example, in Phantom Doctrine all damage and hp are changed with campaign progress.
Weapon fire modes are related to RPS system.
Most other params are for tinkering, like weapon customization, and don’t change much.

60. END
Kacper Szymczak
@illusionGD
kszymczak [ at ] creativeforge.pl
szymczak.kacper [ at ] gmail.com
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