What's more fun? A perfectly balanced game, or a perfectly imbalanced game? (Online Multiplayer)

It depends on the game for me.

Well, do you prefer playing chess, or hitting a Pinata?

It's best answered when understanding a game's design.

It's best answered when understanding a game's design.

I prefer hitting up some suga walls, but in all seriousness

Depends on the style of the game. If a game is aiming to be realistic then having it balanced would be fine, but if its unrealistic then I won't mind the crazy imbalanced gameplay.

This sounds like a Battlefield thing.

If a game is imbalanced to the point where something is totally overpowered and broken then it stops being fun. Most players congregate to this one character, weapon, loadout, strategy, whatever and you're fighting the exact same thing over and over.

Balanced doesn't mean boring, it just means there are more viable ways to play.

What's a perfectly imbalanced game? What's a perfectly balanced game? I need examples!

It depends on the game, really.

But say, with a game like Path of Exile and it's crazy, crazy skill trees, half the fun lies in finding the really overpowered builds. The dev's have even been known to show the best ones on youtube - they don't do it anymore, but are still very welcoming of users exploiting the mechanics in creatiive ways to get an upper hand.

On the other hand, something like World of Warcraft could be horrifically imbalanced in a number of ways, and it was hardly ever fun for everyone all at the same time when in a PvP scenario.

It is a Battlefield thing.

I like asynchronous multiplayer (or even just asynchronous maps) even if it means one team has a distinct advantage. For instance a map where one team is defending a heavily fortified building with plenty of places to peep out and shoot attackers. Meanwhile the attackers just kind of have to deal with it. There was a map in one of the Call of Duty games (Modern Warfare 2 maybe? It's been awhile) but there was a map with a house on top of a hill and whichever team was spawning in the house had a huge advantage. Though if enough of the other team got in their and kicked them out they would start spawning around there (not as a function of the map, just how the spawning worked I think). I'm not really a big CoD fan since 4 but I had a lot of fun on that map, more so when I was on the team with the disadvantage.

However if you mean imbalanced as in "Hey, these two guns are the best in the game and the rest shoot cooked rice" than no, I guess not since it leads to one loadout/strategy that is viable so everyone uses it.

This was actually similar to the topic I wrote on in my game design class. My topic was what makes a perfectly balanced game and i tackled it from the two extremes.

Basically the results are always the same; but its much easier to achieve perfectly balanced than perfectly imbalanced.

A perfectly balanced game is one that was updates every single week. They may seem small and nothing, but its all based on what the creator wants the overall metagame to go. If people cry foul over it, its either because the creator has failed to achieve the balance between fun factor and game mechanics or simply because the audience doesn't get what the creator of the game was trying to achieve.

A lot of the times a perfectly balanced game will not happen due to the game not being fun any more when everything is perfectly balanced., or what the game creator intends to be balanced gameplay is not what the overall audience agrees with.

Then you have your perfectly imbalanced. This is the same damn game from day one to ten years after it was released without any updates at all and people still play it. This is the every glitch found is now a feature and if one doesn't like it then too bad there's no patch coming ever. There's only one game I can think of that does that. MVC2. With enough super crazy glitches, ultra cheap stuff from every side ever, its the one game that after ten years of being released, they still had a fan base that was willing to not only keep playing, but put like insane $50k money matches on the line.

So, to answer the question, its really a matter of taste. Would you rather play a game knowing what you ultimately pick (character, faction, etc) doesn't matter because the overall game is designed to be balanced anyway (going for pure mind games in a fair environment), or would you rather play a game of trying to see how much BS you can get away with, and the mind games all revolves around each other's BS set up?

Yeah, i feel like the poll says imbalanced when it should say asynchronous. Asynchronous can be good, but imbalanced is always bad. There's no such thing as "perfect imbalance".

Something can't be 'perfectly imbalanced', cause for there to be imbalance means something is imperfect.

It's quite obvious that the more balanced something is the better, as it means there are move viable playstyles, and a game will feel fresher for much longer.

Nothing worse than a game going stale due to poor design and players going for the same shit every single time.

I much more prefer a multiplayer game that creates a level playing field. That said, if the game is broken in some way that allows people to become overpowered, then as long as everyone has the potential to exploit that aspect of the system, then it's fine to me. I don't really have any examples, seeing as I don't play a lot of multiplayer games.

I like somewhat broken games. It just makes it fun when the developer tries to balance it out and then completely overpowers something else.

If perfectly imbalanced means that there's also not a way to find a consistent winning combination, for example by randomizing weapons and map layouts between matches I totally prefer that over boring e-sportsy overbalansing. Other than that it kinda depends on the game and how you play it, massive imbalances that get consistently exploited may turn out detrimental to your enjoyment of the game, but I do like unpredictability.

Imbalance is definitely more fun; MMOs for instance that are attempting to be balanced are just really fucking boring on the PvP front; even the OP classes are tedious and slow to manage. But when there's imbalance a whole lot of crazy shit happens like killing dozens of people with only 4 or 5 as you would in Warhammer or DAoC; good players + broken classes = great times.

Pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.

I love finding an exploiting shit other people would call 'broken.' It's great in games like Diablo II/Path of Exile, but it's incredibly unfun in distilled competitive multiplayer like WoW arenas.

Playing fighting games online sucks if you have OP characters. Back in the early days of Street Fighter 4 it got boring really quickly playing against nothing but Sagat and then later Ryu all the time.

@seppli:

"A perfectly balanced game can never be as fun as a perfectly imbalanced game, because imbalance inherently heightens the potential for good times (and bad times, of course)."

I have to disagree on this. Yes, there are some games that thrive on the stupid fun chaos that imbalance can bring. Usually those games have fun mechanics to go with it. Most of the times, though, imbalance means that people cluster up around one OP strategy and spam it over and over. Sure, I can do the same, but I rather watch paint dry. Building your own play style and strategies that might actually work is inherently fun, not imbalance.

This thread just makes me sad that 343 decided to throw balance right out the window for Halo 4 and just go with the Call of Duty killstreak and loadout bullshit. Halo 2 and Halo 3 were perfectly balanced competitive games that remained fun because obtaining the overpowered weapons was part of the metagame, giving each team an even chance of acquiring them. It struck a perfect balance between keeping the game fair but also giving you opportunities to feel powerful.

Man, I fucking loved those games, but chances are Halo MP will never be that great again. Here's hoping Destiny picks up the torch.

I'm not sure I would agree with "imbalance" being more fun. Randomness and broken games? Sure, those can be fun and hilarious. But if I'm playing a competitive multiplayer game, imbalance just means I'll meet some players with the "best" setup, and I know they'll just wreck me and I won't have fun. It just leads to people spamming this one OP strategy/weapon or whatever, and that's only fun when you're on the side making use of it.

Edit: Imbalance is great in Salty Bet though. It can lead to some amazing upsets.

Depends on the game, but if it's meant to be a competitive experience where time and effort put into learning the game is rewarded by improving and getting progressively better than others, balance is essential.

If a multiplayer game is imbalanced then its broken and bad.

I think OP is onto something.

Perfectly "imbalanced" games (IMO): Starcraft Brood War (and to a lesser extent, 2), Counter-strike, DotA (2), Super Smash Bros. Melee

These games are really fun to watch and play, and I think a part of that is due to the presence of a player-crafted metagame, as opposed to the developer's trying really hard to make their game play in a specific, balanced way.

Interesting....I never stand a chance in multiplayer anyway, unless i'm really really focused.

Them Call of duty No scopezz generation kids ruined FPS multiplayer games for me.

Really balanced games tend to be boring. Quite a few modern military shooters feel boring because all of the weapons are balanced so finely that they behave the same way. Battlefield 3 has some of this, there are so many guns that are nearly identical that I could pick a random assault rifle and have the same experience every time.

Counterstrike is horribly unbalanced (Hell, the AWP is a one-hit kill that can shoot through walls) but the balance comes from the high price of overpowered weapons and the one-life-per-round gameplay.

A finely balanced game is more fun to watch (eSports), but an unbalanced game is more fun to play.

Starcraft 2 is one of the most finely balanced games out there, and watching GSL is super exciting. But I would much rather play a game where I can pick a particular broken character, class, gun, etc. and completely own face. Alternatively, it's also fun to play the underdog and defeat that overpowered player through skill alone.

What does it mean to be "perfectly imbalanced"? I still don't quite follow the idea.

If by imbalance, you mean that has random elements or is asymmetrical, then yes, its more fun. If you mean there are a single, simple strategy or choice that outweights any other strategies by a wide margin, then its never fun.

By "perfectly imbalanced" i'll just assume you mean asymmetrical.

If so, absolutely. Last time i played something super balanced it was boring as fuck. The gamemode all the "pros" play in halo 4 where all you get is your DRM and no armor abilities or anything. It was so god damn boring. Just assholes taking popshots at each other for half an hour.

I definitely prefer my multiplayer to focus on fun at the possible expense of balance, rather than the other way around. In a perfectly balanced game, it eventually boils down to who can hit the buttons faster, and that gets old after a while. Throw some imbalance in, and there are far more variables to learn and master.