Video game balance is a never ending struggle for developers. There are few (if any) examples of games that have just the right balance between all of their factors. Every type of game struggles with getting everything just right, and I think that’s great.

Video game balance is not something I thought much of before getting really into Dota 2. Now it’s something I think about frequently. In the past I’d occasionally dismiss things that destroyed me in multiplayer games as overpowered and bullshit, but now I try to figure out why the strong things are strong. Naturally I always tried to play around it, but now I actively make an effort to figure out how to play around the metagames that develop in my multiplayer experiences.

Balance updates reinvigorate games, promoting experimentation and keep them from going stale. Without balance changes games will eventually fall into a stagnant metagame with only one way to play. What’s the use in settling on that, when a simple buff here or a nerf there every once in a while can lead to sweeping changes across a game’s meta?

In Blizzard’s real-time strategy game StarCraft II, Protoss players almost never used the “Immortal” unit until a balance patch granted them 1 more range. A buildup known as the Immortal All-In became the Protoss race’s most prominent and talked about build out of nowhere for a long time.

Blizzard’s card game, Hearthstone also sees occasionally balance updates. A particular “Undertaker” card recently got nerfed, creating a healthier metagame that didn’t revolve around one card of hundreds. Blizzard’s approach to balancing Hearthstone seems to be mostly nerfing strong cards rather than buffing weak cards. It’s this approach that seems most common among developers.

From a time investment standpoint, it is much easier to identify what’s overpowered and do something about it, but some developers do find time to buff the underpowered things. How developers approach balance puts them on a spectrum, between nerfs and buffs. Most developers lay towards the nerf side, but with Dota, Icefrog and Valve are on the other side of that spectrum, and to me buffing the underpowered stuff makes for a far more interesting game overall. Players who enjoy the overpowered stuff won’t be alienated, but more subliminally come to realize the thing they enjoyed isn’t as overpowered anymore, because everything around it has gotten better. There are always going to be cases in which overpowered things are so blatant that they will require a nerf, but if developers can get away with it, I think buffs are generally going to be the best option.

An older example of why nerfing overpowered things isn’t always best would come from my time with the shooter Modern Warfare 2, one of my favorite multiplayer experiences. I enjoyed doing several things in Modern Warfare 2. I loved running around with akimbo model 1887s, care package speed and commando, and using the one man army perk with grenade launchers (noob tubes). The first two of those were destroyed by nerfs, and this resulted in a widespread adoption of the one man army, noob tube combo. It became the only thing anyone did. The combo was a best kept secret sort of thing because of other things, and it was more ridiculous than either. Once those other things were nerfed, the game lost any balance it had and was ruined. Infinity Ward even tried to nerf the one man army perk after its rise to no avail. In hindsight I think the whole nosedive that game took could have been avoided with buffs to the stuff no one was using rather than nerfs to what was good. Conceptually Modern Warfare 2 was already outrageous. It featured a tactical nuke killstreak that ended the game and a chopper gunner that basically secured 10 kills without fail. How outrageous would it really have been to buff something no one used like the scrambler perk?

Dota sees major updates every few months. I started playing with Version 6.79, and got my first taste of an update when last year’s New Bloom Festival hit. It brought a myriad of changes to nearly every hero and some items as well as adding two new heroes. Mostly the changes were buffs to the less popular heroes with a few nerfs to some of the more popular ones. Some popular heroes got buffs anyway. This mostly buff approach to balance has intrigued me, and ever I have poured over every update’s changes since. When version 6.82 dropped, Dota felt like a brand new game. The patch included many subtle tweaks to heroes and items I’d come to expect. In addition, the map was altered; two heroes saw overhauls and the gold and experience systems were heavily modified, effectively changing how the game was played.

Similar to how a series like Call of Duty updates every year with a new game that tweaks its perk system and updates weapons, maps and the like, games like Dota are evolving in much the same way. If Call of Duty were a solely multiplayer experience like Dota, the biggest difference between the two would be between their business models.

Regular updates can skyrocket a game’s potential. It can be risky, but bad changes can always be reverted. I’m of the mind that prioritizing buffs to the underutilized is better than nerfs to the overused. Nerfs risk alienation of the players that enjoy those things, and buffs make the players who don’t, feel better about what they do enjoy. Either way, not issuing balance patches is to risk a mass exodus because the metagame became stale. I suppose there is the possibility that a “perfect” metagame be achieved, but until then, I’ll be plenty happy dissecting the patch notes of the games I play.