Game Balancing - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 334

favor on the basis of the odds thus plays a role in determining his success. Video
games seldom tell players the odds explicitly, but with experience, players come to
learn the odds and make good decisions. If a player has no possibility of acquiring
knowledge of the odds and gets no opportunity to decide whether to take a risk,
chance plays too large a role.
Allow the player to decide how much to risk. Allow the player to choose how
much he places at risk at frequent intervals. By offering the player this choice, you
give him more control over his resources and so tend to reward skill. This again
becomes critically important in gambling games, as in the game of poker. If you do
not let the player choose how much to risk on any given challenge that involves
chance, then the game should not risk too much on his behalf. In a war game, for
example, chance typically affects the accuracy of each shot. By sending a unit into
combat, the player risks a few health points on each shot and cannot choose how
many points he risks. However, he almost always has the option to withdraw the
unit from combat (retreat); the number of points at risk is seldom very large; and
one shot typically affects only one unit.
Put simply, don't use chance to determine large issues unless the player explicitly
chooses to take large risks (and has the option not to).
Making PvP Games Fair
Part of your job includes making sure that your game is fair and that players per-
ceive it to be fair. Fairness means something different in PvP games than it does in
PvE games, so we'll examine them separately. Players generally consider a PvP game
to be fair if they believe (1) the rules give each player an equal chance of winning
when play begins and (2) the rules do not give advantage or disadvantage to players
unequally during the game in ways that they cannot influence or prevent apart
from the operation of chance (in moderation).
Balancing Games with Symmetry
In designing a PvP game, you must decide early on if you want the game to be
symmetric or asymmetric. Chapter 1 introduced the concept of symmetry; see
the section “Symmetry and Asymmetry” there for a refresher if you need one. The
concept doesn't apply to PvE games; all PvE games are asymmetric because there is
only one player.
You will find it easiest to create a P vP game that players perceive as fair if you make
the game symmetric. Each player begins with the same resources, has the same
options available to her, faces the same challenges, and tries to achieve the same
victory condition. The vast majority of traditional games (chess, backgammon,
Othello , and so on) follow this pattern. So, too, does Monopoly , in which each player
begins with $1,500 and all launch their tokens from the “Go” square. One player