Defining how counters work is integral for how a game works. For example, Fire Emblem uses a ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ style for counters: Swords beat Axes, Axes beat Spears, and they beat Swords. On the other hand, Advance Wars just has certain units that perform well against each other: Anti-Air kills planes and copters for example, but there’s no set cycle for what beats what.

One important part of counters is the difference between hard and soft counters. A hard counter usually counters another unit in every way. In a head-on assault, the counter will almost always win (unless the player screws up big time).

A soft counter, on the other hand, just has an advantage over the other unit.

A clear example of a hard counter is common in RTS: Anti-Vehicle. Almost any RTS featuring vehicles has anti-vehicle units that deal massive damage, and the vehicle will often be destroyed before it can drive away or kill the AV units.

A good example of a soft counter can be found in Dawn of War II. The Space Marines can build Assault Space Marine squads (ASMs), that can be equipped with Melta Bombs. These do pretty good damage against vehicles, but are definitely not enough to kill it. They have great HP, though, and can keep a vehicle busy while other units shoot at it. They’re a soft counter: They can do pretty good damage against vehicles, but they’re definitely no one-man armies.

Another soft counter the Space Marines have against vehicles is the Devastator Plasma Cannon squad. These squads have to set up their guns and have a very limited firing range, but shoot big blobs of plasma that deal great damage. However, an enemy vehicles can just drive/walk out of its range and easily escape death. But if you combine them with ASMs to keep the vehicle in place, you’ll be able to tear through vehicles.

Now that it’s a bit clearer how counters work, I’ll talk about how they affect game balance next time.

The pace of a game is very important for balancing it. There are numerous games gone bad simply because the developer tried to change the pace to something the game was not meant to do in the beginning.

Generally there are two paces: A fast-paced game and a slow-paced game. A fast-paced game will feature units that have high attack and low health, and often high speed as well. In a fast-paced game, things die really fast, and if you are not paying attention you could lose the game in a matter of moments. Matches usually don’t last long either. Fast-paced games promote rushing, going on the offensive, and generally, it’s not a big problem if you lose units: As long as the opponent loses more units. Of course, this is a big generalization. Another fast-paced game is Counterstrike: However, because most players will die in one hit (or slightly more), the game is instead about being sneaky and camping.

Micro and Macro are both important in fast-paced games, though micro-management is more important. Because usually, if you can win a small skirmish, you will have a big advantage over the enemy as you can now keep attacking him. This does not mean the macro-game is to be neglected: If you are able to simply fend off enemy attacks, and build up a better economy, you might be able to steamroll him.

Another important feature of fast-paced games is that a small mistake can cost you the game. If you accidentally make a mistake, and the enemy capitalizes on that, it’s possible for all your units to be wiped out, and subsequently lose the game.

A slow-paced game usually features big and bulky units. Matches can last quite long, and unlike fast-paced games it’s instead focused on consistency. If you manage to outplay the enemy for a long time, you will end up getting an advantage, and you’ll be able to slowly wipe him out. The gameplay is focused on macroing, and slowly gaining an advantage over the enemy. While rushing is definitely a good strategy (you could harass the opponent before he gets his defenses up), it is not as lethal as in fast-paced games.

Note that a lot of games are actually a mixture of the two. Especially in RTS, which have multiple phases, the pace can change from phase to phase. A game could be fast-paced in the early phases, with units doing a lot of damage but having little health. But then it could change to a slow-paced game at the end (which usually happens), with a lot of big units with monstrous health. It’s not easy to define a game as 1 of the two, though sometimes it’s quite clear.

An example of pacing gone wrong is Guild Wars. It started out as a fairly slow-paced game: Character deaths weren’t too common, and characters couldn’t do a lot of damage. However, as more and more skills were being added, old skills were also being buffed, and after some time everybody could suddenly pump out much and much more damage. Of course, to counter this, healing was also buffed, but the health bars stayed the same. Eventually, this screwed up the entire game, and multiple game mechanics needed a complete overhaul.

Again, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and that you look forward to the rest of the parts.

The first question that has to be answered before we can fully discuss game balance, is of course: What is game balance? There is no correct definition for a balanced game, and many different people use different definitions. For example, in most fighting games, balance means that there are no characters that are vastly stronger than others, and that any character could beat another character. On Smogon, a site dedicated to competitive Pokemon, balance is defined by having the highest number of viable Pokemon in the metagame possible.

Generally I will refer to a balanced game as a game without a clear superior strategy or tactic, such as choosing a certain race or character. Furthermore, it’s important that there is no strategy that can easily win, but takes almost no skill. For example, many fighting games have a character that can easily defeat most players by spamming a single attack. This does not mean it’s the best character, as a skillful player could easily beat him, but it’s still harmful to the game balance.

So why is game balance important? Well, as a starter it makes the game more fun. No one likes getting his ass kicked by someone that spams one unit or attack, and simply overwhelms you with a very simpleminded strategy. Furthermore, it diversifies the metagame, giving people more choices. If there are some races that are vastly superior to the rest, all matches will end up playing out the exact same way, and the metagame becomes stale.

Finally, it’s to make sure the winner of a match is really the better player. If a worse player could potentially win from a better player by using overpowered game mechanics, then the game fails as a competitive game. And that is of course something to be avoided in a competitive game.

An example of bad game balance is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The character Metaknight is vastly superior to the rest of the characters, and has no good counters: Its best counter is Metaknight himself. This means that everybody will end up picking Metaknight, and the game soon gets boring and stale. If a good player would pick a character like Captain Falcon (who is currently placed at the very bottom of tier lists), and a bad player would pick Metaknight, the Metaknight player will probably rape the better player. That means it fails as a competitive game (not that it was meant to be a competitive game, but still).

I hope the concept of game balance is a bit clearer now, and that people will understand its importance. Now I will be able to discuss the finer details of game balance.

Sadly, that doesn’t mean I’m immediately good at the game. Very often I’ll know a whole lot about the competitive state, every detail, all possible moves, but I never get a lot of personal experience. I’m hesitant to play with others, simply because I’m scared that I’ll suck. Add to that the fact that I’m easily bored, and I end up knowing a lot of things about a lot of games, but still sucking at them.

One thing that competitive games always have trouble with is Game balance. I thought I’d write some blogs (or articles) on this for multiple reasons. First of all, it’s to help me put my thoughts on paper. I have a lot of opinions on the topic but I never write them down. Furthermore, it’s to help people get insight into the matter. Often people talk about game balancing while not knowing the fine details of it. And last of all, I hope that maybe some new developers (or people that mod existing games) read this, so that it can improve their games

I’ll mainly write about Real time strategy games, because it’s so easy to find examples, and because game balance is most important in them (though one could also argue that fighters profit more from a good game balance). However, most of the things I’ll write about apply to a wide variety of genres: Fighters, FPS, TBS, RPG, Puzzle games (think Tetris), racing, etc. I’ll assume that the reader knows the basics of the RTS genre, though I’ll explain some lingo.

Throughout these articles I’ll refer to a number of words, that not everybody knows. I’ll outline them here.

Metagame:

Metagame’s official definition is a bit different from the definition used in online games. When people talk about the metagame, it’s usually what people use. For example, a metagame could be melee-heavy, meaning that there are a lot of players that use melee units. Usually, the metagame changes constantly because people react to each other. If the metagame is melee-heavy, players will start using counters to melee units, and the metagame could shift to anti-melee instead. But with so much anti-melee, players will start using a lot of ranged units, and so the cycle goes on.

Macro:

Macro is usually referred to as a mixture of economy and territory control. It means the game on a large scale: For example, you might be losing small skirmishes, but you can still win in the macro game because you control much more territory than the opponent. Usually, if you are ahead in macro you will win the game because you have large advantages over the enemy: Better economy, better positions, more territory, etc. It is hard to find a corresponding definition in a genre like fighters, but positioning in those is still pretty important: If you’re in the corner, you’re bound to get hammered hard.

Micro:

Micro is literally ’small’. It’s the game on a small scale, with individual units. An example of micro is to not send your units into battle and let them fight, but to manually assign targets to all of your units. In FPS, you could call aiming a form of micro.

This is the end of the introduction, I hope people will look forward to the rest of the parts.

Tip 1
Limit the amount of games you’ll play. For example, say “This week I’m only going to play Left4Dead, Valkyria Chronicles and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” This way, you won’t get swarmed by the huge amount of options when trying to decide which game you’ll play. Normally, you might think “I can’t do that, I’ve got no time, too many games to play”. But if you limit the amount of games, these thoughts won’t pop up. This is also very useful during the holiday season, with so many games coming out.

Tip 2
Spend less time on forums. This is especially useful for people like me, who can spend hours reading forums related to gaming. Whenever I pick up a game, I’ll also start reading forums related to it. Started playing Pokémon again? You can find me on Smogon. Taking a break from playing a lot of Team Fortress 2? Good chance I’ll be on the Valve TF2 forums. There is really hardly any gain from reading forums, so you save a lot of time by not doing so, and you can use this valuable time to do more useful things, like getting a job, or just playing more games.

Tip 3
You’re not forced to play everything right after it comes out, it can wait a while. Getting swarmed by games during holiday season? Pick up one or two, and just wait for a while before playing the other. New content just came out for your favorite MMO? Well, if you wait for a week before playing it, you can have just as much fun, and not everybody in the world will be trying to enjoy the same area at the same time. Even if you wait some time, the game or content will stay exactly the same, so there’s no reason not to wait. Team Fortress 2 is not fun with 10 medics on your team, and playing an MMO is not fun if there simply aren’t enough monsters to meet the demand. If it’s a single-player game, if you wait a while, the price will drop, and you’ll have more money to spend on other things; or, if the game is in high demand, you don’t have to stand in the cold waiting for midnight to be able to pick it up.

So there are lots of ways to make sure you have a better mixture of real life and gaming. It’s not necessary to drop it completely, as some would like you to believe. Keep these three tips in mind, the next time you have to make a decision between gaming and your life.