Game balance
Game balance is a branch of game design with the intention of improving gameplay and user experience by balancing difficulty and fairness. Game balance consists of adjusting rewards, challenges, and/or elements of a game to create the intended player experience.
Overview and development
Game balance is generally understood as introducing a level of fairness for the players. This includes adjusting difficulty, win-loss conditions, game states, economy balancing, and so on to work in tandem with each other. The concept of game balance depends on the game genre. Most game designers agree that game balancing serves towards providing an engaging player experience, especially through a meta.Game balance is commonly discussed among game designers, some of whom include Ernest Adams, Jeannie Novak, Ian Schreiber, David Sirlin, and Jesse Schell. The topic is also featured in many YouTube channels specializing in game design topics, including Extra Credits, GMTK and Adam Millard.
Terms specific to game balance
PvP, PvE and Co-Op Games
describes games that feature a competition between players. PvE is an acronym for player versus environment, where players instead compete with the environment and non-player characters.Co-op is short for "cooperative" and refers to PvE and PvP games where you can work with other players.
Game elements
Game elements are things that appear within a video game that contribute to the gameplay experience. In most game design frameworks, game elements are categorized into groups to help describe their roles in the games. A game element refers to anything ranging from a player's special ability to the relations between different game mechanics in a game.Game mechanics
are constructs that let the player interact with the game world. They define the goal, how players can achieve them and how they cannot, and what happens when they try. These would include challenges, competitive or cooperative gameplay, win-loss conditions and states, feedback loops, and how they relate to one another. Like game balance, the terminology behind game mechanics can vary depending on the designer or the resource's author.Buffs and nerfs
Buffs are changes to a game which increase the utility of game elements, items, environments, mechanics and so on, while nerfs are changes that decrease the utility of said game elements and alike. Buffs and nerfs are common methods for adjusting the challenge for the player. Both can be achieved indirectly by changing other elements and mechanics or introducing new ones. Both terms can also be used as verbs for the act of making such a change. The first established use of the term "nerf" was in Ultima Online, as a reference to the Nerf brand of toys due to their soft toy bullets. However, there is no concrete evidence to show where the term "buff" came from. It has been perceived that the term came from bodybuilding culture, where it is a slang term which refers to an individual's large musculature as a result of strength-based exercises.The most popular use of these terms is found in most MMORPGs, where game designers use buffs and nerfs to maintain game balance shortly after introducing a new feature that may cause significant changes to the game's mechanics. This is sometimes due to a method of using or acquiring the object that was not considered by the developers. The frequency and scale of nerfing vary widely from game to game, but almost all MMOs have engaged in nerfing at some point.
Nerfs in various online games, such as Anarchy Online, have spurred in-world protests. Since many items in virtual worlds are sold or traded among players, a nerf may have an outsized impact on the virtual economy. As players respond, the nerf may cause prices to fluctuate before settling down in a different equilibrium. This impact on the economy, along with the original impact of the nerf, can cause large player resentment for even a small change. In particular, in the case of items or abilities which have been nerfed, players can become upset over the perceived wasted efforts in obtaining the now nerfed features. For games where avatars and items represent significant economic value, this may bring up legal issues over the lost value.
Overpowered and underpowered
The terms “overpowered” and “underpowered” are used on game elements and mechanics that are too good or bad to describe a lack of game balance. More precisely, if a game element is too strong even with the highest possible cost, it is overpowered. If it is too weak even with the lowest possible cost, it is underpowered. On the other hand, a game element might simply be too expensive or not expensive enough for the benefit it provides.Colloquially, overpowered is often used when describing a specific class in an RPG, a specific faction in strategic games, or a specific tactic, ability, weapon or unit in various games. For something to be deemed overpowered, it is either the best choice in a disproportionate number of situations and/or excessively hard to counter by the opponent compared to the effort required to use it.
Underpowered often refers to when describing a specific class in an RPG, a specific faction in strategic games, or a specific tactic, ability, weapon or unit in various games as far weaker than average, resulting in it being always one of the worst options to pick in most situations. In such way, it is often marginalized by other choices because it's inherently weaker than similar options or it's much more easily countered by opponents.
Gimp
A gimp is a character, character class or character ability that is underpowered in the context of the game. Gimped characters lack effectiveness compared to other characters at a similar level of experience. A player may gimp a character by assigning skills and abilities that are inappropriate for the character class, or by developing the character inefficiently. However, this is not always the case, as some characters are purposely "gimped" by the game's developers in order to provide an incentive for raising their level, or to give the player an early head-start. An example of this is Final Fantasy Mystic Knight class, which starts out weak, but is able to become the most powerful class if brought to a very high level. Gimps may also be accidental on the part of the developer, and may require a software patch to balance.Sometimes, especially in MMORPGs, gimp is used as a synonym for nerf to describe a rule modification that weakens the affected target. Unlike the connotatively neutral term nerf, gimp in this usage often implies that the rule change unfairly disadvantages the target.
Revamp
A revamp is a significant change to a game that is designed to improve the game's overall quality. This can include changes to the game's mechanics, art style, storyline, or any other aspect of the game. Revamps are often done in response to player feedback or to address problems that have been identified with the game. They can also be done simply to refresh the game and keep it feeling fresh for players.Revamps can happen at any time during a game's development or after its release. The difference between a revamp and a remaster is that a remaster is simply an updated version of the game with better graphics and maybe some new content, while a revamp is a completely new game built on the foundation of the original.
Revamps may be optional and may happen if something is not properly nerfed.