Metabalance

[PolarBoy]

I thought people might like to hear some thoughts on the subject of game balancing, since there always is a bit of discussion about it here and there, and I had some thoughts recently that I wanted to share.

A common question people will ask of a game to determine it's quality is "Is it balanced?" It's a good question. But not a perfect one. The reason that balance is important is that one of the major points of a game is the tension that comes from the fact that you don't know who will win initially. It's a flawed question though, because balance isn't the important part of it. The important part is winnability. A player should be able to win, that way the tension of who will win is maintained.

I just lied. Winnability isn't important either. The only reason that winnability is important is because the player sees that he has a chance and continues struggling for victory. But if he didn't understand the game's situation completely, or something was hidden from him, the player might think he could win when really he had no chance.

It's stands then that what is important is not winnability itself, but the illusion of winnability that allows a player to believe in it.

This is how mafia is balanced. At the beginning of the game, the players do not know the entire setup of the game. They probably all have some information, but not enough to make any guess as to the likely outcome of the game. Bear in mind that a plyer could have no chance to win and still believe that he does. This is really based on a sort of balance anyway. We could call it metabalance.

Metabalance is basically this: While perhaps no instance is truly balanced, the direction of balance changes enough from game to game that there is no way to accurately predict a given instanfce, and therefore should be played as if one has a chance of winning.

There is a way to break metabalance. If every game was, ultimately, unbalanced in favor of one faction, players who found that they were not in that faction would ultimately decide not to play, as they would have an unreachable goal.

Actually this allows for a lot of intriguing things to happen in mafia games. For one thing roles that aren't in a game can still affect it. Cop variations are a good example. Because cop variations have been used in other games, a cop in a game could be a variation, so he can't be automatically trusted.

Anyway, those are my main thoughts on the subject.

[PolarBoy]

I made the case against winnability because the case for hardly needs to be spoken. Our natural sense of fair play demands it.

There are good reasons for real genuine winnabillity. For one thing it encourages better play. Whether one faction or another has a better shot it's important that the play decides the outcome. Otherwise a mod might as well randomize the roles as "you win" and "you lose".

My point was that a mod can only go so far with balance in the first place. I had no idea that the Serial Killer would win in toybox. I mainly put him there to speed up the game so that the mafia would be able to win in fewer days. You can't usually predict how a game is going to turn out. People will do things that surprise you all the time. My point was that it's no big deal, because Mafia makes up for a lack of balance with metabalance.

Basically, a player doesn't know where the imbalance will lie this time, so he should try as though he has a shot. Maybe he'll win. This swings hugely in the mod's favor.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I misrepresented the issue in the first post. I'm relatively new to all of this.

[PolarBoy]

The problem with SKs is that they're usually added almost as an afterthought. The game is usually written so that the conflict is centered around the Mafia and Town, and the SK is added mainly to mess things up for one of them.

The traditional SK role usually is pretty limited, having no one on his side and generally having more difficult win conditions than anyone else. In a mini, the town usually has to eliminate 2-4 players to win the game, the mafia has to eliminate 6-10, the Sk has to eliminate 9-10. It's pretty easy to see who the odds are in favor of.

Generally though it seems like a good idea to do something to help the SK out. One modification I like is allowing him to lie low from investigations while not killing.

[PolarBoy]

Stewie, the reason only post-crashers are allowed is because pre-crashers would've had the opportunity to read the game thread. If you never did, then you're probably clear.

I guess I should stop bringing up roles from Texas Mafia in discussion threads for a while.

[PolarBoy]

That would be post-crash Stewie. When people say pre-crash or post-crash, they're talking about the big crash. The one where everything back to march was lost. There was a smaller crash shortly after but that lost about a days worth of posts because the site had been backed up recently. That one doesn't count.