So I'm a casual fan of Smash Bros, and something that's been interesting to see is the discussion surrounding the game in terms of character balance and stage legality in Ultimate. A lot of the Smash content I've been watching lately has come from Melee figures discussing approaches to these issues, and they were mostly critical of people suggesting that a given character needs a nerf this early on in the game's lifecycle, or those being ultra-strict on the stages that should be legal (apparently there are people who think a stage having a slope is grounds for banning it???). Although it's terrible logic to watch some videos from Armada and M2K and draw conclusions about the divide between "old-school" and "new-school" players, I went ahead and did so anyway because fuck it, and also this is more of a starting point for discussion, rather than a conclusion.
My atrociously reasoned notion (it may be right or wrong, idk, it's just my reasoning is stupid) that Melee players are generally a lot more tolerant of game imbalance and deviations from convention (in terms of stages at least) mirrors something we see in the competitive Pokemon community as well. How often have you seen some old gens figure complain that players of the more recent generations are far too ban-happy? I honestly think it's close to a universal sentiment among old gen players. GSC is the perfect example here- by the standards of modern generations, Lax would be banned from OU in a heartbeat, but good luck finding actual GSC players in favour of banning it lmao. Sure, most people will probably admit that it's broken, but almost no-one wants any sort of change (believe me, I know from experience lol). And players adapted to this imbalance, and found an extremely deep and interesting metagame as a result.
This is contrasted by modern generations, which see regular suspect tests, frequently of pokemon which, from my perspective as a primarily old gen player not involved with current gen OU, seem like the kind of things you can adapt your play to and evolve around it, rather than simply banning it into oblivion. This is mirrored by other active competitive games. For Overwatch it seems that going a full season (all of two months) with a specific type of team comp being prominent is intolerable to the playerbase, while Clash Royale sees consistent monthly balance updates (I mention these because they're games I'm relatively familiar with).
This dichotomy is the whole point of this post. To compare and contrast these two different approaches to game balance. And yes, there are probably more than two philosophies and yes, it's not a true dichotomy as there is a whole spectrum between these two approaches. It would be folly for a competitive game to never do anything about balance, just as it'd be stupid to say, adjust balance on a weekly basis and so there must be some compromise between stability and balance.
So what are the tradeoffs between these two mindsets? I'll start with the "old-school" approach. Personally, I see two major appeals to having a metagame free from artificial change. The first is that I think it's far easier to reach a competent level in a more static metagame. The reason for this is that developing knowledge of a metagame I think is something extremely difficult to do, and in competitive pokemon it represents one of the biggest barriers of entry for newer players. If your understanding of a metagame is not sufficiently developed, frequent changes to the metagame are difficult to adapt to, and likely to represent a setback in your development as a player. The second point is that there's a clear progression of mastery over the game, as over time players push the game to its limits and come to understand it on an incredibly deep level. To me, this feels incredibly rewarding, to know that our understanding has come as far as it has. I've observed the development of RBY and every twist and turn the meta has taken has mostly been an improvement in our knowledge of the game.
More active balancing approaches have their own merits too. Perhaps the biggest factor driving this is that games begin to feel "stale" really quickly, even if the defining trend has counters or is otherwise ephemeral. The majority of the playerbase is going to take the most straightfoward path to victory, which is what is perceived as the dominant trend of the time. This makes playing repetitive, and even if you are experimenting, you're still likely to face a lot of similar things, which means this stale feeling isn't easy to escape.
One interesting factor that I feel is notable is players' attitudes towards ladder. This both incentivises a large quantity of games and therefore greater exposure to staleness, and winning them, even at the expense of experimentation. Here I think there's a clear divide between older players and new ones, as I feel that although tournaments are still considered the top measure of player skill, newer players place a lot more importance on grinding on ladder, and it's only a small fraction of players that compete in tournaments. By contrast, I think most older players don't really care about ladder, maybe venturing onto it only for fun or to test a team.
So what does all of this mean? I think the biggest thing to note is that even if a developer wanted to approach game balance in a manner similar to what old gen players are used to, that approach may be out of their hands. There's only a certain extent to which developers can promote that mindset among their playerbase, as a competitive game is ultimately nothing without a large, active playerbase. If players demand frequent balance updates, the developer's hand is forced, as otherwise players will simply leave. Unfortunately, it seems that this overactive mindset far outweighs those that want to give things time to evolve (note: this is an anecdote) so it's hard to say what should be done.
Instead, I think developers should aim to implement systems that de-emphasise ladder play (that said, it's not going anywhere, and it's still a great option if you just feel like playing), and replace it with a robust tournament system. They should also consider withholding immediate skill ratings, instead only making available at regular intervals. I think that this would maintain a goal for players to strive for, but without the constant feedback that a typical ladder score provides, I believe players will feel a lot more free to experiment. Lastly, there's always giving players access to resources to understand how to adapt to threats. Strong community discussion is a no-brainer, but other things such as public replays and access to stats for the game are important, with the former potentially showcasing how to play around top threats and the latter enabling players to identify optimal matchups to counter given threats.
Also I'll say now that there's nothing inherently wrong with the overactive balancing mindset, but as you can tell from the way I describe it, I have my own preferences lol
Anyway, this was kinda a wall of text, but if you read it, let me know your thoughts.
My atrociously reasoned notion (it may be right or wrong, idk, it's just my reasoning is stupid) that Melee players are generally a lot more tolerant of game imbalance and deviations from convention (in terms of stages at least) mirrors something we see in the competitive Pokemon community as well. How often have you seen some old gens figure complain that players of the more recent generations are far too ban-happy? I honestly think it's close to a universal sentiment among old gen players. GSC is the perfect example here- by the standards of modern generations, Lax would be banned from OU in a heartbeat, but good luck finding actual GSC players in favour of banning it lmao. Sure, most people will probably admit that it's broken, but almost no-one wants any sort of change (believe me, I know from experience lol). And players adapted to this imbalance, and found an extremely deep and interesting metagame as a result.
This is contrasted by modern generations, which see regular suspect tests, frequently of pokemon which, from my perspective as a primarily old gen player not involved with current gen OU, seem like the kind of things you can adapt your play to and evolve around it, rather than simply banning it into oblivion. This is mirrored by other active competitive games. For Overwatch it seems that going a full season (all of two months) with a specific type of team comp being prominent is intolerable to the playerbase, while Clash Royale sees consistent monthly balance updates (I mention these because they're games I'm relatively familiar with).
This dichotomy is the whole point of this post. To compare and contrast these two different approaches to game balance. And yes, there are probably more than two philosophies and yes, it's not a true dichotomy as there is a whole spectrum between these two approaches. It would be folly for a competitive game to never do anything about balance, just as it'd be stupid to say, adjust balance on a weekly basis and so there must be some compromise between stability and balance.
So what are the tradeoffs between these two mindsets? I'll start with the "old-school" approach. Personally, I see two major appeals to having a metagame free from artificial change. The first is that I think it's far easier to reach a competent level in a more static metagame. The reason for this is that developing knowledge of a metagame I think is something extremely difficult to do, and in competitive pokemon it represents one of the biggest barriers of entry for newer players. If your understanding of a metagame is not sufficiently developed, frequent changes to the metagame are difficult to adapt to, and likely to represent a setback in your development as a player. The second point is that there's a clear progression of mastery over the game, as over time players push the game to its limits and come to understand it on an incredibly deep level. To me, this feels incredibly rewarding, to know that our understanding has come as far as it has. I've observed the development of RBY and every twist and turn the meta has taken has mostly been an improvement in our knowledge of the game.
More active balancing approaches have their own merits too. Perhaps the biggest factor driving this is that games begin to feel "stale" really quickly, even if the defining trend has counters or is otherwise ephemeral. The majority of the playerbase is going to take the most straightfoward path to victory, which is what is perceived as the dominant trend of the time. This makes playing repetitive, and even if you are experimenting, you're still likely to face a lot of similar things, which means this stale feeling isn't easy to escape.
One interesting factor that I feel is notable is players' attitudes towards ladder. This both incentivises a large quantity of games and therefore greater exposure to staleness, and winning them, even at the expense of experimentation. Here I think there's a clear divide between older players and new ones, as I feel that although tournaments are still considered the top measure of player skill, newer players place a lot more importance on grinding on ladder, and it's only a small fraction of players that compete in tournaments. By contrast, I think most older players don't really care about ladder, maybe venturing onto it only for fun or to test a team.
So what does all of this mean? I think the biggest thing to note is that even if a developer wanted to approach game balance in a manner similar to what old gen players are used to, that approach may be out of their hands. There's only a certain extent to which developers can promote that mindset among their playerbase, as a competitive game is ultimately nothing without a large, active playerbase. If players demand frequent balance updates, the developer's hand is forced, as otherwise players will simply leave. Unfortunately, it seems that this overactive mindset far outweighs those that want to give things time to evolve (note: this is an anecdote) so it's hard to say what should be done.
Instead, I think developers should aim to implement systems that de-emphasise ladder play (that said, it's not going anywhere, and it's still a great option if you just feel like playing), and replace it with a robust tournament system. They should also consider withholding immediate skill ratings, instead only making available at regular intervals. I think that this would maintain a goal for players to strive for, but without the constant feedback that a typical ladder score provides, I believe players will feel a lot more free to experiment. Lastly, there's always giving players access to resources to understand how to adapt to threats. Strong community discussion is a no-brainer, but other things such as public replays and access to stats for the game are important, with the former potentially showcasing how to play around top threats and the latter enabling players to identify optimal matchups to counter given threats.
Also I'll say now that there's nothing inherently wrong with the overactive balancing mindset, but as you can tell from the way I describe it, I have my own preferences lol
Anyway, this was kinda a wall of text, but if you read it, let me know your thoughts.
