The perfect balance is an ideal that hardly any game can achieve. Yet, a fighting game by Nintendo has accomplished just that – at least almost.
Achieving perfect balance in a game is actually quite easy – as long as all characters have exactly the same stats and abilities. But as soon as there are different factors, such as classes, various skills, or equipment, balance becomes quite a problem. Whether one is complaining about the strongest class in PvP in World of Warcraft, cursing the “best Exo” in Destiny 2, or grumbling about the meanest killer in Dead by Daylight – balance is a problem that nearly all service games struggle with.
However, one game does not have this problem and has achieved a “nearly perfect balance” – even though there are 86 different characters.
What game is it? We are talking about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the popular hero fighting game from Nintendo. Here, characters like Mario, Link, and Bowser really go at it, but also Pokémon and some quirky characters like Isabelle from Splatoon or Joker from Persona join the fight.
What has been said? Director Masahiro Sakurai talks a lot about game design details on YouTube and also about how difficult it can be to balance a game. It’s not that easy for all “tools” in the game to have the same chances without actually being identical. He then revealed how the balance stands in Smash Bros – and it’s very close to the desired perfection.
The best character has a win rate of 51.43%, while the “worst” character still wins 47.18% of all games. Both values are extremely close to the sought-after middle, namely 50%. This also means that all 84 other fighters are positioned between these two “extremes” and are thus even closer to the perfect 50%.
What is the problem? However, Masahiro Sakurai also reveals that the problem with balancing often lies within the community. They often perceive things worse than can be statistically proven. He refers to this as “a kind of echo chamber,” where people simply convince each other that a certain character is far too strong. This gets passed on until many people believe it – even though the supposedly strong character is also nearly perfect with a win rate of 50%.
Another problem is often the reaction of developers, who try to achieve balance in a “boring” manner:
If you want to balance fighters solely based on their strength, their abilities will quickly be aligned. Disadvantages will be balanced out, while advantages will be weakened, leading to something average in the end. That doesn’t create a fun game – and that’s a problem. To make fighters unique, I advise my team to enlarge their weaknesses to offset their strengths.
The individuality of the characters is something very important, especially for a fighting game in which each fighter should have their own identity.
Do you know other games that have a nearly perfect balance? And which games do you think fail at this?
