History Main / FakeBalance

'''[[PowerEqualsRarity Rarity based balance]]''': Found in certain {{Trading Card Game}}s formats, where rare cards are often much more powerful than common cards. This form of balance is based on the notion that everyone has an equal chance of getting the game-winning cards, and thus an equal chance of winning. However, this can result in having matches decided by who was luckier than who was more skilled, so it can be considered a form of luck-based balance in certain game formats.
* Note : In most TCG formats, where you can build your own deck, this trope doesn't appear as you can buy [[BribingYourWayToVictory all the cards you need, regardless of rarity]]

'''Skill based balance''': A strategy/character/skill that is [[LethalJokeCharacter much more powerful]] [[DifficultButAwesome in the hands of a pro than in the hands of an amateur]]. This seems fair because it rewards a skilled player rather than an amateur. Problems arise when the reward is too huge, until its becomes an unfair advantage over other equally skilled players using a different strategy/character/skill.

'''Unfair/situational advantage''': When a character/deck (A) has an almost unwinnable advantage over certain type of character/deck (B), but is too weak against other characters/decks (C). On the statistic sheet, A might have a balanced winrate, B might have a below than average winrate and C might have an above average winrate. But Deck A isn't balanced and C might not be better than B. This results in a practice known as "counter-picking", where a player makes their choice based on the other player's choice. This naturally leads to all players hiding their choices and making the game feel like an elaborate version of RockPaperScissors played before and effectively instead of whatever actual gameplay was intended.

'''[[GoodThingYouCanHeal Good thing the player can heal]]''': A recent trend in action games it seems, this is like trying to put out a fire with more fire. Giving a stupidly aggressive enemy superior firepower is balanced out by the player being able to regenerate health. If done wrong, you can die in seconds…and yet be at full health in seconds. Which, of course, is pointless when your health is whittled down so quickly, which leads to what is basically a seesaw battle of cheapness. It's usually tipped to the computer's favor, though, since [[GangUpOnTheHuman they usually have no problem shooting a rocket launcher at point-blank range or ignoring friendly fire on their own allies]].

'''STOP!''' Before proceeding, please remember that TropesAreNotBad. Games are designed to reward those who take the time and effort to study them. A player who has more expertise at a game ''should'' win more, ''because'' he or she knows the game's loopholes and how to exploit them. (Games that lack this feature are considered to have FakeBalance in [[LuckBasedMission the other direction]].) ''This'' trope only comes into play when a particular strategy, skillset or loophope becomes [[GameBreaker dominant]] over a game which, purportedly, contains nothing so ultra-powerful.

* An example of a failed attempt of balance by rarity can be found in ''MagicTheGathering''. When the game was first released, it was known that cards such as Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Timetwister and the Moxes were game-breakingly powerful if present in sufficient quantities. However, they believed that since most players would only buy a starter deck and a couple of boosters, their power would never become an issue. This is especially evident when you look at the initial deck construction rules: 40-card minimum for decks, and no maximum for any individual cards. The deck of nothing but Black Lotus/Channel/Fireball was 100% legal, and not even the most broken deck you could build. Constructed tournament latter evolved to have a 60 card minimum limit and a maximum of 4 individual non-land card, thus effectively removing the fake balance.
** Modern ''Magic The Gathering'' still has balance by rarity due to its rarity system, which recently added a new rarity. It should be noted that fake balance exists in limited formats such as booster draft and sealed deck where certain powerful cards could easily help the player to win, but does not exist in constructed play where people will [[SeriousBusiness spend whatever it takes to win]].
*** In ''Magic'' limited formats, there is the ''BREAD'' principle, which describe what card to draft - Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Advantage and Dregs. While Removal, Evasion, Advantage and Dregs cards are available in every rarity, Bombs are usually in the rare slot. A deck with a good amount of bomb and removal cards have a considerable upper hand. Whether a player obtained those cards by luck or by skills is something that is often discussed in MTG boards.

** A cause of Situational Advantage also frequently arises. As cards "rotate" (new ones are printed, older made illegal in most common formats) for good portion of enviroments arise one-two "tier 1" decks that prompt development of counter-decks aimed to specifically hunt those dominants. Said rogue decks are less powerful overall, so any (semicompetent) deck but the dominant actually has a good chance against it - but will fall to the tier 1. The resulting rock-paper-scissors deck choice process is known as metagaming.
* ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' is also famous for the same reason as ''MagicTheGathering'' at game balance. Many of the most powerful cards were not only GameBreaker cards, they were considered "rare", with some others being “Secret rares” that would never ever be encountered by the average player. Now here's what creates the fake balance… after awhile you could buy tins with most of those secret rare cards in there.
* Many FPS games such as ''CallOfDuty'' have the problem of similar but grossly unbalanced weapon sets. At a medium range, nothing beats assault rifles and marksman weapons, likewise extremely short ranged weapons like submachineguns and shotguns are next to useless outside of room to room fighting.
** Additionally, in ''Modern Warfare'' the imbalance grows as a player's multiplayer level increases, since levels grant better attachments and perks to already powerful weapons.

*** However, there is still the consistent problem caused by an unbalance in what moves outside your type most Pokemon can use. Just taking the core "grass->water->fire->grass" triangle, it is unbalanced by the fact that nearly ''every'' water Pokemon can learn Ice Beam, Ice Punch, or Avalance (which are super effective against Grass) while few Grass types can learn moves effective against Fire types and few Fire types can learn moves effective against Water-types (this was somewhat fixed by letting many of them learn Solarbeam and/or Energy Ball). In fact, Ice types are supposed to be {{Glass Cannon}}s as they have many weaknesses and are only resistant to themselves while Ice attacks are SuperEffective against many types, but the abundance of non-Ice types which learn Ice-type moves simply leads to Ice-types being horribly underused and Ice-type moves being practically omnipresent.

*** Dark Eldar wishes it was true.

* ''SuperSmashBros'' took a fairly simple approach to balance. In general, most characters can fit into one of three groups: Fast, but light and weak; Strong and heavy, but slow; and "balanced" characters who are somewhere in between. This sounds good in theory -slower characters don't have to hit as much to KO you, and are more resistant to being KO'd themselves- the problem is that fast characters generally have a much higher combo ability, which makes fighting one more difficult, especially if you're using a slow character who has trouble getting hits in between their opponent's fast attacks. This has ultimately led to the MetaGame being dominated by fast characters like Meta-Knight and Marth.
** This is actually ''very'' common in fighting games with [[MightyGlacier larger, slower characters]] finding their increased strength and durability vastly overcompensated by their inability to catch the opponent or dodge ''their'' attacks (due to their enormous hitboxes), and are most commonly SkillGateCharacters. [[BlazBlue Iron Tager]] is a notable aversion as [[DifficultButAwesome especially skilled players]] can use his anti-projectile and magnetic abilities to compensate.

** Stealth Rock is a perfect example of "Everybody's Cheap". It's absurdly powerful, but an enormous number of Pokemon in 4th gen can learn it. As a result, every team uses it and every Pokemon's value is judged through a filter of how much they're effected by Stealth Rock.

'''Skill based balance''': A strategy/character/skill that is [[LethalJokeCharacter much more powerful]] [[DifficultButAwesome in the hands of a pro than in the hands of an amateur]]. This seems fair because it rewards a skilled player rather than an amateur. Problems arise when the rewards is too huge until its becomes an unfair advantage over other equally skilled players using a different strategy/character/skill.

'''Unfair/situational advantage''': When a character/deck (A) has an almost unwinnable advantage over certain type of character/deck (B), but is too weak against other characters/decks (C). On the statistic sheet, A might have a balanced winrate, B might have a below than average winrate and C might have an above average winrate. But Deck A isn't balanced and C might not be better than B. This results in a practice known as "counter-picking", where a player makes their choice based on the other player's choice. This naturally leads to all players hiding their choices and making the game feel like an elaborate version of RockPaperScissors.

** This is actually ''very'' common in fighting games with [[MightyGlacier larger, slower characters]] finding their increased strength and durability vastly overcompensated by their inability to catch the opponent or dodge ''their'' attacks (do to their enormous hitboxes), and are most commonly SkillGateCharacters. [[BlazBlue Iron Tager]] is a notable inversion as [[DifficultButAwesome especially skilled players]] can use his anti-projectile and magnetic abilities to compensate.

'''Unbalanced skillset''': If a character has a move set with a few overly powerful moves, the counterbalance to this may be to have several moves be near-useless. A skilled player is likely to exploit the good moves while ignoring the useless ones.

** With the standard tournament settings (no items, 1v1 stock match) slow characters might be underpowered. However, they're much more useful in free-for-alls, where they can hog the KOs before other characters get a chance, and where they can pick off people who are busy fighting someone else. The latter also goes for team battles, to a lesser extent.

'''Unfair/situational advantage''': When a character/deck (A) has an almost unwinnable advantage over certain type of character/deck (B), but is too weak against other characters/decks (C). On the statistic sheet, A might have a balanced winrate, B might have a below than average winrate and C might have an above average winrate. But Deck A isn't balanced and C might not be better than B.

* Despite being designed with an eye for better balance, 4th Edition D&D hasn't entirely avoided this. The original example of the "Controller" role, the wizard, was loaded with lots of low-damage but wide-area affecting spells, as they were meant to do damage to a wide variety of foes. This worked so long as there were a decent number of 1 hit point [[{{Mooks}} minions]] on the field, but usually there weren't. Later controllers switched from "Area Damage" concepts to "Debuff and battlefield control," which left the wizard out in the cold until supplements with better powers appeared. It wasn't all bad for the wizards, though...the less said about [[GameBreakingBug orbizards]] the better.

* ''YuGiOh'' is also famous for the same reason as ''MagicTheGathering'' at game balance. Many of the most powerful cards were not only GameBreaker cards, they were considered "rare", with some others being “Secret rares” that would never ever be encountered by the average player. Now here's what creates the fake balance…after awhile you could buy tins with most of those secret rare cards in there.

** Wu Jens basically get free metamagic feats if their narrator plays them a certain way. (eg, unable to touch a dead body, cannot cut hair, cannot bathe...) However, some players often pick the taboos and set them to stuff the player or Wu Jen wouldn't even do in the ''first'' place!

** This is actually ''very'' common in fighting games with [[MightGlacier larger, slower characters]] finding their increased strength and durability vastly overcompensated by their inability to catch the opponent or dodge ''their'' attacks (do to their enormous hitboxes), and are most commonly SkillGateCharacters. [[BlazBlue Iron Tager]] is a notable inversion as [[DifficultButAwesome especially skilled players]] can use his anti-projectile and magnetic abilities to compensate.

* SuperSmashBros took a fairly simple approach to balance. In general, most characters can fit into one of three groups: Fast, but light and weak; Strong and heavy, but slow; and "balanced" characters who are somewhere in between. This sounds good in theory -slower characters don't have to hit as much to KO you, and are more resistant to being KO'd themselves- the problem is that fast characters generally have a much higher combo ability, which makes fighting one more difficult, especially if you're using a slow character who has trouble getting hits in between their opponent's fast attacks. This has ultimately led to the MetaGame being dominated by fast characters like Meta-Knight and Marth.

For clarification, Fake Balance is caused when the game designer intends to balance the game, but fails to do so. Intentionally putting in GameBreaker or joke characters does not count, since the game designer has no intention of balancing the game anyway.

'''STOP!''' Before proceeding, please consider that skill levels of players vary, and simply adding an example because you feel it is “cheap” is missing the point, not to mention a great way to start an EditWar. For the types of players likely to do this, see {{Scrub}}, {{Munchkin}}, ComplacentGamingSyndrome, and StopHavingFunGuys.

'''Skill based balance''': A strategy/character/skill that is [[LethalJokeCharacter much more powerful]] [[DifficultButAwesome in the hands of a pro than in the hands of an amateur]]. This seems fair because it rewards a skilled player rather than an amateur. Problems arise when skilled player A with said strategy/character/skill have an unfair advantage over equally skilled player B using a different strategy/character/skill.

'''[[SkillGateCharacters Skill Underestimated]][=/=][[DifficultButAwesome Overestimated]]''': Probably the main cause of Fake Balance in fighting games is when the game designers underestimate or overestimate a skill's usefulness in the hands of a capable player. Underestimating a skill may cause the character's weakness to be ignored; for example, allowing a FragileSpeedster to hit like a MightyGlacier. Overestimating a skill may cause the character to become an unintentional JokeCharacter.

For clarification, Fake Balance is caused when the game designer intends to balance the game, but fails to do so. Intentionally putting in overpowered characters or joke characters does not count, since the game designer has no intention of balancing the game anyway.

'''[[PowerEqualsRarity Rarity based balance]]''': Frequently found in {{Trading Card Game}}s, where rare cards are often much more powerful than common cards. This form of balance is based on the notion that everyone has an equal chance of getting the game-winning cards, and thus an equal chance of winning. However, this can result in having matches decided by who was luckier than who was more skilled, so it can be considered a form of luck-based balance in certain game formats.

'''[[PowerEqualsRarity Rarity based balance]]''': Frequently found in {{Trading Card Game}}s, where rare cards are often much more powerful than common cards. This form of balance is based on the notion that everyone has an equal chance of getting the game-winning cards, and thus an equal chance of winning. However, this can result in having matches decided by who was luckier than who was more skilled, so it can be considered a form of luck-based balance in certain game formats. May also be a case of BribingYourWayToVictory.