History Main / FakeBalance

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' took a fairly simple approach to balance. In general, most characters can fit into one of three groups: [[FragileSpeedster Fast, but light]] and weak; [[MightyGlacier strong and heavy, but slow]]; and [[JackOfAllStats "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, allowing them to easily turn one weak hit into several, ultimately dealing more damage than the few, powerful hits that heavyweights dish out. Additionally, heavyweights themselves are extremely susceptible to combos, as their weight works against them by keeping them in range of their attacker, and they are usually large in stature as well, making them that much easier to hit. The heavyweights have effective {{Herd Hitting Attack}}s that can be unleashed while other players are distracted with each other, but this is no help in 1v1 matches, which are the standard for competitive play. This has ultimately led to complex CharacterTiers appearing (despite [[MemeticMutation claims that "tires don exits"]]) and the MetaGame being stormed by fast characters like Fox and Falco, though with a few exceptions such as Jigglypuff and Peach. The imbalance between slow and fast becomes even more evident when one goes ''outside'' the AbridgedArenaArray, ironically. MightyGlacier characters tend to have virtually-unwinnable matchups against FragileSpeedster characters on maps like Hyrule Temple, not to mention they're not as good at grabbing items or avoiding hazards. This has been explained by the developers as their being [[CripplingOverspecialization balanced with chaotic free-for-all play in mind rather than one-on-one]]; they can weather being ganged up on and [[CrowdClearingAttack clear crowds]], but not much else.

** "Old" Sagat in ''Super VideoGame/StreetFighterII Turbo'' is a classic example of Unbalanced Skillset: the "Old" characters in general lack their newly-granted super moves, in exchange for having some other attributes buffed to play more like they did in the prior game. In Sagat's case, he traded his super for reduced recovery time on his projectiles--and in the process, created a bit of a monster. He didn't ''need'' super moves when he could just spam Tiger Shot all day long; no character could out-spam him at range, so the only way to approach him was to jump at him, putting the attacker at risk of being hit by a Tiger Uppercut. While there was counterplay to Tiger Shot spam, it wasn't something that every character could do easily, which led to some of the most lopsided matchups in the whole roster. Consequently, Old Sagat is probably the most famous example of a "soft" ban: he's not even close to Akuma's brokenness, but tournament players agree that if he were legal, then about half the cast would suddenly be nonviable.
* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' took a fairly simple approach to balance. In general, most characters can fit into one of three groups: [[FragileSpeedster Fast, but light]] and weak; [[MightyGlacier strong and heavy, but slow]]; and [[JackOfAllStats "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, allowing them to easily turn one weak hit into several, ultimately dealing more damage than the few, powerful hits that heavyweights dish out. Additionally, heavyweights themselves are extremely susceptible to combos, as their weight works against them by keeping them in range of their attacker, and they are usually large in stature as well, making them that much easier to hit. The heavyweights have effective {{Herd Hitting Attack}}s that can be unleashed while other players are distracted with each other, but this is no help in 1v1 matches, which are the standard for competitive play. This has ultimately led to complex CharacterTiers appearing (despite [[MemeticMutation claims that "tires don exits"]]) and the MetaGame being stormed by fast characters like Fox and Falco, though with a few exceptions such as Jigglypuff and Peach. The imbalance between slow and fast becomes even more evident when one goes ''outside'' the AbridgedArenaArray, ironically. MightyGlacier characters tend to have virtually-unwinnable matchups against FragileSpeedster characters on maps like Hyrule Temple, not to mention they're not as good at grabbing items or avoiding hazards.

** One of the most infamous floodgates of all was Imperial Order, which negated all Spells--essentially locking down roughly half a player's options most of the time, and making some decks completely unplayable. To balance this out, they gave it a cost of paying 700 LP at the start of each of your turns, or destroying the card. However, not only is 700 LP per each of your Standby Phases an incredibly minor cost (it would take twenty-four turns to drain a player from their starting LP), but this actually made the card ''much better:'' it meant you could choose to turn its effect off whenever it would hinder you. Usually, players would activate it during the opponent's turn to shut down all their Spells for that turn, then at the start of their own turn, they'd choose to not pay and let the card destroy itself, at which they were now free to play their own Spells. The attempt to give the card a downside effectively gave it no downside at all, and the card was banned for years, only became unbanned when it was errataed to effectively double the cost and make it mandatory (meaning you could no longer choose to destroy it), and was ''still'' considered one of the best floodgates in the game.

* ''VideoGame/TheBattleForMiddleEarth'' had a lot of this going on with the division between Good factions (Gondor and Rohan) and Evil factions (Isengard and Mordor). The intended idea is that the Good factions are about quality troops and defensive warfare, while the Evil factions are about an aggressive ZergRush. However, in practice, the "quality over quantity" ethos of Good factions translates into them getting all manner of huge advantages--healing access, more heroes, more upgrades, better initial defenses--and, pivotally, are capable of ''summoning'' bands of soldiers on a temporary basis, which handily undoes Evil's numerical advantage (Evil does get a summoning power, but it's pretty much at the end of their tech tree). Evil factions do gain access to siege weapons that can be used to break Good defenses, but these weapons are slow and expensive, and can be destroyed easily by a cavalry charge or good use of their powers. What's more, since Evil factions don't have the walls that Good factions start with, this means they're ironically far ''more'' vulnerable in the early game. The result is that in the early game, Gondor and Rohan effortlessly hold off any attempt at a rush and then counter with one of their own to wreak havoc, and in the late game, Gondor and Rohan have a mess of fully-upgraded troops and heroes and powers that they can use to easily stomp their way through the tides of cannon fodder. The sequel decided to avoid this by making the factions far more clearly balanced with each other.

** Stealth Rock is a perfect example of "Everybody's Cheap". In single battles it's absurdly powerful (one use damages ''every'' opponent that comes out as much as 50% health, since, unlike the other entry hazards, it factors [[ElementalRockPaperScissors typing]], and removing it is harder than setting up because that takes a turn and can be blocked by switching to a ghost type), and an enormous number of Pokémon in 4th gen can learn it. As a result, every team uses it and every Pokémon's value is tremendously affected by how much they're affected by Stealth Rock -- [[HighTierScrappy Charizard]] is notoriously affected, to name one. The developers attempted to {{Nerf}} this in the fifth generation by removing it as a TM, which still fails as everyone just ported over their Gen IV Pokemon that knew Stealth Rock -- it even came back as a tutor move in Black 2 and White 2, presumably because they didn't want to give people who do so such a huge advantage.

* '''Balance through MinMaxing''': Badly-designed or poorly-aged characters and items are often extremely difficult to properly balance without significant overhauls or complete redos because they simply do not fit in the context of the game. A cheap and easy fix (and one that is a dead giveaway for devs who don't know what the hell to do with the character or item) is to bloat or gut its numbers. This seldom works because the issues are generally structural, not numerical, and it usually results in a TierInducedScrappy because the character or item is overtuned (if good) or completely useless (if bad). For instance, if a character sucks because they lack ranged attacks and can't close the distance to their targets, then increasing their melee damage even further only lets them win even harder against people they would have beaten already; the character still struggles to safely reach their opponent(s) in the first place. In online titles, these characters are often "pubstompers"[[note]]{{Skill Gate Character}}s who are notorious for being dominant against lower-level players who do not have the knowledge or ability to consistently exploit their weaknesses, but are useless against more skilled players and cannot compete in higher-level play[[/note]], which makes balancing them even harder - fix their core issues, and they will rip through low-level play to the point where newer players may actually be driven away.

** The Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Trainer's team in ''Brawl'' is designed to duplicate his home franchise's ElementalRockPaperScissors, with Charizard taking more knockback from water-based moves, Squirtle from grass-based moves, and Ivysaur from fire-based moves (while taking less from grass, fire, and water, respectively). The problem is that outside of those three (and [[PowerCopying Kirby]]), only one character in ''Brawl'' (Mario) uses even a single water-based move, ''Ivysaur itself'' is the only character with grass-based moves, and fire-based moves are plentiful, with several being powerful enough to KO. The sum of this is that outside of a MirrorMatch, the mechanic only serves to make Ivysaur [[TierInducedScrappy even worse]].

** Stealth Rock is a perfect example of "Everybody's Cheap". In single battles it's absurdly powerful (one use damages ''every'' opponent that comes out as much as 50% health, since, unlike the other entry hazards, it factors [[ElementalRockPaperScissors typing]], and removing it is harder than setting up because that takes a turn and can be blocked by switching to a ghost type), and an enormous number of Pokémon in 4th gen can learn it. As a result, every team uses it and every Pokémon's value is tremendously affected by how much they're affected by Stealth Rock -- [[TierInducedScrappy Charizard]] is notoriously affected, to name one. The developers attempted to {{Nerf}} this in the fifth generation by removing it as a TM, which still fails as everyone just ported over their Gen IV Pokemon that knew Stealth Rock -- it even came back as a tutor move in Black 2 and White 2, presumably because they didn't want to give people who do so such a huge advantage.

* ''VideoGame/Dota2'''s Anti-Mage, as his name suggests, is meant to be a MageKiller Hero thanks to his abilities, which include a ManaBurn passive, a skill that grants [[AntiMagic magic resistance]] and can reflect targeted spells, and an ultimate ability that does damage based on how much mana the target is missing. However, he's also designed as a FragileSpeedster hard carry hero, meaning that [[MagikarpPower he starts off very weak and spends most of the game trying to gather gold and items until he comes online in the lategame]]. Because ''Dota 2'' {{invert|edtrope}}s LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, magic-based heroes are more of a threat early in the game, when Anti-Mage is too weak to participate in fights, not helped by the fact he's also one of the most item-dependent heroes in the game. As such, he fails in his mage-killer role, instead staying away from everyone for most of the game and focusing on killing creeps instead of heroes, until he gets enough items to steamroll everyone regardless of how mana-reliant they are (or his team loses due to playing [=4v5=] for the first 30 minutes of the game). Adding to this is the fact he doesn't have the bulk to really take advantage of his magic resistance, has a hard time getting value out of his ultimate because he'll likely burst his targets down with raw autoattack damage before burning enough mana, and the fact his kit lacks any proactive ways to disrupt casters, so other anti-magic heroes like Silencer and Doom are far more practical than him in that role. It's telling that despite most of his skillset being designed to make life harder for mages, his most important one is generally agreed to be his [[TeleportSpam Blink]], which isn't necessarily more effective against mages than other hero types.

* ''VideoGame/Dota2'''s Anti-Mage, as his name suggests, is meant to be a MageKiller Hero thanks to his abilities, which include a ManaBurn passive, a skill that grants [[AntiMagic magic resistance]] and can reflect targeted spells, and an ultimate ability that does damage based on how much mana the target is missing. However, he's also designed as a FragileSpeedster hard carry hero, meaning that [[MagikarpPower he starts off very weak and spends most of the game trying to gather gold and items until he comes online in the lategame]]. Because ''Dota 2'' {{invert|edtrope}}s LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, magic-based heroes are more of a threat early in the game, when Anti-Mage is too weak to participate in fights. As such, he fails in his mage-killer role, instead staying away from everyone for most of the game and focusing on killing creeps instead of heroes, until he gets enough items to steamroll everyone regardless of how mana-reliant they are (or his team loses due to playing [=4v5=] for the first 30 minutes of the game). Adding to this is the fact he doesn't have the bulk to really take advantage of his magic resistance, has a hard time getting value out of his ultimate because he'll burst his targets down with raw autoattack damage before burning enough mana, and the fact his kit lacks any proactive ways to disrupt casters, so other anti-magic heroes like Silencer and Doom are far more practical than him in that role. It's telling that despite most of his skillset being designed to make life harder for mages, his most important one is generally agreed to be his [[TeleportSpam Blink]], which isn't necessarily more effective against mages than other hero types.

* ''VideoGame/Dota2'''s Anti-Mage, as his name suggests, is meant to be a MageKiller Hero thanks to his abilities, which include a ManaBurn passive, a skill that grants [[AntiMagic magic resistance]] and can reflect targeted spells, and an ultimate ability that does damage based on how much mana the target is missing. However, he's also designed as a FragileSpeedster hard carry hero, meaning that [[MagikarpPower he starts off very weak and spends most of the game trying to gather gold and items until he comes online in the lategame]]. Because ''Dota 2'' {{invert|edtrope}}s LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, magic-based heroes are more of a threat early in the game, when Anti-Mage is too weak to participate in fights. As such, he fails in his mage-killer role, instead staying away from everyone for most of the game and focusing on killing creeps instead of heroes, until he gets enough items to steamroll everyone regardless of how mana-reliant they are (or his team loses due to playing [=4v5=] for the first 30 minutes of the game). There's also the fact his kit is geared towards tanking magic damage and making mages run out of steam faster, rather than providing any proactive disruption that successful MageKiller heroes, like Silencer and Doom, do. It's telling that despite most of his skillset being designed to make life harder for mages, his most important one is generally agreed to be his [[TeleportSpam Blink]], which isn't necessarily more effective against mages than other hero types.

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 in that case the designer has no intention of balancing the game in the first place.

* '''An underestimated[=/=]overestimated ability''': A major cause of Fake Balance in {{fighting game}}s is when the game designers inaccurately gauge an ability's usefulness relative to the rest of the game. Underestimation may cause a character's weakness to be ignored; for example, a 99% evasion rate could make a FragileSpeedster functionally just as NighInvulnerable as a StoneWall, but also faster to get into an attack position and without the penalty to offense. Overestimating an ability may cause a character to become an unintentional JokeCharacter, like when an attack move is only noticed for the high amount of damage it can do in one hit, while ignoring that it can be easily dodged.

* '''Balance through MinMaxing''': Badly-designed or poorly-aged characters and items are often extremely difficult to properly balance without significant overhauls or complete redos because they simply do not fit in the context of the game. A cheap and easy fix (and one that is a dead giveaway for devs who don't know what the hell to do with the character or item) is to bloat or gut its numbers. This seldom works because the issues are generally structural, not numerical, and it usually results in a TierInducedScrappy because the character or item is overtuned (if good) or completely useless (if bad). For instance, if a character sucks because they lack ranged attacks and can't close the distance to their targets, then increasing their melee damage even further doesn't solve the problem; the character still struggles to do damage, it's just that they can now win even harder against people they would have beaten already. In online titles, these characters are often "pubstompers"[[note]]{{Skill Gate Character}}s who are notorious for being dominant against lower-level players who do not have the knowledge or ability to consistently exploit their weaknesses, but are useless against more skilled players and cannot compete in higher-level play[[/note]], which makes balancing them even harder - fix their core issues, and they will rip through low-level play to the point where newer players may actually be driven away.

*** In second edition A&D, the Wu Jen spend [[CastFromHitPoints hit points to cast magic]] with the cost of each spell being three times the level of that spell. The problem is, at level one, the Wu Jen get 1d4 and an additional hit point for their starting health. This means you have a 50% chance of having [[IneptMage a Wu Jen that can't cast any spells]].

* ''VideoGame/Dota2'''s Anti-Mage, as his name suggests, is meant to be a MageKiller Hero thanks to his abilities, which include a ManaBurn passive, a skill that grants [[AntiMagic magic resistance]] and can reflect targeted spells, and an ultimate ability that does damage based on how much mana the target is missing. However, he's also designed as a FragileSpeedster hard carry hero, meaning that [[MagikarpPower he starts off very weak and spends most of the game trying to gather gold and items until he comes online in the lategame]]. Because ''Dota 2'' {{invert|edtrope}}s LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, magic-based heroes are more of a threat early in the game, when Anti-Mage is too weak to participate in fights. As such, he fails in his mage-killer role, instead staying away from everyone for most of the game and focusing on killing creeps instead of heroes, until he gets enough items to steamroll everyone regardless of how mana-reliant they are (or his team loses due to playing [=4v5=] for the first 30 minutes of the game). It's telling that despite most of his skillset being designed to make life harder for mages, his most important one is generally agreed to be his [[TeleportSpam Blink]], which isn't necessarily more effective against mages than other hero types.

** Paladin kits should be balanced against various different foes. Undead Hunters are [[CaptainObvious better performing against the undead]]. Inquisitors are better perfoming against wizards. Cavaliers are better performing against demons and dragons. Choosing one kit for your character won't result in CripplingOverspecialization, as all of them can perform quite well for the whole game, but you will get some advantages in specific quests, thus experiencing different situations. After the ''Enhanced Edition'' added kits to the first game, this balance was only on paper: undead hunters became relatively weaker than cavaliers (whose passive abilities turn some [[NintendoHard hard encounters]] of BG1 into cakewalks) or inquisitors, maybe even plain unkitted paladins. In the first game, the undead are very few and not so strong. So undead hunters often result in a wasted OverKill in those few moments when they excel, not counting that there are many spells or items that plenty cover what they can do alone, while a cavalier is all-around better wight strengths that cover a wide range of enemies and situations. More generalist fighters perform overall better than any paladin and there is no tactical reason to deploy undead hunters in the first game, except personal role-playing or custom expression.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'' had ''serious'' balance issues with its weapons. There were four types of weapons- basic, mundane weapons, special weapons, weapons created by transmuting the souls of defeated bosses, and dragon weapons, each divided by the type of material used to upgrade them (basic Titanite, Twinking Titanite, Demon Titanite and Dragon Scales). Unfortunately BoringButPractical ended up being the order of the day, since ''only'' basic weapons could be upgraded beyond level 5- sure, you required a pair of special Embers to give to a specific blacksmith to get past the level 5 and 10 caps, but once you had them a basic weapon could be upgraded to ''+15.'' While special, boss and dragon weapons could come with a number of special attributes and unique attacks, From Software ''seriously'' overestimated how valuable these effects were compared to the raw face-smashing power of a +15 weapon that simply has much higher DPS. To add insult to injury, ''only'' basic weapons could be imbued with special elements (like lightning and chaos), and there were ''very'' few special weapons that you were allowed to buff with damage-enhancing items or spells, which would often contribute almost as much damage as the weapon itself. ''Very'' few non-basic weapons were considered worth using in the long run for anything other than fun (such as the Black Knight Halberd and Quelaag's Furysword), resulting in a game where a sword crafted from the crystallized soul of a fallen god was considered worthless next to the basic Zweihander you found lying around [[DiscOneNuke in the first area after the tutorial zone]]. Armour was even ''worse,'' since they didn't have things like move sets to differentiate them and a lot of non-basic sets couldn't be upgraded ''at all.'' Later games fixed the issue by both lowering the level cap for basic weapons (from +15 to +10) and increasing the damage scaling that non-basic weapons received so a +5 boss weapon would scale as well as or even ''better'' than a +10 basic weapon.

** There are three sizes of ship: destroyers (small), cruisers (medium) and battleships (large- carriers are also large size, but are less direct combat-focused ships). Smaller ships move faster (filling your action gauge more quickly) but are obviously weaker. The problem is that if you can use battleships, ''you use friggin' battleships.'' The difference in both firepower and durability between tiers is ''exponential,'' completely lopsiding the speed vs power equation- a destroyer may be able to act more often than a battleship, but its small-sized popguns are effectively worthless against battleship defences (they can barely even damage cruisers), while the large scale weapons mounted on capital ships will ''melt'' through smaller craft. Cruisers have the additional balance millstone that they were supposed to function as point defence craft, but that brings us to the ''other'' major issue with the ship combat, and the reason carriers still had a place in the game despite having less raw power than battleships:

*** The most noteworthy issue is how the designers greatly underestimated the Psychic type. Both its counters worthless (there were no strong Bug-type moves in the game, with the only Ghost-type move that wasn't a FixedDamageAttack also being painfully weak), a programming error made Psychics ''completely immune'' to the latter instead of the opposite, and even if neither of those things were an issue, Psychic-types were still strong against Poison (with many Mons in the game, including most Bugs and all Ghosts, having that as a secondary typing).
*** The apparent balance between "physical" and "special" types was also an illusion; physical Attack and Defense were separate stats, but the Special stat governed both offense and defense; meaning strong Special attackers were automatically strong Special tanks. Needless to say, Psychic is one of the special types, which only helped that type dominate all the more. Meanwhile, the Dragon type basically failed to ''exist'' offensively -- its only move was Dragon Rage, which always does 40 damage. The second generation addressed these flaws, and each succeeding generation has fine-tuned the system further.
*** In addition, the Fire-type was rendered completely redundant by Ice, of all types, in Generation I, because except for Ice itself (which was practically moot as all but two Ice-types were part Water, and these two had other, physical, weaknesses) and the never-used Bug, every type that Fire was strong against was also weak to Ice, Ice attacks were strong against some types that Fire was not, including one (Ground) that is strong against Fire, and another (Dragon) which resists its attacks. (The Steel-type had yet to exist.) The Fire-type itself did not resist Ice-type attacks until the following generation, and Ice-type moves were much more common than their Fire-type counterparts anyway, because Ice Beam and Blizzard were both [=TMs=] that could be learned by practically any Special-based attacker, while Flamethrower[[note]]which wasn't even a TM[[/note]] and Fire Blast could only be learned by Pokémon of their own type, with very rare exceptions. If that were not enough, the Freeze [[StatusEffects status ailment]] was [[GameBreaker completely broken]] in Generation I, as it prevented all attacks, and would ''never'' heal in-battle unless the opponent was [[WhoWouldBeStupidEnough stupid enough]] to attack the frozen Pokémon with a Fire-type move, or use [[UselessUsefulSpell Haze]]. Burn, on the other hand, did nothing but take off 1/16 of the enemy's health each turn, which is negligible. (Later generations would at least fix this by halving the Attack of a burned Pokémon, and giving all frozen Pokémon a chance to thaw each turn.) This meant that using a Fire-type would do nothing but take up a valuable party slot. The changes from Generation II onwards, despite being intended to balance the Psychic-type, actually did more to {{Nerf}} the Ice-type than any other. (See below.)
*** Note that there is a slight balance in Special and Physical in the first generation. Special still did not give you protection against Physical. And the Physical side happens to have the Normal type. In the first generation, it was typing that had 1 resistor (Rock) and 1 immunity (Ghost), but nothing weak to it. Defensively, it is immune to the underdeveloped Ghost Type, and weak to Fighting Type. The catch is, in Gen I, the resistor in question is weak (or, in the case of Omastar and Kabutops, at least neutrally-affected) to the ever-common Water, and those that are immune are extremely fragile and weak to the ever-common Ground, and Fighting types are taken down without question by Psychic-types and the fact that good Fighting-type moves are are ridiculously rare. In return, Normal has the crit-fest Slash, the extremely powerful Hyper Beam (with no recharge if it defeats the other Pokemon), and Body Slam, which has the power, wide distribution, and chance to paralyze to make it an extremely game changing move. There is a reason why many Gen I competitive analysis for Normal-type mons on Website/{{Smogon}} go around "This thing is good but is not Tauros" or "This thing is really good, but has no Water moves". Like Psychic-type above, Normal-types were severely nerfed in second gen onwards.

** In a more general note, Pokémon is balanced by luck, as there are quite a number of moves with their additional effects chance of occurring is determined by the RandomNumberGod.
*** 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-type Pokemon can learn Ice-type attacks against Grass-types, while few Fire types can learn moves effective against Water-types (this was somewhat fixed by letting many of them learn Solar Beam and/or Energy Ball) and even fewer Grass-types can learn Rock-type moves to take out Fire-types.

** Ice-type Pokémon are arguably among the hardest types in the series to use thanks to this. Most of the types they have an advantage to (Grass, Flying and Ground) have other, easier to find weaknesses available earlier than you will have access to Ice and Ice-type weaknesses (Fire, Fighting and Rock) are easy to find too. This means [[CripplingOverspecialization the only advantage they had prior to Gen VI was been the only type that is strong against Dragon-types apart from Dragon itself.]] However, most Dragon Pokémon can learn a Fire move and most Water types can learn an Ice move too making this redundant. Then Fairy-Type in Gen VI gave every other type viewed as useless a reason to be used while removing the only reason to use Ice.

** Stealth Rock is a perfect example of "Everybody's Cheap". In single battles it's absurdly powerful (one use damages ''every'' opponent that comes out as much as 50% health, since, unlike the other entry hazards, it factors [[ElementalRockPaperScissors weakness and resistance into its damage]], and removing it is harder than setting up because that takes a turn and can be blocked by switching to a ghost type), but an enormous number of Pokémon in 4th gen can learn it. As a result, every team uses it and every Pokémon's value is tremendously affected by how much they're affected by Stealth Rock -- [[TierInducedScrappy Charizard]] is notoriously affected, to name one. The developers attempted to [[{{Nerf}} rein this behavior in]] in the fifth generation by making it only available to monsters who learn it normally by level up or through breeding, which still fails as everyone just ported over their Gen IV Pokemon that knew Stealth Rock -- it even came back as a tutor move in Black 2 and White 2, presumably because they didn't want to give people who do so such a huge advantage.
*** Addressed in Generation VI, when Defog, which is also obtainable by a lot of Pokémon in Generation IV, has been changed to remove entry hazards from both sides. And unlike Rapid Spin, no Pokémon is completely immune to it, so you have no worries about the opponent trying to switch to counter your Defog. [[note]]Defog's status as an HM in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum does stop it from being transferred from those games to Generation V, but you can still trade the Pokémon in question to [=HeartGold/SoulSilver=], where Defog isn't an HM, and transfer it to Generation V from there.[[/note]]Only problem that remains is how most Pokemon that learn Defog are Flying-types... and are therefore also weak to Stealth Rock, making it harder for them to use the move without dying first.
** One notable case of "Skill Overestimated" is Rock. Rock seems to be intended as a type for defensively-oriented Pokémon, what with how many of its users fill the MightyGlacier route and its resistance to Normal, but balanced out by it also having weaknesses to the relatively strong Water and Ground and the less-common Fighting and Grass. This worked fine in the first generation, since Normal was an incredibly strong and common attacking type, and Rock and Ghost were the only real checks to it. Then the second generation introduced Steel, which, barring a weakness to Fire instead of a resistance, was just flat-out better than Rock as a defensive type, resisting everything else Rock did and adding some more, while losing the weaknesses to Water and Grass. What's more, the increasing PowerCreep would cause Normal-type moves to fall almost completely out of favor, meaning Rock's main defensive niche wasn't just redundant, but pointless, and it's now considered one of the ''worst'' defensive types. Much like Ice, a lot of the time, Rock-type moves are run for their offensive coverage (though they're still often lamented for lackluster accuracy) while actual Rock-types often languish near the bottom unless they're named Tyranitar (who, as a beneficial weather summoner with very high stats, is very hard to screw up).
** Regigigas falls under "Skill Overestimated". It has extremely high stats in nearly every category, but is hindered by its "Slow Start" ability, which halves its attack and speed until it stays in battle for five straight turns. Unfortunately for the trainer, five turns is more than enough time for your opponent to take advantage of, and switching out resets the timer, so once Regigigas is sent out in battle you have to keep it there, which takes away a big part of battle strategy. To make matters worse, to try and make it even more "balanced", it is the only Pokémon who can learn [=TMs=] that is unable to learn Protect or Rest, two moves that could normally help it try and stall for time. In the end, the developers went way too far in trying to balance Regigigas's power, and it ended up becoming useless instead, though it being given the aforementioned moves in Gen VIII might help.

* Anti-Mage from ''VideoGame/Dota2'' is one of the oldest and most iconic classic heroes in the game. Despite this, he has for a long time been considered an absolute mess of a hero design, but because people are divided on what direction he should be taken to fix him, he hasn't fundamentally changed since his ''VideoGame/DefenseOfTheAncientsAllStars'' days. He is a hero who combines AntiMagic, FragileSpeedster, and MagikarpPower into one package, but his skill mechanics and his role in the metagame are at complete odds with one another.
** His stats: ''Dota'' follows the inverse of LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, where physical attackers in general scale better in the late game than magic users. By looking at raw values, Anti-Mage is a carry, a type of hero defined by their MagikarpPower. However, his stats skew him very far into the late game. Not only is he an Agility carry, which means he'll very high damage output with some physical damage mitigation to boot late game, but his low Base Attack Speed makes him scale even harder than most Agility carries. To balance this, his early game stats are low, including his life pool, and to make him not snowball too quickly, he lacks good creep-clearing skills. The problem comes from the fact it conflicts with his design, which is supposed to be an anti-caster hero. He's a late-game hero in practice but a counter to early-game heroes on paper. Because of his exponential scaling and lack of utility and clear speed early game, Anti-Mage is shoehorned into being played as a flash-farmer[[note]]A type of carry who contributes little to the team early game to farm up clear-boosting items as fast as possible to load up on powerful, expensive items to steamroll the late game[[/note]], which means he will be spending the early game avoiding the heroes he's supposed to counter when they're at their strongest.
** Mana Break: His attacks [[ManaDrain burn the opponent's mana]] and deals damage relative to how much Mana it burnt. His ultimate relies on this since its damage scales with missing mana. While in theory this can be pretty disruptive to casters, because any player can instantly react to being autoattacked, it can only prevent ability casts if they were already at low mana or with the help of another hero to actually suppress them first. Also, because it's tied to your autoattack speed, it's not very effective early game and because Anti-Mage is a squishy melee hero, it can't be used to harass during laning. While more damaging against high-mana enemies, it's more disruptive against low-mana enemies, and this difference used to be even worse back when Mana Break didn't scale with the enemy's max mana. Another weird problem is how it doesn't provide any bonus damage against enemies that ran out of mana.
** Blink: A [[SimpleYetAwesome fast, low-cooldown teleport with good range]]. This lets him engage, escape from fights, and jump between creep waves to farm. This single ability what breaks the rest of Anti-Mage's entire kit. Early game, Blink can't be too effective and his magic resistance can't be too high or it makes him too hard to shut down. Mid game, Blink can't have its cost and cooldown too low and range too high because it affects his farm speed. Late game, this combined with the amount of Armor he gets from Agility late game makes him even harder to kill, which skews him further into late-game and adds to the slowballing problem.
** Counterspell: Passive magic damage resistance with an active that lets him briefly reflect single-target abilities back at the caster. This is arguably his most practical "anti-mage" ability in his kit, but it's at total odds with the other parts of him. Its power early game has to be limited because if it's too good early, then Anti-Mage becomes too hard to shut down combined with his Blink, making it too easy for him to snowball. While having some damage mitigation on a squishy hero is welcome, a purely defensive skill is somewhat counterproductive on a hero that wants to avoid taking damage in team fights in the first place. It also doesn't provide him with any protection against crowd control duration and area of effect disables, and being disabled with or without magic resist is equally bad in a team fight, since the disable has does its job of disrupting a high-value target. As a carry, Anti-Mage should be avoiding taking damage getting disabled in the first place, meaning he won't get as much mileage from mitigating magic damage if he's avoiding them, and carries will buy a Black King Bar to be immune to them in the first place (which Counterspell is ''not'' a replacement for).
** Mana Void: Deals [=AoE=] damage around the target based on the target's missing mana. Because damage is dependent on the target's missing mana points, it's rather weak in the early game, even as a finisher. Getting the optimal scenario for this skill is also very impractical: the target will probably need to spend mana for all their skills (thus allowing them to do their job), let themselves get hit by Anti-Mage long enough from him to burn enough mana, and put themselves right in a spot that lets him hit most of the team with the ult. Even when not going for the most optimal scenarios, it's a difficult skill to time due to many factors like the damage threshold required to kill someone and whether the target has a big enough mana pool (and there's its radius, but it's been buffed to be so high that it's a lot harder to miss in a team fight). The real problem is by time Mana Void can be an effective nuke, a farmed Anti-Mage will have dealt enough damage and render the skill sub-optimal, or have outright killed them already.
** By looking only at his skillset, Anti-Mage seems like a type of hero who should be played by outlasting his opponent's barrage of magic damage and burn down their mana to get a big ult, which would fit a MightyGlacier type of hero. In practice, the best way for Anti-Mage players to stop caster heroes on their tracks is to [[OccamsRazor kill them before they can even retaliate]]. The time Anti-Mage starts becoming effective is when the heroes he's supposed to counters start tapering off anyway. His kit has almost zero crowd control or disables, which are generally more effective as countering casters by preventing them from using their skills in the first place. He lacks any proactive ways to counter casters, and his only options are slow and defensive counters. However, he can't be played as a tank because his survivability early game is too weak and is too high-value of a target to afford drawing hits towards himself. Anti-Mage's best traits end up being his scaling and mobility, and his mana burn, ultimate nuke, and magic damage mitigation are all seen as secondary. This begs the question: is Anti-Mage ''really'' an "anti-mage"?
** The easiest solutions to fix his kit requires taking away something he already has, but how can you make him a better AntiMagic hero while keeping his late-game power and his mobility without turning him into a brand new hero? His {{Expy}}, Magebane, in ''VideoGame/HeroesOfNewerth'' tried that once and it didn't work. To give him something more disruptive against casters and him more reasonable to shut down, they made his Blink give magic armor and give him an aura that made enemies take damage based on mana spent, but this change made him too vulnerable early game and more annoying to play against in a team fight since all he had to do was stand around to contribute extra damage. The community was resistant against changing Magebane further because [=DotA=] ports in general had a SacredCow status to them, and Anti-Mage's janky kit became iconic to the character. He would later be reverted to roughly his original state.
*** Many years later, Magebane was eventually reworked. While he didn't receive any brand-new abilities, he was changed to a Strength hero with better early-game stats, while adding more utility to his kit. His Flash of Anti-Magic has shorter range and longer cooldown, but it a slow, and if it hits an enemy hero, he gains a magic damage shield that deals damage when broken, and Master of the Mantra gives him passive magic damage reduction and more damage reduction to the whole team in a teamfight, and it can be activated to gain a temporary aura that deals damage to enemies based on how much mana they've spent. All these changes combined lets him be played as a front-line hero who can tank magic damage right from the start and allow his mana burn and magic damage mitigation to gather its mileage, and while he's longer has an insanely powerful carry and split pusher late game, he gained more defined weaknesses to make him less frustrating to fight against late-game, without changing the "feel" of the hero. Anti-Mage got a bit of extra utility with a magic damage reduction aura and a Blink that spawns an illusion for more mana burning, but they're gated behind Aghanim's Shard and Scepter, which are rather sub-optimal picks on a carry stat-wise and aren't available early game.
** tl;dr version: Anti-Mage is a GlassCannon FragileSpeedster whose skillset is optimized for a MightyGlacier and a [[MagikarpPower late-game]] hero who is supposed to be a counter to a class of heroes that are primarily at their best early-game, and the best way to play him makes him unable to use the full potential of his kit against the heroes he supposedly counters. If he's ever relevant to the meta, it's to abuse his mobility and late-game power in a carry-centric meta, and almost never for his anti-caster abilities.

* A textbook example of fake balance was present in the old ''VideoGame/{{Asteroids}}''-like Mac game ''Asterax''. The player can choose one of three ships: [[JackOfAllStats the Moth]], which had mediocre everything; [[MightyGlacier the Crab]], which had good guns and shields but tiny engines; and [[FragileSpeedster the Mantis]], which had good engines but tiny guns and shields. The problem with this arrangement came in the form of the game's item shop selling guns, engines and shields, which meant that a Crab pilot could upgrade away their ship's sole deficiency with a single purchase, while Moth and Mantis pilots would need to buy two or three upgrades to reach the same level of effectiveness. Not to mention, as you might expect in an Asteroids game, "better" (i.e. faster) engines can make the game [[NonIndicativeDifficulty harder instead of easier]] anyway.

->''"As Thomas you can shoot more accurately, throw lassos, and climb ledges; and as Ray you can open the pause menu, restart the mission, and choose Thomas instead, you fucking idiot! Ray takes less damage, [[RegeneratingHealth but health regenerates so it hardly matters anyway]], and he can dual wield pistols, which means twice as many weapons you have to stop and reload every fifteen nanoseconds."''

* '''[[TacticalRockPaperScissors Counterplay-based balance]]''': An item or character is ridiculously overpowering, but falls apart if you use a certain item, character, or strategy, but this can be undone with another item/character/strategy, and so on and on until you end up with a multiplicity of layers of counterplay. The rationale here is that these powerful characters can be negated by skilled people capable of exploiting their weaknesses. This also has the side effect of creating {{Skill Gate Character}}s that are very strong against unskilled players, but weak against skilled players. However, this type of balance can fall apart if the type of counterplays available [[HighlySpecificCounterplay makes you overall worse against anything it doesn't counter]].

** A less noticeable example would be some of the unlockable melee weapons compared to their default counterparts, specifically for the Pyro's Fire Axe, Heavy's Fist, Scout's Bat, and Soldier's Shovel. The unlockable weapons generally are better in specific circumstances and worse in others (Axtinguisher does huge damage against burning enemies and less against others, [[DesperationAttack the Equalizer does less damage at high health and more at low health]]), or grant special abilities at the cost of making them less effective as weapons (the G.R.U. deals less damage and makes the Heavy take more damage, but lets him run faster; the Atomizer deals less damage in exchange for giving Scout the ability to triple jump). The catch is that default weapons for those classes are almost ''entirely useless'' in the first place, even as {{Emergency Weapon}}s (the Rocket Launcher and Scattergun reload as fast as their classes' respective melee weapons can be swung, and as mentioned above the latter deals more damage at melee range to begin with; meanwhile, the Minigun and Flamethrower [[BottomlessMagazines don't even have to reload at all]] and rarely run out of ammo in the hands of a skilled player), so there's nowhere to go but up most of the time.

* '''[[TacticalRockPaperScissors Counterplay-based balance]]''': An item or character is ridiculously overpowering, but falls apart if you use a certain item, character, or strategy, but this can be undone with another item/character/strategy, and so on and on until you end up with a multiplicity of layers of counterplay. The rationale here is that these powerful characters can be negated by skilled people capable of exploiting their weaknesses. This also has the side effect of creating {{Skill Gate Character}}s that are very strong against unskilled players, but weak against skilled players. However, this type of balance call fall apart if if the type of counterplays available [[HighlySpecificCounterplay makes you overall worse against anything it doesn't counter]].

*** And then when the meta developed and the air game became much more important, followed by players realizing how awful Mac's recovery was, he immediately became somewhat of a joke character, as players in FG would regularly just throw him off and use a single follow-up attack to take his first stock. Similarly, picking Little Mac in any sort of 4 stock competitive setting results in a quick loss amidst a stream of tears. Especially now that [[Franchise/StreetFighter Ryu]] is out, who is widely considered 'better Mac with air game'.

* The three OriginalGeneration HumongousMecha of ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsJudgment'' are supposed to be balanced, with {{Real Robot}}s "Bellzelute" as a light, dodgy sniper and "Coustwell" the somewhat heavier, melee counterpart. "Granteed", the SuperRobot, is supposed to be the tanker with balanced weapons on both ends. However, thanks to the AI's tendency to attack units with lower evasion rates, the Granteed and its overwhelming armor rating makes it better than the other two. As a bonus, because it is an L-sized unit, attack and defense bonuses are increased, with weapons so powerful its second strongest is greater than the final attack of the other originals, not to mention good weapon reach that makes it the best sniper, tanker, and melee attacker out of all three.
** The ''actual'' balance comes in with how the protagonist receives a different set of "Spirit Commands", depending on whether they're piloting the Granteed or not. On a first playthrough, if the male pilot uses the Granteed, he receives the "Accelerate" Spirit Command, which doesn't quite compensate for the unit's base movement of five. When it finally arrives on the frontlines (or within range of it), it's the best of the three and solidifies its position as the top-tier super, but not before.

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars'':
** The series tried its hardest to balance characters, but certain [=COs=] are just undeniably superior. Max and Eagle both have some powerful units at the cost of other weak units[[note]]Max has strong direct attack but weak indirect attack while Eagle has strong air units but weak naval units[[/note]], but the fact of the matter is you simply don't need to ''use'' the weak units (You'll rarely ever use naval units to begin with). Other [=COs=] like Kanbei and Colin[[note]]The former has strong units at the cost of high deployment expenses, while the other has weak units at the cost of low deployment expense[[/note]] are thoroughly broken because their strengths are easily exploited to far outweigh their weaknesses. On the other end of the tier, [=COs=] like Andy[[note]]JackOfAllStats[[/note]] and Sonja[[note]]Has increased vision on FogOfWar maps, which isn't all that useful even ''on'' such maps, at the cost of often doing less damage than she should[[/note]] are just not worth using. As the series went on attempts were made to balance them out better[[note]]Andy was given one ''hell'' of a Super [=CO=] power, Sonja was given a counter-attack bonus, GameBreaker Lash was nerfed considerably[[/note]] but it wasn't quite enough to fully even the odds.
** There's a general TacticalRockPaperScissors system, and it mostly works--copter beats tank, tank beats anti-air, anti-air beats copter--but breaks down when dealing with naval units. The intended pattern is that battleships are powerful, but can be taken down by bombers and copters and can't shoot them back, but cruisers can take down bombers and copters, so cruisers have the job of escorting battleships. Except that bombers and copters can still deal very heavy damage to cruisers (on fair ground, a copter can take out about half their health while a bomber brings them down to almost nothing), and because they have greater movement speed and can fly, they'll pretty much always be able to hit the cruisers first, and once they've gotten their licks in, the cruisers are probably too heavily-damaged to fight back. Not to mention, it takes a lot more more money to build a cruiser than it does to build a copter. Because of this, a flight of bombers and copters can effortlessly decimate any naval force that doesn't have fighter screening. This also makes Drake, who trades off strong ships for weak aircraft, a lot less effective than he should be.

* '''[[TacticalRockPaperScissors Counterplay-based balance]]''': An item or character is ridiculously overpowering, but falls apart if you use a certain item, character, or strategy, but this can be undone with another item/character/strategy, and so on and on until you end up with a multiplicity of layers of counterplay. The rationale here is that these powerful characters can be negated by skilled people capable of exploiting their weaknesses. This also has the side effect of creating {{Skill Gate Character}}s that are very strong against unskilled players, but weak against skilled players. However, this can still fall apart if the type of counterplays [[HighlySpecificCounterplay severely gimp your overall power level against everything else]].