#balancing system

I’ve been playing lots of Pokemon games recently and this particular one just so happened to give me a painful yet oddly fun first hand experience of the importance balancing game systems and the effects of lacking such balance.

Normally in EoS, each Pokemon species has two Abilities (usually taken and tweaked from the main franchise to suit Mystery Dungeon’s gameplay), an IQ group which determines the extra skills/perks the Pokemon gains upon raising IQ (eating Gummis), and a list of moves that they will learn on level-up. The dungeons themselves are random by layout, but each dungeon has a set item and Pokemon list that determines what can be found and fought. This randomised Rom gave each species of Pokemon random Abilities, movesets, and IQ groups. Furthermore, the set list for Pokemon were randomised, so although the 3rd floor for Mt. Bristle will always contain the same list of Pokemon, the Pokemon you find might usually only be found in a completely different dungeon and usually be more or less common.

Abilities I was given completely disabled weather effects which made me avoid potentially deadly scenarios early on and in future. One Ability didn’t affect my Pokemon at all, while another halved my partner’s movement speed, turns, and attack for the first 10 or so turns. The imbalance of Abilities made certain scenarios easier and even worry-free while it made other scenarios like early floor encounters extremely difficult.

Monster houses spawned early in the game; a normally rare, late-game challenge that makes the player use every resource, turn and strategy they can and consider their options carefully. My moveset included a move that damaged the entire room, saving me constantly from what would have been an unfair and deadly event.

There were plenty of frustrating encounters that I felt I had no control over. Most of these situations were due to the enemy units having strong, unbalanced properties, whether powerful moves or stats that are usually seen in late-game or boss-fights.

A Pokemon was once adjacent to my partner when we entered a new floor and one-shot them before we could attack.

I was instantly killed by a one-hit-KO move without knowing the Pokemon knew it.

My partner and I were attacking an enemy with incredibly good stats. It survived an unusual amount of turns before using a multi-hitting move to finish me off.

Fullerton describes “enjoyable activities” as having “clear goals, stable rules, and challenges well matched to skills...” (2018. p.101). Because the challenges and whether I got one-shot or lightly tapped was always so random, the challenge didn’t always feel enjoyable. The only times I felt in control was after an enemy had halved my health and within that instant, I realised I was going to fail the objective if I didn’t make careful choices for the next few turns. It was fun when it did occur due to the challenge still proving beatable, but in a way, the rollercoaster of snapping in and out of focusing or having to constantly be on high alert was mentally taxing.

Eventually after failing the second mission so many times, the game initiated a balancing/negative feedback loop (Fullerton, T. 2018. p.152) and gave me some healing and revival items to aid me on my next attempt. Funnily enough, despite playing this game multiple times as a kid, I never once saw this cutscene. In all honesty, it hurt my pride a little but was funny nevertheless to see how the increased chance/randomness and lack of balance had affected gameplay.

At this point in my journey, I ended up revising my objective. The game encourages the player to successfully clear a dungeon with little to no blackouts by using all of their resources. This is enforced with the high penalty for fainting which removes up to half of your items and gold carried on you. Being able to prepare before dungeons, taking a limited amount of resources with you, the high amount of information given to the player, and the turn-based, grid gameplay tells me that the game was originally designed to be strategy oriented.

The designer’s intention of gameplay changed due to its random nature. The player experience goal is now more akin to ‘trying again and not giving up, using everything you learn as you fail’ as you would see in games like Cuphead or other roguelikes. From an objective perspective, my goals changed to be ‘clearing the dungeon in as few attempts as possible’ rather than ‘little to no blackouts’.

Engaging gameplay is achieved when challenge and ability are balanced (Fullerton, T. 2018. p.98) . In this randomised version of Explorers of Sky, every story dungeon felt like a brick wall or dead end (Fullerton, T. 2018. p.320) where the only way to progress was by slamming my head against it until it fell.

Playing the regular game was extremely different. It was a gentle slope that gradually threw new challenges like the occasional move that hit in a line of sight instead of adjacent, or the boss fights you could prepare for. Seeing the effects of balancing systems first hand and how important they are was really interesting to experience. Although the randomised version can be incredibly frustrating and get a little tedious in its unwavering challenge, the newness and difficulty increase of my old experience satiates the Achiever in me (2018. p.103) with the new different cast of characters providing my Storyteller play style with new materials for telling my characters’ stories.

I’m curious to see how gameplay is affected in late game when dungeons are longer and how it feels when the challenges I was meant to face later on have already been faced before. My assumption is that because challenge is no longer increased over time, I will eventually become less invested and grow bored (Fullerton, T. 2018. p.98). I’ll see for myself soon enough!