The Razor’s Edge of Balance.
There is a never-ending and ever emotional argument when it comes to many games regarding balance. Balance would be the game being fair and everyone having an even footing when it comes to actually playing the game. It is not an uncommon sight to visit a particular game’s forums and see someone talking about, or dare I say complaining, about how feature x or feature y is unbalanced or favoring their opponent.I believe that balance is something that has become so subjective that unless there is a significant and obvious difference between two things in a game that should be equal that we, the people playing the games, might have a less than objective perspective on balance .
Say for example that your opponent in a real time strategy game like Starcraft 2 is playing a certain faction and is beating you rather severely, my reaction could be any number of things but most likely would fall into either A) “Oh wow this opponent is good/Oh wow I’m awful at Starcraft 2.” or B) “Hmm maybe his faction is just overpowered/the faction I’m playing just isn’t very good 1v1 against his.” In that example I would go with option A as it is a fact that I’m not very good at SC2 but I think it provides a good example of the ranges of reactions.
