Balancing cards in Gods Unchained

The FAQ page for Gods Unchained says it best- “card games are difficult to balance”. Having played trading card games much of my life, I couldn’t agree more. It’s nearly impossible to understand the complex interaction between hundreds of cards enough to perfectly balance a game. This is especially true when balancing for numerous game modes and player skill levels.

The options available for balancing card games vary on the type of game. For a paper TCG like Magic the Gathering, the only option was to restrict whether the card could be used in a deck. This is contrasted with a digital card game such as Hearthstone, where they could change or rework a card entirely after creating the card.

Gods Unchained is taking a best of both worlds approach with a “balancing beta”, which is a one month window they allow themselves to make changes to cards after releasing them. In theory, once the balancing beta is over for new cards, the card will remain the way it is forever.

I’ve heard some concerns with the way the Gods Unchained team is approaching balancing, and rightfully so. People are wanting a healthy meta and they’re worried overpowered cards ruining the game. I’d like to try to address some of these concerns in this post.

What is a healthy meta?

A healthy meta is one where there’s diversity in decks types, play styles, and is fun to play. In other words, people feel they can play how they want and have a good experience.

However, it’s important to know how different players have fun in a card game. Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic the Gathering) identified three generic player profiles: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Timmy likes big spells and big creatures. He’s more concerned about the quality of wins and not quantity. Johnny, on the other hand, has fun by winning in creative or interesting ways. He might use cards that are lesser used or difficult to pull off. Finally, Spike is competitive, plays to win, and has fun by winning. When balancing a card game, it’s important to consider the different ways people play the game.

There’s another aspect to consider: deck type. I usually group decks into four main types, which are aggro, midrange, control, and combo. Each deck has a different speed and win condition. Aggro, for example, tries to reduce the opponent to 0 life as quickly as possible. Control, on the other hand, plays a slower game but tries to win by maximizing card advantage. In a healthy meta, all of these decks (and plenty of hybrids/in-betweens) are viable. In fact, often these deck types are similar to rock-paper-scissors and serve as counters to each other. One deck type shouldn't be dominant.

So, we have an idea of what a good meta would look like. Where do we run into problems?

To nerf, or not to nerf?

When a card dominates the meta or when a card creates too many situations where players don’t have effective answers, it may be time to nerf (or ban/restrict) the card. People that have played Magic the Gathering may remember a fun little card named Skullclamp. The card had such an impact on the meta that your deck either had to run it, or your deck had to be designed to try to beat it. Eventually, the card was banned from play and the resulting meta was much more diverse.

It’s inevitable that the Gods Unchained team will let some overpowered cards slip through the cracks. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle it, but if I had to guess, they’d sooner ban or restrict the card from play than to change it.

When is it time to take action?

When I think of balance in games, I often think of Smash Brothers Melee released in 2001. It’s a fighting game with a vibrant competitive scene that is still active today. What’s unique is that the game never received any balance changes throughout its life. Yet, the tier list and ranking of the characters continuously evolved several years after the game was released. In Jigglypuff’s case, she went from a below-average character to a top-tier competitor. Many other characters took years to unlock their true potential (there’s a fantastic article written about the topic here, I’d highly recommend it!).

These days, I often see people talk about OP and broken cards in digital card games. In Hearthstone, I recall seeing calls for nerfs even before a set was released. Are some of these claims legitimate? Absolutely! But, I’d rather see more discussion surrounding counterplay before calls for banning/nerfing cards.

With enough experimentation, there may be unforeseen ways to counter seemingly broken or OP strategies. I believe the marketplace in Gods Unchained is fantastic for the game for this exact reason. With the marketplace, people will be able to more easily experiment with their decks to try new cards and counters.

I'm hoping Gods Unchained's meta shapes up to be fun for many for years to come. Remember- the next time you encounter a card that you think is OP, try asking yourself how you can play around the card. Or, ask yourself if there's a different way you can design your deck to better counter the card.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject. What are some potentially problematic cards in the game currently? What kind of things can the developers do to help balance the game?

Until next time, cheers!