Games

I play DBD, and one of the playerbase’ biggest annoyance is balance by win rate and usage rate. Sometimes an option is just fun and well designed, without being too strong.

It’s especially important to look at what’s fun for multiple players. A good example might be Helldivers 2’s jet pack. Yes, it’s so fun to cover a lot of ground at once, but if the way that’s used is to abandon a cornered teammate to go do objectives while they die surrounded, then it suddenly makes teammates feel slow and useless.

Meanwhile there’s dopamine-driven team synergy potential with the assisted reload weapons. But, there’s not a lot of mechanical information encouraging their use, and it’s pretty simple for people to just use them alone.

I remember TF2’s simple idea where all weapons did more damage the closer you were to enemies, and it demonstrates what I think can be really good balancing design.