How important is game balance? Consider that game companies are willing to face the wrath of players whose characters have just been adjusted, because they know balance is absolutely critical to the long-term health of the game.

The +7 Balance Engine can help achieve game balance while at the same time introducing key factors that increase player acceptance of changes to the game environment:

The +7 Balance Engine balance algorithms are designed to reach a balanced state with the minimum movement necessary. This is in stark contrast to manual balancing, where a specific adjustment will attempt to get a component exactly in-balance in one step. Such one-time corrections are rarely exactly on-target, and can often lead to an over-shoot-and-correct phenomenon. Thus, dynamically balanced games enjoy the benefit of reaching a balanced state with less overall adjustment than can be achieved with manual balancing efforts.

The +7 Balance Engine employs a philosophy of small nudges rather than drastic revisions. Players will never enter the game world to find their game is significantly different than it was yesterday. Adjustments are slow and controlled, allowing players time to adjust their play-style to the changes. In many cases, players will adjust unconsciously to slow, controlled shifts in the game environment.

When employing dynamic balance control, adjustments are made earlier. Imbalances can be algorithmically detected and corrected much earlier than they can be human-detected. This means that broken components may be adjusted before they're significantly exploited by the player base -- and that underpowered components may be detected and strengthened before the player base abandons them.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, using algorithmic balancing removes the target of player's anger: the game designer. Players will target game designers that they perceive as out-of-touch with the game, blaming game designers when their favorite components are nerfed. When players have an understanding that game adjustments are made not by subjective observers, but based on hard player-base statistics, the 'finger of blame' has nowhere left to point, they can understand and accept changes.

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