gaming Best examples of TERRIBLE balancing in games

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,278]

Game balance, depending on what type of game it is, can be a tricky thing. Sometimes it is easy to balance out the overall experience while other times, the developers miss something and as a result, it can break the experience. The most common genres with this are multiplayer shooters, righting games and some others. 

 

We can discuss our personal experiences with games that just have terrible balance in one way or another, or maybe it did have that until they patched it. Or it could be a game that couldn't have been patched, due to lack of Internet at the time.  

 

Here is a very recent one for me and the sole game that made me want to make this thread:

 

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2

While the game itself is actually pretty good, the balance problems here are horrendous and this is actually due to one simple thing: Rose, a character for the plant team .She is so unbelievably overpowered in every way that it makes playing as a zombie against her frustrating and nothing else. Her shots are homing, her damage and fire rate are pretty brutal and her 3 abilities are a complete pain, and the zombie team just doesn't have anything that can compete with this. This issue on its own is flooding the official forums for the game and for good reason, as this one thing is breaking the multiplayer entirely. How PopCap did not see this is beyond me. 

[MetalBrony 44]

Oh  know

 

War Thunder/ World of Tanks

Russian Bias.

Is it just me, or do the Russian vehicles seem sometimes a little op? A good example is some camo bonuses. 

[Megas 27,063]

The junction system in Final Fantasy VIII, which is always in your favor despite a bunch of crap the game throws at you(Draw, Enemy levels up with you), once you play your cards right*hint*hint*wink*you can pretty much become a god by the end of the tutorial

Edited February 24, 2016 by ChicksDigGiantRobots

[MelloSkitzo 57]

The boltor prime in warframe is wayyyyyyyyyy to overpowered lol. The thing is way to strong to be in any game.

[Castle Bleck 19,166]

The cops in GTA V are borderline omniscient.

[Celestial Sloth 369]

The cops in GTA V are borderline omniscient.

 

Shotgun cops in GTA 4. Now that's a bad time!

[Once In A Blue Moon 894]

In Dawn of War II, your scout team could fire high-damage sniper shots, plant explosives and lay mines whilst invisible. So long as you had enough supplies for each of those abilities, nothing short of a stealth-detecting boss could stop you. And when one ability unlock in the sequel Chaos Rising made mines and explosives an energy-using ability (as well as deploying mines in clusters) there really was no challenge. Finally, add in your commander's ability to permanently reduce all energy costs whenever he used 'warcry' and you could stand at the mission start with the commander shouting his head off for a couple of minutes to make all energy-using abilities completely free.

 

Most of the later abilities in DoWII Chaos Rising were completely overpowered (especially with no energy cost) but the scouts had far and away the best.

[Discordian 6,013]

The junction system in Final Fantasy VIII, which is always in your favor despite a bunch of crap the game throws at you(Draw, Enemy levels up with you), once you play your cards right*hint*hint*wink*you can pretty much become a god by the end of the tutorial

It should be noted that if you aren't trying to break the game but are using your Junctions right the game plays in perfect balance. Way too many people play the game without fully understanding the Junction system or hear they have to break the game early on or something and they don't just...play the game.

[ChikaChan 7,320]

Godzilla the game for ps4 >.>

[TeeSix 116]

Oh  know

 

War Thunder/ World of Tanks

Russian Bias.

Is it just me, or do the Russian vehicles seem sometimes a little op? A good example is some camo bonuses. 

 

I'm a pretty hardcore War Thunder tanks player, and I've got to agree with you. American, British and German tanks all relying on certain shell types getting nerfed to shit, while the Soviets are left untouched. Not to mention the battlerating/matchmaker system, complete arse that is. Oh, and pay-to-win rocket-firing tanks that can nuke anything in the game.

 

God I could go on for hours, and that's only tanks, let alone aeroplanes. And then the devs have the nerve to refuse to release gamplay stats on the count of, and I quote 100% truthfully here; "[The players] are too stupid to understand the statistics'. Simple conclusion is that if they don't want to show us, then there's either no stats or the stats are totally fucked. After all, sekrit documents, am I right komrade? Axaxaxaxa )))))))

 

[Kronos the Revenant 1,971]

I know this may sound really atupid when i say it, but ill say it: ALL RATCHET AND CLANK GAMES BY INSOMNIAC.

 

Here's what i mean: when you play it the first time, it's really tough, right? You get thrown immediately into the fray with almost no knowledge as to what you're supposed to do. Then, after dying a bunch of times, you finally figure out a strategy to progress-- it took me five freaking tries to beat Drek from the first game, and that's the LAST Rathet and Clank game ive beaten--and eventually beat the game. But, the Ratchet and Clank series has this gimmick in which you can replay the game and enemies are slightly--SLIGHTLY--tougher while you get monsterously overpowered--*ahem* RYNO *ahem*--and suddenly, even the final bosses become pushovers. The games end up becoming something like endless dungeon crawlers where you dying only happens if you're either careless or plain stupid or bored just because you havent seen the fainting animation in a few hours and want to see it again for once. Does anyone agree or am i just standing on my own soap box like an idiot?

[Evilshy 5,089]

The boltor prime in warframe is wayyyyyyyyyy to overpowered lol. The thing is way to strong to be in any game.

 

What? There are multiple weapons way better than Boltor Prime. Tonkor, Soma Prime and Vaykor Hek (hell, even normal Hek since you get it to something crazy like 390% multishot and then build for elements) off the top of my head. Redeemer with a frame that can consistently trigger finisher/stealth bonuses.

 

Now what is unbalanced is the way weapon modding and enemy scaling works. At high levels, you basically have to use the best 10 or so weapons modded completely for damage or it's just not good enough. A lot of weapons simply aren't viable because they need utility mods to work well, but every utility mod is 1 less damage mod. Tonkor can get away with like 1 utility mod because it's bases are so high, but even then it pretty much always has to be reload speed, which might as well be a fire rate mod on Tonkor because of the 2 shot clip.

 

It's really annoying, some of my favorite weapons art Paris Prime and Prisma Grakata, but I can';t use either on the really high level stuff because they can't put out of enough damage on enough things.

 

Still a super fun game, though. And if this post is scaring anybody away from getting into it, this is only true for end-game content. Until then, literally anything can work as long as you upgrade your mods and aren't an idiot. It;s also free, with a very reasonable pay system. And the paid currency can be freely traded, meaning you can sell rare items to get it without spending any actual money. Also, the paid currency bundles usually go half-off during Steam sales.

[Dust and Memories 557]

Destiny: The Taken King:

"Oh, you have a maxed VoG Hard Mode run equipment loadout with your favorite exotics and you're an expert in using Voidwalker techniques? Well, too bad. Everything you have is useless, your favorite strikes and raids are either locked out or impossible to hit up a group for, and we threw in a bunch of new classes that you can cheese the hell out of with little to no skill. Have fun! (For $40.)"

 

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (or any other CoD game since CoD 5):

"This gun can kill you in three shots, puts out six shots in half a second, and has the range of a sniper rifle. But you can't get it from anything but those Supply Drops you only get every 20 levels or pay real money for."

 

Warframe:

"I heard you liked not having to grind endlessly? Too bad. BACK INTO THE SALT MI- I mean, OROKIN TOWERS WITH YOU!" - literally every update

 

 

World of Warplanes:

"So, remember how epic the Bf-109 was in CBT? Guess what? We just buffed the Russians! For the third time in a month! Now it takes five minutes instead of two to kill an Il-5!" - true story, actually took me five minutes to kill an Il-5 sitting right behind it in a Bf-109E

 

World of Tanks: Blitz:

"xaxaxaxaxa *world blows up in a storm of Communism*"

 

Literally Any Crackshot-Using Minecraft Gun Server:

"This here LMG had the range of a sniper rifle, two hit kills, has 100 bullets, next to no recoil, and doesn't put out any tracers. This sniper rifle has exploding rounds, a night-vision scope, bans people when you kill them with it, and sends up a highly inappropriate firework on impact. But this shotgun is my favorite..." Et cetera, ad nauseam.

 

Humor aside, those are probably the games with the biggest problems balance-wise I know of.

[Anneal 2,194]

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (or any other CoD game since CoD 5):

"This gun can kill you in three shots, puts out six shots in half a second, and has the range of a sniper rifle. But you can't get it from anything but those Supply Drops you only get every 20 levels or pay real money for."

 

The automatic assault rifles and SMGs in CoD for a very long time has always reigned supreme; the developers had no sense of map scale and recoil, and due to most deathmatch maps being small the automatic fire isn't needed to fire as long for recoil to seriously kick in. Semi-autos who can't deal an immediately large amount of damage has always been seen as useless for a very long time.

 

And let's not forget TF2. I won't say it's extremely terrible balancing but at times it seems like Valve is on drugs when they update stuff. Pyros infamously get a lot of attention and are the target of all nerfs and buffs and whatnot. Some of the time there's no real reason for it.

[joanro 247]

The two things I wish they would have changed in Gears of War Ultimate Edition with the recent update is how powerful the melee attack is(a player can be downed with two melee strikes) and the grenade stun(It's too long...even if the player misses, the stun gives the player more than enough time to kill his opponent before he/she can recover from the grenade stun).

[Nuke87654 1,849]

In Dawn of War II, your scout team could fire high-damage sniper shots, plant explosives and lay mines whilst invisible. So long as you had enough supplies for each of those abilities, nothing short of a stealth-detecting boss could stop you. And when one ability unlock in the sequel Chaos Rising made mines and explosives an energy-using ability (as well as deploying mines in clusters) there really was no challenge. Finally, add in your commander's ability to permanently reduce all energy costs whenever he used 'warcry' and you could stand at the mission start with the commander shouting his head off for a couple of minutes to make all energy-using abilities completely free.

 

Most of the later abilities in DoWII Chaos Rising were completely overpowered (especially with no energy cost) but the scouts had far and away the best.

 

You mean Cyrus:

 

 

I will agree with you on that, level him up correctly and he can literally solo whole missions on his own as his explosives and high powered shot paired with his infiltration ability to stay hidden and there's literally nothing short of detecting bosses that can stop him. In chaos rising, try to have the FC have the ability to reduce cooldowns so he can make energy abilities free, and have Cyrus be equipped with energy based explosives, and the only thing you ever need to be concerned with him is patience and time.

 

There's another character from DOW 2 that it's nearly as oped as him too in Tarkus:

 

 

Let him level up his stamina to full so he can get invulnerability on his tactical advance, level his energy till at least he can use grenades as energy weapons, and he is quite possibly the most important member in boss fights and the 2nd most oped character next to Cyrus as he will not die while his tactical advance is active and his taunt ability is awesome as he can draw enemies attention towards him, making him oped as heck in boss fights as Taunt -> Tactical Advance = him laughing all the damage boss throws at him while the rest of your squad can take down the boss while he's distracted. He also makes an awesome Orbital Strike and Artillery beacon as he is immune to any damage while his tactical advance is active and taunt will draw enemy squads towards him so have no fear using him as bait.

 

He actually even outstrips Cyrus in opedness in Retribution as Cyrus was toned down a bit while Tarkus got even more overpowered as he can cause crap loads of damage with any weapon he wields. Give him Shadowscale armor to infiltrate and a plasma cannon and he can solo whole maps on his own.

 

Speaking of DOW 2, there was a time when these units =

Assault Terminators were the most broken things in the whole game as their super heavy armor got reworked to being strong against anything that isn't power, plasma, and artillery weapons, 5400 HP pool, and their than new lightning claws were melee heavy weapons, and they could level up! Summoning even one squad on the field at any point in the game were considered an insta 'I win button' as you could send your whole army at them and the 'clawminators' will murder them with little difficulty. They did balanced them were they made the Lightning claws power melee and reduced their hp upon upgrades to 4500 HP, and they no longer leveled up.

 

Now Catachan Devils:

 

 

in the vanilla retribution are broken as they're a utility squad that is too good at too many roles. Also their shotguns cause the same damage at all ranges while the comparable scout shotguns suffers a damage penalty the longer the distance the target is, power melee weapons that allowed them to beat the crap out of many melee squads and paired with high explosive shot to knock them back to soften many melee squads up before they engage, along with their damnable ol reliable and smoke grenades to ensure nobody bothers them with ranged fire in melee, they're broken as heck.

 

Thankfully, the elite mod and others rectified that and more.

I'm a pretty hardcore War Thunder tanks player, and I've got to agree with you. American, British and German tanks all relying on certain shell types getting nerfed to shit, while the Soviets are left untouched. Not to mention the battlerating/matchmaker system, complete arse that is. Oh, and pay-to-win rocket-firing tanks that can nuke anything in the game.

 

God I could go on for hours, and that's only tanks, let alone aeroplanes. And then the devs have the nerve to refuse to release gamplay stats on the count of, and I quote 100% truthfully here; "[The players] are too stupid to understand the statistics'. Simple conclusion is that if they don't want to show us, then there's either no stats or the stats are totally fucked. After all, sekrit documents, am I right komrade? Axaxaxaxa )))))))

 

 

I've heard Gaijin Entertainment is infamous for their heavy favoritism towards anything Soviet/Russian stuff. There's even evidence to show for it on sites like ED to showcase that they're blatantly Soviet WW2 fanboys.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Nuke87654

[Manman20x6 359]

I haven't played the game, but the most broken character in fighting game history is by far Ivan Ooze from Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition

 

[Artimis Whooves 1,576]

 

 

I know this may sound really atupid when i say it, but ill say it: ALL RATCHET AND CLANK GAMES BY INSOMNIAC. Here's what i mean: when you play it the first time, it's really tough, right? You get thrown immediately into the fray with almost no knowledge as to what you're supposed to do. Then, after dying a bunch of times, you finally figure out a strategy to progress-- it took me five freaking tries to beat Drek from the first game, and that's the LAST Rathet and Clank game ive beaten--and eventually beat the game. But, the Ratchet and Clank series has this gimmick in which you can replay the game and enemies are slightly--SLIGHTLY--tougher while you get monsterously overpowered--*ahem* RYNO *ahem*--and suddenly, even the final bosses become pushovers. The games end up becoming something like endless dungeon crawlers where you dying only happens if you're either careless or plain stupid or bored just because you havent seen the fainting animation in a few hours and want to see it again for once. Does anyone agree or am i just standing on my own soap box like an idiot?

I agree, but it doesn't make it any less fun in my opinion... If you want to see a pushover boss try R&C before the nexus and get the RYNO, you can kill the prog duo in a couple of hits! 

[YoshiFanGM 48]

Since Super Smash Brothers is the only "fighting" game series that I play, I can only think of Kirby (from SSB64) being somewhat broken in that game. His up-tilt can easily break a shield and punish the opponent, and his recovery is amazing, being only worse than Pikachu's.

 

 

Meta Knight in Brawl has also been considered broken by many. He even was banned for a time in tournaments but I don't play Brawl very often.

[Makazi 317]

The crissaegrim in Symphony of the Night is the most balance-breaking weapon I know of; once you get it, you can mow down pretty much everything in your path. It's so OP that lots of people consider using it as cheating.

 

In this video you can see this dude using it to take out high-level bosses in a couple of hits.

 

While it is pretty cheap, it's still hella fun to use, haha.

[GreySentinel 157]

I haven't played the game, but the most broken character in fighting game history is by far Ivan Ooze from Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition

 

 

I came here expecting this to be posted. I'm just gonna post this instead:

 

 

Allowing that into arcades should have been illegal... 

[Wax n' Wane 103]

Maplestory, their potential system, specifically their bonus potential system.

[Megas 27,063]

I came here expecting this to be posted. I'm just gonna post this instead:

 

 

Allowing that into arcades should have been illegal... 

"SNK Boss Syndrome" is one of the most accurate ways to describe broken characters

[TeeSix 116]

I've heard Gaijin Entertainment is infamous for their heavy favoritism towards anything Soviet/Russian stuff. There's even evidence to show for it on sites like ED to showcase that they're blatantly Soviet WW2 fanboys.

 

Not surprised honestly. Though I think they might have finally sat up and started to listen at least a little bit, they've been a little more open on dev posts over the last week or two. They're just probably only beginning to realise what they've done considering the extremely loud and growing voice of dissent in both the forums, Reddit and the game over bias (however much they deny it) and general balancing problems.

[Nuke87654 1,849]

Not surprised honestly. Though I think they might have finally sat up and started to listen at least a little bit, they've been a little more open on dev posts over the last week or two. They're just probably only beginning to realise what they've done considering the extremely loud and growing voice of dissent in both the forums, Reddit and the game over bias (however much they deny it) and general balancing problems.

 

Probably and it's definitely for the best as they badly need to get over their love for anything Soviet. They had good tech that definitely influenced warfare and stuff such as slope armor, but there was a reason why the U.S and Soviet Union were trying to grab as many German Scientists as possible after the war.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Nuke87654