Last updated: January 16th 2025
The goal of this blog post is to break down and explain our approach to balancing whenever we make new changes or big overhauls. Honestly, it gets pretty exhausting having to repeat our design philosophy in every single patch note – it’s starting to feel like a broken record.
So, from now on, any relevant patch notes will just link here instead. If you’ve clicked through from a patch note, then hey there! Welcome! Let’s dive in.
The Short of It
This blog post ended up being pretty long, mostly because it dives into our past experiences with balancing updates and how they shaped our design philosophy. If you’re just looking for the short version, here it is:
Here’s how we approach things: when we roll out a new feature, we like to keep it on the conservative side. Then, as we gather more data, we’ll adjust things like rates, gold, or whatever else needs tweaking. This way, we can figure out if changes are even necessary and make informed decisions.
Think of it like this: it’s way easier to add stuff to the game than it is to take it away later.
Want to know more? Then read on…
Balancing Is Hard…
Yep… balancing is supremely hard. Honestly, I’d argue it’s the hardest part of developing an online game, hands down. Developing a game? Easy compared to balancing it. Handling payments with all their complexities and edge cases? Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ve got it covered. Setting up a web infrastructure that handles over 35 million requests a day? Pfft. Child’s play compared to getting balancing right.
And I’d bet good money that most game developers in similar circumstances would agree with me. Even Blizzard – a company with a market cap of $74.28 billion – still struggles with balancing their games. Take Overwatch, for example. If you’ve played it recently, you’ll know their patch notes often feature monumental sweeping changes to multiple characters or mechanics that completely shake up the “meta” – sometimes flipping it on its head entirely (though, there’s a cynical side of me that believes they’re doing it on purpose to feel things feeling “fresh”).
In a community Q&A, a Hearthstone developer came pretty close to implying that they’re winging it – making last-minute design changes and basing decisions on what feels right, rather than sticking to a strictly data-driven approach. Now, don’t get me wrong – this isn’t me saying whether that’s the right or wrong way to do it. Maybe it works for them, maybe it doesn’t (I can’t say since I don’t personally play Hearthstone).
But here’s the truth: balancing is hard. Anyone who says otherwise is either a prodigy or straight-up lying. At some level, we’re all just winging it. Every single one of us. The difference is, some are just a little braver about admitting it than others.
Why is balancing so hard? Honestly, it’s such a massive, multi-layered question that I don’t even know where to start. There are just so many things to think about, and that alone is what makes it so tough.
Who do you focus on – old players or new ones? How do you keep the game’s economy stable without accidentally breaking it? What even defines a “good” economy? How easy should it be to acquire end-game items?
And then there’s the big question that companies like Blizzard undoubtedly face: how do balance updates affect monetization? What happens if the game becomes too easy and people get bored? Or if it’s too hard and players just give up?
And really, who gets to decide what’s “too easy” or “too hard”? There’s no universal rulebook for that – it’s all pretty subjective. At the end of the day, a lot of it does feel arbitrary.
Honestly, the Hearthstone developer might be on to something. Maybe, in the end, it really does boil down to what feels right. Sometimes, instincts and experience can carry you further than numbers alone.
Perception of Change
As I’ve mentioned before, asking what makes balancing hard is such a tough question that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Honestly, I could probably write an entire book about all the challenges involved.
But there’s one aspect of balancing that I really want to drill down on. The real challenge is something deceptively simple: how players perceive change. That’s where the real challenge lies, and it’s where things start to get tricky.
Making changes in a game is always a balancing act – whether it’s tweaking the economy, fine-tuning a battle feature, or even just juggling priorities and opinions. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s this: you literally can’t please everyone. It’s just not possible. And yes, I mean literally, not figuratively. I could release an update that magically put $20 straight into everyone’s bank accounts, and I guarantee at least one person would find a reason to complain. Just off the top of my head, I can think of several valid reasons to complain:
$20? I’ve spent $100 on this game, and all I get is $20 back?
What am I going to use $20 for? I use pounds, not dollars!
Why are they sending us $20 when they could be using this to improve the game? I don’t need this money.
Now, that might sound a bit dramatic – or like I’m trying to build some kind of strawman argument to make my point stronger. I mean, I’ve never actually handed out $20 to everyone, so I get the skepticism. But I promise you, it’s not. I wish it were, but this is just the unfortunate reality when dealing with thousands of people.
If you think about literally any change in the world, no matter how positive it is, there will always be someone who’s unhappy with it. That’s just the way things are. The only exception might be if you’re dealing with a really small group of people – but even then, it’s not a guarantee.
To illustrate, there’s an XKCD comic that comes to mind. I think I’ve posted this XKCD so often that it’s burned into my brain. If you’ve been reading our posts for a while then you likely rolled your eyes and uttered “Oh, god, not this again”. It’s about a developer fixing a critical bug, something that objectively improves the experience for nearly everyone. But for one user? That bug happened to work just fine for them – in fact they turned the bug into a feature of their own. And in their eyes, fixing it wasn’t an improvement; it was a problem. They’re so focused on what they’ve lost that they can’t see the good it brings to the bigger picture.
Now, you might be wondering: “But Mike… where are you going with this? Surely the perception of change has nothing to do with the act of balancing itself?”
Oh, sweet summer child, it absolutely does – and far more than you might think.
Perception shapes everything. It’s not just about the math or the mechanics of balancing (though, they’re equally as important); it’s about how those changes feel to the players after they have been made.
You see, while the perception of change doesn’t directly mess with the game mechanics, it can have a huge impact on the game’s ecosystem because it’s all about how players react. And that reaction? It’s almost always tied to how the change directly affects their gameplay experience.
People Are Selfish
Yep, people are selfish. Now, before you blow a gasket, hear me out – I’m not blaming anyone. I don’t mean it in a bad way at all. Honestly, it’s totally understandable and makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Players come and go – it’s just the nature of things. Someone might stop playing tomorrow, next week, or a few months from now. Sure, we hope they’ll stick around for the long haul, but realistically? The chances of that happening are pretty slim. And that’s okay – it’s just how things work.
It’s great when a game feels amazing for a few weeks because it just happens to align perfectly with someone’s play style. But let’s be real – most players aren’t thinking about the game’s long-term health, especially if they’re not even sure they’ll still be playing by then. And if that play style gets disrupted in the name of “longevity,” well, they have every right to be upset.
I don’t blame them for that. People naturally focus on how changes affect them right now, not the bigger picture. Heck, I’m probbably the same way most of the time.
The problem is, if something does goes wrong, we’re the ones left dealing with the fallout. And let’s be real, most of that fallout lands squarely on the economy, creating long-lasting issues that we have to work hard to fix.
So, when we say something like, “We’re making a change that will benefit the game, but you won’t actually notice it until the economy stabilizes down the line,” a lot of players are just going to be annoyed. And that’s completely understandable.
Let’s say we make an objectively good change – a surefire way to keep the game healthy in the long run – but it means reducing X or Y. There’s always going to be a good chunk of people who get annoyed because it affects them in the moment. And honestly, why should they care about the long-term health of the game? Why would they? I get it. They’re not obligated to care.
It’s not like we put in our terms of service, “Oh, by the way, you’re required to love and nurture this game like it’s your own child.” No – they’re here to have fun. And if we make a change that disrupts that fun, they’re going to be upset. It’s as simple as that.
Now, I’m not saying everyone’s like this. There are definitely players who can set aside their own situation and see the bigger picture. But let’s be real – that’s not the majority. Most people are focused on right now, and if right now isn’t fun for them, they’re going to let us know. And that’s fair.
Imagine I make a game with an in-game market that has a 30% tax on every purchase. It’s been there since day one. Players accept it because it’s the norm – it’s just how the game works. Then one day, I lower the tax to 25%. Fantastic! Players are thrilled – more money for everyone.
Now, flip the script. Imagine the tax started at 3%. Everyone is used to low taxes and has built their expectations around that. Then, in a future update, I raise the tax to 25% to tackle inflation. People would lose their minds – and rightly so! No one likes higher taxes. That’s their hard-earned money, and taking more of it feels like a betrayal.
The kicker? From a purely numerical standpoint, both scenarios end up in the same place: a 25% tax rate. But the perception is fundamentally different. Lowering taxes feels like a win. Raising them, even to the same level, feels like a punishment.
This is the critical difference: the context of the change. It’s not just what you do, but how it’s perceived, that defines whether a change is seen as positive or negative.
Our Past Experience
We’ve talked about our past experiences and the lessons we’ve learned along the way – notably in a recent Q&A session hosted by Couch Cat, a YouTube channel that focuses on persistent browser-based games. The experiences we had have shaped and molded the way we approach balancing now.
Let me break it down and explain further.
For IdleMMO, we’ve always had a pretty high market tax – up to a staggering 15%, depending on membership status – right from the start. Sure, people occasionally complain about it, but it’s nothing new. It’s always been there.
On the other hand, in SimpleMMO, we had to tackle inflation caused by some deeply flawed mechanics. To counter it, we increased the market tax rate from 3.5% to 6% and added additional taxes of up to 6% on things like trading to prevent people from getting around the tax.
And the result? Well, sometimes it’s better to show than tell. So here are some of the top comments from the community:
Time for SMMO to die faster and truly just become a chat room
Mike just destroyed the f**king economy. Amazing.
This update is criminal activity.
I’m going to quit (They did not)
Overreaction? Justified? As amusing as they are – it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, there’s a clear lesson here: perception matters a lot because negativity spreads like wildfire.
When we rolled out the update, I explained the reasoning behind the changes – it wasn’t like we left players in the dark. But that didn’t seem to matter. The change was for the good of the game, and it did achieve the purpose it was meant to serve. Yet, people were so furious at the thought of additional taxes that some outright quit the game, while others stuck around but kept playing with a chip on their shoulder.
And this wasn’t even the first time. A few months earlier, we had to make adjustments to stop players from occasionally earning over 1 million gold with what was essentially a single button press – something that was never supposed to happen. It was a side effect of the game’s “infinite” nature and how gold scaled with levels. Honestly, I never expected anyone to hit level 10,000, let alone 500,000.
That update only impacted 164 players out of over 900,000 at the time. The result? Well… let me just show you just some of the reactions that were deemed appropriate for this post:
Game just died
Mike just wants the game to die
He’s f**ked us
I’m cancelling [the subscription]
You’ve obliterated all my personal hope for the game
Mike can go f**k himself
Did the game die? No – of course not. If I had a penny for every time I read that phrase, I would be a millionare. But it’s the same situation again. A change that ultimately benefited the game and only impacted a small group – 164 players at the time. Yet, we were absolutely bombarded with negativity, from both personal attacks and general complaints, even from players who weren’t remotely affected. I even saw a level 50 player complaining about it – for context, the update only applied to players above level 40,000.
The real issue here was the ripple effect. These players, despite being nowhere near the level cap where the update mattered, were surrounded by so much negativity that it put them off the game entirely. The negative atmosphere became contagious, even for those who had no reason to care, and it left a sour impression that still lingers even today.
There’s an important, multi-faceted lesson here: perception and community sentiment matter, even when the changes themselves make logical sense.
First, there’s the personal human element. I’ve touched on this before in previous posts, but I’ve been at this a while now, and I’ve been called everything under the sun – name-calling, personal threats, you name it. I’ve gotten used to it over time, but when it’s coming at you from every direction all at once, it’s tough to keep your guard up 24/7. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get to me, even just a little. Still, I did my best not to let it sink too deep.
While they could control their reaction, I try not to blame them – even after some of the horrifying comments I saw during those two updates. Honestly, I’d probably feel annoyed in their shoes too. They’re responsible for how they act, of course, but I get where the frustration comes from. I mean, I can’t even count how many times I’ve cursed EA Sports up and down for what I thought was absolute tripe (FIFA, I’m looking at you).
The difference is, back then, I was just some random dude yelling at a big, faceless corporation. But in that moment? I was just one guy trying to make the game better – while getting absolutely bombarded with hate.
You might be thinking, “Ok – so what? People say bad things. Boo-f**king-hoo, cry me a river, ya big baby.” And fair enough. But beyond the human element, the second – and arguably more important – effect of those changes was the direct impact they had on the player base: people were unhappy and angry.
The truth is, only a small handful of people were actually upset. Most players didn’t care; it barely affected them. But as the old saying goes, “A single rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel.” A few vocal players left because of the changes, while others stayed but kept that negativity alive – and that negativity started to spread. It created this atmosphere where more people left, not because of the changes themselves, but because of the negativity surrounding them. And in some cases, it even fostered communities that thrived on hatred.
Here’s the thing: there’s nothing stronger than a shared sense of mutual hatred for something. It’s human nature. I don’t blame them – I accept it. Hell, I even get it. I’ve been there myself.
Take Blizzard and Overwatch as an example. Back when they made sweeping changes that ruined the game for me personally, I wasn’t just frustrated – I actively went on Reddit searching for negative posts to validate my feelings. I wanted to see other people ranting about the same things, and I latched onto that shared sense of outrage. It’s a cycle, and honestly, it’s pretty hard to break out of.
It’s entirely possible that you’re stuck in this cycle right now as you’re reading this. Maybe you’re frustrated with a change we made recently, or maybe you’re still holding onto hard feelings from something we changed years ago. And you know what? I completely get it.
As I’ve said before, it’s impossible to please everyone. Even the simplest, most harmless change in the world is bound to annoy someone, especially when you’re dealing with thousands of players logging in every day. I’ve come to terms with that, and the best I can do is be transparent about the reasoning behind our decisions.
Anyway, I digress. The two situations I described earlier left me with one big question: “Were the changes worth it?” And honestly…. that’s not an easy question to answer. It’s complicated.
If all I had to deal with was the hate and negativity, and it stayed self-contained, then yeah – absolutely, it was worth it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not afraid to step on a few toes if it means a game of ours gets better in the long run.
But the fact that these changes negatively impacted the game in other ways? That’s where things get murky. When the backlash creates ripple effects – players leaving, negativity spreading, and fostering communities that thrive on hostility – it starts to feel like the benefits might get canceled out by the damage.
And that’s the real problem here. The line between “doing what’s best for the game” and “doing more harm than good” isn’t always clear. Sometimes, the right decision on paper doesn’t translate so cleanly into reality.
Our Approach
After reading all this, you’re probably thinking, “Damn, this guy’s done nothing but whine about people being mad.” But the point isn’t to say, “Oh, poor us, look how bad we developers have it.” It’s to give you some context – why we felt the need to come up with a new approach to handle these situations. And honestly? It’s made a real difference – it’s actually turned out to be surprisingly effective.
This ties back to my earlier example with market taxes. If the taxes were set high from the very beginning, it effectively eliminates that negative backlash when changes have to be made later. Plus, the benefits for the game’s economy are more long-lasting.
Take this scenario: say a game has a 30% tax for three years, and after those three years, we lower it to 25%. That means we not only maintained a healthy economy for three years – enough to justify reducing the tax – but we also benefited from three years of having that extra 5% tax in place. Now flip that scenario. Imagine the tax started at 3%, and we later had to raise it to 6%. In that case, there would’ve been a three-year period where the tax was unnecessarily low, and during that time, extra gold would’ve stayed in the economy that otherwise would’ve been removed from the higher tax had we set it high initially.
If we eventually conclude that not enough gold was removed from the game, that 3% difference is gold that’s now permanently circulating in the economy. It doesn’t just magically disappear. And unless we forcibly remove it from players’ accounts (which, let’s be real, isn’t even an option), it stays in the game forever. That’s the real challenge.
It kind of boils down to this: it’s way easier to add stuff – gold, items, whatever – into a game than it is to remove it once it’s already there. And that’s not just because of the human side of things (people don’t like having things taken away), but also the technical challenges.
Let’s say we introduce an enemy that drops an item 80% of the time. After a couple of months, we realize that’s way too high and drop it to 20%. Now we’ve got two problems. First, it’s a negative change, and nobody likes hearing that rates are being slashed. Second, all the items that were already introduced into the game during those months? They’re here to stay. There’s no way to un-drop them unless we go full dictator mode, rip them out of players’ inventories, and say, “Whoops, our bad.” And let’s be honest – that’s not exactly a move that’ll win us any popularity contests.
Our approach is simple: when we introduce a feature, we aim to be as conservative as possible – without going overboard – and then gradually increase rates, gold, or whatever over time as more data comes in. This way, we can make informed decisions about whether adjustments are even necessary and what those adjustments should be.
This method solves two major problems:
- As mentioned earlier, it’s infinitely easier to add assets to the game than to take them out. Adding millions of gold is like eating cake – it’s easy. But removing millions of gold from a broken economy? That’s like trying to read a book on astrophysics while riding a unicycle. Not impossible, but… let’s just say, not ideal.
- Starting with low values means there’s only one direction to go: up. Players are much more likely to embrace improvements than cuts.
However, this approach does come with one big downside: it can make new features feel less exciting at launch. A perfect example of this is IdleMMO’s battle update.
When we first rolled out the battle system, we made it very clear in the patch notes that the loot rates were intentionally set low. The reason? We simply didn’t know the scale we were dealing with yet. If we started too high, we risked flooding the game with far more items than it could handle, which would have been catastrophic in the long run.
Despite our transparency, the battle system was met with a flood of negative feedback – mostly complaints about how little loot players were getting and how battling was no longer profitable. Over time, though, we implemented several updates to improve it: scaling enemies, magic find mechanics, a pet system, and more.
The result? The battle system is in a much healthier place now than it was at launch. Is it perfect? No. But it’s in a much better state than it was 3 month ago. And all of that was by design. It was a deliberate decision to start cautiously, gather data, and make improvements step by step. Sure, it wasn’t flashy or exciting at first, but it allowed us to avoid larger, irreversible issues down the line.
We’re not going to always get it right
Let’s face it – the cold, hard truth: we’re not perfect. We’re not superhuman. We’re not economists or mathematicians. Me? I’m just a code monkey hunched over a computer, doing my best with what I’ve got. That’s all there is to it.
A Valuable Lesson
Other than, you know, tweaking our balancing approach to be more sustainable in the long run, one of the biggest lessons I’ve personally learned is that it’s totally okay to accept that different viewpoints exist. We can’t make everyone happy, and that’s just the reality of it.
A lot of the time, critiques aren’t about one side being right or wrong – they’re just different perspectives. Sometimes it’s as simple as having different goals, and that’s perfectly fine.
Conclusion
So, to wrap up this unexpectedly long blog post – which has grown way bigger than I intended – it’s worth keeping in mind the approach we’re committed to with almost every change we make moving forward: we’re starting cautiously, taking the conservative route with new features and adjustments, and scaling them up over time.
Of course, sometimes we might not get it quite right. Maybe we’re not conservative enough – like with the recent IdleMMO update that introduced community goal tiers. We set them pretty high initially, but it turned out they weren’t high enough, so we had to adjust them further. But that’s part of the process. It’s important to step back occasionally and say, “Ok, let’s reevaluate this once it’s had time to settle.”
And if things don’t always go perfectly? All I can personally ask is to keep it civil. Name-calling, rage baiting, or venting won’t achieve anything except maybe getting a slightly amused smirk out of me. We’re not perfect – we’re going to make mistakes. At the end of the day, we’re just doing the best we can with the tools and information we have. All we ask from you is to be respectful.
