This week pertained mostly to balance in games, as well as how to design a game that is fair for everyone. We touched on many games this week, but we specifically talked about two games near and dear to my heart, being “Hearthstone” and “League of Legends”. These games both have had their issues with balance, but exemplify the importance of balance in online games as a whole. To begin, “Hearthstone” is a card game made by Blizzard Entertainment based on the Warcraft universe, and has garnered a massive audience since its launch in 2014. I have been playing this game since the first year it was released, after the game had already received its first three expansions. I can remember ten times off of the top of my head when this game was imbalanced. It is incredibly difficult to get balancing right the first time, especially in a card game, and Blizzard is usually quick to responding to feedback, now more than ever. Just recently, Blizzard added a whole new class to play as in Hearthstone, the Demon Hunter. This class is based on the class of the same name in “World of Warcraft”, and features a play style similar to the MMORPG as well. Rushing the enemy down with low cost cards, attacking with weapons for extra utility, and healing while dishing out damage is what Blizzard imagined when designing the Demon Hunter. This playstyle is similar to the Hunter, who relies on taking control of the board and keeping it with powerful Beasts and spells, with a hero power that helps whittling the enemy’s health down. However, Hunter has little to no healing, with Hunter relying on a control or midrange playstyle. Demon Hunter on release could do everything other classes could do, but better. An incredible early game with sticky low cost minions and spells? That beats the zoo playstyle of Warlock. Playing tons of cards in one turn while drawing through your deck for amazing tempo swings? Demon Hunter’s draw still rivals the Rogue. Massive minions to seal out the game with, as well as massive spells? Mage and Shaman wish they could have some of that. It was almost insulting how powerful Demon Hunter was on day one, and it was solely based on the Demon Hunter’s most powerful cards. The 10 most powerful cards of the class found their way into every deck, making Demon Hunter have the highest winrate in Standard play, Wild play (which allows for use of all cards ever printed in the game), and Arena play (which gives the player a semi-randomly generated deck to play with against others). A class that had been in the game for one day was dominating the entire card pools of other classes which had been in the SIX years. Blizzard, however, acted accordingly and hotfixed the game on day two of the expansion, making the game much more fair for all of the other classes. This, among many other stories in the history of “Hearthstone”, have shown the importance of balance. When it comes to Riot Games and their MOBA “League of Legends”, Riot is notorious for having issues with balancing. They have said that they like releasing champions to the game strong in order to shake up the meta and then act accordingly, but this has led to some very sticky situations. For example, at one point in the game’s 10 year lifespan, a certain champion, Kassadin, had a 95 percent ban rate in all competitive play. At this time, Kassadin was running away with games, effortlessly destroying anyone who would face him, and could easily “1v5” an entire enemy team. Today, Kassadin still has a very strong late game presence, but is quite weak during the early game, making him much more balanced than he was during his “reign of terror”. To conclude, balancing is incredibly important in any game, no matter what the genre or audience. If intense care isn’t taken to balance, players will find how to break your game. While sometimes things can slip through the cracks, testing is of the utmost importance.