feotakahari

You know those multiplayer games where one really strong character fights four or five weaker ones? Every time I read about one, I see a complaint that in low tiers, the strong character wins way too much, while in high tiers, the team wins way too much. I’m starting to think this is just a thing that happens with asymmetric multiplayer. Cooperation is powerful, and it’s hard to balance around the presence or lack of it.

Now that I think about it, this probably explains why Vicious Circle sucks. In that game, the strong character is AI and the weak characters are players. Only one player can win, so they’re encouraged to backstab each other, but all of them can lose to the AI if they backstab too much. In practice, nobody cooperates, everyone gets stomped, and everyone gets frustrated and quits playing.