Balance is a funny thing. Many early designers assume that games need to be balanced. That is mostly true, but individual elements don’t necessarily need to be balanced. Balance is about making sure that each choice is equally valuable, or each possibility has equal impact. But why and where is it uncalled for?

Drafts

The most common times you’ll find unequal choices is during a draft. There are lots of types of draft, like the classic pick and pass or a market. When you draft, it means that the most unbalanced a result can be is the best and second best option are going to different people. That’s not all that bad. This is especially true if there was some cost associated with getting that first pick, like having to spend an action or bid for it. You have to be very careful, though, because while drafting is a good way to ensure multiple powerful choices get picked by the same player, it does require that multiple choices be made by multiple players. You also have to be careful of cascading benefits. For example, a simple alternating pick means one player gets the 1st, 3rd, and 5th best, while the second player gets the 2nd, 4th, and 6th best. Compare the two and you’ll see the first player has 9 compare to 12, a pretty significant advantage. This is why a lot of games alternate picks, often doing a “snake” draft where the last person to pick picks first in the next round.

Backup Plan

Sometimes a weaker choice is fine because it gives players an out. You may know that one option is better in the long run or on a purely value basis, but the direction it’s pushing you in is unwise or unsafe. Perhaps you need another option just in case things get dangerous. Attacking is always good, but sometimes you want to heal, even though it doesn’t progress you towards your goal, just to change the math somehow. It can also be a good way to give the player an easy choice if they’re feeling exhausted from play. Yes, it’s better to do something powerful and strategic, but if it’s not something you can handle right now, you could always just take a small but useful little option to cool down.

Speed Bump

Maybe the reason there’s a bad choice is because you’re going to force a player to take it. It’s still a choice, isn’t it? You gotta eat your vegetables. In Concordia, you always have the option to take all of your cards back in your hand to replay them later, but doing so takes your whole turn. But you always have the option! You could play the same card every other turn if you really felt like it, but that would slow you down so much. But these moments are important. Forcing your players to make a decision of when to make that annoying, weak choice can leave them with a lot to think and strategize about. Also, much like the backup plan, it can give some breathing room.

Payoffs

See now, this is the fun one. If you have an option that does nothing, or does something very weak, but is always there, then you have potential. If a player likes that weak action, maybe they can upgrade it. This article was inspired by the prospector action in San Juan, the Development action in Ares Expedition, and the File action is gizmos. All of these are basically a way to just let you draw a card, something very minor but always a little useful. But because it’s so weak, there are many many ways in the game to power it up, usually to a much stronger degree than other abilities, since it’s so weak that the game assumes you aren’t going to do it much otherwise. But upgrade them enough and they become incredibly powerful. This gives players something cool to do and really makes them feel like they’re getting away with something. Not only do they benefit from all actions more equally now, but in the games where the actions are done by all players, you get a benefit when they get none! Everyone’s happy. But you have to provide that option from the start.

Conclusion

There are so many reasons to make unequal options. So rather than trying to balance them next time, maybe think about which of these might apply and turn them closer to it.