tinyhumansai Balance Pass
Tuning is where studios lose whole projects to work nobody recorded: the same value moved back and forth by people who each remember only their own pass.
When to use
- A system is dominant, ignored, too easy or too hard.
- Playtests show a difficulty spike or a dead choice.
Steps
- Read
balance-changesfirst. This number has probably been moved before, possibly in the direction you are about to move it back from. - State the problem as a player experience — "players skip the bow entirely after level three" — not as a number that feels wrong.
- Change one thing. If a system already has an open trial, wait; two changes at once means you learn nothing from either.
- Record the change with old and new values. "Nerfed the bow" is not a record and will not help anybody in a month.
- Get it in front of players. Telemetry or a playtest — a balance change judged from the designer's own play is judged by the person least able to see it.
- Close the row as kept or reverted, with what it actually did. Frequently not what was intended, and that is the entry worth having.
Output
A balance-changes row with the values, the reason, and the observed effect.
One open trial per system, closed before the next.