Spreadsheet Balancing: Ruining a Game Near You

We sit here in the 21st century and the first century of gaming. We have seen many things change. But what were the costs? Does anyone remember the great asymmetry of old?

What happened to the mammoth tanks that annihilated air, enemy tanks, and infantry?

Carriers of impending doom?

Cataphracts of glory?

War Cart?

Tasers that lit people on fire?

Were these overpowered? Or just built into the fun?

Gaming has exploded. And although many studios are chasing the early millennium dragon by rehashing old titles, they have lost the passion.

We’ve all seen it. This disconnect, this lack of vision. And yet, it’s not all titles; some have embraced their genre and evolved, e.g., Wargame — not WARNO, Doom…

Games that fell short of their fans’ mark this year due to a lack of vision include Civilisation VII, Stalker 2, Total War: Warhammer III, and even Helldivers II.

The Helldivers team listened to streamers wanting a competitive online experience in a PvE game, and they nerfed weapons to make the game harder. They used spreadsheets to determine the most commonly used weapons and attacked them across the board, rather than buffing the other lacklustre options.

Subsequently, Helldivers II got review-bombed to a point of publisher reprisals.

I mean, that’s how bad it’s got; the studios have lost their passion to the point where we need to holler at the publishers, publishers who only notice when sales drop. They, in turn, yell at the studios, and the studios have to all go, “Maybe we were wrong? Naw, but let’s do what the publisher said anyway.”

Five years ago, I would have never seen myself blaming studios and devs, but the bottom line is, they’re not playing their games! And if you want to create something cool, you must first love your idea, not your freaking data! These people have no vision, no idea, they have a blueprint, and they think if they paint by numbers, the fun will come.

Games that did it right in 2025? Ironically, Helldivers II has redeemed itself in my eyes; aside from the massive chunk of SSD it takes on PC, it still provides some of the neatest, unscripted vistas one could ask for. I mean, killing bugs with meteors and your ship’s orbital bombardment raining in overhead is something to behold.

And yet, they had lightning in a bottle initially and then farted on it. Here, we have a studio that tried to polish its game by spreadsheets and niche opinions, instead of following its core vision. Only after they did this did they see the silent majority’s true wishes. Which is to dive into new worlds with their buds, make pretty explosions, and go home with a sense of accomplishment. Nowhere in here does it say we want our primary weapons to do absolutely nothing.

There will be loud voices who disagree with me on this point. However, those are most likely the desperate streamers — not the successful ones — who rely on pushing the boundaries of games to keep their fans interested. They’ve got a job to do, that’s why they never shut up — I should know.

The worst game for spreadsheet balancing goes out to WARNO. Here’s a game that started as more of a military simulation and devolved into a spongy spam fest. The lead “balancer” got all mathematical. In the end, they did things like “make infantry great again,” then revoked those changes the next week. They let tanks reverse at seventy kilometres an hour, gave IFVs more health, vehicles a second chance, and even handed one team napalm artillery without bothering to implement any countering options. I might add that this napalm artillery roasts everything, including heavily armoured vehicles.

All the while, the balancer was saying things like, “We notice infantry wasn’t being used, so we did this.” Despite their misguided efforts, the game continually teetered from one fail state to another. I will also add that this lead balancer is no longer working with the game. And I wish no ill will on anyone. And yet, when I think of all the opinions that were ignored from passionate people working on the WARNO team, I lack pity.

In other words, spreadsheet balancing is inherently lazy and boring! Yes, spreadsheets should be considered and addressed. But here’s the thing, spreadsheets don’t factor in the most important rule of gaming:

The Rule of Cool

“Oh, people are using this gun the most, so it must be the most powerful, right?” Prosaic goob

WRONG!

We were using the MP44 in BFV cause it was cool, sounded cool, and is a Sturmgewehr! But what did they do? They nerfed it because no one was using their other gorgeously modelled guns.

Furthermore, BFV was a game where you could blow everything up, which meant there was a lot of dust and smoke. So an assault rifle was perfect for peppering areas you assumed there were people. Another reason why it was a popular choice.

Who would think a gun that was conceptualised during World War II and became the most widely used firearm variant on the planet in our contemporary era would be popular in a WWII game?

“We must address this! We can’t have everyone using the gun they want!” Prosaic goob

The BFV devs, like Arrowhead (Helldivers II devs), nerfed the MP44, evidently, instead of buffing everything else to its fun, effective potential.

Then they hired the lead designer of Candy Crush to take on a niche he’s never even thought of. After that, they balanced the whole game around the nerfed MP44 and the Gewehr.

Amidst more criticism and flailings, they increased the time to kill, thinking this would help new players. Why? Because their spreadsheets and peer reviews told them people were sick of dying. So they gave everybody more HP and increased damage drop-off, so only snipers could kill people over fifty metres.

This did not help the noobs; in fact, quite the contrary, illustrating just how parochial their thinking is.

Where they traced their logic from is beyond me, because most people care more about killing than dying in these games. Essentially, they made it impossible for new players to kill. Therefore, they made dying not worth it!

I’m not alone in saying that when I wipe two squads, I’m prepared to die. The same goes for a noob. You make that an impossibility? Well, then you are missing out on a big high. The person who fires first in war generally wins. The same applies to a game. Give people the opportunity to fire first, and they will worry about how to survive.

Sports are similar. You can fall, get bumped around, and hyper ventilate, but those lows make the highs all the more satisfying. You make a long put, catch a long pass, spike an opponent, all these cool moments are brought on by your affects.

And affecting things is fun, affecting is COOL. This is key to understanding the concept of the ‘rule of cool’ in interactive titles.

February 2024, when Helldivers II orbital dropped into our hearts, the Breaker was all the craze. But why?

Affection and Effects

The Breaker in Helldivers II was — and is again — a fantastic example of an effective point-defence weapon. It was initially nerfed due to popularity. But review bombing and backlash forced the “balancers” to bring it back up to its effective glory. You can even put a drum mag on it now. Which makes it super effective and places it in our hearts as one of our best point-defence friends.

We now covet the breaker like the plasma cutter in Dead Space, the double-barrel in Doom (2016), or the Tesla Coil — for both Ra95 and HD… And any other Tesla Coil for that sizzled matter.

What do these weapons, of defensive devices, have in common?

They give us glorious visuals of effective gameplay!

Our actions are played out in visceral detail before our eyes. Blam, “Now that Hell Knight is missing the left side of his torso… excellent.”

Or Blamblamblamblam, “now none of those Terminids have limbs… excellent.”

We use these weapons not cause they’re the biggest scorers, but rather, to emulate the raw power of boom sticks.

Guns hurt things, and yet, many of us don’t want to. However, we still think battles in general are cool and/or fun. So we do it in games. No one gets hurt — no one on our team gets hurt anyway. Well, no one gets hurt on purpose, that is.

Anyway, the point is that these weapons were popular because they emulated the violent properties found in real life. If games find balancing issues, they need to consider why that doesn’t happen in real life. I’m not saying everything should be a military simulation, but there is inspiration from real life you can adopt for balancing purposes.

Just a quick example would be Battlefield V again. The tanks were dominating as per tradition, and finally, we could blow up houses with snipers in them. And yet, there was a problem: driving the tank was too fun, bordering on cheese. The driver could see and hear far more than they would have on a WWII battlefield.

Hearing footsteps over tank engines was a significant design flaw in BFV, as was allowing tank drivers to drive in third person. Had they not given tanks these bizarre, unearthly advantages, they would have been just as cumbersome as they were in real life. And yet, just as feared and fun to wallop medic trains with.

So, there you have a rule of cool ignored. The rule being, this thing is powerful and armoured, but it can’t see a damn thing. AKA an Achilles heel.

In WWII, tanks were super capable siege breakers, but they didn’t have a clue. Hence why they need infantry and radios. They don’t know what’s over the next hill, who’s in that bush ten centimetres to their right track, or if that rumble overhead is a friendly aircraft.

Again, not all games need to be realistic, but when it comes to balancing issues, real-life considerations should be taken into account. Especially if they will enlighten the gaming experience and provide asymmetric combat.

In BFV, you could see people from miles away as if you were in a drone floating above your tank in El Alamien 1942. Still a good time. Just not for the infantry. This meant that asymmetric infantry assaults, such as flanking with panzerfausts or TNT, were much more difficult, compounded by the open maps.

Tanks in Battlefield V could have been resolved by forcing them into first-person view — not even a realistic tank slit or gun scope — but first-person view would have been good enough. It would allow infantry to flank, and it would balance the tank by giving us a way to affect it! With TNT! Or the beloved jeep full of TNT — works enough to make it worth it.

On the contrary, something Battlefield V did right was exit animations. They looked fantastic, and peppering a tanker as he tried to exfil his burning tank was satisfying af. And what did they do in Battlefield 2042? Back to the teleport. Players can just teleport out of their vehicle and run into a bush again.

Why did they do this? Some loud people complained about how long it took to egress, while those who liked it just played. So, when it came time to cut animations, the first on the list was most likely vehicle exfil animations.

The Divide

Essentially, what we have in our gaming world today are people who game for renown and people who game for fun. These are polarities, of course, there’s a spectrum. However, those who have intrinsically combined their ego with gaming are louder. The others just want to visit other worlds and solve captivating problems — keeping to themselves.

Helldivers was where the wave broke. It was where devs realised a challenge wasn’t the only piece of the pie, but rather a harmonious aspect of the whole experience. And yet, there are still residual painting-by-number effects resonating through arrogant, empowered, petty devs, but the writing is on the wall.

Promoting devs with passion and gumption will make games fun again. These visionaries focus on lore, creativity, and interaction, as seen in games such as Total War: Shogun II, Attila, Battlefield III, Wargame, Anno 1800, Manorlords, or the beloved Company of Heroes.

These games all loop in dazzling asymmetry. Some are old af, others are new, and yet, they are all wrought by the same thing, inspiration.

This path of consciousness opens us up to the other divide. The divide between artists, programmers, and marketers. And yet these issues have been overcome before with the titles I just mentioned. And it would be a huge digression. So maybe I’ll get into that next time.

For now, just remember we’re all doing this to have fun, and if a dev does something you don’t want, stop playing. If they continue to do something you don’t want, then drop the review bombs.

As a content creator myself, I’m completely okay with my idea evolving through popular demand. The key would be combining the demand with the initial vision. That is where art becomes lore, and never dies.

And yet, contemporary releases have proven to us that somewhere in the eighty-million-dollar budget, the passion and vision are lost.

An analogue would be using AI to write. In doing so, the personality’s lost.

Contemporary studios exhibit many of the same consistency issues AI does. They both suffer from too much influence. This dilutes their craft and washes out the exciting bumps.

Instead, devs need to find and follow passion. They need to love their service; then, and only then, will they create a realm we and they choose to spend time in.