Campaign balance has been an ongoing topic within the community since the game's release, with many players claiming one side or the other has too much of an advantage and speculating how much focus FFG puts into balancing the campaign. Jodocast aired a podcast several months ago interviewing Imperial Assault's two lead developers, not the ones that created the Core but designed Hoth, Bespin and Jabba's Realm. This interview was aired just before Jabba's Realm hit shelves, so most of the skirmish content was known at that time, and likely Wave 9 had finished being developed (but not yet announced) and Heart of the Empire was well into development.

There is a question about game balance at about the 57:25 mark and the designers explain how they approach the idea of balance in the campaign. Sadly this interview has never been transcribed, so I'm betting there are many people in the community that have not heard this, so I have decided to transcribe it here so that people can actually understand how FFG approaches balance in campaign before they start trying to have their own discussion about balance in campaign.

You can listen to the interview for yourself here: http://www.jodocast.com/2016/12/06/jodo-cast-episode-44-designing-imperial-assault/

I used ... whenever the speaker discontinued whatever they were saying to start over. The only words I purposefully excluded were "um"s.

Quote

Jodocast: Do you think it’s easier to design and balance for skirmish or campaign if you had to pick one?

Todd Michlitsch: (sigh) Tough question. The bar is a lot lower for campaign, or at least very different, right. So in campaign we can get away with things not being perfectly balanced on the back of the fact that people probably never play a mission more than once or twice. So if it’s not razor balanced it’s probably okay as long as you enjoy yourselves. So the way that we approach balance… The best word that I’ve heard for it in campaign games is pacing. You’re more concerned with pacing than you are with balance. If the story unfolds correctly in campaign, you’re good to go.

In skirmish we have to give a lot more scrutiny to make sure it’s balanced because I think a lot of players who play skirmish, at least in a tournament format, derive their satisfaction from the game, from at least like [having] a legitimate chance to win the game. So it’s probably a lot harder to balance skirmish. I mean, at least I pay a lot more attention to skirmish balance than I do to campaign balance.

Paul Winchester: Yeah but I mean by the same token though, you want to… avoid… because you can get the same thing in spamming, you know, 4 gray units in a skirmish list, you can have the same thing show up in campaign too*, where if you make a 5 cost unit that’s better than everything else, that’s all a competent Imperial player is going to bring when they hit threat level 5.

Now the other thing with campaign that makes it sometimes more challenging, but also sometimes, like, gives you a little bit of license is you get an insane amount of variation and variables. The hero combinations that could be facing a list… the way different units interact on different missions on different maps with different Imperial classes with different agenda decks with different rewards that you’ve gotten from different side missions earlier in the campaign. It’s kind of crazy and there comes a point where it’s… it’s almost freeing, right, it’s saying, like, if you take a step back and look at it from a more experiential angle… and a pacing angle, those can actually become opportunities rather than drawbacks. “Oh, I found this cool interaction and I won, awesome”. As long as that’s not something that’s exploitable throughout a campaign. Like you just constantly pair up a class card with a unit, and that just makes the game not fun, that’s always the biggest thing is making sure that the game is fun and more importantly, not “not fun”.

And so that… making something… Avoiding negative play experience has less to do with balance in campaign and has more to do with pacing. And has more to do with balance in skirmish, because balance creates the pacing between the two players.

*Actually you can't have more than 2 same gray units in any single campaign mission thanks to component limitations, but we get what Paul's trying to say.

Anyway, hopefully this helps a lot of people better understand how the current crop of FFG designers (are these two still with FFG? I think so) approach the campaign game and maybe we can cut down on the "Is campaign balanced?" threads, because now you know that the answer is "no, campaign is not perfectly balanced, but it is still a ton of fun". I am personally glad they don't try to perfectly balance campaign because that would make everything extremely weak and same-y and the game would be super flat and boring for no reason since most playgroups are unlikely to consist of players who are close to the same skill level anyway. I would probably have said that if you can't enjoy a game unless it's balanced then you should probably be playing skirmish, but then Worlds happened, so yeah, sorry.

I think that the issue of "balance" is kind of silly anyway. There are dozens of incredibly unique missions in the campaign at this current time. I don't understand how players can expect that the win/loss ratios of an assymetric theme-based game could ever be nearly as close to 50:50 as people seem to want.

As the two devs said in that interview, there are so many factors that go into this multitude of missions, that balance doesn't really matter. As long as a mission isn't flat out broken, I think that should be something to celebrate.

3 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

*Actually you can't have more than 2 same gray units in any single campaign mission thanks to component limitations, but we get what Paul's trying to say

I think Paul knows that you can reinforce in the campaign.

Due the virtually unlimited amount of possible combinations the individual campaign missions can only be tuned as far as being winnable by both sides. It would be great to end up with 50% win chance, but you can never hope to get a sample size high enough during playtesting to know that. The percentage is available only more than a year after the fact - when the product has come out and after a lot of groups have played each mission. And even in a mission with 50% win chance you will have groups where either the imperial or the rebel side crushed the other.

If the missions could be 'living' after their release, they could be adjusted by FFG or the community when more and more data is accumulated.

edit: Whoops, wrong thread

I've been really impressed with balance in campaign. In general, our mission outcomes tend to reflect the win/loss percentages of the polls on BGG but so many of them have been nail-biters and decided by a single roll (often a crazily timed X-man). I also appreciate the idea of pacing. In some of the missions that were very lop-sided, I've had to remind my group to look at the present storyline and realize they were up against the wall and that this is what happens in a good story with opposition and climax. For instance, if the mission is called "Disaster" then maybe the Rebels are in an uphill battle during this point in the story.

Anyways, thanks for posting this interview. I had listened to it a while ago but it was a good reminder. Great podcast in general by the way, more IA please.

23 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

I think that the issue of "balance" is kind of silly anyway. There are dozens of incredibly unique missions in the campaign at this current time. I don't understand how players can expect that the win/loss ratios of an assymetric theme-based game could ever be nearly as close to 50:50 as people seem to want.

As the two devs said in that interview, there are so many factors that go into this multitude of missions, that balance doesn't really matter. As long as a mission isn't flat out broken, I think that should be something to celebrate.

Agreed. In a campaign, not every mission is supposed to be balanced.

Was Blowing Up the Death Star balanced? Not at all. It's not supposed to be. But Rebels still won that mission.

To me, it seems that most of the complaints about balance come from players where one side is getting consistently beaten every time. Rebel players who never win a game, or Imperial players who just get stomped into the ground over and over. To which the major issue seems to be that you can't balance people. If the player(s) on one side are is much better, or one side is playing the game 'wrong', they can't really balance around that.

9 hours ago, Tvboy said:

"no, campaign is not perfectly balanced, but it is still a ton of fun"

This is a good quote

I like that they emphasize pacing over perfect balance - as you say, the missions would have much less diversity (as skirmish missions tend to) and much fewer story-driven mechanics if they needed to be perfectly balanced. If either side can win, and you have fun doing whatever the mission requires of you, then it's a good mission.

Honestly, pacing is really the biggest problem you run into when min-maxing. We played a Core campaign where the Rebels were Fenn, Diala, Gideon, and Jyn, and the Imperials were Technological Superiority with all the best Agenda Sets. By mid-campaign, every mission was: the Rebels run around wiping everything off the board, and the Imperials throw out stun-bots (Hired Guns with Imperial Industry and Experimental Arms) and super-troops (Cloaked Elite Jet Troopers with Adaptive Weaponry) to try to slow the Rebels down as much as possible. A lot of the missions were "close", in that it came down to the last few activations of the last round, or a crucial Dodge, but they weren't fun. The Imperials usually activated one or two groups per round (the rest were defeated before they could activate), and the Rebels spent 1/3 of their actions removing stuns. The pacing was awful.

We've started a new Jabba's Realm campaign with Onar, Murne, Shlya, and Vinto, and the Nemeses class. It's been a blast so far - even though a few of the missions haven't been technically as close as before, the pacing has been so much better. The battle goes back and forth, fun Villains show up (and are defeated), and the mission unfolds at a steady pace instead of alternating between flurries of activity and dead silence.

Maybe that's not what they mean by pacing, but that's been our experience so far.

So they admit they don't care about balance for campaign. It's shown in the last two campaigns and it's made for a pretty poor experience. Bespin very nearly made us quit it was so bad, and really the only reason we might still keep playing after JR is because while still bad it was at least an improvement and we're getting Rebels stuff, Ahsoka and iconic things like Emperor. So I guess you can say we'll play the next expansion because it's Star Wars and not because we expect it to be a decent product.

2 hours ago, Union said:

So they admit they don't care about balance for campaign.

You apparently see what you want to see. "not perfectly balanced" is different than "do not care about balance".

13 hours ago, Abyss said:

To me, it seems that most of the complaints about balance come from players where one side is getting consistently beaten every time. Rebel players who never win a game, or Imperial players who just get stomped into the ground over and over. To which the major issue seems to be that you can't balance people. If the player(s) on one side are is much better, or one side is playing the game 'wrong', they can't really balance around that.

Exactly. If, for instance, if a soccer team (or football, for our friends across the Atlantic) was consistently beating a different soccer team, you wouldn't say that was due to lack of balance in the game (as, I mean, that's about as symmetrical as a game as you can get). Rather, you might take a look at the teams that were playing each other, and realize that you had Germany's national team against my little brother's 7th grade parish team. Obviously, the balance of the game is not what's causing the issue.

A good Imp or Rebel team should have the potential to win any mission that isn't broken. And as far as I know, there are only a small handful of missions that I'd categorize as "broken"- which is pretty impressive considering the nature of the game and the sheer amount of content we have.

Just to throw this out there- I'd view Fly Solo and Viper's Den as broken. Everything else seems fine enough. And even then, I've at least had fun with those missions.

7 hours ago, a1bert said:

You apparently see what you want to see. "not perfectly balanced" is different than "do not care about balance".

That describes you very well.

" The bar is a lot lower for campaign "

So campaign balance the "bar is a lot lower."

" You’re more concerned with pacing than you are with balance. "

In fact balance isn't even the main priority.

" If the story unfolds correctly in campaign, you’re good to go. "

In fact balance isn't even a consideration.

"In skirmish we have to give a lot more scrutiny to make sure it’s balanced because I think a lot of players who play skirmish, at least in a tournament format, derive their satisfaction from the game, from at least like [having] a legitimate chance to win the game. "

Having a legitimate chance to win is important in skirmish unlike campaign where it's fine if you get your face stomped "as long as the story unfolds."

" Avoiding negative play experience has less to do with balance in campaign and has more to do with pacing. "

Campaign isn't about having a balanced game that you play against each other, it's the unfolding story.

I think it's pretty clear what I said is dead on. You can see this exact philosophy with JR, more story and event heavy and completely lacking in any semblance of balance.

Not at all.

Admitting that balance is much more difficult in a game mode that inherently asymmetric doesn't mean that they don't care about it. Nor does implying that balance issues shouldn't hamper your campaign experience if it isn't fun. To say that they "don't care about balance for campaign" is not only comically pessimistic, it's also just inaccurate.

Union's right, so he should probably quit IA and just play chess.

9 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

Admitting that balance is much more difficult in a game mode that inherently asymmetric doesn't mean that they don't care about it.

No, but admitting they don't care about it is admitting they don't care about it.

Union seems very binary. I read "less to do with balance in campaign and has more to do with pacing" and Union apparently reads "nothing to do with balance in campaign and everything to do with pacing". I will just have to agree to disagree. I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe some nyances of the language are missed on me.

13 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Union seems very binary. I read "less to do with balance in campaign and has more to do with pacing" and Union apparently reads "nothing to do with balance in campaign and everything to do with pacing". I will just have to agree to disagree. I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe some nyances of the language are missed on me.

I used many quotes, you then use 1. 1 point does not make a line. I drew a very good line with what I said.

Just now, Union said:

I used many quotes, you then use 1. 1 point does not make a line. I drew a very good line with what I said.

Yet not one of those quotes was "we don't care about balance in campaign".

You reinterpretated many of those quotes to read as that, but surely you don't that makes it so. Surely you don't think the post you made where you literally interjected your own subtext into that interview is somehow the end-all be-all of this issue.

I see it, like has recently been brought up, as X-Wing rules: read what's on the card, not what isn't on it. Or, more appropriately here, read what's in the interview, not what isn't.

Balance is just as important to campaign players as it is to skirmish players, it's just on a different level. In skirmish every game should be balanced (with equally costed forces on either side) but in campaign mode the overall campaign should be balanced.

I think the take home is that Skirmish is a competitive game and requires very careful balancing. Especially given tournament play.

Campaign is an Adventure game and requires a different mind set during development with different goals. The developers simply referred to this as pacing, which is an interesting way to think about this.

Edit: In a way the Skirmish game has probably helped keep the campaign balanced since they share cards and the Skirmish is so highly scrutinized during tournament play.

There are moments where my group gets competitive in campaign play, but by and large we play campaign for the same reason we play stuff like D&D: to have fun. Here is our criteria:

Was beer consumed?

Was pizza ordered and consumed as well?

Were there laughs?

Was there fun?

If the answers to those questions are all yes, then for us campaign is as balanced as necessary. Sure, I can break out some of the downright cruel Imperial classes and just stomp the Rebels flat or give them a negative play experience, but that defeats the purpose. Same thing if the Rebels take a combo of ridiculously OP heroes (even then I still in my heart am on the side of he rebellion so even though I may "lose" I'm still part of telling the story about the Rebel victory.

Do we have a few house rules? Sure! I don't know a gaming group that doesn't.

Someone on the X-Wing boards said this ages ago (like before IA existed) but it's so true:

The objective of the game is to win. The point of the game is to have fun.

I would also like to point out that taking the words of the designers and construing them to mean "we don't care about balance" is a gross misrepresentation of their statements.

Edit: I forgot two of our criteria for a successful campaign game night:

Were "pew pew" or ligtsaber noises made?

Were imitation wilhelm screams attempted?

Hey cool! Thanks for transcribing this it was a lot of fun interviewing them.

5 hours ago, RogueLieutenant said:

Hey cool! Thanks for transcribing this it was a lot of fun interviewing them.

Thank you for doing that interview and asking such great questions! You guys did a really great job giving the designers things to talk when I'm sure it was tempting to just ask them about unreleased content (and get the standard FFG line over and over).

7 hours ago, FatherTurin said:

Were "pew pew" or ligtsaber noises made?

Were imitation wilhelm screams attempted?

Dang, I knew there was an important rule I missed somewhere! We have been playing this game completely wrong

12 hours ago, Stompburger said:

Dang, I knew there was an important rule I missed somewhere! We have been playing this game completely wrong

Omg, you haven't been doing a wilhelm scream every time a stormtrooper gets hilariously murdered? You are definitely doing it wrong. It's right after step 17.6 in resolving an attack!

Bonus points if you do it whenever someone gets knocked into the sarlacc.