balance-pass

name	Balance Pass
description	Change one number for a stated reason, and find out what it actually did.
category	Design

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

1. Read balance-changes first. This number has probably been moved before, possibly in the direction you are about to move it back from.
2. State the problem as a player experience — "players skip the bow entirely after level three" — not as a number that feels wrong.
3. Change one thing. If a system already has an open trial, wait; two changes at once means you learn nothing from either.
4. Record the change with old and new values. "Nerfed the bow" is not a record and will not help anybody in a month.
5. 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.
6. 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.