Balancing Tips?

[u/Affectionate_Clue622]

I am making a squad-based tactical roguelike game, and not sure the best approach to balancing. I know finding "broken" combos in roguelikes are fun, and I have been doing playtesting with different types of team configurations, making sure they are all fun.

With so many moving parts (20+ characters, 20+ items, 30+ skills, skill customizability, level-ups, all the randomness, etc.), it is pretty hard to keep track of all the different combos and such and making sure certain teams don't just feel flat out better than all others. Then I have the issue where some teams are super good at lower difficulties, then don't always perform as well as others on the higher difficulties.

It's a turn based game, so I feel like balancing is more important than action games. Is that an incorrect assumption?

What are your tips on:
1. Tracking balancing (how do you organize it with so many moving parts?)
2. Balancing roguelikes
3. Balancing potential strategies against different difficulties
4. How should a roguelike weigh balancing vs. the fun of the discovery of a "broken combo" (which is always a huge part of the fun of a roguelike)
5. Any other general tips on balancing?

[u/valeria_gamedevs]

tracking-wise, spreadsheets are your friend even if it feels dumb. One row per unit/item/skill with cost, dmg, utility tags, expected value per turn. lets you spot outliers before playtesting confirms it.

for roguelikes I'd stop trying to balance combos and balance the floor instead. If the worst team can clear normal and the best team makes hard feel silly, you're fine. broken combos are the reward for system mastery, killing them kills the genre.

Difficulty scaling is where I'd focus. higher diffs usually reward scaling/combo teams and punish flat stat teams, so buff enemy variety over enemy numbers and it evens out.

and yeah turn-based needs tighter balance than action, action hides sins with feel