Balancing is, especially among players, a highly debated topic of video games. Whether a game is sufficiently balanced greatly influences its reception, player satisfaction, churn rates and success. Yet, conceptions about the definition of balance diverge across industry, academia and players, and different understandings of designing balance can lead to worse player experiences than actual imbalances. This work accumulates concepts of balancing video games from industry and academia and introduces a player-driven approach to optimize player experience and satisfaction. Using survey data from 680 participants and empirically recorded data of over 4 million in-game fights of Guild Wars 2, we aggregate player opinions and requirements, contrast them to the status quo and approach a democratized quantitative technique to approximate closer configurations of balance. We contribute a strategy of refining balancing notions, a methodology of tailoring balance to the actual player base and point to an exemplary artifact that realizes this process.

翻译：平衡性，尤其在玩家群体中，是电子游戏领域一个备受争议的话题。游戏是否足够平衡，极大影响着其口碑、玩家满意度、流失率及成功与否。然而，业界、学术界与玩家之间对平衡性定义的认知存在分歧；对平衡设计的不同理解甚至可能导致比实际不平衡更差的玩家体验。本研究汇集了来自业界与学术界的电子游戏平衡性概念，并引入了一种以玩家为驱动的方法来优化玩家体验与满意度。通过分析来自680名参与者的调查数据以及《激战2》中超过400万场对战的实证记录数据，我们汇总了玩家的意见与需求，将其与现状进行对比，并探讨了一种民主化的量化技术，以逼近更优的平衡配置。我们提出了一种优化平衡性概念的策略、一套针对实际玩家群体定制平衡性的方法，并指向一个实现该过程的示范性成果。