Game Balance: Combat Power as a Design Metric

A recent design discussion reminded me that Combat Power is often misunderstood. It is not just about turning ATK, HP, and DEF into a single score.

In F2P games, its real purpose is to serve as a measurement tool. It is a metric used to compare different forms of strength.

This topic covers:

• Visible Combat Power

• Invisible Combat Power

• Design Benefits & Risks

1 Visible Combat Power: Visible Combat Power is what players see.

When players invest resources into the system, their Combat Power increases through:

→ Base attributes: ATK / HP / DEF

→ Advanced attributes: Crit Rate / Crit Damage / Accuracy / Dodge

→ Skill upgrades

This turns combat-related growth into a readable score and helps players understand:

• how strong their character is

• how difficult the target may be

• whether they are closer to the next content requirement

So visible Combat Power is mainly a player-facing growth signal.

2 Invisible Combat Power

Some games do not show Combat Power as a visible number, but designers still need to measure the strength of characters, monsters, items, and content.

Invisible Combat Power is usually closer to the real balance logic because it is used behind the system. Even when Combat Power is not shown, designers still need to evaluate:

• Is this character in the right strength range?

• Is this monster suitable for the current stage?

• Can the same type of item have different prices based on its power value?

• Are different builds still comparable within the same content range?

So Invisible Combat Power is not a number on the UI. It is the strength evaluation behind the system.

3 Design Benefits & Risks

The benefits of Combat Power:

• Players can understand how to become stronger, which makes the progression path easier to read.

• Players can measure strength more easily, which makes combat difficulty easier to read.

• Players can set short-term targets more clearly, and the game system can create early events more easily.

The risk is over-dependence. It may make players feel that:

• The game may become focused on only one target, and it may lose part of its fun.

• Before the fight begins, players may already know the result, so the game loses some uncertainty.

• It may become less accurate when skills, mechanics, and strategies have a larger impact, which can make the game harder to read.

• It may also contribute to power creep. I will explain this in the next post.

Whether Combat Power is visible or invisible, it affects both the system and the economy.

So next, I will continue with Combat Power Inflation.