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Unstable Equilibrium

1097 statements
207 feature instances
251 referencing feature instances

Unstable Equilibrium	type	FeatureClass
Unstable Equilibrium	label	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium	page	UnstableEquilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium	comment	In games, an Unstable Equilibrium occurs when a design feature rewards a well-performing player with advantages that enable the player to perform even better, or punishes a badly-performing player and causes them to do even worse. This causes a pile-up of advantages or disadvantages which can eventually turn into an unstoppable feedback loop of success or failure. Another name for this effect is "snowballing", after the metaphor of a snowball that grows larger and larger as it rolls down a snow-covered hill; the larger it gets, the more surface area it has, and thus the more snow it can pick up, making the problem increasingly worse over time. Unstable equilibria are nearly always undesired in games, as they upset the game balance and make the game less fun to play for many players. For example, in a single-player game, they can create a situation where early advantages accumulate to the point where the game becomes very easy later on, while early mistakes make it harder and harder to recover; this can make the game boring for more skilled players and frustrating enough to drive away everyone else. In multiplayer, it can mean that any player who takes an early lead quickly amasses such an advantage that they cannot be beaten, rendering the rest of the match pointless for everyone else. This is a ubiquitous problem in game design and a difficult one to solve. Examples of unstable equilibria in games include:
Unstable Equilibrium	fetched	2024-04-15T09:31:22Z
Unstable Equilibrium	parsed	2024-04-15T09:31:22Z
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to AdvanceWars: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to AndYourRewardIsClothes: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to AvertedTrope: Not an Item - IGNORE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to BottomlessMagazines: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to Catch22Dilemma: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to Combo: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to CurbStompBattle: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to CycleOfHurting: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to DamnYouMuscleMemory: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to DefiedTrope: Not an Item - FEATURE
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Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to GameBreaker: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to GameMod: Not an Item - FEATURE
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Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to RedAlert3: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
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Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to ShootEmUp: Not an Item - IGNORE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to SmallTownBoredom: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to SonicAndSegaAllStarsRacing: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to StatusBuff: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to SubvertedTrope: Not an Item - CAT
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Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to WarcraftIII: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Unstable Equilibrium	processingComment	Dropped link to ZergRush: Not an Item - FEATURE
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	Combo
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	AdvanceWars
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	ModernWarfare3
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	NexusClash
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	RedAlert3
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	SonicAndSegaAllStarsRacing
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	TheHouseOfTheDead
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	WarcraftIII
Unstable Equilibrium	processingUnknown	EmpireEarthII
Unstable Equilibrium	isPartOf	DBTropes
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10d303a2	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10d303a2	comment	The Smirk status in Shin Megami Tensei IV. If you deal a Critical Hit, hit an enemy with their weak element, get hit by an element you resist, or successfully dodge a non-status attack, you have a chance of gaining this effect. This basically buffs all your stats through the roof — including crit rate and dodge rate — and temporarily cancels your weaknesses (you'll take normal damage instead). This means one decisive hit can turn into more decisive hits, while one bad move can turn into more bad moves. The only reason it can't chain forever is that Smirk only lasts until the end of your next turn, and you can't Smirk on consecutive turns.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10d303a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10d303a2	featureConfidence	1.0
Shin Megami Tensei IV (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_10d303a2
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10ddd3d5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10ddd3d5	comment	The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: A minigame has you try to collect colored items worth different amount of points while flying. The kicker is that for each consecutive item of the same color you collect, its point value doubles, to a maximum of ten times. In short, every consecutive item you collect until you hit the cap is worth more than all the previous ones combined. You can win quite easily if you miss several red items, but if you collect a single other item during the middle part of the game you're screwed.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10ddd3d5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_10ddd3d5	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_10ddd3d5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1276bf61	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1276bf61	comment	The sequel demonstrates Sequel Escalation from the first game. Early rushing to grab as many planets as possible is even more important than before, and this time the Space Pirates rely on hit-and-run tactics against trading ships rather than attacking weak colonies, which was used to dissuade wild colonization in the first game. On the other hand, other empires can annex planets or entire solar systems through diplomacy, especially in multiple small empires gang up on the larger one at the negotiation table.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1276bf61	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1276bf61	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ruler 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1276bf61
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13aa3120	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13aa3120	comment	...which is why Advanced Strategic Command that started as its Fan Remake still doesn't have carry-over feature even after moving on.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13aa3120	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13aa3120	featureConfidence	1.0
Advanced Strategic Command (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_13aa3120
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13f21e09	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13f21e09	comment	Players need to use their (usually infantry) units to capture territory in Company of Heroes to earn resources, but if one side truly outmatches the other in maneuvering as they fight over territory, they'll capture more territory than the other side to start buying upgrades, laying down mines and requisitioning vehicles at a faster rate to help them continue beating up the opposition who will probably be struggling to just have the manpower to replace or reinforce their basic units, let alone buying more advanced ones. This is very slightly undercut by how manpower is automatically reduced as more of a player's population is used up on units, but not by much given that without any units at all, a player will earn about enough manpower to build a basic infantry unit every minute and a half (and obviously, having no units at all is incomparably bad for their ability to control territory). This effect can even happen later in the game due to how territory cut-offs also provide population, so even after both sides have bought pretty much all of the units they could want, one side getting enough of a leg up to be able to control both their territory and the enemy's territory cut-off can allow them to reduce the enemy's population such that even if their enemy hasn't actually lost any units, they will lack the population to be able to reinforce their infantry squads. Given that factions tend to need infantry to capture victory points to win the game or have engineers to repair their vehicles, this can be a crippling blow even late in the game if the territory cut-off is not regained quickly. 2 and onwards removed the later possibility by making all players start with their maximum possible population at the beginning of the game instead.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13f21e09	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_13f21e09	featureConfidence	1.0
Company of Heroes (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_13f21e09
Unstable Equilibrium / int_142657fa	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_142657fa	comment	In Thunder Force III and its sequels, dying will, instead of taking away every weapon (besides the two that you start with), take away only the weapon you were using. This leads to situations where, in order to keep a particularly useful weapon and you are in a very risky situation, you have to not use that weapon. So much for using Free Range and Sever on those more difficult bosses!
Unstable Equilibrium / int_142657fa	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_142657fa	featureConfidence	1.0
Thunder Force (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_142657fa
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1641fd92	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1641fd92	comment	Sunrider: After every mission, the Sunrider earns funds equal to the value of the enemies destroyed minus a repair fee of the damage taken by friendly units. The less well you do, the less money you earn, and the less money you have to upgrade your units, making your odds worse going forward.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1641fd92	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1641fd92	featureConfidence	1.0
Sunrider (Visual Novel)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1641fd92
Unstable Equilibrium / int_168c4727	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_168c4727	comment	Guild Wars 2 originally featured Orbs of Power in its realm-based player versus player combat, which provided large bonuses to whichever team possessed them. Since gaining control of an Orb of Power was rather difficult to start with, but keeping control was easy, the first team to take an Orb very rarely lost it. Add in an exploit allowing unethical players to take an Orb without being challenged, and it's not surprising that the mechanic was removed entirely. Having control of many supply depots also lets a realm upgrade their defenses and deploy offensive weapons much faster, which allows faster gain of more supply depots, which can eventually lead to another realm being repeatedly squashed at their home base. There are, at least, several vulnerabilities to this strategy, as defending every supply point on the map simultaneously takes a good deal of coordination.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_168c4727	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_168c4727	featureConfidence	1.0
Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_168c4727
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1773eb11	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1773eb11	comment	Star Ruler A big offender. Getting many planets early allows you to get more research capacity. Research not only improves economic and military capabilities, but also begets more research. Play your cards right, you'll be out-researching and out-producing everyone while also building bigger and more advanced ships, spiraling until victory is effectively guaranteed. Bottling in the AI opponents early on is critical, as if you see waves of colony ships leaving their systems at about an hour or to into the game, you have already lost; the AI will expand exponentially and will build exponentially more powerful ships. The game tries to discourage you from colonizing too fast by having Space Pirates appear to blockade and raid undefended systems, but past a certain point in the tech race you'll have powerful enough weapons that even a puny task force can keep them off your backs. The sequel demonstrates Sequel Escalation from the first game. Early rushing to grab as many planets as possible is even more important than before, and this time the Space Pirates rely on hit-and-run tactics against trading ships rather than attacking weak colonies, which was used to dissuade wild colonization in the first game. On the other hand, other empires can annex planets or entire solar systems through diplomacy, especially in multiple small empires gang up on the larger one at the negotiation table.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1773eb11	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1773eb11	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ruler (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1773eb11
Unstable Equilibrium / int_17bfcf60	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_17bfcf60	comment	Homeworld lives by this trope. Don't harvest sufficient resources or maintain your fleet (through construction or capturing) and you will find later levels much more difficult. Do a good job and the later levels become much easier. In some of the later levels it helps if you deconstruct your fleet to some degree and quickly rebuild at the start of the level. The enemy force scales with yours but not your resources.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_17bfcf60	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_17bfcf60	featureConfidence	1.0
Homeworld (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_17bfcf60
Unstable Equilibrium / int_184dc16f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_184dc16f	comment	The Salvation War: Discussed in "Pantheocide". When the humans try to resist Uriel via their willpower, they are told that they cannot afford to take any losses or else the survivors will get disheartened, which will allow Uriel to kill more of them, which further weakens the survivors, locking them into a Cycle of Hurting.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_184dc16f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_184dc16f	featureConfidence	1.0
The Salvation War	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_184dc16f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_19350db9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_19350db9	comment	Master of Orion The game takes steps against the boring mop-up period, not against this trope itself. Every so often, the game's warring star empires convene and vote on unification. Anyone who's supported by two-thirds of the total galactic population wins the game. Unfortunately the voting process is weighed against population; only the two most populated factions out of up to eight become candidates for the election, the vote of a faction is worth more as it grows on population, and the two candidates can, and will, vote for themselves. Its more of a mercy feature to prevent games to extend needlessly, as anyone who has the lead on the population race is often steamrolling in every field with little chance for anybody to catch up. Some races, especially in Master of Orion II, have clear advantages over others, creating inherent imbalance. Playing as the Psilons, who get all advantages from researching a technology and a research boost (normally, a player has to pick one advantage per technology and trade for the rest), or the Elerians (who can see all star systems from the beginning and can conquer planets using mind-control) usually results in them curb-stomping everyone in short order.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_19350db9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_19350db9	featureConfidence	1.0
Master of Orion (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_19350db9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1a862e23	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1a862e23	comment	In Wolf (DOS), you need to be in good form to hunt food and avoid human hunters. If you are injured badly (either through a hunter's bullet, prey animals fighting back, or a fight with a packmate over dominance), you will be unable to take advantage of your Sprint Meter, making staying alive much, much harder. While you might be able to find a carcass to eat from, good luck limping away from a human hunter.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1a862e23	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1a862e23	featureConfidence	1.0
Wolf (DOS) (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1a862e23
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1af341a1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1af341a1	comment	Most of Nippon Ichi's games (Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom, etc) have some game mechanic (repeated reincarnation in Makai Kingdom, failure fusion in Phantom Brave) that can be abused in order to make extremely powerful characters or equipment fairly early. While the games often have secret events, post-game storylines and random dungeons that will put these advantages to proper test, the main questline will be too feeble to offer any challenge.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1af341a1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1af341a1	featureConfidence	1.0
Disgaea (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1af341a1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1b56abaa	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1b56abaa	comment	Champions Online gives you stars as you win battles and complete missions, and takes them away as you die. These stars give a boost to your stats, improving your healing abilities, the damage you do, etc. That means that doing well in battle makes your character more powerful, while doing bad takes your power away, making you weaker and hencefort more likely to die even more. You can buy star refill boosts in the in-game store at any time but, of course, this takes real money. If you've been doing certain missions you can get Questionite, which you can then exchange for store money at exhorbitant rates, but you'll likely find that there are many more useful things you could be doing with either of those currencies. If you're a free player, your better choice are vendors that will refill your stars for in-game gold but, of course, those can only be found in hub areas, and not inside dungeons, where you're more likely to need them.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1b56abaa	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1b56abaa	featureConfidence	1.0
Champions Online (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1b56abaa
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1d6f193a	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1d6f193a	comment	Tales of Berseria: Combo length is limited by the Soul Gauge, which gets longer when you defeat enemies, hit all of their weaknesses in a single combo, or inflict status effects on them (which nearly every attack can do). It gets shorter when you suffer status effects, which includes being stunned by a Zerg Rush. If you get a large amount of souls, the Cycle of Hurting is distinctly in your favor, letting you perform long combos while expending the extras on Break Souls. Get down to one or two and you'll awkwardly struggle to fend off enemies with long breaks between attacks and have many of your Artes inaccessible (unless you go to the tedious lengths of changing what order they come in a combo mid-battle), not to mention suffer from the status effects themselves. Low SG does have some compensatory benefits—reducing damage and making status effects less common to receive and more common to perform—but they don't really make up for its limitations. Blast Gauge is another resource, which can be used for powerful Mystic Artes or more prosaically on Switch Blast, which can bench an endangered player character, removing status effects and gradually restoring their health, while granting their relief a soul. However, a character getting knocked out makes them lose a considerable amount of BG—half on Normal difficulty and practically all of it on higher difficulties. That said, everyone does have an easily-unlockable title that prevents BG loss on KO.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1d6f193a	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_1d6f193a	featureConfidence	1.0
Tales of Berseria (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_1d6f193a
Unstable Equilibrium / int_210767ac	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_210767ac	comment	Crusader Kings games tend to balance advantage of outward expansion by giving you more vassals who can plot against you to manage.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_210767ac	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_210767ac	featureConfidence	1.0
Crusader Kings (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_210767ac
Unstable Equilibrium / int_21810fae	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_21810fae	comment	This is one of the main reasons behind the Apple Trust's titanic power in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. Because they can afford to buy the latest Magitek and fix up their infrastructure when it breaks, they can produce far more crops with the same amount of labor, which in turn gives them more money and influence.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_21810fae	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_21810fae	featureConfidence	1.0
RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse (Fanfic)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_21810fae
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2192aeb3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2192aeb3	comment	In the Fire Emblem series it's near inverted, as although the more units on your side the better, if you try to level each unit equally, you'll be left with not very good units and be overwhelmed easily. Also, if you spend the limited amount of gold you're given too quickly or hold on until the last moment, you'll end up with not very good gear besides the special equipment that you're given. While too many units is a problem, so is not enough. If a crucial or powerful unit is defeated and you're short on people, you're finished.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2192aeb3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2192aeb3	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2192aeb3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_291e9857	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_291e9857	comment	Dark Souls Dark Souls got rid of world tendency, but still has this to a lesser degree with the humanity stat: it has a tremendous effect on resistance to the instant-death curse status effect and item drop rate while having a smaller effect on defense, but raising it is rather time-consuming while failing to recover your body after dying makes humanity go down to 0. In Dark Souls II, a character's maximum health is stunted by 5% after each death, up to a maximum of 50% health stunting. It can be reversed, but only through use of an item with limited supply. There's also a ring that prevents this (and another which halves the effect of the penalty to a maximum of 25% of maximum HP), but it breaks upon death. It can be repaired, though (for a price).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_291e9857	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_291e9857	featureConfidence	1.0
Dark Souls (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_291e9857
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2930d0c4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2930d0c4	comment	Battlefield 3: Being an FPS with a level-to-unlock system, has this trope in hordes. However, it does try to avert this with pick-up kits and squad specialisations. The most egregious example is with regard to air combat. If your opponents have a good jet/helo pilot while you only have a decent jet/helo pilot, he probably already has loads of tasty unlocks and the skill required not only to cook your air support, but your tanks, your jeeps, your infantry and even your mobile anti-air. Considering that air-to-ground missiles are scarily effective on armor, this will not end well. Vehicles do have their own class of unlocks too. Tanks are the most egregious example here, with the penultimate unlock being a Canister Shell that does 50% damage to infantry and acts as a shotgun with 1km range. Essentially, they can snipe out infantry with random headshots. It is the vehicle vs infantry unlocks in general. Almost all infantry upgrades have a downside. Heavy barrel increases bullet speed, but also recoil while decreasing hip accuracy, the silencer hides the minimap ping and lowers recoil, but greatly reduces bullet speed. Reactive armor, smoke/flare or canister shells have no downside at all. Made even worse by the fact that infantry carried anti vehicle equipments do not have any upgrades at all besides unlocking them. Speaking more generally, in Conquest matches a losing team is extremely likely to KEEP losing. This is because flanking attacks and divide-and-conquer techniques are a major part of successful play... but a team that has been pushed back into their spawn area literally only has one direction to come from. They can't flank in any meaningful way, and the winning team is free to focus the entirety of its firepower on them rather than being forced to split their attention between multiple objectives. The losing team gets no advantages whatsoever. The Armored Kill maps are even worse. In addition to the usual jets and helicopters, it also adds AC-130 gunships and mobile artillery. Both of these powerful vehicles are tied to key objectives, which is supposed to allow a losing team to rush those points. The problem is that both the artillery and gunship are more effective the more of the map you control. A winning team can use artillery to fire straight into the enemy base without fear of reprisal, while the gunship kills backcappers from the air. A losing team, on the other hand, is likely to waste precious tickets in a rush to the gunship point only to have it shot out of the air by hordes of stinger missiles from the rest of the map.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2930d0c4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2930d0c4	featureConfidence	1.0
Battlefield 3 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2930d0c4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a5145ed	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a5145ed	comment	Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: If you do not master time management and Chronostasis, then you will run out of time to do all the quests, and may even fail the game. If you learn them all too well, then you can finish the main quest line by the end of the third day, and most of the side quests by the end of the sixth day. This leaves you with very little to do until the final boss battle, which won't happen until the world ends after day thirteen.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a5145ed	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a5145ed	featureConfidence	1.0
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a5145ed
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a643174	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a643174	comment	In Chicken Invaders, getting hit costs you a significant amount of firepower, meaning that defeating enemies will take longer and you're more likely to get hit again.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a643174	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a643174	featureConfidence	1.0
Chicken Invaders (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a643174
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a893b9b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a893b9b	comment	Counter-Strike: Online multiplayer team games such as CounterStrike often give the winning team a bigger reward. This, of course, means that as one side keeps winning, the losing team slowly becomes crippled relative to the winning Some servers also run a Warcraft mod where players earn XP for kills. Higher levels get better abilities, which may make it nigh-impossible for low-level players to get any kills. For example, an Orc player at a certain level has the explosive power and range of regular frag grenades boosted by a factor of 2-4. This can allow an Orc to clear out an entire building with a single grenade. While some servers keep your XP and level if you log out and come back later, other servers reset it either upon a login or at certain intervals.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a893b9b	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a893b9b	featureConfidence	1.0
Counter-Strike (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2a893b9b
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2c9d337d	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2c9d337d	comment	Human Killing Machine has a very annoying mechanic where Kwon, the player character, is designated either "strong" or "weak" at the beginning of a fight, depending on how well he beat his previous opponent. If he won the fight with high health, he is "strong" and needs fewer knockdowns to defeat his next opponent - but if he barely won he is "weak" and requires more knockdowns to win. While the intention was presumably to reward a player who was on a good streak, the reality is that it is difficult enough to beat an opponent at all with the game's poor controls and hit detection. Therefore, most victories the player will achieve will be barely scraping by, ensuring that Kwon remains "weak", and since each opponent essentially gains an extra two lifebars under those circumstances, the chances of clawing one's way back up to making Kwon "strong" again are essentially nil.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2c9d337d	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2c9d337d	featureConfidence	1.0
Human Killing Machine (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2c9d337d
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2ee053b1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2ee053b1	comment	Yes, Your Grace: The Player Character's revenue comes mostly from taxes paid by the general population. The gameplay is arranged in such a way that choices have to be made between helping people in need, army upkeep, and buying expensive items for the royal family. Helping people can increase taxes recieved, while refusing to provide help can decrease them. Getting too few taxes means not being able to afford the bigger material help packages or the salaries of the agents who can be sent to deal with problems on site, resulting in more people getting turned away. Because of this, a single turn of turning all petitioners away (or a few turns of accepting to help too few people) to be able to spend the resources on other things can result in a downwards spiral budget-wise.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2ee053b1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_2ee053b1	featureConfidence	1.0
Yes, Your Grace (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_2ee053b1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3277eea2	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3277eea2	comment	In the The Battle for Middle-earth series, hero units persist across campaign maps and the War of the Ring mode of Risk-style territory captures. By the time the Rise of the Witch expansion was produced, your armies were persistent in War of the Ring, thus letting you build up an army of elite upgraded top-tier units and simply roll across Middle-Earth crushing everything in your way. Conversely, if a skilled-enough player on the defensive can hold off the advance (often with the aid of fortifications like Helm's Deep and copious amounts of archers), the player can not only completely shatter the offensive, but come out of it with a powerful army of the player's own and turn the game around.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3277eea2	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3277eea2	featureConfidence	1.0
The Battle for Middle-earth (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3277eea2
Unstable Equilibrium / int_339e3a65	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_339e3a65	comment	Sweet Home (1989) combines Survival Horror resource management and permanent character deaths with RPG-style Random Encounters, i.e. infinite enemies. The game becomes an utter cakewalk if you can level up enough, because your party is always given first chance to attack, but it is a very big "IF."
Unstable Equilibrium / int_339e3a65	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_339e3a65	featureConfidence	1.0
Sweet Home (1989) (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_339e3a65
Unstable Equilibrium / int_34ce08dd	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_34ce08dd	comment	Star Soldier (the WiiWare one, probably other ones) rubs Unstable Equilibrium in the face of gamers everywhere with an (admittedly generous) twist on the "die and lose all your weapons" concept. Your weapon strength is tied to your health, so each time you're hit, your weapons get weaker and weaker until you die. The short "score attack" nature of the WiiWare game makes this a bit easier to swallow.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_34ce08dd	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_34ce08dd	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Soldier (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_34ce08dd
Unstable Equilibrium / int_367f632a	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_367f632a	comment	Dawn of War It doesn't matter how good your base defenses are, capturing strategic points/critical locations/relics is practically the only way to produce Requisition resource which is needed by absolutely everything. If someone gains an advantage here, they can Zerg Rush the losers who will never catch up in terms of production capabilities. The skirmish/multiplayer victory conditions Control Areanote capture 67% of the map's strategic points and hold them for 8 minutes and Take and Holdnote capture half of the map's critical locations and hold them for 7 minutes are specifically introduced to prevent this trope by ending the match whenever someone has gained critical advantage. A totally different example occurs in the Dark Crusade expansion, at the strategic level in the campaign. There, your bases stay right where you left them, to be used when an AI later re-invades the territory. Hence a province you gain in a skin-of-your-teeth victory with your base half wrecked will be a BEAR to hold in subsequent rounds, whereas one you left with two fully-developed expansion bases will provide a pretty boring curb-stomp of any foolish invaders. This also developed a habit of people stopping just short of completing the objective (usually blowing up the enemy HQ) to capture every single Requisition point on the map and fortify them, as well as building up ludicrous amount of power generators, so that if the area gets assaulted again, all you have to do is to hotkey your unit production buildings and swarm them before the enemy even has his economy up (which is a surprisingly easy feat despite the enemy already starting out with resources and a base). You can even build gun turrets where you expect the enemy to spawn, so that you can win a Defense match without ever pressing a button!
Unstable Equilibrium / int_367f632a	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_367f632a	featureConfidence	1.0
Dawn of War (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_367f632a
Unstable Equilibrium / int_37b56f7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_37b56f7	comment	With the release of the expansion Throne of Bhaal, Baldur's Gate II became potentially really unbalanced because you can clear the first floor, maybe the second too, of the Watcher's Keep during chapter 2, and snowball consequently. They can be undertook without too much danger as the enemies scale on your level and are doable. First, the loot is very overpowered (considered that it was thought for a party after the defeat of the Big Bad in the vanilla campaign); if you don't want to use it, you can still sell it to earn tons of money and buy fancy things you weren't supposed to afford until in later chapters, some of which become Disc-One Nukes. Second, the experience points you get can make your party much more powerful than most enemies you are supposed to face in the normal missions at this point, and if you add the xp from those, you will cut pretty quickly through chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 5 might still be a bit challenging in some quests, but by chapter 6 you might even have reached High Level Abilities (introduced in the expansion with higher levels, while the original game was capped below the max amount of possible xp you could get in the whole campaign). At this point you could also return to the Keep and finish the remaining floors, which while hard can earn you tons of items, xp and money that make the loot of the first two floors pale in comparison. You will end so much stronger than what was previously your limit that the final confrontation with the Big Bad will be trivial. The Enhanced Edition added a mechanics giving free xp to newly recruited characters if they are way behind the protagonist, in order to catch up and be immediately competitive. On one hand, this makes anybody perfectly viable even if you recruit him or her after most experience was divided among other companions; on the other hand, you could cheese the game by quickly farming xp while soloing (e.g. by scribing spells from scrolls or exploiting quests that earn tons of xp when you conclude them, since you don't divide them among companions).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_37b56f7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_37b56f7	featureConfidence	1.0
Baldur's Gate II (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_37b56f7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_390a0da6	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_390a0da6	comment	The reboot to Steel Battalion does this in a rather nasty way. In order for you to get any upgrades at all, you need to attain a good performance rating from specific missions (which, incidentally, are also multiplayer capable). Particularly good players that can gain an A rank is awarded with many upgrades, especially the ones that can make your Vertical Tank much more durable (which is the most valuable upgrade, given the Nintendo Hard nature of the game). However, it is unlikely that new players know what to do, and most of the time, they cannot attain such a rank, which means later levels will get progressively harder and harder because simply surviving gets very, very hard without the upgrades to help them.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_390a0da6	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_390a0da6	featureConfidence	1.0
Steel Battalion (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_390a0da6
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3be31c4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3be31c4	comment	The Modern Warfare series and Call of Duty: World at War also have this - players who get kill streaks without dying are rewarded with air support raining down on the opposition. However, these advantages are SO high as to fall squarely into the main-level trope. Someone who is only okay is likely to get less and less kills, as the high-level people gain the ability to use those tricks.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3be31c4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3be31c4	featureConfidence	1.0
Modern Warfare (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3be31c4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3cf15492	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3cf15492	comment	Unstable equilibrium could hit the earlier versions of MechWarrior Living Legends pretty hard. Players start out each match with light assets and earn money by capturing bases, assisting teammates, and damaging enemies, which causes them to rank up, increasing their spawn money so they can buy bigger and more advanced vehicles. However, an early base capture rush by one team could give them a decisive advantage, which would only magnify unless the other team coordinated to take down the enemy's top players. After half an hour into the match, the rush team might be stomping around in Inner Sphere assault mechs and Clan heavies mechs, while the slower team was stuck in medium mechs. Comeback Mechanics introduced in the final update greatly reduced the likelihood of the curb-stomp battles by giving more money to players fighting larger assets - pulling an assault battlemech too early now is essentially shooting yourself in the foot, as the lighter enemies will get loads of money by shooting your slow mech.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3cf15492	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3cf15492	featureConfidence	1.0
MechWarrior (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3cf15492
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3d3a4e34	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3d3a4e34	comment	In Blaster Master and its sequels, taking damage during the overhead on-foot segments downgrades your gun, which you need to have powered up for the bosses, especially the later ones.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3d3a4e34	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3d3a4e34	featureConfidence	1.0
Blaster Master (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3d3a4e34
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3defe34c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3defe34c	comment	Ernest Adams discusses this trope from a game designer's perspective in two of his articles: "Balancing Games with Positive Feedback" and "Preventing the Downward Spiral".
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3defe34c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3defe34c	featureConfidence	1.0
Discussed Trope	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3defe34c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3e05ffc5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3e05ffc5	comment	Lovely People: The fact that one's Social Credit score impacts that of one's friends, both positively and negatively, leads to this trope. People with high scores will have an easier time making friends, since connecting with such people is beneficial for one's score. People with low scores suffer the opposite, with their friends and family cutting ties with those people to protect their own scores.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3e05ffc5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3e05ffc5	featureConfidence	1.0
Lovely People (Webcomic)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3e05ffc5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3f633fb4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3f633fb4	comment	"The rich get richer, the poor get poorer". To grossly oversimplify, the rich can afford to take spare cash and invest it, gaining more cash. This cash can then be invested for even more cash. The poor struggle to meet their daily necessities - or, for the worst off, do not even succeed in doing so - and remain poor. Even when they get external aid, the most common form is through a loan. If they can't capitalize on the loan well enough, they'll have to pay out debt on top of everything else. Laws can be created to stabilize this, but take a wild guess at what you need to get laws passed. Explored further in a Cracked article. This is called accumulated advantage or the Matthew Effect in sociology, as detailed above. The saying typically comes up in relation to the Boom-Bust Business Cycle. In a Boom, the first people who buy in are the people who already have money, and they usually wind up selling their assets to poorer people who either took out loans or got a windfall during the Boom. When the Boom Busts, the value of assets plummets, allowing the rich - who sold to the poor during the Boom for cash - to repurchase the assets at a net profit. The cycle repeats, each time transferring money from poor to rich. Communities with high crime rates discourage businesses from moving into the area. This results in a lack of local jobs, increasing local unemployment. Many of these unemployed people believe society is stacked against them, and look up to local criminals as role models, leading to more crime. Once the crime rates drop and the area becomes safe, gentrification often swiftly kicks in. This creates another cycle— because many poor people rent their property rather than own it, once an area stops being awful, people will quickly move in and purchase the cheap real estate, then raise rents. The poor people in the area are unable to pay the rents and are instead replaced with better off people. The poor people now need to go find new housing, and will likely only be able to afford to live in a poor, crime-ridden area, putting them back where they started, just in a new location. Historically, malnutrition and disease were more common amongst poor people, who couldn't afford to feed themselves properly. This resulted in poor people being more likely to be unable to work, increasing their poverty. Poverty trap is the term used to describe these positive feedback loops that reinforce poverty. Some of the ones observed include bad infrastructure (no money to pay for roads; bad roads mean businesses don't want to invest there), education (lack of money for schools; low education means much fewer opportunities to escape poverty), health and war (caused by desperation and lack of options, fueled by the frictions associated with poverty). It is also the case that good quality stuff lasts longer and so is cheaper in the long run. Poor people can't scrape together the larger one-off cost and so have to buy cheaper versions that wear out much more quickly. This creates an odd sort of paradox where poorer people actually spend more money over time than the wealthier people, despite having less money to begin with. The Captain Sam Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3f633fb4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_3f633fb4	featureConfidence	1.0
Cracked (Website)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_3f633fb4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_423d62c4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_423d62c4	comment	Invoked deliberately in Papers, Please much like the real-life poverty example. If you don't have enough money for food or heat, your family members will become sick. If you don't buy sick family members medicine (on top of the daily food and heat), other family members will become sick, requiring more medicine. This will also force you to make some of the more harsh decisions, such as coldly turning away people you sympathize with because you can't afford the citation for letting them slide, or accepting the deal of the corrupt sentry who pays you off to detain more people than normal.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_423d62c4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_423d62c4	featureConfidence	1.0
Papers, Please (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_423d62c4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_42ffb88e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_42ffb88e	comment	SCP Foundation: Possibly unintentional in the case of SCP-4054, aka The Seventh Door. Due to the electrical charge the game produces to bypass being locked out of the NES system, every time the game is reset it damages the game's hardware a little more, causing increasingly frustrating glitches until the game becomes unable to be played.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_42ffb88e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_42ffb88e	featureConfidence	1.0
SCP Foundation (Website)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_42ffb88e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_438b63e4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_438b63e4	comment	In Halo: Reach, the weapons you have when you blast off in the Sabre fighter determine what weapons you have when you board the Covenant Corvette. On harder difficulties, a poor weapon choice can dramatically affect how well you do on the Corvette level.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_438b63e4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_438b63e4	featureConfidence	1.0
Halo: Reach (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_438b63e4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_468bebb0	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_468bebb0	comment	Discworld has the "Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice" from Sam's own pondering on boots. A rich person can spend $50 on a good pair of boots that last years and years whereas a poor person can only afford a cheap $10 pair of boots that have to be replaced much more often. Therefore on a long timeline, he spends twice as much as the man who can afford fifty dollars up front (and he would still have wet feet.)
Unstable Equilibrium / int_468bebb0	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_468bebb0	featureConfidence	1.0
Discworld	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_468bebb0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_497461f4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_497461f4	comment	In Tonight We Riot, the player's party is stronger the more workers they have liberated for the revolution. Lose some workers early in a level, and it is likely to turn into an uphill struggle throughout. Conversely, assembling a big enough pack can turn most levels to a walk in the park.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_497461f4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_497461f4	featureConfidence	1.0
Tonight We Riot / Videogame	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_497461f4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49a88442	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49a88442	comment	Final Fantasy XIV's large-scale PvP mode, Frontline, rewards kills and assists with an increased Limit Break gauge and "Battle High" buffs, with 5 tiers of buffs. These buffs increase damage and healing, which can in your Limit Break filling faster. Given how a melee DPS job can very nearly kill squishier jobs (e.g. healers) with the Limit Break alone, this can lead to a juggernaut ripping through your team if they have their own healers focusing on them. The tradeoff is that a broken spree rewards the enemy team with more points, and Battle Highs are visible to everyone, leading to a potential ambush if you're seen out in the open with it.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49a88442	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49a88442	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy XIV (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_49a88442
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49ad83ee	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49ad83ee	comment	World of Warcraft: Lake Wintergrasp: The PvP area Lake Wintergrasp deals with this by granting the faction with fewer players present the Tenacity buff, which gives them increased health, health regeneration, and healing power. In extreme cases, this can result in players with five times as much health as the opposition. Tenacity effectively rewards the side that's unable to gather as many players together to fight, since it's widely considered that the buff more than makes up for the lack of numbers. Of course, Tenacity doesn't help defenders because 3 players cannot cover 20+ points of entry from 80 or more players. It basically just enforces a tug of war. There's also a feature in Wintergrasp that makes the battle easier for the attacking side if they've consistently lost several battles, ensuring that control of the zone will eventually switch. Tol Barad has similar issues. There's no Tenacity, and it's much easier to defend Tol Barad than it is to capture it. This is semi-intentional, as capturing Tol Barad comes with huge rewards. Later Blizzard tweaked it to make capturing Tol Barad more easily possible. An example created via an Addon. The infamous "GearScore" addon calculate the (then hidden) item level of a player's equipment, and assigned them a number based on the average. This was meant to give raid leaders an indication of how well geared a player was, as certain content required a certain level of gear in order to be survivable. Unfortunately, GearScore really took off, and some raid readers began enforcing "Minimum GearScore" requirements for certain content. Often, the only way to achieve the required score was by equipping gear found only in the dungeon they were about to run. Blizzard eventually made item levels visible, and began enforcing a (considerably more reasonable) minimum ilevel to run content. Blizzard made the leveling easier and removed the penalty for death but is now finding that once players reach the top they are bored and half the gaming world is useless (i.e. too low a level to bother hanging around in) to players at the level cap. This was at least partially remedied with the Archaeology profession, as well as the Pet Battle system, both of which gave high-level players a reason to visit lower-level areas. World-wide level-scaling was also introduced towards the end of Legion, making monsters and rewards in given zones correspond to the player's level, within certain ranges, making leveling in what were once lower-level areas as profitable as higher-level areas.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49ad83ee	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_49ad83ee	featureConfidence	1.0
World of Warcraft (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_49ad83ee
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4bea6084	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4bea6084	comment	The same company's Europa Universalis series also tries to avert this with its "Stability" mechanic: Every country has a Stability rating that fluctuates many times during the game, often being lowered by certain events. Stability affects both revolt risk and tax income. Where this trope comes in is that each province a faction holds adds a little extra to the cost of raising its Stability (though a nation's "core" provinces have much lower costs); an empire holding a large number of low-income, non-core provinces might actually cost more to keep stable than it's worth.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4bea6084	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4bea6084	featureConfidence	1.0
Europa Universalis (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_4bea6084
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4c56381b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4c56381b	comment	The Binding of Isaac: Not getting a good item on the first floor can make or break your entire run. It can make the difference between having enough time to make it to Boss Rush or ??? or getting held up by rooms of Goddamned Bats, and it can be the crucial thing that stops you from taking damage and getting those precious Devil and Angel Rooms. So much so that not only is "Holding R" now an official term for resetting your run until you get a good first-floor item drop, but doing this 7 times in a row gives the Mr. Resetrer! achievement and unlocks half Soul Hearts as a drop to reward (punish?) you for it. note They replace a full soul heart that would have otherwise dropped. To make it more even handed consoles change the unlock to 10 losses in a row, which resetting counts as a loss, presumably so it's more of an unlock than direct punishment. Learning how to game the system and avoid damage can take an experienced player much further than a newbie. The game rewards you with powerful Devil or Angel rooms each floor if you avoid taking non-self damage to your red hearts, allowing them to get more powerful faster if they choose to do so. For this reason, damage is more valuable than health earlier in the game, which lets you kill enemies and remove danger sooner, as is finding soul hearts early since they can cover for mistakes without ruining Devil/Angel room spawn chances. Most health ups and defensive items don't matter as much until late game because if you're not killing things fast enough you'll just accumulate more damage. Avoiding damage also means that the player may have spare health laying around to use for various purposes, such as gaining money from a blood donation machine or taking on a boss challenge room knowing they can heal afterwards. Being able to find (and access) secret rooms is also a big deal, as these rooms often contain many coins or items. More coins means you can get more items from shops or pay off beggars later in the game for health up items, while secret rooms can contain some of the biggest Game-Breaker items in the game. The character Bethany has gameplay that leans heavily toward this. She can't gain soul or black hearts, meaning that any damage she takes reduces Devil/Angel room chances, and spawns wisps of light that enhance her damage and defense, but are damaged by enemies, meaning that even getting close to being hit can destroy them. If she's not able to consistently dodge she'll run out of wisps, her main advantage. Tainted Bethany takes this even further, as she gains masses of extra items that are tied to destructible wisps - if the items she has aren't enough to tear through enemies easily she'll start losing them. Tainted Keeper is a particularly extreme example of an unstable equilibrium. One of his primary gimmicks is receiving much larger shops with items from a variety of pools (instead of only shop items). If you're lucky enough to get powerful items from a shop early in the run, chances are good you'll be able to steamroll the rest of it, unless you get careless. If not... well, Tainted Keeper has two HP maximum under most circumstances, and his base damage output is barely enough to get through the first few floors without upgrades, and certainly not later ones.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4c56381b	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4c56381b	featureConfidence	1.0
The Binding of Isaac (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_4c56381b
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4ce5263e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4ce5263e	comment	XCOM: Enemy Unknown changes the equilibrium to make the late game play very differently from the early game. To detect UFO attacks, you need to have satellite coverage over a country, but you start the game with only one satellite (out of 16 countries), and new satellites are prohibitively expensive (costing almost half of your starting budget for just one). Satellite coverage is necessary to get funding from the nation that the satellite is stationed over, and having all the countries of a continent covered by satellites also gives you a not-insignificant bonus. By the late mid-game, you should have all or almost all countries covered by satellites, giving you a significant amount of funding each month (so you can afford the expensive toys you've researched), prevents abduction events in all covered countries (keeping panic in check), and lets you focus on the tech and events you need to win the game.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4ce5263e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4ce5263e	featureConfidence	1.0
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_4ce5263e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4cf36e52	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4cf36e52	comment	In Offworld Trading Company, you win by buying out your opponents. The thing is, if you can get a large income in the early game, you can buy out your weaker opponents to raise your stock price (making it more expensive to buy you out), until you've snowballed such an advantage that your remaining opponent is in a hopeless situation. On the other hand, if you struggle to get a strong income, you'll fall behind, have a low stock price, and be more vulnerable to a buyout. This is the point of the game, however: as an economic warfare simulator, the game starts off with everyone on equal footing, and your goal is to destabilize the equilibrium to enhance your position and destroy your opponents.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4cf36e52	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_4cf36e52	featureConfidence	1.0
Offworld Trading Company (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_4cf36e52
Unstable Equilibrium / int_50b6ac87	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_50b6ac87	comment	Both Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith and Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism have a shot power penalty for bombing, so if you bomb against a boss, its attacks will last longer, which means you're more likely to have to use another bomb. MoF does grant one "free" bomb at full power, since the shot power is exactly the same from 4.00 through the max of 5.00, but drop to 2 or less during a boss fight and you're pretty much screwed.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_50b6ac87	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_50b6ac87	featureConfidence	1.0
Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_50b6ac87
Unstable Equilibrium / int_51c15d94	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_51c15d94	comment	Risk is a mixed bag. As players conquer more territory, they get exponentially more troops. This means that the guy to conquer the most gets the most troops. However, this is to counterbalance the side effect of spreading your troops too thin. It also suffers from the mopping-up problem where someone is clearly going to win, but it will take a lot of die-rolling for it to be official. And of course, there's the human factor...
Unstable Equilibrium / int_51c15d94	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_51c15d94	featureConfidence	1.0
Risk (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_51c15d94
Unstable Equilibrium / int_52f6626	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_52f6626	comment	The same goes with Jak II: Renegade; especially painful due to the game's Nintendo Hard nature worsened even more by Checkpoint Starvation. Emptied 85% of your weaponry on that final wave and died? Now do the same without ammo.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_52f6626	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_52f6626	featureConfidence	1.0
Jak II: Renegade (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_52f6626
Unstable Equilibrium / int_54399b8	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_54399b8	comment	Warhammer: Dark Omen makes a downright infuriating example. Lose a critical unit in any battle, and you are royally screwed. In fact, the very instant you see your Fire Wizard drop dead, you might as well restart the battle. Also, if you have high casualties in one battle, that usually means that your army won't be at full strength for the next battle, leading to heavier casualties, etc. It tends to quickly degenerate into a downward spiral, where your best option is to restart the campaign and self-impose yourself some "acceptable casualty limits".
Unstable Equilibrium / int_54399b8	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_54399b8	featureConfidence	1.0
Warhammer: Dark Omen / Videogame	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_54399b8
Unstable Equilibrium / int_550ba959	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_550ba959	comment	This goes even further in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, as the later killstreak rewards are often simply -better- than earlier ones. A weaker team might be trying its hardest to scrape together enough kills to earn a UAV recon or spy plane, whereas the other team can be grinding them into dust with repeated airstrikes, AC130 gunships and attack helicopters. Worse, in Modern Warfare 2, said killstreak rewards count towards earning others, something that resulted in the somewhat infamous Harrier/Chopper Gunner/Nuke combo.*Getting a Harrier (7 kills) usually gets enough kills for a Chopper Gunner/AC130 (11 kills) which leads up to a Tactical Nuke (25 kills). Needless to say, this is horrifying for the other team.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_550ba959	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_550ba959	featureConfidence	1.0
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_550ba959
Unstable Equilibrium / int_56fa0ea4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_56fa0ea4	comment	Civilization The games in general suffer from this when it comes to the research-race. Players who start out in a location favorable to research, or know how to best balance early expansion and enhancement of existing cities to maximize research, will sooner be able to create buildings that increase research (Libraries, Laboratories) and - more importantly - build one-of-a-kind Wonders that can boost research or provide free technologies (The Great Library, for example), thus further increasing their lead in the tech-race. Next thing you know, they'll be knocking over your bow-and-arrow wielding sentries with tanks and tower artillery. Better hope you're playing one of those Civ-games where Rock Beats Laser. This problem is prominent enough that some players exclusively play on Pangaea-type maps so that they can stop any opponents who look set to skyrocket in research. The popular Civilization 4 mod, Fall from Heaven includes this trait, but also adds a new, militarized version in Baron Duin Halfmorn, a unique 'World Unit' which can be built by ANYONE, regardless of civilization, religion and civic choices - the ONLY such unit. (All other 'unique' units are cultural or religious heroes.) So basically, whoever first researches the necessary technology, gets to build him. Being a Werewolf, he has a high chance of turning any unit he kills into a Ravenous Werewolf, and if they survive their first engagement (even if it's only with an unarmed Worker), they turn into Blooded Werewolves under your control. These, then, have a chance of turning into stronger Greater Werewolves with every combat-success - and every type of werewolf has a set chance of creating more whenever they kill a unit. Thus, anyone good enough with tactics to make decent use of Duin Halfmorn and his spawn, are rewarded with even more, free units with similar power, essentially allowing a skilled played to BECOME The Virus. (Fortunately, there's an option to simply disable Duin Halfmorn from your game if you find him too unbalanced.) Civ V attempted to mitigate runaway city-building and warmongering. Unhappiness is increased every time another city is founded or annexed, and social policy and tech costs also increase with the number of cities one owns. This attempts to encourage you to not to spam cities everywhere, and only do so if you can be sure the city will pay off the increased science and social policy cost. The downside, however, is that this inadvertently made it so that playing tall (few cities, but high population) is far more advantageous than playing wide (many cities, but lower population), resulting in an odd situation where you have a 4X game that discourages 3 of those Xes. Civ VI, attempting to solve the paradox in V, made it so tech and civic costs are now static, but districts (special locations focused on a specific thing, like science or faith) scaled in cost instead. The downside is that this trope comes into play again, since it doesn't matter if your 20th Campus is going to take 100 turns to construct - it's not going to negatively influence your empire, so just forget about that crappy snow city and let it slowly build. VI also made it so that barbarians will come harass you more than in previous games, meaning that if an encampment spawned next to you you will probably spend the next 20 turns trying to clear the horde while other Civs got to expand. In a game where a second city early will likely double your science, culture and production, lagging behind in expansion is a really hard hole to crawl back out of.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_56fa0ea4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_56fa0ea4	featureConfidence	1.0
Civilization (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_56fa0ea4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_575e8afd	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_575e8afd	comment	Doomsday Warrior gives you experience based on how much health you have at the end of each fight. You get one point for every remaining life segment to spend on stats. If you struggle against opponents and barely win, you will end up weaker. If you regularly win with more than 75% of your health, you will end up stronger.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_575e8afd	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_575e8afd	featureConfidence	1.0
Doomsday Warrior (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_575e8afd
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5779deb9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5779deb9	comment	Castlevania takes away whip upgrades, sub-weapon and stored hearts whenever Simon dies. While the whip upgrades can be quickly regained, losing ammo and being forced to use an almost always worse sub-weapon generally makes finishing the stage much more difficult.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5779deb9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5779deb9	featureConfidence	1.0
CastlevaniaI	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5779deb9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5986a220	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5986a220	comment	In Legendary Wings, your weapon power acts as your health, every time you get hit your power decreases, until you die.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5986a220	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5986a220	featureConfidence	1.0
Legendary Wings (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5986a220
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5ae0bec6	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5ae0bec6	comment	The WWE TCG Raw Deal has probably the most extreme example of this. The game has no mana; instead, you can play cards with a Fortitude "cost" equal to or less than the amount of Damage you'd already played. In other words, the more damage you've dealt, the more damage you can deal. They addressed this with powerful cards in the next expansion that only work if you're behind ... which then makes it more advantageous to be behind ... which was addressed with powerful cards that only work if you're ahead in the following expansion... and the cycle of life continues.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5ae0bec6	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5ae0bec6	featureConfidence	1.0
WWE (Wrestling)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5ae0bec6
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5afbc0cb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5afbc0cb	comment	Increasing your LV in Undertale increases the damage you deal and passively decreases enemies' defense stats, resulting in you dealing more and more damage as you continue to level up, to the point that you can One-Hit Kill almost anything save two bosses if you grind XP, and enemies start dealing less and less damage to you if they even get a chance to attack, resulting in a snowball of power imbalance. Given that LV, level of violence, is the measure of your malice, and monsters naturally become weaker against someone who is malicious, it's justified in a nasty way.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5afbc0cb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5afbc0cb	featureConfidence	1.0
Undertale (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5afbc0cb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd0554b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd0554b	comment	Some servers also run a Warcraft mod where players earn XP for kills. Higher levels get better abilities, which may make it nigh-impossible for low-level players to get any kills. For example, an Orc player at a certain level has the explosive power and range of regular frag grenades boosted by a factor of 2-4. This can allow an Orc to clear out an entire building with a single grenade. While some servers keep your XP and level if you log out and come back later, other servers reset it either upon a login or at certain intervals.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd0554b	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd0554b	featureConfidence	1.0
Warcraft (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd0554b
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd9e7b7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd9e7b7	comment	In Dark Souls II, a character's maximum health is stunted by 5% after each death, up to a maximum of 50% health stunting. It can be reversed, but only through use of an item with limited supply. There's also a ring that prevents this (and another which halves the effect of the penalty to a maximum of 25% of maximum HP), but it breaks upon death. It can be repaired, though (for a price).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd9e7b7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd9e7b7	featureConfidence	1.0
Dark Souls II (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5bd9e7b7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d1b7e1f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d1b7e1f	comment	Paradox Interactive's Hearts of Iron II avoids the problem of conquering an empire becoming too powerful to defeat in a few ways: Whenever you officially annex a country, instead of receiving all of its IC (Industrial Capacity, the units of production in the game) and manpower, you receive only 20%. Recently conquered territories will not like being under your rule, and you will have to garrison a number of divisions of troops to prevent partisans from rising up against you. Supply lines are abstracted as your TC (transport capacity), which becomes strained as your army, your foreign conquests, and the aforementioned partisans grow in size. If these exceed your TC, the effectiveness of your entire armed forces will start to decline. The same company's Europa Universalis series also tries to avert this with its "Stability" mechanic: Every country has a Stability rating that fluctuates many times during the game, often being lowered by certain events. Stability affects both revolt risk and tax income. Where this trope comes in is that each province a faction holds adds a little extra to the cost of raising its Stability (though a nation's "core" provinces have much lower costs); an empire holding a large number of low-income, non-core provinces might actually cost more to keep stable than it's worth. Crusader Kings games tend to balance advantage of outward expansion by giving you more vassals who can plot against you to manage. Paradox games have another feature to avert this. They typically have an invisible "Bad Boy" score that goes up if you go on a conquest spree, which will (in theory) cause countries to unite against you before you can get big enough to run away with the gamenote This is most obvious in Stellaris, where you might easily take half an empire in conquest, only to find that the remaining half immediately creates several alliances after the war is over (you can't make an alliance while actively at war), even if their empire type is normally isolationist. In extreme situations, they may even create a Federation of several empires, or join an existing one. The united forces against you are supposed to be more challenging and interesting than mopping up nations one-by-one.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d1b7e1f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d1b7e1f	featureConfidence	1.0
Hearts of Iron (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d1b7e1f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d96b889	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d96b889	comment	Mario Kart: In a grand prix, winning a race means you start the next race slightly ahead of everyone else; the players start in the order they finished the previous race. This is countered with the re-introduction of coins as of 7; racers start off with coins based on how far down the grid they are. Racers in the lead are more likely to get defensive items that help them fight off incoming attacks, while those who are falling behind will frequently get speed boosts and offensive items with no defensive benefits at all (though the Super Star and Bullet Bill do provide temporary invincibility). This means while drivers at the front of the pack can keep and maintain a healthy lead until and unless somebody pulls out a Spiny Shell, racers who are near the middle will often end up pummeled by items and drop even further behind.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d96b889	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d96b889	featureConfidence	1.0
Mario Kart (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5d96b889
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5da242aa	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5da242aa	comment	Fuga: Melodies of Steel: The "Soul Cannon" is a Limit Break that can win any battle in one hit. It is also Powered by a Forsaken Child, and every time you use it, it permanently removes one of your party, which reduces your options for winning battles without it.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5da242aa	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5da242aa	featureConfidence	1.0
Fuga: Melodies of Steel (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5da242aa
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e3832b5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e3832b5	comment	In Cave Story, any damage you take will also cause your weapons to lose XP and eventually de-level, so they deal less damage. You get that weapon XP back by killing more enemies—which of course becomes harder if your weapon loses a level. The upshot of this is that deliberately tanking damage is rarely a viable strategy. (Although there are systems to minimize the failure spiral. You can switch to a different weapon if your current one is depowered too far, and later in the game you can get weapons that are very powerful even at their lowest level. And the various bosses' projectile attacks can be destroyed for powerups, so the boss fights don't become unwinnable just because you took two hits.) The one mitigating factor to this, albeit it's tricky to find, is the Nemesis weapon that is actually its strongest at LV 1 with no experience, and at its weakest at MAX level: it's normally tricky to use in levels but with your back against the wall from a boss it's easy to keep at its most powerful.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e3832b5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e3832b5	featureConfidence	1.0
Cave Story (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e3832b5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e88d233	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e88d233	comment	Chrysalis (RinoZ): A monster that makes serious mistakes in its early development, such as evolving before condensing a core, will find that it Can't Catch Up with one who properly optimised things. If they don't max out their mutations and fully reinforce their core before evolving, then they've permanently missed out on the extra evolutionary energy that they would have received, reducing the benefits that they gain by evolving — and furthermore, the strength of one's evolution governs how much the core can be further strengthened, so a monster with a weak evolution can't gather as much evolutionary energy for next time. This is a big part of why Anthony has the advantage over the monsters around him; as a reincarnator, he's much smarter than typical monsters and is able to optimise his build (although, lacking knowledge of the System, he still doesn't get everything right).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e88d233	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e88d233	featureConfidence	1.0
Chrysalis (RinoZ)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_5e88d233
Unstable Equilibrium / int_61faf154	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_61faf154	comment	Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers has several mechanics that cause this, but also ways to mitigate it: You lose quite a bit of your power when you die, and the game is a bit stingy with power items. There are some Ability Cards that can mitigate this, however: Pebble Hat makes you lose less power when you die, Reliable Tanuki Apprentice keeps your power from falling below 3.00/4.00 after you die, and Great Tengu's Barley Rice can repeatedly increase your power. There's also Law of the Survival of the Fittest, which boosts the power of your regular shot and ensures you'll have an okay damage output even at low power. You lose some money when you die, which can put some of the stronger ability cards that could've helped you out of reach. While you can also pay in power, there are two problems: (1) you may have lost so much power from dying that you still can't afford the card, and (2) even if you can afford the card, you'll have to start the next stage with lower power. However, the Lucky Rabbit's Foot allows you to keep all your money when you die. The Dragon Pipe card gives you life fragments when you clear a Spell Card without bombing or dying, which means that you'll get extra lives when you're doing well and nothing when you're struggling. The Gluttonous Centipede card gradually increases your power as long as you play perfectly, but it's reset whenever you die or bomb.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_61faf154	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_61faf154	featureConfidence	1.0
Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_61faf154
Unstable Equilibrium / int_62bf541	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_62bf541	comment	Super Mario Bros. actually has this pretty bad. Fire Flowers make it easy to plow through many enemies, including the otherwise tough Hammer Bros. (especially those not standing on overhead blocks) and all of the boss fights. But mess up or fall into a pit, and you'll have a much harder time. 8-3 and 8-4 in particular are bad examples; if you are Fire Mario and know your way through these levels, it's not too difficult to preserve that status and win, but if you make a mistake, you'll probably take a hit and lose the precious fireballs. These levels are exponentially harder without the fire suit, and after the 8-3 checkpoint or the entire level of 8-4, there's actually no way to get a complete fire suit again if you die once. Later 2D games also have lots of suits like this, many hidden, so in most games a simple Self-Imposed Challenge is done to avoid such suits.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_62bf541	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_62bf541	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Mario Bros. (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_62bf541
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66a1dcea	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66a1dcea	comment	Tomb Raider: The earlier games in the series have items carry over from level to level. Saving health packs and especially ammo during the early levels where enemies still die easily to the infinite ammo pistols allows for a lot more leeway towards the end, where not having enough ammo is likely to also drain your health pack supply. The third game throws a few nasty curveballs in there to mix it up: A certain level empties your entire inventory, and, depending on what order you choose to play the levels in, this can be as early as the 6th level or as late as the 14th. You don't get any of it back. Saved everything you found so far to make the final levels less painful? Shucks. The only exception to this inventory wipe is your save crystals, in the Playstation version. These are collectibles that carry over from level to level and allow you to save your game. Yes, except for between levels, you won't be able to save without them so you'd better not need to save much early on.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66a1dcea	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66a1dcea	featureConfidence	1.0
Tomb Raider (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_66a1dcea
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66bebdef	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66bebdef	comment	Sin and Punishment: Star Successor has a score multiplier that increases as you kill enemies. Getting hit lowers it, and at over x10 (up to the maximum of x16), the decrease in multiplier gets worse. The multiplier penalty also seems to be biased towards multiple hits, so ten hits of 1 HP each, for example, tends to be worse for your multiplier than one hit of 10 HP. If you are bad enough, or have hit the time limit for a boss, the multiplier can even drop to x0, making everything you do worthless until you get the multiplier back up.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66bebdef	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_66bebdef	featureConfidence	1.0
Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_66bebdef
Unstable Equilibrium / int_69977d0c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_69977d0c	comment	Silent Scope EX gives you a letter grade at the end of each level based on speed, hit ratio, and headshots. An S rating restores 10% life, and a SS restores 25%. Lower grades have proportionately smaller benefits. Needless to say, if you're good enough to SS even one stage, getting through the whole game in a single credit isn't going to be a problem. If the best you can do is B, it's going to get expensive.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_69977d0c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_69977d0c	featureConfidence	1.0
Silent Scope (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_69977d0c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ac55ec7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ac55ec7	comment	Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have special rules or cases to enforce this, but like any resource management game it can be a concern. In earlier editions, having one or two of your big spells fizzle can make your Wizard a walking liability (especially at early levels, before you have a few dozen spell levels full of backup fodder). In 4th Edition, the designers realized just how devastating it could be to a party's resource structure to miss with a Daily power, and so made most Dailies still have some effect on a miss (or, in the case of Reliable powers, not be expended until they hit). Essentially, most fights of average size last between three and five rounds, and missing out on a round's worth of actions for any reason can reduce your combat effectiveness by 30% or more. In a big setpiece fight with a solo monster you're Damage Racing, getting stunned or missing with your best shot can make all the difference. Several early editions of (A)D&D modify the amount of experience received for a game by a percentage based on the character's (class-based) "prime" attribute(s). So not only will e.g. a stronger fighter already perform better in combat than a weaker one because of the to-hit and damage bonuses resulting from that high strength — he or she will also advance more quickly just for being that strong and thus pull ahead of his or her weaker fighter-colleagues in that respect as well.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ac55ec7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ac55ec7	featureConfidence	1.0
Dungeons & Dragons (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ac55ec7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bbde1c8	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bbde1c8	comment	Overwatch: Doing damage to enemies gives you charge for your Ultimate, and using Ultimates makes it much easier to win fights. So, when a team starts getting the better of fights, they can use their Ultimates more frequently, which helps them win future fights, which gives them more charge for future Ultimates.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bbde1c8	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bbde1c8	featureConfidence	1.0
Overwatch (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bbde1c8
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bf3da91	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bf3da91	comment	In volume 2 of Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, the Grand King inflicts a curse on Elisabeth that puts a Power Limiter on her ability to generate mana. The curse would be broken if she killed the Grand King, but the curse prevents her from generating enough mana to do so. Kaito solves the problem by forming a contract with the Kaiser, the only known demon more powerful than the Grand King, who is, therefore, able to break the curse for her.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bf3da91	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bf3da91	featureConfidence	1.0
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6bf3da91
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6c1234ed	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6c1234ed	comment	Tantrums in Dwarf Fortress are all about this. When a dwarf gets unhappy enough to throw a tantrum, they'll toss items around and attack other dwarves, both of which are crimes, and they'll be subject to Dwarven Justice for them, which will not make them happy. Best-case scenario, the player has built a Luxury Prison Suite specifically to counter this. More likely, the player has forgotten to build a prison at all and all jail times are replaced with beatings. Oh yeah, and if your fort is in bad enough shape that one dwarf will throw a tantrum, there are probably a few others right on the border of one, and if it happens to be their stuff tossed around or their nose punched in, you might be in for a tantrum spiral. Conversely, if your fort is kept really happy, a single dwarf randomly (or "randomly") suffering enough at once to throw a tantrum regardless won't be enough of a dent in the overall mood to have any further effect. The big 2014 content update expanded personality traits and added a more elaborate stress system, which mitigates this substantially. Instead of dwarves instantly throwing a fit after having one really bad day, good and bad experiences cause stress to slowly build up or wear off over time, such that it takes a prolonged period of hard times before a dwarf snaps. In addition, dwarves react differently to stress; only the angry dwarves will throw tantrums, while others may mope or stare into space, and some dwarves are just naturally more able to cope with stress than others. All this serves to soften the blow of short-term stress; you either have to constantly neglect your dwarves' needs over long periods of time or fall victim to something more violent like a dragon attack.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6c1234ed	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6c1234ed	featureConfidence	1.0
Dwarf Fortress (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6c1234ed
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6e627c5c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6e627c5c	comment	In Halo 5: Guardians's Warzone mode, you earn more energy levels by kicking ass. Higher energy levels allow you to requisition more powerful weapons and vehicles, which allow you to kick even more ass and earn even more energy levels. That said, requisitioning weapons will reduce your energy level, with the most powerful ones setting it back to zero, and there is a cap on how much energy you can have at any given time.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6e627c5c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6e627c5c	featureConfidence	1.0
Halo 5: Guardians (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6e627c5c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ef57be4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ef57be4	comment	In Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, your multiplier is equal to your current combo. This means if a song has a maximum combo of 300, and you miss on the first or last note, it means not a whole lot. But miss on the 150th note, and your score can really suffer because your point multiplier only went up to x150 instead of x299. The effect is extreme enough that a perfect, but low rank run will likely score higher than an imperfect, but otherwise higher ranked run. Gets egregious in later levels when shooting for a high score. Every tap you do starting from 2x combo will tack on (12-Easy/25-Normal/50-Harder) points to the values of every 300 you get. 100s, not so much. This results in FC's having almost double as many points as regular runs, and in that over 30% of your final can be from the last segment alone. By the end of Ep. 15, a single 300 can be worth as much as 30,000 points.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ef57be4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ef57be4	featureConfidence	1.0
Elite Beat Agents (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_6ef57be4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_707adc29	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_707adc29	comment	In Thwaite, after a missile silo is blown up, it's out of commission for the remainder of that round and until either sunrise (every five rounds) or the player completes a round without a single building being destroyed. At this point, the player has fewer missiles to work with, and one strategy is to ignore half the buildings.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_707adc29	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_707adc29	featureConfidence	1.0
Thwaite (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_707adc29
Unstable Equilibrium / int_712418fc	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_712418fc	comment	In Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, the online mode can become this. Owning nodes will generate money for you, and capturing a node you haven't had in the game yet will let you acquire a new weapon. However, it's possible to shut the other player out by killing them when they try to get nodes and taking them for yourself. This will allow you to get new weapons and more money, which will let you put up barriers over the nodes you own and capture the other nodes faster due to being able to kill the enemies that spawn near them quicker. By doing this, you can leave the other player stuck with their starting Combuster (pistol), and no money to buy base defenses, player upgrades, or an invasion force to attack the enemy base.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_712418fc	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_712418fc	featureConfidence	1.0
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_712418fc
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73b4d4c1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73b4d4c1	comment	Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. When you fail a roll, your Sanity decreases, making it easier to fail rolls, to represent the descent into madness.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73b4d4c1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73b4d4c1	featureConfidence	1.0
Call of Cthulhu (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_73b4d4c1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73cdb697	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73cdb697	comment	The earlier Resident Evil games had this owing to a finite amount of health and ammunition found in the game. If you're bad at the game earlier on, which forces you to either use ammunition to rout foes or healing items to recover after, the late game basically becomes impossible since you will not be able to deal with the later game enemies. In fact, it is actually possible to render the game Unwinnable by Mistake if you go into the final battle without enough ammunition to bring it down. Conversely, being good at dodging the zombies will make the late game a cakewalk since you'll have double-digit ammunition to gun down the hunters and like with impunity. Starting with Resident Evil 4 a Dynamic Difficulty was introduced that throttles the difficulty in accordance with your performance — scaling it down when you struggle and ratcheting it up when you do well, and dynamically adjusting item drops (rather than having the fixed item drops of previous games) to ensure you, for the most part, get what you need to survive.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73cdb697	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_73cdb697	featureConfidence	1.0
ResidentEvil	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_73cdb697
Unstable Equilibrium / int_747a18bc	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_747a18bc	comment	In Battle for Wesnoth, every unit has a name, a level, and experience points. Units from the previous scenario can be "recalled" in subsequent ones as an alternative to recruiting new ones, and this is pretty much the only way to succeed: you get already developed units right away, instead of recruiting the weakest units. The computer, on the other hand, can recruit preprogrammed load-outs of pre-leveled units by the bucketload. This tends to make things difficult if too many units die or you fail to soak up enough experience points early in the campaign.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_747a18bc	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_747a18bc	featureConfidence	1.0
Battle for Wesnoth (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_747a18bc
Unstable Equilibrium / int_74f7210c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_74f7210c	comment	The Legend of Zelda: In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, if you die, you lose all the powerup seeds you've collected up to that point, making it harder to avoid dying again and you lose more rupees than last time. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: A minigame has you try to collect colored items worth different amount of points while flying. The kicker is that for each consecutive item of the same color you collect, its point value doubles, to a maximum of ten times. In short, every consecutive item you collect until you hit the cap is worth more than all the previous ones combined. You can win quite easily if you miss several red items, but if you collect a single other item during the middle part of the game you're screwed.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_74f7210c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_74f7210c	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Zelda (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_74f7210c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_755b343f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_755b343f	comment	Halo In Halo: Reach, the weapons you have when you blast off in the Sabre fighter determine what weapons you have when you board the Covenant Corvette. On harder difficulties, a poor weapon choice can dramatically affect how well you do on the Corvette level. Same with the two-part missions in Halo 2, where your weapons carry over from the first half of the mission; a poor combination can make things more frustrating, and if you quit and reload, you start over with the mission's default weapons. In Halo 4, this is the whole point of Dominion. Of course to make things fair some weapons randomly spawn outside on the field, away from the bases to give either the winning or losing team a upper (or lower depending on the player and weapon) hand. However, when the losing team loses their last base, the entire team enters a mode that gives overshields to help them win back a lost base. If they die, they stay dead until a base has been re-captured or they lose. In Halo 5: Guardians's Warzone mode, you earn more energy levels by kicking ass. Higher energy levels allow you to requisition more powerful weapons and vehicles, which allow you to kick even more ass and earn even more energy levels. That said, requisitioning weapons will reduce your energy level, with the most powerful ones setting it back to zero, and there is a cap on how much energy you can have at any given time.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_755b343f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_755b343f	featureConfidence	1.0
Halo (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_755b343f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_75df62cf	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_75df62cf	comment	Downplayed in Granblue Fantasy Versus, where the Guts mechanic does lower a character's damage if they get hit, but the highest reduction they can be dealt is 25%, when their health bar hits the 11% threshold.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_75df62cf	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_75df62cf	featureConfidence	1.0
Granblue Fantasy Versus (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_75df62cf
Unstable Equilibrium / int_76c6b614	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_76c6b614	comment	In Mario Super Sluggers, the better you play in a given baseball game, the more stars you will get. The more stars, the more star swings/pitches, and the more good plays that will net you more stars. So if you're doing poorly, it'll be hard to come back. Especially if your opponent has a ton of stars.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_76c6b614	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_76c6b614	featureConfidence	1.0
Mario Super Sluggers (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_76c6b614
Unstable Equilibrium / int_77677ed1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_77677ed1	comment	Sword of the Stars: Being designed as a competitive multiplayer game, tends to invoke this trope. While a small empire can hold off a larger one almost indefinitely by building ships instead of researching, doing so will leave you far behind research-wise, making the outcome inevitable. To make things worse, the game is sufficiently random that you often 'start' with an advantage of this level, and smaller AI empires only band together if they have a decent chance of success - beyond that, they're smart enough to ally with the apparent winner instead. It does cut down on the mop-up period. On the other hand, you can also start with a disadvantage of this level, that you must work to overcome. The degree of randomness in starting positions and the amount of available customization in initial conditions is seen by the developers as an effective counter to the problem of unstable equilibrium, when viewed statistically over the course of a large number games. There's also the problem of the Zuul players having expansion as a racial requirement. As their planets are constantly losing resources, if they're not allowed to expand, the empire will eventually die.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_77677ed1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_77677ed1	featureConfidence	1.0
Sword of the Stars (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_77677ed1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7894fb5d	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7894fb5d	comment	The Four Gospels: In the Gospel of Matthew, there's a verse alluding this trope:
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7894fb5d	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7894fb5d	featureConfidence	1.0
The Four Gospels	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7894fb5d
Unstable Equilibrium / int_796b8ac	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_796b8ac	comment	Labrys in Persona 4: Arena has a gimmick in which practice makes her whole character built around Unstable Equilibrium. She has an axe gauge with five levels that builds up as she attacks the opponent (on hit or block). The higher the gauge, the better her damage output is, and at max level, her attacks gets extra hitstun. She can use her Supers to consume the gauge and deal more damage, and when maxed out it has the potential to outright one shot opponents. However, the axe gauge depletes while she stops attacking or gets hit, and her damage is significantly weaker at low levels. Moreover, the axe gauge carries over to the next round, so if she wins a round with a Super but not the match, she has to start the next round with an empty gauge. If Labrys stays on the offense and the opponent can't push her out, she gets rewarded. If Labrys has to go on defense or has to use her Super to prevent a loss, she gets punished, and her average mobility and bad defensive options makes it even harder for her to recover. Even when compared to others fighters in other games that depend on close-range aggression, Labrys gets punished harder than most by design.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_796b8ac	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_796b8ac	featureConfidence	1.0
Persona 4: Arena (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_796b8ac
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7a55e957	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7a55e957	comment	Blood Bowl had so much of a problem with this that most of the changes in the fourth edition were intended to fix it. They actually managed to do the exact opposite, and the so-called Living Rulebook was created to fix that damage. Nowadays Blood Bowl is more boring but also more balanced.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7a55e957	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7a55e957	featureConfidence	1.0
Blood Bowl (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7a55e957
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7aefccf3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7aefccf3	comment	In Hotline Miami, completing a chapter with a high-score will reward the player with new weaponry and masks (which grant them unique bonuses when worn). As a result, skilled players will find the later chapters to be noticeably easier.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7aefccf3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7aefccf3	featureConfidence	1.0
Hotline Miami (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7aefccf3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7b2ca7a2	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7b2ca7a2	comment	Bayonetta: Torture Attacks need at least eight units of magic to use and tend to make enemies drop their weapons, which can be used to quickly rack up more units of magic. On the other hand, getting hit will deplete four units of magic, which is recovered through fighting, dodging, countering, or taunting. More skilled players will be able to take out angels quicker by avoiding attacks and building up the magic meter, while players with less skills will have their Limit Break gauge getting reset on hit. The sequel fixes part of this by removing magic-depletion on damage.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7b2ca7a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7b2ca7a2	featureConfidence	1.0
Bayonetta (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7b2ca7a2
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c19a801	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c19a801	comment	FTL: Faster Than Light: Pick up lots of scrap, take a minimum of damage and have good encounters, and you have good chances to go far. On the other hand, taking lots of damage and being forced by the Random Number God into poor encounters where you can't get much scrap will force you to use that scrap in repairing and hobbling on with poor equipment, which will further lower your chances of survival.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c19a801	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c19a801	featureConfidence	1.0
FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c19a801
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c31fdd7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c31fdd7	comment	The third Valkyrie Profile game, Covenant of the Plume, uses overkill damage to determine what rewards you get from Mistress Hel after each battle. Score a lot of overkill damage? You get extremely nice stuff, such as powerful weapons or in a certain route, an item that actually increases the maximum amount of Sin you can get from each enemy from 100 to 120. Score an insufficient amount? Good luck with the Realmstalkers, Hel's servants that almost force you to use the Plume just to get rid of them. Given that usage of the Plume automatically gets you closer to getting owned by Freya and/or the bad ending, but nets you enough points to outright ignore the overkill situation, it's probably her way of saying "you moron, you want to kill Lenneth or not? Don't fuck up."
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c31fdd7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c31fdd7	featureConfidence	1.0
Valkyrie Profile (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7c31fdd7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7d25ee05	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7d25ee05	comment	In New Horizons, as players start out, they might find themself losing against same sized ships, due to gunners not hitting them, or getting killed in one or two hits during boarding actions, making acquiring money and ships very hard for beginners. However, once they start leveling up, gain better gear and perks to increase combat performances and make life easier, they will soon be able to fight entire fleets head-on, and steamrolling every crew that stands in their way. Money and EXP will just rain at this point.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7d25ee05	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7d25ee05	featureConfidence	1.0
New Horizons (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7d25ee05
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7ebaf179	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7ebaf179	comment	PokÃ©mon Shuffle offers items that permanently enhance your PokÃ©mon as prizes for competitions and escalation battles. Using them wisely (or in bulk) improves a player's performance in future competitions and escalation battles, allowing players who did well collecting the early items to collect even more of the later ones. In competitions, where items are awarded by regional ranking, the fact that the best players keep getting more items makes it harder for other players to get any items at all.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7ebaf179	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7ebaf179	featureConfidence	1.0
Pokémon Shuffle (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7ebaf179
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f02dd41	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f02dd41	comment	In the Star Wars: Battlefront series, a team who holds the majority of command posts will cause the other team's reserves to start dropping, thus creating an incentive to keep grabbing command posts instead of spawn camping and ending the game faster if one side gains a significant territorial advantage. This also occurs if one side destroys an important objective (Hoth's power generator, Endor's shield bunker). In the sequel, the game host can choose whether hero/villain characters are given to good players as a reward or to bad players to give them a a chance.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f02dd41	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f02dd41	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Wars: Battlefront (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f02dd41
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9dbbcd	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9dbbcd	comment	Far Cry 3: The only way to expand your storage (including weapon slots and ammo pools) is to hunt wild game. Which is helluva difficult to do without being able to carry enough ammo in the first place as all wildlife has hair-trigger instincts and either runs off as soon as you make so much as a rustle, rendering any pursuit moot if you don't hose it down with your first volley or tackles you before you even have a chance to pull the trigger. It takes considerable effort to break out of this stalemate.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9dbbcd	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9dbbcd	featureConfidence	1.0
Far Cry 3 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9dbbcd
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9f892f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9f892f	comment	War Thunder: Bringing airplanes to ground battles (and even more helicopters at higher tiers) can provide a significative advantage since you can bomb enemy tanks, even knowing in before where they are if one killed you thanks to the killcam, as long as you are a good enough player to use them effectively. The thing is, in order to spawn an aircraft you need to get spawn points by performing successful actions in game, and if you get them, it means that you are already doing well (i.e. killed enemies or capped zones). This means that more often than not, close air support in ground battles becomes a curb-stomp to an already struggling enemy, which is then forced to either spawn SPAAGs (which are usually too weak to engage tanks) or fighters (which have limited ground strike capabilities) to counter the flying attacker, who now might as well return to a tank. After a game, destroyed vehicles become damaged and you can't deploy them again unless you wait for a countdown timer to expire representing off-screen free repairs. This timer ranges from a few minutes to even days or weeks, depending on the vehicle level and your crew skill. Alternatively, you can just spend some of the in-game currency to instantly repair the vehicles, the price is called "repair cost". In some cases, these are designed to act as some kind of soft balance in game, by limiting how often players can field some vehicles that are too strong for their level, but not enough to be put at a higher level, and are hard to balance in other ways (e.g. a propelled heavy bomber that has enough payload to destroy alone everything on the map and enough machine guns to fend off enemy planes, but can't be placed at higher tiers because it would face jets with missiles, becoming useless). When the after-battle repair costs become too high, players are induced to wait for the free repair timer, rather than spending their credits, thus the vehicle is less often encountered in battle. The developers even use an algorithm to track the performances of vehicles and automatically adjust repair costs, according to how well (costs increase in subsequent patches) or bad (costs decrease) are their battle statistics. The problem is, when repair costs skyrocket, the only players who use these vehicles are those good enough to take advantage of their characteristics to the max extent, while less skilled players avoid entirely for not wanting to even think of the bill. This leads to a vicious cycle: vehicles are used well by experienced veterans, their performance stats increase, their bills increase, other less skilled players don't use them so there are less battles with the vehicle being destroyed, veterans can use their overperforming machine against weaker opponents, the stats increase even more and so on. And since skilled players earned a lot of credits thanks to their performance, chances are they won't even care of repair costs because they can afford them, unlike less skilled players. Thus, facing vehicles known to have high repair costs usually means that you are also facing a very skilled player using a very good machine (with few situational exceptions), and if the game mode allows it, he/she will also have backups: good luck with that. Unless the developers also change the battle rating of that vehicle, then it will face stronger opponents and even skilled players will start to struggle. The new problem is, they too now avoid using the vehicles because either it has become unplayable or they don't want to pay constant repair bills that can't be mitigated anymore by scoring enough kills, instead waiting for weeks for the free repair. Since the vehicle is not used anymore as before, its stats don't change in a significative way and the algorithms don't change its repair costs, inverting the trope and also becoming a Catch-22 Dilemma. This has become absurd in late august 2020 when the american B-29, which suffers of insane repair costs, as been moved to a rating that puts it almost exclusively against jets. Almost every B-29 player stopped using it, unless in private sim battles where squadrons agree to simply bomb without interfering (a behaviour that further increases its stats, since the bomber doesn't get killed while also scoring a lot of points). Stock syndrome could be this as well. Many vehicles are very underwhelming or even unplayable when first purchased, requiring to unlock components that enhance their performance. High rank vehicles require a lot of research points to unlock these modules, which means annoying, painful, slowly grinding them through battles and battles, suffering many deaths until the vehicle becomes good enough (unless you pay with real money for a premium account, indeed). Thus, many players use less often those vehicles due to frustration. Skilled players, however, can manage to quickly unlock all the modules by winning somehow and then see a significant boost to their performance, at the expense of those who just got the vehicle or rarely played it. This too became particularly outrageous in august 2020 when stock projectiles for high tier tanks where changed to the weakest shells, which are nigh-to-useless. Those who get a stock modern tank now should expect increased suffering against other players that have armor piercing shells.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9f892f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9f892f	featureConfidence	1.0
War Thunder (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_7f9f892f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_803465e9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_803465e9	comment	In the City-Building Series: Worker shortages can quickly send your city into a spiral: if your public services don't have enough workers to support your houses, people start to move out of the city, exacerbating the shortage. This is especially severe in Caesar and Pharaoh, whereas later games allow more precise control over worker allocation. Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile: Your Prestige score caps your city's population of expert workers and decays if not regularly maintained. If your Prestige falls — as it always does when your current ruler dies, for example — you might lose some of the workers you need to keep it from falling further.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_803465e9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_803465e9	featureConfidence	1.0
City-Building Series (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_803465e9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_806c20e5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_806c20e5	comment	World Tendency in Demon's Souls works this way. If you die while in Body Form, World Tendency shifts towards black. On the contrary, if you defeat a boss or certain black phantoms that only appear in Pure Black World Tendency, it shifts towards white. As it gets whiter, the enemies are easier to kill and do less damage. As it gets blacker, the enemies are more difficult. However, in Black World Tendency, the item drops are much more valuable.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_806c20e5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_806c20e5	featureConfidence	1.0
Demon's Souls (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_806c20e5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_81692f99	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_81692f99	comment	In Star Trek: Birth Of The Federation, a small empire will invariably be at a disadvantage, as research nets you bigger and better warships. For example, if you play as The Federation (which is, arguably, one of the most difficult factions to play) and dominate research, you will fairly quickly get access to the Defiant-class heavy escort, the most powerful warship in the game (available to the player). No other race has an equivalent. A single Defiant can destroy an entire fleet without sustaining much damage thanks partly to its cloaking device (which gives you a free turn at the start of combat). Additionally, if a weaker empire is constantly losing battles, the planetary morale will keep falling until the planets start seceding, which has further negative effect on morale, resulting in a domino effect.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_81692f99	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_81692f99	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Trek (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_81692f99
Unstable Equilibrium / int_817b1a43	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_817b1a43	comment	The original Time Crisis, and its Gaiden Game Project Titan. Unlike later games, where the timer completely refills every section, it only increases by a certain amount for each area, also depending on your skill. So if you aren't fast and well skilled, you'll have less and less time for the subsequent areas, and when the timer runs out, it's Game Over. The timer also keeps running during the "Wait" sequences.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_817b1a43	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_817b1a43	featureConfidence	1.0
Time Crisis (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_817b1a43
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8258e260	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8258e260	comment	Super Mario Bros.: Super Mario Bros. actually has this pretty bad. Fire Flowers make it easy to plow through many enemies, including the otherwise tough Hammer Bros. (especially those not standing on overhead blocks) and all of the boss fights. But mess up or fall into a pit, and you'll have a much harder time. 8-3 and 8-4 in particular are bad examples; if you are Fire Mario and know your way through these levels, it's not too difficult to preserve that status and win, but if you make a mistake, you'll probably take a hit and lose the precious fireballs. These levels are exponentially harder without the fire suit, and after the 8-3 checkpoint or the entire level of 8-4, there's actually no way to get a complete fire suit again if you die once. Later 2D games also have lots of suits like this, many hidden, so in most games a simple Self-Imposed Challenge is done to avoid such suits. The game also has hidden 1-ups which are only collectible if the player collected all the coins in the preceding level...thus giving extra lives only to players who collect every coin and therefore have more lives to start with (as 100 coins = an extra life). In the arcade version, the second half of the maze castle 7-4 replaces a certain floor section with a Lava Pit if you get the path wrong the first time, making the correct route (which is different from the NES version) harder to reach. Super Mario 3D World: When playing co-op, the winner of each level is awarded a crown that is worth 5000 points in the next level. This makes it easier for one player to win several levels in a row, although other players can fight for the crown.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8258e260	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8258e260	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Mario Bros. (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_8258e260
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8281aef3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8281aef3	comment	In KonoSuba, Experience Points are given to whoever deals the last blow to an enemy, rather than being distributed amongst the party. This leads to Megumin, whose only spell is an endgame Fantastic Nuke that One Hit Kills everything she uses it on, being a few dozen levels higher than Kazuma, who never gets the last hit in and struggles to get his level above the teens due to her penchant for Kill Stealing.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8281aef3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8281aef3	featureConfidence	1.0
KonoSuba	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_8281aef3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_82e4196a	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_82e4196a	comment	Twin Cobra does this too, exacerbated by power-ups being fewer and farther between in later levels.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_82e4196a	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_82e4196a	featureConfidence	1.0
Twin Cobra (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_82e4196a
Unstable Equilibrium / int_84dfb5d5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_84dfb5d5	comment	Galactic Civilizations 2: Large empires are just better at everything. Their greater size means they get more money from their higher population, can build more research facilities, and can build more, bigger and better ships. Plus, since friendliness is largely calculated based on military size, they will tend to start shaking you down if you're too far below them, further delaying catch-up.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_84dfb5d5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_84dfb5d5	featureConfidence	1.0
Galactic Civilizations (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_84dfb5d5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b79d17	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b79d17	comment	Black Mirror: In "Nosedive", it's repeatedly shown that while high ratings don't always lead to more 5-star ratings, they definitely help, while low ratings inevitably engender more low ratings. Some drivers even ding a hitchhiking Lacie just for having a low score, putting her further into the pit.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b79d17	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b79d17	featureConfidence	1.0
Black Mirror	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b79d17
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b855e2	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b855e2	comment	The Thrawn Trilogy: Thrawn is able to launch a successful, major offensive to the New Republic thanks to this trope. The fabled "Katana" Fleet is comprised of two hundred Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers built by the Republic Navy before the Clone Wars. Thrawn is able to smuggle the fleet and add it to his forces and, even if they are outclassed by Imperial Destroyers and Mon Calamari Cruisers, their sheer numbers prove to be a force multiplier that only snowballs as the story progresses.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b855e2	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b855e2	featureConfidence	1.0
The Thrawn Trilogy	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_85b855e2
Unstable Equilibrium / int_86814cc3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_86814cc3	comment	In Final Fantasy II, the chance to gain Agility is based on your Evasion percentage, and Agility itself contributes to your Evasion percentage. In essence: the more Agility you have early in the game, the more Agility you will have later in the game. A character who optimizes their Evasion with shields and light armor from the start of the game will be able to practically do backflips in the ultra-heavy end-game Armor of Invincibility, while a character who spends the entire game in heavy armor will be stuck as a far-less-effective Mighty Glacier.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_86814cc3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_86814cc3	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy II (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_86814cc3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8876f3c7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8876f3c7	comment	In Children of the Jedi this is what makes it difficult to reach the control room of the automated dreadnought Eye of Palpatine, since the passage leading to it is guarded by a grid of automated blasters. A Jedi can (and did) try and rush down it by using the Force to deflect or avoid the bolts, but there are simply too many to avoid and each bolt that hits makes it harder to maintain the focus they need to protect themselves until they're overwhelmed. Callista (who died attempting this and only survived to describe the experience through Brain Uploading) describes it nicely:
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8876f3c7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_8876f3c7	featureConfidence	1.0
The Callista Trilogy	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_8876f3c7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_94081029	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_94081029	comment	R4: Ridge Racer Type 4's GP Mode gives you a new car after the first heat, after the second heat, and before the final race. Your performance in previous races determines the quality of your new car. Get first place in every race and you'll get the best new car, allowing you to complete the next few races with ease. Place just high enough to qualify in each race and you'll get crappy new cars that will require perfect runs to even qualify in the upcoming races. This is on top of your team berating you for not finishing in first.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_94081029	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_94081029	featureConfidence	1.0
Ridge Racer (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_94081029
Unstable Equilibrium / int_952797ee	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_952797ee	comment	In the PokÃ©mon Trading Card Game, the player who knocks out a PokÃ©mon gets to draw an extra card, which is a small but significant edge. The player whose PokÃ©mon gets knocked out must discard any cards attached to it, which nearly every PokÃ©mon requires in order to attack and may have needed several turns to build up, a substantial setback. Quite often, there has not been time to attach anything to any PokÃ©mon but the one attacking, meaning the player whose PokÃ©mon has just been knocked out must start all over while the other player still has all of the necessary attachments.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_952797ee	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_952797ee	featureConfidence	1.0
Pokémon (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_952797ee
Unstable Equilibrium / int_959dd815	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_959dd815	comment	On the other hand, in Professional Wrestling, tag team matches routinely zig-zag this trope for drama: the heels keep one of the faces away from their partner and take turns beating them up, until the face finally does manage to tag their well-rested partner to come in and kick some ass.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_959dd815	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_959dd815	featureConfidence	1.0
Professional Wrestling	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_959dd815
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9735616e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9735616e	comment	Jared Diamond posits that this is how civilization as we know it arose in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: People groups that were early adopters of agriculture and animal domestication eventually accrued so many advantages over those that remained subsistence hunter-gatherers that the latter were forced to either adopt a settled lifestyle themselves or die out. Similar theories exist regarding early tribal religions. Tribes that developed a concept of religion were motivated by their belief in that higher power and thus were more driven to survive and advance. This explains why religion is so deeply ingrained into civilization across the globe, the tribes with religion went on to found civilization where the tribes without died. Evolution at work.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9735616e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9735616e	featureConfidence	1.0
Guns, Germs, and Steel	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_9735616e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_980a4d78	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_980a4d78	comment	Bomberman games are notorious for this in its arcade-like single-player modes. You died? Kiss all of your ability power ups GOODBYE! Recovering them means clearing several levels without dying again. It's even more painful if you died to a boss; as Bomberman bosses often have their own levels without any bombable blocks in them. This means you generally will have no way to replace the ability powerups you lost for sequential attempts, it's definitely painful, but the situation is still serviceable if your stats are high enough. Get a Game Over to the Boss though? All of your stat powerups are gone now as well, have fun beating that difficult boss with only a single bomb with the absolute weakest blast radius. And with absolutely NO way of getting stronger during boss fights, it may be quicker and easier for you to start the game all over at this point.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_980a4d78	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_980a4d78	featureConfidence	1.0
Bomberman (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_980a4d78
Unstable Equilibrium / int_999855bb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_999855bb	comment	Heroes of Might and Magic IV and Age of Wonders has this sort of a campaign system.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_999855bb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_999855bb	featureConfidence	1.0
Heroes of Might and Magic (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_999855bb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9db1766a	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9db1766a	comment	Very much in effect in the Devil May Cry series. Even on a fresh playthrough where the character moveset is still limited, skilled players will use combos better and with more variations, giving them a higher Stylish rank than those who spam the same attacks and combo patterns over and over. The higher the Stylish rank, the more Red Orbs the enemies drop, which in turn allows the player to buy more and better moves, giving them the ability to use better and more varied combos to repeat the process of unlocking new stuff, which also includes Vitality and Devil Trigger gauge upgrades that are helpful for your character's survival and utility in the harder modes.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9db1766a	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9db1766a	featureConfidence	1.0
Devil May Cry (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_9db1766a
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9ef055f4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9ef055f4	comment	The first three Ratchet & Clank games don't return any ammo to the player if they die, making progressing through already difficult missions even harder if there are no vendors in sight. This is especially bad during the first game where ammo is more expensive compared to what you get (and numerous Cash Gates don't help matters) meaning you can completely run out of both ammo and money during the Final Boss. Deadlocked doesn't return ammo either, but since money is plentiful (at least compared to the ammo price) and the stages are short (thus usually you'll get respawned next to the vendor), this isn't that much of an issue in that game.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9ef055f4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9ef055f4	featureConfidence	1.0
Ratchet & Clank (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_9ef055f4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f02efb1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f02efb1	comment	EverQuest. Couldn't survive in this zone with your equipment? Have fun trying to survive naked if you die and have to make it to your corpse. In the old days, at least.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f02efb1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f02efb1	featureConfidence	1.0
EverQuest (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f02efb1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f89a5f0	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f89a5f0	comment	Head-to-head battling in a PokÃ©mon game, assuming no other factors, is like this: As soon as the first PokÃ©mon faints, that player has one fewer PokÃ©mon to use, and it also means fewer options to switch to. The more the difference in remaining PokÃ©mon grows, the more at a disadvantage the player with fewer PokÃ©mon becomes. There are also some PokÃ©mon that are very effective were it not for some crippling weaknesses or one or two bad stats, such as Arcanine, Donphan, Shedinja, Tangrowth, Serperior, Tyrantrum, Alolan Sandslash, and Vikavolt, who are sitting ducks early on but become a lot more useful when the opponent has run out of PokÃ©mon that can safely deal with them. In addition, there are Abilities that create bigger advantages the more the user is ahead, like Moxie or Beast Boost. In practice, however, PokÃ©mon battling is a game of withheld information, meaning surprises and wild cards that cause huge comebacks can pop up at any moment—you can never tell if that Mimikyu will use Z-Splash and suddenly gain the Attack boost needed to one-hit KO all of your PokÃ©mon, for instance.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f89a5f0	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f89a5f0	featureConfidence	1.0
PokÃ©mon (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_9f89a5f0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2add1d4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2add1d4	comment	In Splatoon 3, during a Tricolor Turf War, if the defending team manages to keep both of the attacking teams from claiming an Ultra Signal for the entire match, they stand a good chance of winning the entire round, considering their number advantage. But if even one of their opponents can sneak through and grab a Signal, it will summon a Sprinkler of Doom that inks a huge area of turf in their team's color for the rest of the battle. If this happens early enough, it will take all of the defending team's coordination and skill to clutch out a victory, because they'll have to focus on both keeping the attacking teams away from the center and inking the turf the Sprinkler of Doom covers, while the attackers only have to push through to the Ultra Signal.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2add1d4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2add1d4	featureConfidence	1.0
Splatoon 3 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2add1d4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2b99d6e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2b99d6e	comment	In Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment, the star mechanic heavily encourages this. In short: both players start a round with seven stars under their standard life bar, actions performed over the course of the game (such as hitting with certain moves, breaking an opponent's guard, or making a counterattack) can break an opponent's stars one by one, and when an opponent's stars are depleted, the Star of Death appears and the player can use a character-specific Fatal KO move. Hitting with a Fatal KO replenishes the opponent's stars fully in the next round... but if that doesn't happen, then lost stars will still carry over between rounds, with players only replenishing one star at the start of each round, and nearly all the ways to break stars favor the person who's dishing out damage. So if you successfully whallop an opponent hard enough to break all their stars but don't use your Fatal KO in favor of beating them up conventionally, you can simply break their last star at the start of the next round and drop a Fatal KO to decide things in five seconds.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2b99d6e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2b99d6e	featureConfidence	1.0
Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a2b99d6e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a3402a3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a3402a3	comment	This is a well-known phenomenon in the Total Annihilation / Spring community: the outcome of a multiplayer match is frequently considered to be set in stone after the result of the first raid. If you can cripple your opponent's economy early, you can set him back whilst your own vastly outstrips his. Cue large army smashing on your doorstep because your enemy is claiming metal spots whilst you're fending off raiders.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a3402a3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a3402a3	featureConfidence	1.0
Total Annihilation (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a3402a3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a451621e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a451621e	comment	In osu!, the freeware equivalent of Elite Beat Agents, it is even more aggravating, since, in average, songs have much more beats to get combo (since breaks are much shorter, and there are several long songs), combos have a much more bigger impact in score. This means that, in order to get a score high enough to get considered for a ranking increase, FC's are mandatory (except in a few Harder Than Hard songs) (For a score to be considered for a ranking increase, the play has to be in the top 800 scores of the beatmap). Also, the way scoring works, it is possible for a play with 99.x% acc with 1 MISS to lose against a ~70% FC (or even less).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a451621e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a451621e	featureConfidence	1.0
osu! (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a451621e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a49a709b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a49a709b	comment	In Settlers of Catan, players whose initial settlements don't produce enough resources often wind up permanently blocked from expansion by other players busy building roads and settlements, both of which cost nothing to maintain and can't be removed. This is likelier to happen the more players are in the game. Though these unlucky souls lack the resources to do much of anything either for themselves or against opponents, their misery doesn't end until the game does. However, apart from being blocked off from an expanding player, the game is mostly an aversion. Doing well early on plants a big bullseye on your back from the other players, and unlike a game of Monopoly, the players do have ways of ganging up on you and making you pay. A good strategy is play well, but not so well that it's obvious that you're winning. That's why the Development Cards exist. Mathematically, they're often not as great as the resources you spend to get them, but they are a way to potentially advance in position quietly for a surprise victory at the end. The unstable equilibrium exists more for losing (it's harder to come back) than for winning.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a49a709b	featureApplicability	-1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a49a709b	featureConfidence	1.0
Settlers of Catan (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a49a709b
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a4d1f742	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a4d1f742	comment	In the online FPS Planetside, players were soldiers on a battlefield and received experience points for killing enemies, but received much more experience points if their side won a battle. Hence, if one side started losing, players on that side would realize they were unlikely to win and pull out, looking for better experience-point potential in other areas. This meant that it was difficult to find a battle in serious contention for more than an hour or so at a time. To mitigate this problem, the developers introduced a system that gave players on the side with fewer members bonus health and experience points, encouraging them to stay. This also caused controversy among gamers: one gamer said that the game was "becoming more like the University of Michigan every day" (referencing the affirmative-action debate).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a4d1f742	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a4d1f742	featureConfidence	1.0
PlanetSide (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a4d1f742
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a599305d	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a599305d	comment	Mega Man Zero is worse. In order to gain a new special attack from a boss, you have to get the highest rank in the stage - you have to be good enough to win without taking any damage or using any items.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a599305d	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a599305d	featureConfidence	1.0
Mega Man Zero (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a599305d
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a6543322	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a6543322	comment	Many Touhou Project series have some such game mechanics: Most of the games make you lose some power whenever you die. How harsh this penalty is varies depending on the game. In the first three Windows games, recovering the lost power is fairly easy. In Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object and beyond, the main rule is that dying reduces your power by 1.00 out of 4.00, and that while the games are quite generous with power items during stages, they're much harder to come by during boss fights. So if you die during (or just before) a boss fight you're going to have to finish the fight with about 25% less firepower than you'd have otherwise, making all the patterns take longer, making you more likely to die again. Both Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith and Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism have a shot power penalty for bombing, so if you bomb against a boss, its attacks will last longer, which means you're more likely to have to use another bomb. MoF does grant one "free" bomb at full power, since the shot power is exactly the same from 4.00 through the max of 5.00, but drop to 2 or less during a boss fight and you're pretty much screwed. Mountain of Faith also has the Faith Point system, which determines the score value of the blue point items. Each time you die, your total Faith Points take a permanent hit, making every single blue point item for the rest of the run worth fewer points. Meanwhile, extra lives are awarded based on score. In Subterranean Animism, bosses can drop a life fragment item after every attack phase, and an extra life is awarded for every 5 life fragments collected. The problem? If you die during the attack phase, the boss won't drop the life fragment at the end of that attack phase. In addition, if you don't finish the attack phase within the time limit, the boss also will fail to drop a life fragment, while the power loss from bombing makes it more likely that time will run out. Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character comes at this from the positive reinforcement side: Bomb and life fragments are gained by auto-collecting large numbers of items (done by going up to the top of the screen. Or bombing, but that's not efficient) and capturing spellcards (done by not dying, bombing, or timing out the attack). So, it's easy to get totally maxed out on resources if you're playing below your skill level, but you'll find yourself with nothing if you try to play above it. Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers has several mechanics that cause this, but also ways to mitigate it: You lose quite a bit of your power when you die, and the game is a bit stingy with power items. There are some Ability Cards that can mitigate this, however: Pebble Hat makes you lose less power when you die, Reliable Tanuki Apprentice keeps your power from falling below 3.00/4.00 after you die, and Great Tengu's Barley Rice can repeatedly increase your power. There's also Law of the Survival of the Fittest, which boosts the power of your regular shot and ensures you'll have an okay damage output even at low power. You lose some money when you die, which can put some of the stronger ability cards that could've helped you out of reach. While you can also pay in power, there are two problems: (1) you may have lost so much power from dying that you still can't afford the card, and (2) even if you can afford the card, you'll have to start the next stage with lower power. However, the Lucky Rabbit's Foot allows you to keep all your money when you die. The Dragon Pipe card gives you life fragments when you clear a Spell Card without bombing or dying, which means that you'll get extra lives when you're doing well and nothing when you're struggling. The Gluttonous Centipede card gradually increases your power as long as you play perfectly, but it's reset whenever you die or bomb.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a6543322	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a6543322	featureConfidence	1.0
Touhou Project (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a6543322
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a68d3836	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a68d3836	comment	In Darkwood, looting is vital to win the game, thus players who leave their hideouts carrying as little gear as possible and returning with a full stash of valuable items will have an easier time advancing into later parts of the game. On the flip side, players who leave carrying a great deal of gear to help them survive in the wilderness â€” or die too often and keep losing half their gear and loot noteFortunately you can retrieve anything that you lost upon dying by revisiting where you died and picking the items back up from a bloodied backpack â€” will bring less valuable items back to their hideouts and have more difficulty surviving later portions of the game. This gets even trickier on Hard Mode where you only have a certain amount of lives before losing the game, and in Nightmare Mode you can only die once. To challenge those who got too good at looting and stashing away a great deal of useful gear/items, the game will not allow the Bicycle Man to visit the Swamp Hideout and deliver your stash of loot from chapter one into chapter two, meaning you can only bring what you can carry and must start over looting again in a dangerous environment.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a68d3836	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a68d3836	featureConfidence	1.0
Darkwood (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a68d3836
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7bb29b2	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7bb29b2	comment	Mega Man X5 introduced the infamous boss rank mechanic, where a boss that is level 8 or higher can drop a special item, and the higher their level the more likely they are to drop one. Ignoring that this only happens on normal difficulty (which makes easy the hardest difficulty as lamented here), the better you do in the stages the faster the bosses will level up. In other words, doing well without the items gives you more opportunities to get the items, while doing poorly makes it harder to get the items you could most certainly use to do better.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7bb29b2	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7bb29b2	featureConfidence	1.0
Mega Man X5 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7bb29b2
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7c9f8e9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7c9f8e9	comment	Legend of the Five Rings has central game mechanics built around an Unstable Equilibrium, as each of the paths to victory limits your opponent's options while expanding your own. Military decks attack the opponent's provinces, which limits the number of Dynasty cards they get. These include Holdings (used to pay for everything) and Personalities (used to do nearly everything). Honor decks can control the Imperial Favor, a bonus which has had a staggering number of different uses over the years. Dishonor decks force the opponent to pay extra for Personalities whose honor requirements they no longer meet (and in previous editions of the game, could prevent them from playing Personalities at all.) Enlightenment decks seek to play the five Rings cards, which is an Instant-Win Condition. The Rings themselves have extremely useful abilities. The aspect of the game that pretty much everyone agrees is its biggest flaw is the way the battle system resolves: once all players involved in the battle have finished taking actions, the total amount of force on each side is counted up. The army with less force, even if only by 1 point? Annihilated. And to add insult to injury, the winning player gains 2 honour for each card they destroyed this way, which can add up to an enormous surge in a large battle. If you don't commit everything you have to the battle, you risk losing, but if you do and lose anyway you'll basically lose the game in one battle, while the victor loses nothing (apart from any cards destroyed by in-battle actions like ranged attacks). The Yu trait was basically introduced as a direct attempt to limit the effects losing a battle can have on the game, but it's still generally considered a band-aid fix to a fundamental and unfixable flaw.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7c9f8e9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7c9f8e9	featureConfidence	1.0
Legend of the Five Rings (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a7c9f8e9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a825da3e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a825da3e	comment	Magic: The Gathering A player that can obliterate his opponent's forces has a few rounds of easy pain-causing before the other side can bring itself up to speed. The solution is often one of the "Wrath of God" cards that clean the whole board and re-equalize the situation. The concept of Tempo also highlights this— well-timed spells and abilities can be used to slowly gain total control over the flow of the game through card advantage, denial of critical spells, or even just by delaying the opponent, so a player who can snipe out critical spells or permanents can effectively cripple an opponent so badly, only the most unexpected spells or the worst possible draws can ruin their advantage. Of course, tempo can swing both ways, as a canny Aggro player can lure out a Wrath of God with a token army, then summon the real threat after making the opponent use up their mana and spells to stop that feint. This is part of the archetypal Green Ramp deck. Play cards that give extra mana, use the extra mana to get more mana, repeat until you can drop enormously expensive things early in the game. The game designers have mentioned doing this deliberately, arguing that even being on the losing end of an Unstable Equilibrium is generally more fun and encouraging to a player than being involved in a game that has been forcibly stalled. It also helps the Green Ramp by design has intentional weaknesses that keep them from being invinsible (no flying creatures means damage can be blocked more easily, many of them dying to simple removal or counterspells), and naturally an attempt to circumvent those weaknesses would lead to a less efficient ramp.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a825da3e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_a825da3e	featureConfidence	1.0
Magic: The Gathering (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_a825da3e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_aaa898fc	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_aaa898fc	comment	The sequel and DX fix it a bit with fairies, which spawn if you die and give you some powerups so you don't lose absolutely everything. The Raiden Fighters series is much more generous with powerups so it isn't much of a problem at all.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_aaa898fc	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_aaa898fc	featureConfidence	1.0
Raiden Fighters (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_aaa898fc
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ad34ca69	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ad34ca69	comment	Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has this for the auction houses. At first, you barely stand a chance at winning since you only have a handful of 1, 2, and 3 point tokens, but if you play several times to unlock the ability to buy tokens before starting the auction (with clan points, which you get for everything, but are otherwise almost useless), then the whole thing becomes piss easy. It can also lead to a Game-Breaker or Disc-One Nuke if you get this ability early and use it to sweep the board to win powerful items.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ad34ca69	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ad34ca69	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ad34ca69
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b1107421	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b1107421	comment	Cho Ren Sha 68k awards bonuses at the end of each stage: 20,000 points per bomb (up to 5 bombs for 100,000 points total), 50,000 points if you have a shield up, and 50,000 points for each life in stock. Staying alive and racking up points means you'll earn those every-1,000,000-points lives much faster than if you keep fumbling, and those extra lives in turn will earn you more points. Additionally, dying resets your shot power back to minimum, meaning that a single life lost can begin a cascade of drawn-out boss battles, more mistakes, and a much lower score by the end of your credit.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b1107421	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b1107421	featureConfidence	1.0
Cho Ren Sha 68k (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_b1107421
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b6ae9932	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b6ae9932	comment	Splinter Cell: Double Agent deliberately does this with its Trust Meter, as having more confidence with the JBA gives you more lethal low-tech weaponry while more confidence with the NSA gives you more non-lethal high-tech weaponry. The lethal low-tech stuff like frag grenades and shotguns make it harder to pursue NSA missions like sparing civilians and sneaking through JBA HQ, while the non-lethal high-tech stuff like the OCP Pistol make it harder to pursue JBA missions like sweeping enemy forces or assassinating targets, so the further you go to one side the harder it is to claw yourself back.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b6ae9932	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b6ae9932	featureConfidence	1.0
Splinter Cell: Double Agent (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_b6ae9932
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b8a97b98	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b8a97b98	comment	In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, if you die, you lose all the powerup seeds you've collected up to that point, making it harder to avoid dying again and you lose more rupees than last time.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b8a97b98	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b8a97b98	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_b8a97b98
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9419bd1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9419bd1	comment	Deus Ex: Human Revolution The major experience bonuses are only available with specific augs activated - the Traveler bonuses usually need high jump and/or Icarus Descent, combat requires the Reflex Booster, hacking requires an array of hacking augs — whereas better aim and defenses don't trigger bonuses. Choose utility early on, and you can afford aiming and defenses later. Choose defenses, and you'll never get enough Praxis to gain utility. The hacking minigame plays into this as well. If you invest in hacking augs early and hack often, you'll quickly gather a stockpile of Nuke! viruses that enable you to claim nodes without alerting the system, and Stop! worms that put alerts on hold for a few precious seconds. If you wait too long, you'll use up every one of the viruses and worms you find just trying to hack the level 4/5 computers that are everywhere once you get to Montreal.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9419bd1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9419bd1	featureConfidence	1.0
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9419bd1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9cf7b5f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9cf7b5f	comment	BIT.TRIP FATE: While higher modes grant no gameplay advantages in the rest of the series, higher modes slightly increase your firepower in this game, helping you defend yourself from enemies so they don't hit you to lower your mode.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9cf7b5f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9cf7b5f	featureConfidence	1.0
BIT.TRIP (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_b9cf7b5f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ba1083f7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ba1083f7	comment	In Guitar Hero and Rock Band (before Rock Band 3, which allows saving with no-fail on), nailing a star section gives you star power, which you can deploy on demand to make it easier to keep your health up. If you miss the star sections, you won't have the star power to BS your way through the tricky stuff.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ba1083f7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ba1083f7	featureConfidence	1.0
Guitar Hero (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ba1083f7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bcadd7cb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bcadd7cb	comment	A problem in any sort of Turn-based Wargame, most notably Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle.: This is because both players will inevitably start out with the same amount of units, but one player will always go first. This means that he gets one turn to fire weapons at his opponent with impunity, which results in the other player logically starting with a handicap (as statistically some of his troops are going to bite the dust before he even gets to move). A lot of games compensate by having the player who goes first also place his troops first, so the second player has the compensatory advantage of being able to take his opponent's troop placements into account in his own deployments. In the above examples, the Reserves rule was implemented in 40k specifically so that you can hold some of your troops back from the initial volley of shots, at the expense of them not being able to do anything until they come in from reserves. The issue also compounds in bigger games; while theoretically the forces scale up and casualty percentages remain constant, the dice roll doesn't. If 10% of all your shooting would be ineffective, then it would greatly matter if that 10% would be enough to save a model or not. In small games, that might not be enough to actually remove a model, thus removing the opponent's combat efficiency. In large games you might have just removed an entire squad holding weapons unique to them.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bcadd7cb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bcadd7cb	featureConfidence	1.0
Warhammer 40,000 (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_bcadd7cb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bfb483af	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bfb483af	comment	Splatoon: In all of the games, getting splatted takes a chunk out of your Special Weapon meter. This means that the longer you're able to go without getting splatted and the more turf you ink, the more specials you'll be able to use (and some of them are extremely powerful, especially if more than one player on your team has them). In Splatoon 3, during a Tricolor Turf War, if the defending team manages to keep both of the attacking teams from claiming an Ultra Signal for the entire match, they stand a good chance of winning the entire round, considering their number advantage. But if even one of their opponents can sneak through and grab a Signal, it will summon a Sprinkler of Doom that inks a huge area of turf in their team's color for the rest of the battle. If this happens early enough, it will take all of the defending team's coordination and skill to clutch out a victory, because they'll have to focus on both keeping the attacking teams away from the center and inking the turf the Sprinkler of Doom covers, while the attackers only have to push through to the Ultra Signal.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bfb483af	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_bfb483af	featureConfidence	1.0
Splatoon (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_bfb483af
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c0d295c4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c0d295c4	comment	Team Fortress 2 The game, as carefully balanced as it is, does this on purpose. On control point maps, a team that's down to a single point still under its control will have its respawn interval increased, making it take longer for a killed defender to rejoin the fight: without this rule, the density of defenders on the last point would be so high that no one would ever win. The game also rewards doing well with critical hits: If you've done a lot of damage in the last twenty seconds, one has a much higher chance of scoring critical hits and, therefore, to keep killing. This is to encourage players who are 'on a roll' to stay that way. In Capture the Flag, capturing the intelligence (flag) awards your whole team several seconds of all crits, making is easier to push for the intelligence again. Likewise, in Arena mode, whoever earns the first kill earns several seconds of critical hits (not shared with your team this time), making it easier to keep killing (otherwise, earning the first kill would be nearly suicidal). They go into great detail on the evils of stalemates in the dev commentary. The engineer's teleporter, the moving respawns, and the sliding respawn interval are all bent towards crushing the weaker team, so the match can end and the teams can be reshuffled. It's also interesting to play third-party maps by people who didn't listen to the commentary, and therefore designed an old-style static map, which of course results in a stalemate nine times out of ten. This also becomes a problem on servers with instant respawn—while it's nice to get back into the fight more quickly, it pretty much destroys game balance. In Mann Vs Machine, a well-comprised and well-organized team is more likely to be able to get a lot of the money dropped by robots when they die. The team needs the money to upgrade their equipment, which is necessary for surviving later waves of robots. Likewise, the robots become stronger the longer they can hold the bomb without dropping it, making easier to keep from dropping it.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c0d295c4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c0d295c4	featureConfidence	1.0
Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c0d295c4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c1b43f85	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c1b43f85	comment	Super Mario 3D World: When playing co-op, the winner of each level is awarded a crown that is worth 5000 points in the next level. This makes it easier for one player to win several levels in a row, although other players can fight for the crown.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c1b43f85	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c1b43f85	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Mario 3D World (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c1b43f85
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c2463c55	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c2463c55	comment	Final Fantasy X with its Overkill mechanic can cause a positive-feedback loop; higher-level characters will score overkills more often, getting more experience and keeping them higher-level to score more overkills...
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c2463c55	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c2463c55	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy X (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c2463c55
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c305f9a9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c305f9a9	comment	In Axelay, your currently-equipped weapon gets disabled when you get hit, if it doesn't kill you outright.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c305f9a9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c305f9a9	featureConfidence	1.0
Axelay (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c305f9a9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c3e3fe99	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c3e3fe99	comment	Valdis Story: Abyssal City: You're graded on how well you do during boss fights. How quickly you defeat the boss, how much damage you take, and how high your combo meter was all contribute to an overall score. Better grades reward the player with increased stats or additional skill points. If you're not strong or skilled enough to get a good score, you won't get the better rewards, making the next boss fight even harder to get a good score in.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c3e3fe99	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c3e3fe99	featureConfidence	1.0
Valdis Story: Abyssal City (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c3e3fe99
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c4a1d59e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c4a1d59e	comment	Call of Duty: The Modern Warfare series and Call of Duty: World at War also have this - players who get kill streaks without dying are rewarded with air support raining down on the opposition. However, these advantages are SO high as to fall squarely into the main-level trope. Someone who is only okay is likely to get less and less kills, as the high-level people gain the ability to use those tricks. This goes even further in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, as the later killstreak rewards are often simply -better- than earlier ones. A weaker team might be trying its hardest to scrape together enough kills to earn a UAV recon or spy plane, whereas the other team can be grinding them into dust with repeated airstrikes, AC130 gunships and attack helicopters. Worse, in Modern Warfare 2, said killstreak rewards count towards earning others, something that resulted in the somewhat infamous Harrier/Chopper Gunner/Nuke combo.*Getting a Harrier (7 kills) usually gets enough kills for a Chopper Gunner/AC130 (11 kills) which leads up to a Tactical Nuke (25 kills). Needless to say, this is horrifying for the other team. Reasons like this are why Modern Warfare 3 tones down the killstreaks substantially; many killstreaks require more kills than in the previous game, air support only counts toward your killstreak if used during the same killstreak it was obtained in, and there are better counter-air-support options, such as better rocket launchers and a surface-air missile turret item. Additionally, the new version of the Tactical Nuke, the M.O.A.B. (Mother of All Bombs), is less powerful and much harder to get—it instantly kills the entire enemy team rather than instantly ending the game, and the requisite 25-kill streak no longer counts kills gotten using other killstreaks. Curiously this can also manifest within a team. If one or two exceptional players keep killing the outmatched enemy team, their allies can find themselves constantly chasing after blips on the radar, finding only corpses, while their exceptional allies are already on the other side of the map making new corpses of the team who have just respawned. As the best players get better and better killstreak rewards they'll create a situation where only they can get kills, because the enemies spend too much time dead for anyone else to have a chance.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c4a1d59e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c4a1d59e	featureConfidence	1.0
Call of Duty (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c4a1d59e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c52ba890	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c52ba890	comment	Worker shortages can quickly send your city into a spiral: if your public services don't have enough workers to support your houses, people start to move out of the city, exacerbating the shortage. This is especially severe in Caesar and Pharaoh, whereas later games allow more precise control over worker allocation.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c52ba890	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c52ba890	featureConfidence	1.0
Caesar / Videogame	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c52ba890
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5a1b371	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5a1b371	comment	In BLOODCRUSHER II, player leveling is tied to points from combos and trick kills, enemy difficulty is tied to kills total. Thus, if a player is playing conservatively and killing enemies safely one at a time, enemy difficulty quickly outpaces their character's attributes.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5a1b371	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5a1b371	featureConfidence	1.0
BloodCrusher2	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5a1b371
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5f50eb4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5f50eb4	comment	The Contra series has this in spades. The base bosses in the arcade version increase in difficulty the longer the fight drags on, but even in the console version, chances are the spread gun is the only thing keeping from becoming dog food. Lose the spread gun, and you will probably lose the rest of your lives in short order. In Super Contra, if you lose your weapon upgrades in Those Last Two Levels, you're as good as dead.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5f50eb4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5f50eb4	featureConfidence	1.0
Contra (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c5f50eb4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c6e646e5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c6e646e5	comment	In most games in the Darius series, dying can decrease your firepower by a lot. In the original Darius, powering up your weapon, bomb, or shield 6 times will upgrade it, and on dying, you lose all of your powerups. So you can be on the last powerup level for your missile shot (red triple missiles), ready to get another powerup so you can get the laser, but when you die, you downgrade all the way back to green single missile. Darius II decides to just say "fuck you" and take away all of your powerups. Darius Gaiden takes away two shot levels every time you die. Just to add insult to injury, there is a Dynamic Difficulty system that raises the difficulty whenever you collect a shot powerup for the first time within the stage, with the new difficulty being directly proportional to the current stage. A few deaths in the final stage not only has a devastating effect on your firepower, but also leaves you with a choice between toughing out the last stage with your reduced firepower or making the stage sadistically difficult by trying to recover your firepowernote And that's if you can even get powerups, which is quite unlikely during the Final Boss.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c6e646e5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c6e646e5	featureConfidence	1.0
Darius (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c6e646e5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c8c98633	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c8c98633	comment	The RTS game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 was specifically rebalanced to avoid this, since the first game had a rather bad problem with it - namely, that the computer will throw everything it has into its first attack, meaning you've effectively beaten it if you can weather that. One of the developers described it as (something like) "winning a game in five minutes, then taking forty minutes to actually complete that victory."
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c8c98633	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c8c98633	featureConfidence	1.0
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c8c98633
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c9c1bb50	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c9c1bb50	comment	Evolve. A Monster that manages to stay ahead of the Hunters will get more time to feed uninterrupted, allowing it to Evolve more quickly and grow as a threat. However, if it gets caught early and often, it will end up wasting precious time in the Dome, and that's if the Hunters don't manage to do enough damage to get through its armour to its health. Health doesn't regenerate and isn't fully restored when Evolving, meaning Hunters can slowly but surely chip a Monster to death over a number of fights. However, if the player Hunters don't work well together, it is very easy for the Monster player to absolutely stomp them very quickly, even in stage one.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c9c1bb50	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_c9c1bb50	featureConfidence	1.0
Evolve (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_c9c1bb50
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cab8d10	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cab8d10	comment	Downplayed in 7 Wonders Duel. The Progress Token "Economy" gives you the money spent by your opponent when they buy missing resources. This gets more powerful the farther you are ahead on resources, which already gives you an advantage.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cab8d10	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cab8d10	featureConfidence	1.0
7 Wonders (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cab8d10
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cba48b98	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cba48b98	comment	God Hand includes a difficulty system that goes from easier to harder and back depending on how well the player's doing, through levels 1, 2, 3 and the aptly named Die. After each stage, the game counts up all the enemies you killed on each level and rewards you with money, with kills on higher levels being worth more, and conversely penalizes you for every death. Having more money allows players to buy upgrades and more powerful attacks.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cba48b98	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cba48b98	featureConfidence	1.0
God Hand (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cba48b98
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cbf0ee94	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cbf0ee94	comment	EVE Online: There are generally two groups of players: Those with lots of money all the time, and those who constantly struggle to make a living. The ones who are always wealthy, usually have built up that wealth for so long that they have self-sustaining business empires within the game and often comprise the leadership of player-run empires. Needless to say, there are also many players who make a lot of money by successfully scamming and stealing from everyone else. There is a well known phenomenon that was discovered in the game's adolescent years, when the developers would introduce new features and benefits for new players to attract more of them; One veteran player stated that "Any new feature intended to benefit new players will ultimately benefit older more established players substantially more". This law has yet to be defied or disproved.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cbf0ee94	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cbf0ee94	featureConfidence	1.0
EVE Online (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cbf0ee94
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cc69e03e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cc69e03e	comment	VGA Planets: Often a problem in this multi-player space-empire game. If you don't get off to a fast start settling and developing the planets around your homeworld and getting a ship-building supply network going, one of your 10 opponents will likely end up producing a massive fleet that will irresistibly roll over you. And since a typical game takes months to play, a losing player gets to slowly lose for, yes, months, as the winning player normally has to mop all of the victim's assets in order to officially boot them from the game. (You can still technically be in the game while owning a single ship.) On the current "Planets Nu" system, there is always a long list of games seeking replacements where people got fed up and quit. Some Nu games do include a planet count required to stay in the game which increases as the game progresses.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cc69e03e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cc69e03e	featureConfidence	1.0
VGA Planets (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cc69e03e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ccc74c7e	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ccc74c7e	comment	Sacrifice: One of the more dramatic examples. There is a single resource for creating units; souls. These souls exist in a VERY limited amount, most held by you, your enemy, and the scarce ambient creatures across the field. Since souls are easier to hold on to (run into them) then they are to steal (a minute long ritual just to get them on their way to your altar for another ritual to convert them) the game maintains a strange sort of stalemate...at least until you lose one bad fight. If your enemy gains even a tiny soul-lead on you, it turns very quickly into a snowballing curb-stomp. Made slightly more odd by the fact that this is the main tactic in the campaign mode for you. Create a catspaws base to start sapping enemy souls for your own army.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ccc74c7e	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ccc74c7e	featureConfidence	1.0
Sacrifice (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ccc74c7e
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cd6d8488	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cd6d8488	comment	Towards the end of an early mission in MechCommander you face a MadCat, a very tough enemy. The game does allow you to avoid the fight (in fact that's what you're supposed to do, thematically) but beating it very often nets you this mech and with it you will waltz through the other early missions. The point being that only players good enough to get through the rest of the mission essentially unharmed can consider accepting battle, those struggling won't have their mechs in any shape to face it (although the only realistic way to beat it is luring it into a field of fuel tanks and then blowing them up, you still need to have your mechs in relatively good condition to even consider engaging it or it's just going to wreck you before you can get it into position).
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cd6d8488	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cd6d8488	featureConfidence	1.0
Mech Commander (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cd6d8488
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cf0603d0	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cf0603d0	comment	Heavy Weapon has this with your Smart Bombs. In most shooters, you are restocked with a certain number of bombs after death. In Heavy Weapon, you lose all your Nukes on death! This makes the waves even harder as you now don't have the ability to clear the screen of enemies and bullets.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cf0603d0	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_cf0603d0	featureConfidence	1.0
Heavy Weapon (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_cf0603d0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d03aeb13	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d03aeb13	comment	The popular Civilization 4 mod, Fall from Heaven includes this trait, but also adds a new, militarized version in Baron Duin Halfmorn, a unique 'World Unit' which can be built by ANYONE, regardless of civilization, religion and civic choices - the ONLY such unit. (All other 'unique' units are cultural or religious heroes.) So basically, whoever first researches the necessary technology, gets to build him. Being a Werewolf, he has a high chance of turning any unit he kills into a Ravenous Werewolf, and if they survive their first engagement (even if it's only with an unarmed Worker), they turn into Blooded Werewolves under your control. These, then, have a chance of turning into stronger Greater Werewolves with every combat-success - and every type of werewolf has a set chance of creating more whenever they kill a unit. Thus, anyone good enough with tactics to make decent use of Duin Halfmorn and his spawn, are rewarded with even more, free units with similar power, essentially allowing a skilled played to BECOME The Virus. (Fortunately, there's an option to simply disable Duin Halfmorn from your game if you find him too unbalanced.)
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d03aeb13	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d03aeb13	featureConfidence	1.0
Fall from Heaven (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d03aeb13
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d0a5a846	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d0a5a846	comment	Your maximum power in most Gradius games: missiles, a laser attack (or double shot), four Options, and a shield. This takes 31 or 32 powerup capsules. On dying, you lose all of this, although some games allow you to fly into and recapture the Options.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d0a5a846	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d0a5a846	featureConfidence	1.0
Gradius (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d0a5a846
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4d31eeb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4d31eeb	comment	DJMAX attempts to strike a compromise: when you hit a note, you get a note judgment in the form of a percentage, and at the end of the song, the game averages your note percentages to produce your accuracy. Then there's the scoring system, which has the combo bonuses.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4d31eeb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4d31eeb	featureConfidence	1.0
DJMAX (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4d31eeb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4dafda9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4dafda9	comment	In Cytus, the maximum score you can earn on any song is 1,000,000, which is earned by hitting every note with a Perfect rating. Just below that, there's the S rating, earned by scoring at least 950,000 points. You'd think that this means each note is worth 1,000,000 divided by the total number of notes, but actually, 100,000 of these points are based on your maximum combo. Missing a single note near the middle of the song will make it impossible to get an S rating, even if you hit every other note perfectly, while missing once near the start or end of the song will still result in near-perfect scores.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4dafda9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4dafda9	featureConfidence	1.0
Cytus (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d4dafda9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b43	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b43	comment	Same with the two-part missions in Halo 2, where your weapons carry over from the first half of the mission; a poor combination can make things more frustrating, and if you quit and reload, you start over with the mission's default weapons.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b43	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b43	featureConfidence	1.0
Halo 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b43
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b45	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b45	comment	In Halo 4, this is the whole point of Dominion. Of course to make things fair some weapons randomly spawn outside on the field, away from the bases to give either the winning or losing team a upper (or lower depending on the player and weapon) hand. However, when the losing team loses their last base, the entire team enters a mode that gives overshields to help them win back a lost base. If they die, they stay dead until a base has been re-captured or they lose.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b45	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b45	featureConfidence	1.0
Halo 4 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5166b45
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59d9e99	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59d9e99	comment	R-Type was definitely one of the most brutal instances of this. Dying (in one shot, natch) would strip you of all power-ups, including speed upgrades and, most essentially, the Force unit that was so fundamental to the series that it was always your first weapon upgrade. Without your speed upgrades it'd be even harder to weave between bullets to pick up power ups without getting shot down again, while without a Force unit you couldn't block enemy projectiles. You'd be sent back to the last checkpoint every time you died, which was a mixed blessing- while it meant all your progress was lost and you now had to do it again while even weaker than before, you got another chance to reacquire at least a couple of upgrade, rather than being forced to press on to face the next boss with only your basic cannon (which in several cases would render them close to Unwinnable). This at least got marginally less-severe as the series went on and speed upgrades were removed altogether, being replaced by a permanent controllable throttle.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59d9e99	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59d9e99	featureConfidence	1.0
R-Type (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59d9e99
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59e2ca4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59e2ca4	comment	A similar problem occurs in multiplayer games where the players have to collect weapons and powerups like Quake and Unreal Tournament. A recently killed player will be severely understocked against the player that just killed him, which in turn leads to worse chances of getting the next powerup that appears and increased chances of dying again. In Unreal Tournament 2004's case, the adrenaline. By getting full adrenaline the player can temporarily give himself regeneration, a faster firing rate, superspeed movement or even invisibility. A good player will gain a massive advantage from these with the most unfortunate example being Bombing Run, a sports-esque game mode where scoring a goal gives a large amount of adrenaline to the player, about 35% of the meter. Since speed is very important in Bombing Run, the winning team will be able to abuse the superspeed powerup over and over again as they score more goals and refill the adrenaline almost instantly. Notably, Adrenaline is disabled in most competitive UT2004 matches, as are the one-shot-kill superweapons. This means that in competition, the unstable equilibrium feature on a map is usually the large shield pickup. It's a strong enough bonus to ensure that its holder cannot be killed in one shot by any normal means (though falling into an instant-kill map hazard is still fatal). This item spawns on a predictable timer, and many, MANY matches are decided largely on which player can manage to be precisely at the point where the pack spawns at precisely the moment the shield respawns. The player who took the last shield has a ridiculous advantage in taking the next shield, provided that they manage to retain their shielding. Additionally, as the player's arsenal is emptied on death, the shield-holder often has a wider array of weapons available in any given encounter, where a freshly-spawned player might have two or even one good weapon. Also, given that certain (usually deathmatch) rulesets make weapon pickups despawn temporarily on pickup, a player with the early lead can conceivably hold a monopoly on the best health items on the map AND the best weapons for depleting that health. It's little wonder that very small skill gaps in UT2004 can lead to landslide victories. In the Onslaught game mode, Power Nodes almost always spawn vehicles. The team controlling the most nodes thus usually has a firepower advantage, which in turn makes it harder and harder for the other team to either construct a contested node or keep it up long enough that they can move on to the next one.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59e2ca4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59e2ca4	featureConfidence	1.0
Quake (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d59e2ca4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5c2a7a3	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5c2a7a3	comment	The first two games in the Thief series have an interesting way to deal with this: The loot you steal on your previous mission is used to purchase weapons and upgrades for your next one, but any unspent gold is lost and the stuff you buy doesn't carry over to following missions, so there's no point in hoarding it. You always have to buy your entire loadout (except for a few default items) using only the gold you collected on the previous level. Deadly Shadows does away with this.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5c2a7a3	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5c2a7a3	featureConfidence	1.0
Thief (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d5c2a7a3
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d616724d	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d616724d	comment	League of Legends has many measures to slow down the scales tipping. For instance, killing a player who already died lots without getting kills will only give you a pittance of gold, while the weaker player gets tons of money if he does manage to gain the upper hand. It doesn't prevent unstable equilibrium, but it makes it less overwhelming.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d616724d	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d616724d	featureConfidence	1.0
League of Legends (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d616724d
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d758ed0c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d758ed0c	comment	TimeSplitters brought a creative solution to the problem in one game mode: the player in last place gets a strike team of rocket launcher-wielding monkeys dropping in periodically to help. The sequels have another mode called Shrink, in which players change size based on their rank on the scoreboard: maintaining first place means retaining normal size, but any drop in position causes the player to shrink, with the last place competitor becoming very tiny and difficult to hit.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d758ed0c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d758ed0c	featureConfidence	1.0
TimeSplitters (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d758ed0c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d880e828	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d880e828	comment	It is actually easier to come back in Defense of the Ancients than in other games provided you have the skill to know how (or luck), even though its mechanics lead to massive gold differences after only a few kills. This is because abilities are so powerful (and by and large don't scale with gear) that even the highly fed enemy carry can be caught out and nuked or stunlocked to death. You have to do it multiple times due to buyback gold, but you can do it. The final match of The International 3 was decided by Alliance pulling off two awesome plays from a severely disadvantaged position after 30 minutes of getting stomped by Na'Vi. There is a huge defender's advantage at the entrance of the actual base, but once they do get into your base and destroy your barracks, the game is pretty much over. It doesn't end at that point though, giving the winning team plenty of opportunity to spawn camp the losers.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d880e828	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_d880e828	featureConfidence	1.0
Defense of the Ancients (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_d880e828
Unstable Equilibrium / int_da5f4b41	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_da5f4b41	comment	Border Down has a unique take on this. There are three colored borders in the game: green, yellow, and red, which you choose one of at the start of the game and may or may not be able to manually change between stages depending on how high you scored in the previous stage. Each border is a different variation of a stage: green border is the easiest, while red is the hardest. They also represent your lives remaining: getting hit in green demotes you to yellow border, getting hit in yellow demotes you to red, and getting hit in red results in a Game Over.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_da5f4b41	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_da5f4b41	featureConfidence	1.0
Border Down (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_da5f4b41
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dab32bc	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dab32bc	comment	There are eight (six in Mega Man) Robot Masters that you have to defeat and you can do it in any order. Each one of them is weak against one of the other's weapon that you can gain with Power Copying. Once you have knowledge of their weaknesses, you can easily cream the rest of them once you beat one of them.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dab32bc	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dab32bc	featureConfidence	1.0
Mega Man (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_dab32bc
Unstable Equilibrium / int_db96ded4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_db96ded4	comment	The Legend of Korra: The Pro-Bending ring is designed intentionally with this trope in mind. The teams start out in the zone nearest to the arena's center and must fight to remain there because, once pushed backwards, they cannot return to their previous position. This puts the player and their team at a disadvantage since attacks from longer distances are easier to deflect or dodge.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_db96ded4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_db96ded4	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Korra	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_db96ded4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dc63428c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dc63428c	comment	Imperium Galactica invokes the trope deliberately: the Dargslans are live and expanding from day one, and you have to ascend to the Grand Admiral rank before they defeat the majority of your would-be allies to stand a chance in the endgame.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dc63428c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dc63428c	featureConfidence	1.0
Imperium Galactica (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_dc63428c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ddd4b174	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ddd4b174	comment	Monopoly: This trope is the foundation of the original game's moral: wealth inequality's tendency to worsen itself. Per official rules, players who obtain more property earlier charge higher rent from opponents who land on such, giving them a massive advantage.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ddd4b174	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ddd4b174	featureConfidence	1.0
Monopoly (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ddd4b174
Unstable Equilibrium / int_de57fb2f	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_de57fb2f	comment	We Who Are About to Die: Maximum Stamina drops pretty heavily when you're injured, and it rules how much you can move and swing (as well as the effectiveness of both). As a result, whoever eats the first few heavy blows will usually lose, and turning the fight around is quite difficult. This also applies between fights, due to the limited regeneration and healing: If you took too much damage to heal in one week, you'll enter your next fight at lower capacity, eat more blows, and thus be even harder to heal until you manage to avoid enough damage to get back on your feet. Or die.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_de57fb2f	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_de57fb2f	featureConfidence	1.0
We Who Are About to Die / Videogame	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_de57fb2f
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dec5f386	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dec5f386	comment	The very first Raiden has this. At full power, you can have a vulcan cannon that covers almost 180 degrees in front of you as well as huge dumbfire missiles (and/or a Wave-Motion Gun and stupidly fast homing missiles). Die, and you're back to a basic two-bullet shot with no sub-weapon. It takes 2-3 stages of powerups to get up to max. The sequel and DX fix it a bit with fairies, which spawn if you die and give you some powerups so you don't lose absolutely everything. The Raiden Fighters series is much more generous with powerups so it isn't much of a problem at all.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dec5f386	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_dec5f386	featureConfidence	1.0
Raiden (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_dec5f386
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e1426d79	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e1426d79	comment	This is just one of the issues with Sonic R, as booster pads and locked doors need rings to activate. Since the person up front will get first-grab at the rings on the track, they'll be getting more boosts and shortcuts than the people behind them, making it even harder for everyone else to catch up.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e1426d79	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e1426d79	featureConfidence	1.0
Sonic R (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e1426d79
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e186f45	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e186f45	comment	Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?: All mothers in the MMORPG the characters play are granted extremely broken gear and stats at the beginning. They gain experience and new skills by the truckload at the drop of a hat for seemingly no reason at all, while their children have to face the burden of Early Game Hell and having all of their kills stolen from under their noses by their mothers. To put it into perspective: answering a question correctly nets Masato 10XP, while Mamako gets 30 just for being there.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e186f45	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e186f45	featureConfidence	1.0
Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e186f45
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e235270c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e235270c	comment	Paradox games have another feature to avert this. They typically have an invisible "Bad Boy" score that goes up if you go on a conquest spree, which will (in theory) cause countries to unite against you before you can get big enough to run away with the gamenote This is most obvious in Stellaris, where you might easily take half an empire in conquest, only to find that the remaining half immediately creates several alliances after the war is over (you can't make an alliance while actively at war), even if their empire type is normally isolationist. In extreme situations, they may even create a Federation of several empires, or join an existing one. The united forces against you are supposed to be more challenging and interesting than mopping up nations one-by-one.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e235270c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e235270c	featureConfidence	1.0
Stellaris (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e235270c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e500f417	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e500f417	comment	This is the core of the economic part of Harvest Moon. Choosing Friends of Mineral Town for illustration, you start out the game with 500G. By the end of the first spring you can use foraging and turnip sales to earn yourself 30,000G, tool upgrades, and some animals. By the end of the first summer, you can take that 30,000G and make well over 300,000G from pineapples. By the end of the first Autumn, you can take that 300,000G and make well over 3,000,000G from sweet potatoes. 3,000,000G is enough to buy essentially all the purchasable things in the game.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e500f417	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e500f417	featureConfidence	1.0
Harvest Moon (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e500f417
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5964cdb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5964cdb	comment	Chess has very strong elements of this. A player who gets behind in the opening development will have a very hard time catching up with his opponent. In a similar way, if one player manages to get a material advantage ("material" as in "combined value of all pieces"), that player will likely be able to exploit and increase said advantage. This means that, for advanced players, winning a game of chess is often a matter of getting that first advantage while preventing the opponent from doing so. This is the reason professional-level chess games almost never end in checkmate, with one player conceding when they determine their situation to be hopeless; not because Chess players are quitters, but because they understand how key the unstable equilibrium is in the game.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5964cdb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5964cdb	featureConfidence	1.0
Chess (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5964cdb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5de447c	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5de447c	comment	X-COM uses this very hard. If you do well at the start, you'll have more money and therefore can hire more scientists, getting you better technology, improving your odds in battles, etc. This results in the game being very hard at the start but ridiculously easy toward the end. This is partially accounted for by more powerful aliens sequentially appearing throughout the game, and them being better armed, but not sufficiently to make the game's difficulty smooth. Many self imposed challenges have originated from this. Also, since soldiers gain ranks for participating in missions and killing aliens, the more you use the same soldiers over and over again (and therefore the more experience they get), the more incentive you have to keep using them, barring wounds, and the less incentive you have to level your reserves from scratch, especially in the late game. It may be jarring to get a top soldier wounded (or, worse, killed) and be suddenly forced to fill the spots with rookies and squaddies and level them all over again. Game Mod The XCOM Files exaggerates this to almost ludicrous levels, while also managing to reset it several times. At the beginning of the game, you have very few resources, weapons, and people, and you have to spend your very limited research budget just cutting through the red tape to get such basic things as decent weapons and literally any armor. Once you've successfully completed a few missions, you'll have more research avenues to explore, and you'll quickly expand to be able to deal with the threats you're facing, as the initial cults and monsters are only really dangerous when you don't have the gear to deal with them. Once you do deal with them, though, you uncover additional conspiracies that quickly make your advancements either outdated or completely ineffective, and you have to come up with new strategies to deal with them. To the point that by the time the alien invasion actually starts, the aliens can be the least of your problems, because at least your current tech is (hopefully) enough to deal with them before they ramp up.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5de447c	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5de447c	featureConfidence	1.0
X-COM (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e5de447c
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e650c1d4	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e650c1d4	comment	Poker. While you get the same (random) cards whether you're down or up, a short-stacked player can't thicken the pot as well when he has really strong hands, and can't use the threat of a large raise to force players out and protect his "drawing" hands. While it is generally true that a large stack gives players more strategic options to play their hand and the possibility to win larger pots, this can quickly become an Inverted Trope for extremely small stacks. In a tournament, players who have less than 10 Big Blinds left usually only have the option to go all-in right away or fold their cards. This gives the short-stacked players a slight advantage by being able to force their opponents to make a final decision early on during a hand. During the golden years of online Poker, so many players exploited this "short-stack strategy" by buying into cash-games only with the minimum amount required (20 big blinds at that time), that virtually every poker site had to increase their minimum buy-in to 50 big blinds.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e650c1d4	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e650c1d4	featureConfidence	1.0
Poker (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e650c1d4
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e9d7acf9	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e9d7acf9	comment	The Lone Wolf gamebooks reward you for playing through all the adventures by allowing you to add an extra Discipline for each previous adventure you completed. By and large, these make life easier but don't give you a massive advantage. Until Grand Master. In addition to the Discipline benefits, you gain 1 Combat Skill point and 2 Endurance points for each adventure completed. The upshot is that the adventures actually get easier as you go, to the point where the ultimate mission... going alone into the evil god's universe and swiping a legendary artifact from his inner sanctum... is an absolute cakewalk.Though this gets inverted in some of the later books, where having some of the items you get from previous books, most notably the Sommerswerd, will make some bosses exponentially harder, to the point where one boss is mathematically almost impossible unless you have a very specific set of disciplines, have gotten and saved every single stat-boosting item you can get by that point in the game, have both of END and CS scores maxed, AND gotten a one of a kind potion in the third book that boosts your combat score higher then any other potion in the game and refrained from losing/using it until the boss battle, in the eleventh book. Even then it requires a lot of luck with the combat rolls.It's notable that there are several fanon attempts to explain why it would be perfectly logical for Lone Wolf to NOT bring the only non-evil weapon in the world able to kill the Big Bad's with him when he invades one of their strongholds, just to make that fight easier.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e9d7acf9	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_e9d7acf9	featureConfidence	1.0
Lone Wolf	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_e9d7acf9
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ea002280	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ea002280	comment	Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile: Your Prestige score caps your city's population of expert workers and decays if not regularly maintained. If your Prestige falls — as it always does when your current ruler dies, for example — you might lose some of the workers you need to keep it from falling further.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ea002280	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ea002280	featureConfidence	1.0
Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ea002280
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb0a8c95	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb0a8c95	comment	Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character comes at this from the positive reinforcement side: Bomb and life fragments are gained by auto-collecting large numbers of items (done by going up to the top of the screen. Or bombing, but that's not efficient) and capturing spellcards (done by not dying, bombing, or timing out the attack). So, it's easy to get totally maxed out on resources if you're playing below your skill level, but you'll find yourself with nothing if you try to play above it.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb0a8c95	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb0a8c95	featureConfidence	1.0
Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb0a8c95
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9e6431	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9e6431	comment	In rymdkapsel, get too many workers picked off by a hostile fleet and you'll be too busy replacing them to build additional defenses before the next fleet hits. Although in the end you're doomed anyway.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9e6431	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9e6431	featureConfidence	1.0
rymdkapsel (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9e6431
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9fc84d	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9fc84d	comment	Blazing Lazers is a good example of the space shooter power-up problem. The weapons level up seven times. The later levels are tough enough with the best weapons. If you die once, it's virtually impossible to build them back up without dying again.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9fc84d	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9fc84d	featureConfidence	1.0
Blazing Lazers (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_eb9fc84d
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebac92a0	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebac92a0	comment	The PSP game Jeanne d'Arc would have the same problem, were multiplayer available: when the title character is in Limit Break, killing an enemy gives her another turn. It's not all that hard to set up the battlefield for her to leapfrog around one-shotting everyone.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebac92a0	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebac92a0	featureConfidence	1.0
Jeanne d'Arc (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebac92a0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebc7a4c7	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebc7a4c7	comment	In Terra Cresta, your attack drones can be destroyed by enemy fire, making you more likely to lose another, repeat until death.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebc7a4c7	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebc7a4c7	featureConfidence	1.0
Terra Cresta (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ebc7a4c7
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ecb18afb	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ecb18afb	comment	Most of the games make you lose some power whenever you die. How harsh this penalty is varies depending on the game. In the first three Windows games, recovering the lost power is fairly easy. In Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object and beyond, the main rule is that dying reduces your power by 1.00 out of 4.00, and that while the games are quite generous with power items during stages, they're much harder to come by during boss fights. So if you die during (or just before) a boss fight you're going to have to finish the fight with about 25% less firepower than you'd have otherwise, making all the patterns take longer, making you more likely to die again.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ecb18afb	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ecb18afb	featureConfidence	1.0
Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ecb18afb
Unstable Equilibrium / int_edd0982	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_edd0982	comment	Seven Kingdoms 2: The Frythan Wars Human factions must conscript new soldiers from their civilian population. A major loss can significantly drain the population of a player's cities as they try to replace their lost soldiers and hurt their economy. Made even worse is that soldiers level up, a lot. Soldiers in forts are constantly training and slowly gaining levels, and in battle gain several levels quickly. And finally every unit has an inventory where they can hold one unique item. A victor can walk away from a battle with an army that has gained several levels of experience and new items while the loser has to use his civilian population to create new rookie soldiers. Additionally, the demonic frythan factions use life force gained from killing to create units. A victory for them can really boost their military might.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_edd0982	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_edd0982	featureConfidence	1.0
Seven Kingdoms (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_edd0982
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ee666734	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ee666734	comment	Every mode in Mushihime Sama Futari Black Label — lose one life and your counter drops by about 1,000-2,000. Use a bomb, and your counter drops by at least 6,000.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ee666734	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ee666734	featureConfidence	1.0
Mushihime-sama (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ee666734
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eed321b1	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eed321b1	comment	Ars Magica: Wounds and fatigue both inflict stacking penalties on all of the character's actions, making it harder for them both to attack and to defend themselves against further harm. Also, a wounded character who exerts themself is at risk of making their injuries worse.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eed321b1	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_eed321b1	featureConfidence	1.0
Ars Magica (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_eed321b1
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ef8bd4a5	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ef8bd4a5	comment	Mega Man: There are eight (six in Mega Man) Robot Masters that you have to defeat and you can do it in any order. Each one of them is weak against one of the other's weapon that you can gain with Power Copying. Once you have knowledge of their weaknesses, you can easily cream the rest of them once you beat one of them. But then it's all fair for the final level when you have all the weapons... at least until you realize that dying will not refill your weapon energy tanks, but it will remember which ones you've already picked up. When these weapons make getting through certain parts about 100x easier, and you use them all up, and then die and have to do that part again. Mega Man X5 introduced the infamous boss rank mechanic, where a boss that is level 8 or higher can drop a special item, and the higher their level the more likely they are to drop one. Ignoring that this only happens on normal difficulty (which makes easy the hardest difficulty as lamented here), the better you do in the stages the faster the bosses will level up. In other words, doing well without the items gives you more opportunities to get the items, while doing poorly makes it harder to get the items you could most certainly use to do better. Mega Man Zero is worse. In order to gain a new special attack from a boss, you have to get the highest rank in the stage - you have to be good enough to win without taking any damage or using any items.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ef8bd4a5	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_ef8bd4a5	featureConfidence	1.0
Mega Man (Franchise)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_ef8bd4a5
Unstable Equilibrium / int_efceef73	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_efceef73	comment	In The Sims Medieval, starting a quest with low Focus can screw up most of the quest. When you have low Focus, you're more likely to fail at quest tasks or get bad results from responsibilities/chance cards. These events give you negative buffs, which cause you to lose even more Focus. And if you take too long recovering your Focus, you get Behind on Quest...which, you guessed it, decreases your Focus.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_efceef73	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_efceef73	featureConfidence	1.0
The Sims Medieval / Videogame	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_efceef73
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f412ce55	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f412ce55	comment	In Unreal Tournament 2004's case, the adrenaline. By getting full adrenaline the player can temporarily give himself regeneration, a faster firing rate, superspeed movement or even invisibility. A good player will gain a massive advantage from these with the most unfortunate example being Bombing Run, a sports-esque game mode where scoring a goal gives a large amount of adrenaline to the player, about 35% of the meter. Since speed is very important in Bombing Run, the winning team will be able to abuse the superspeed powerup over and over again as they score more goals and refill the adrenaline almost instantly.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f412ce55	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f412ce55	featureConfidence	1.0
Unreal Tournament 2004 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_f412ce55
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f6bb880b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f6bb880b	comment	In Professor Layton games, you get "picarats" for solving puzzles. The number of picarats a puzzle can earn you is based on its difficulty (the more picarats it's worth, the tougher it's going to be). The more times you try a puzzle and get it wrong, the fewer picarats you can earn by getting it right, although after a few tries it stops lowering the score. They don't affect the outcome of the game as far as winning or losing, but you must earn certain numbers of picarats to unlock bonus material.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f6bb880b	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_f6bb880b	featureConfidence	1.0
Professor Layton (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_f6bb880b
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fccc35cc	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fccc35cc	comment	Crusader Kings II has a mechanic for religions called Moral Authority, which governs a variety of religious mechanics, including the likelihood of heresies spawning, county conversion rate, willingness of unreformed pagan rulers to convert to organized faiths, ability to excommunicate, grant invasions, and call crusades. A religion that is doing well, winning religious wars, and controls its holy sites, will have little heresy, be able to relgiously consolidate its gains, and reliably wage crusades. Meanwhile, a religion that is doing poorly will bleed moral authority with each heresy that pops up and wins a revolt, which increases the odds of more heresies spawning, which can also take holy sites out of the religion's control, further hurting moral authority, and a ruler trying to slow the bleed by fighting holy wars against the heretics will find their efforts to convert them back hampered by their own poor moral authority, giving more time for the heretics to revolt again. And for unreformed pagans, as their faith loses moral authority from rulers gradually accepting foreign missionaries or convert to protect their lands from holy wars, the rulers led astray and converted holy site holders will hurt the faith's moral authority and make other rulers more likley to convert, making it ever harder for a player to reform the faith.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fccc35cc	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fccc35cc	featureConfidence	1.0
Crusader Kings II (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_fccc35cc
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe85bfc8	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe85bfc8	comment	Super Smash Bros.: Ledge recovery attacks become slower but stronger if the player's character is at or over 100% damage. Removed in 3DS/Wii U for game balance purposes.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe85bfc8	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe85bfc8	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Smash Bros. (Video Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe85bfc8
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe930a0	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe930a0	comment	In the obscure Digimon TCG, the losing side is dedigivolved to their rookie form, while the winner remains the same. This basically means that whoever is winning after the first turn has a big advantage. They did try to use the Rockâ€“Paperâ€“Scissors mechanic to combat this unbalance - Vaccine (red) beats virus (yellow), Virus beats Data (green), Data beats Vaccine - and some digimon switch their color when digivolving. Though the other player can anticipate your switch and switch themselves.
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe930a0	featureApplicability	1.0
Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe930a0	featureConfidence	1.0
Digimon (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Unstable Equilibrium / int_fe930a0

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Unstable Equilibrium	processingCategory2	Video Game Difficulty Tropes
Unstable Equilibrium	processingCategory2	Video Game Rewards
All That's Left (Fanfic) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse (Fanfic) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Mega Man (Franchise) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Star Fox (Franchise) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Return of the Runebound Professor / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Saintess Summons Skeletons / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Four Gospels / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Salvation War / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Thrawn Trilogy / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
DangarUFORobo	seeAlso	Unstable Equilibrium
English Premier League	seeAlso	Unstable Equilibrium
LostPlanet	seeAlso	Unstable Equilibrium
Tropes T to Z / Real Life / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Survivor / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Achtung! Cthulhu (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Backgammon (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Battleship (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Betrayal at House on the Hill (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Catan (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Eldritch Horror (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Highlander (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hollow Earth Expedition (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lost Ruins of Arnak (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Mao (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Monopoly (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Risk (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
7 Wonders (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Twilight Imperium (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Underwater Cities (Tabletop Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
A Typical Wednesday Afternoon (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
A Valley Without Wind 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Adventure Island (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Afghanistan '11 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Agony (1992) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Among Us (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Armored Core (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Atlas Reactor (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Atom Zombie Smasher (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Awesomenauts (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Azur Lane (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Back 4 Blood (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Battle Cheese (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Battle for Wesnoth (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
BattleTech (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
BattleTech (2018) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Bayonetta (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Bloons Super Monkey (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Bomberman (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Border Down (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Brutal Doom (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Bubble Bobble (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Bubble Tanks (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Call of Duty: Zombies (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Cannon Dancer (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Cataclysm (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Chippy (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Cho Ren Sha 68k (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Citizen Sleeper (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Civilization (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Clive Barker's Undying (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Contra (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Counter-Strike (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Cross Edge (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Crusader Kings III (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Curious Expedition (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Curious Expedition 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
DanceDanceRevolution (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Darius (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Darkwood (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dead Space (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dead Space (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Defense Grid: The Awakening (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Defense of the Ancients (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dementium: The Ward (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Demon's Souls (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Devil May Cry (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Distant Worlds (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Doomsday Warrior (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dota 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dune (1992) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dungeon of the Endless (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Dwarf Fortress (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Elona (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Empire: Total War (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Endless Space (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Equestria at War (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Escape Dungeon (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Eschatos (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Extreme-G (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
F-Zero 99 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fallen London (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fantasy Life (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fantasy Zone (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Far Cry 3 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Felix the Cat (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Final Fantasy IV (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Final Fantasy Legend II (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fuga: Melodies of Steel (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Curse Of The Crimson Elixir (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Fullmetal Alchemist 3: The Girl Who Succeeds God (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Game Dev Tycoon (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ghosts 'n Goblins (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
God Hand (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Gradius (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hard West (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hellish Quart (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Heroes of the Storm (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Heroes of Newerth (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hitman 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hoard (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hollow Knight (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Hotline Miami (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Humankind (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
IDOLA: Phantasy Star Saga (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
I Miss the Sunrise (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Imperator: Rome (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Intelligent Qube (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Jagged Alliance (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Kahoot! (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
KanColle (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Katamari Damacy (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Killing Floor (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
LEGO Racers (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
League of Legends (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lethal Company (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lost Saga (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lumberwhack: Defend the Wild (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Mario Party 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
MARVEL SNAP (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
MechWarrior (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Medieval Dynasty (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Metal Slug (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Metro 2033 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Micro Machines (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Miitopia (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Mini Metro (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Modern Warfare (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Neo Scavenger (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
New Horizons (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Nintendo Wars (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Odium (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
One Way Heroics (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Onmyōji (2016) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Outpost 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Paladins (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Papers, Please (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Pathologic 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Peglin (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Persona (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Plok (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
PokÃ©mon Unite (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Primal Carnage (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
R-Type (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Real Space (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Rebel Inc. (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ridge Racer (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ring of Red (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
rymdkapsel (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
SaGa 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sacrifice (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Scorched Earth (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sid Meier's Pirates! (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sigma Theory (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Skies of Arcadia (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Smite (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sonic Mania (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
SoulBlazer (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Space Station 13 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Spellstone (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Splatoon 3 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Star Ruler 2 (Video Game)	seeAlso	Unstable Equilibrium
StarTropics (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Street Fighter 2010 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Streets of Rage (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sunless Skies (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Super Mario 3D World (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Super Mario Bros. (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Super Robot Wars K (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sweet Home (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sweet Home (1989) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Terminator Dark Fate - Defiance (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Terra Cresta (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Test Drive (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Binding of Isaac (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Final Fantasy Legend (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Lord of the Rings Online (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Mysterious Murasame Castle (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Way (RPG Maker) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Thunder Force (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Time Commando (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Toribash (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Total Annihilation (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Total War: Rome II (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Total War: Three Kingdoms (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Trailblazer (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Trauma Center (Atlus) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Tribes (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Trimps (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Tropico (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Twin Cobra (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Tyranny (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Ultimate Chicken Horse (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Valkyria Chronicles (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Vampyr (2018) (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Void Bastards (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Wasteland 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Wave Race (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
World's End (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
XCOM 2 (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
ZombiU (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Clonk / Videogame / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lost Planet / Videogame / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Mario Super Sluggers (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Splatoon (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Subnautica (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Sims 3 / Videogame / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
We Who Are About to Die / Videogame / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Sunrider (Visual Novel) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Achievement Hunter Minecraft Series (Web Video) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
The Critical Drinker (Web Video) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
TierZoo (Web Video) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Twitch Plays PokÃ©mon Red (Web Video) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Lovely People (Webcomic) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium
Star Ruler (Video Game) / int_17975d1b	type	Unstable Equilibrium

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