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Game Breaker: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Gamebreaker4 3461.jpg|frame|[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal|The only defense against Hungarian épée.]]]]
{{quote|''The Assyrians were the first people to start using iron weapons instead of bronze which, to put into a modern perspective, is sort of like showing up for a knife fight with the [[Star Wars|Death Star]]. Using iron made the Assyrians so near-invincible that, really, the other guys might as well have been swinging around bananas.''
|''[[Cracked.com]]'' [http://www.cracked.com/article_16972_5-most-terrifying-civilizations-in-history-world.html article].}}
A controversial element of gameplay that unexpectedly trumps all others. It is not cheating, depending on who you ask. A '''Game Breaker''' is a legit element of the game used in an unintended way, resulting in [[Gameplay Derailment]]. Contests are decided less by a player's skill and strategy, and more by whether they use the Game Breaker in question.▼
▲{{quote|''The Assyrians were the first people to start using iron weapons instead of bronze which, to put into a modern perspective, is sort of like showing up for a knife fight with the [[Star Wars|Death Star]]. Using iron made the Assyrians so near-invincible that, really, the other guys might as well have been swinging around bananas.''|''[[Cracked.com]]'' [http://www.cracked.com/article_16972_5-most-terrifying-civilizations-in-history-world.html article].}}
▲A controversial element of gameplay that unexpectedly trumps all others. It is not cheating, depending on who you ask. A Game Breaker is a legit element of the game used in an unintended way, resulting in [[Gameplay Derailment]]. Contests are decided less by a player's skill and strategy, and more by whether they use the Game Breaker in question.
A Game Breaker can boost a pre-existing strategy or character and make it overwhelmingly powerful against things it would normally be balanced against -- [[Scissors Cuts Rock|Scissors crushing Rock]], [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|so to speak]]. One fan term for it is "cheesing."
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The upshot is that you should probably take most of the below examples of multiplayer games with a grain of salt.
Unlike video games, many [[Tabletop RPG]]s (except the most modern) have a built-in check in the form of the [[Game Master]], who can override published rules for the sake of everyone's enjoyment; thus, with a good [[Game Master]], no Game Breaker is possible (unless the game is
Compare [[Disc One Nuke]] and [[Sequence Breaking]]. A [[Lethal Joke Character]] may be one of these, as will the [[One Man Party]] if the game's balance is easily skewed. Some [[Boring but Practical]] moves/tactics may border on this, as may some [[Awesome Yet Practical]] ones too. [[That One Attack]], when available un-nerfed to players, usually becomes this. Contrast [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]], as well as [[Skill Gate Characters]] that appear this way to newbies but can be taken apart by experts. The dramatic equivalent is [[Story-Breaker Power]]. For how Game Breaking spells/items are usually treated if in limited supply, see [[Too Awesome to Use]]. When something looks like a Game Breaker, but is actually required to complete the game, it may be [[Purposefully Overpowered]].
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* Any game with a finite number of states and which does not make use of too much recurring randomness may be [[wikipedia:Solved game|mathematically solved]], resulting in a guaranteed win or draw ("perfect play") for whomever has the correct starting conditions. Once a strategy for perfect play is discovered, the game can be considered completely broken, unless played by naive players. The most well-known example of this is Tic-Tac-Toe, which any skilled player can play to a draw. Less trivial examples include Connect Four and Checkers (though in these cases, the correct strategy was found by computer and is far too complex for most humans to memorize).
** In checkers, like in Tic-Tac-Toe, it's relatively simple to force a stalemate.
** Chess and Go, arguably [[Smart People Play Chess|the quintessential games for genuises]], are both theoretically solvable for a sufficiently advanced computer, as both games have a finite board and no random elements—though a computer powerful enough to perform the necessary calculations would be a orders of magnitude better than anything available with our current{{when}} level of technology (the high branching factor in Go makes intractable to analyze with the methods used for Chess, since you rapidly get too many options to explore via lookahead in any reasonable timeframe, with no obvious way of pruning 'bad' choices quickly).
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▲[[Category:Competitive Balance]]
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