The Theory
Now…
…the problem is that one of the most required qualities of a designer is the understanding of the concept of EQUILIBRIUM/BALANCE, not only in games, but in life. This is one thing that is really hard to get. This is why some people with extremely good logic can fail miserably at being game designers. Because balance means everything around us. There are exceptions, but usually the best conceptual game designers are those people who are extremely open minded, up to obsesion, which helps them see more things and understand more complex and even apparently highly abstract systems, with no theoretical logic of their own. They can see how things fall into place around them, without even thinking of it. On the other side, they can make terrible, terrible mistakes, because of their inherited self-confidence.
Balancing sometimes can be dependent on things eluding even the most accomplished and experienced people in this field. Things can be so complicated that you mind will just hang on anything to create a understandable balance, and not wait to discover it.
To jump on the main subject…
…for example, the problem of the automation. How many things you can automate in a game. Should I let you gather things, or should I let give you the possibility of creating a system that will make gathering an automate process. Should I force this automatic gathering system to require from player to create additional systems to control it efficiently, or should I make it as efficient as it can be and just give it to the player to use it. Would this be a game/fun breaker or no?
I am writing this since me and Silverbolt were discussing about him programing a Minecraft mod, which would give you a box that will gather things that fall on the ground near the box. As you know, Minecraft is quite a rudimentary world where you use very, lets say, archaic methods of doing things. For example, the most complicated thing is a Cake, which is made out of many ingredients. On the other hand by mining and using redstone (working as a conducting wire), a stick and a block you can make a diode. Having a diode, you can build a ALU, basic logical unit and, even a simple computer using only blocks and redstone. Incredible, but true. The concept is quite revolutionary.