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[Synnah]

I was having a discussion with a friend last night about death in games which gave me cause to rethink a few of my opinions on game design. My recent stance, as someone in their late twenties with a full time job and less time than they'd like to spend on gaming, has been that anything that causes the player to lose the progress they've made since the last checkpoint/save is a Bad Thing. Even back when I did have more time to spend on games, this was what caused me to give up on Vagrant Story. Especially in that game, where so much time was spent in the clunky menu system, having to do it all again because I wasn't quite cautious enough just seemed like the game designer was having a laugh at my expense.

Having said that, however, I can't overlook the fact that having to repeat sections of gameplay is the best way to force the player to learn the game and its mechanics; I started playing games in the middle of the 80's after all, when they were intended to be completed in a single sitting, but becoming good enough to do that was where the longevity came from. So why is it that I find it so frustrating to have to repeat my actions these days? It might be due to the fact that modern commercial games are often heavily story-driven, and there's no merit in having to play through story developments again; the more the story becomes intertwined with the gameplay, the more this is true.

Is there any way to reduce the frustration of having to replay large sections of game, and still have the player learn, though? Fable 2 tried to do this, by making death a mere experience penalty/cosmetic scar, but this didn't work at all. I never felt like I had any reason to become good at combat. I have a feeling that the answer may just be that I need to be less impatient and more cautious in my playing style; however...

...Discuss!

[nayon]

I thought about this a lot too, how do you punish the player for their mistakes without having a penalty? I mean, death is just a name for a penalty, the point is not having a setback. But how do you do it? If it's a stat-based game and you make the player lose stats, again you make the player redo the actions of gaining stats. I thought a lot about it and couldn't find anything to be honest.

Then the question came, does there HAVE TO be a penalty? I couldn't answer this too, how do you make a game compelling if the player knows he can't lose? You can make it story-driven, but then it becomes linear, and you lose replay value.

I don't know.

[genericuser]

How about making the penalty less and less severe for each try, but at the same time reducing the reward for the task in question?

For example, a standard "kill 10 monsters" RPG quest could award 100 coins if it's completed flawlessly. For each time the player dies, the reward is reduced by 5 coins, but the monsters get closer (to the player) and weaker. After completing the quest, the player could come back and do it again to get the remaining coins.

 

[Hajo]

My favorite is "save points" every 10 or 15 minutes of gameplay, so there is a challenge to reach the next one, but it is doable in a small timeframe - games that require an hour or so between two of such points often mean I give up, because on failure I loose to much of my invested time.

[Gold Cray]

My favorite is "save points" every 10 or 15 minutes of gameplay, so there is a challenge to reach the next one, but it is doable in a small timeframe - games that require an hour or so between two of such points often mean I give up, because on failure I loose to much of my invested time.

Also, save points right before bosses. Unless the boss is something a new player can beat on the first try (not much of a boss), it gets pretty annoying spending 10 minutes getting to the boss only to die in the first 10 seconds (I'm looking at you, Monster X).

[Synnah]

Yeah, I think considered placement of save points to minimise the amount of play time lost is the main way of reducing frustration. It's generally done well in modern games; to return to Vagrant Story, however, I remember walking into one of the boss fights without any sight of a save point; being completely unprepared, I died, and had to go quite a way back to a previous save. When I got back to the room before the boss fight, I noticed that there was a save point in another room next to it, so basically you had a choice of two rooms to go into, one with a save point, and one with the boss, with no way of knowing which was which.

How about making the penalty less and less severe for each try, but at the same time reducing the reward for the task in question?

I do like the mechanism of diminshing rewards every time you die, though; if the player isn't happy with the rewards when they finally win, they can reload their previous save and try again, putting into effect everything they learned from previous failures. The difference is that this is at the player's discretion. I've seen this done in a few games, and it's pretty effective.

Then the question came, does there HAVE TO be a penalty? I couldn't answer this too, how do you make a game compelling if the player knows he can't lose? You can make it story-driven, but then it becomes linear, and you lose replay value.

I think the best example of a game where the player can't lose is Braid; there are one or two puzzles where you can mess things up and have to start again, but the game's structure is so lenient that this usually only costs you a couple of minutes of play. Braid's mechanics are kind of special, though. It would be interesting to see which other ways an invincibility mechanic could be implented and still make a game challenging. Wasn't an invinciblity competition suggested in the Compo ideas thread?

[Jad]

I want a game with good structure that kills the shit out of me and then respawns me somewhere good. Obviously this mainly applies to platformy or run'n'gun:y games, or more or less challenge games that are supposed to entertain you only for a while.

Anyways, these kinds of games ... I dunno, I just like it that they sometimes just 'Hey, you failed, go redo it faggot!' The face that that sometimes makes me turn off the game and try again at a later time is only a merit for me, since .. err .. : D Playing all games in one long huge run shouldn't be the only way to play games anyway.

I'm not arguing very well here = __=;;

[Cymon]

Didn't we already have a thread about this. Same title IIRC. I posted something about a game where death was the primary mechanic.

[Synnah]

Hmmm, I couldn't find anything! I searched the entire forum for threads with 'death' in the title, and nothing came up.

I want a game with good structure that kills the shit out of me and then respawns me somewhere good. Obviously this mainly applies to platformy or run'n'gun:y games, or more or less challenge games that are supposed to entertain you only for a while.

Mirror's Edge strikes me as a good example of a game that does this well. The game auto-saves very frequently, so death is very much a part of the gameplay. It could be argued that making you repeat such small sections over and over kind of ruins the flow of the game, but I think this is offset by the fact that you can take the skills you learn by doing this into the Time Trial mode, where the aim is to complete levels in one complete run.

[JLJac]

Commercial console games these days tend to have a check point system that automatically saves before every "battle scenario", meaning that when you die you can immediately engage the same enemies in the same battle, until you get past them to the next save point. I think this is a very good mechanic for acieving what commercial games nowdays want to achieve, games as easy, pick-up-and-play entertainment.

The bad part about it is that you never really fear death, because you know that there are no serious consequenses. At least for me it works this way: If I fear dying or in some other way feel that my performance is important I get more engaged in the game, and the feeling of adrenaline and other sensations within the game gets a lot stronger. Therefore I gotta say that I prefer pretty hard penalties in games, it simply increases the whole sensation of playing. Then of course it shouldn't set you back so much you just give up... I guess it's a question of balance :D

[One of the Beatles]

I think games that let you die with no penalty suck. Because then there's no challenge, and it gets really boring. But it is also very bad when you have to redo a whole level if you die. I think this can be solved by an efficient life system, such as having it regenerate after a time if you reach x percent of life.

In some games, I got really pissed because you often had to perform the exact actions perfectly or you'd lose. But in some, it is just not fun without penalties. I agree, it is a question of balance. Really delicate balance.

[Hempuli‽]

I think games that let you die with no penalty suck.

cough cough Prince of Persia cough. I agree.

[Kenta]

One good approach (I think), is Baroque (ps2). Everytime you die a cutscene plays, revealing a part of the story which can't be seen in normal gameplay. And by dying many times, you're able to put together the story and figure what to do next.

Of course, everytime you die you go back to the first level in the game, but...

[One of the Beatles]

cough cough Prince of Persia cough.

Precisely...

[Fifth]

I do kinda miss the days where you'd lose progress by dying, and lose everything by running out of lives.  Or rather, the days when you could get away with such things.

Lives in games have become so meaningless these days.  No game that has them really needs them.  I guess you're not allowed to take progress from the player any more.  And death is, by and large, just as meaningless.  Things have changed, and people won't put up with death really setting them back.  You can always just go to another game if the one starts annoying you.

But what's the point in death if you don't lose anything?  Or even if you don't lose enough?  If there's nothing to fear, there's no reason to really care about what you're doing.  The player can become detached and careless...


I think fear of death is a precious thing nowadays.  Even if it's just so rare...  Does anybody remember trying to collect all the notes from the last two levels in Banjo-Kazooie?  There were 100 notes, and dying would reset them.  So whether you're scaling the giant tree, trying hard to to lose 3/4 of your health by falling, or jumping through fans in the engine room, you really felt the weight of the situation, that one small misstep and you'd lose it all. (In the new XBLA version, though, notes stay collected forever, and the game is robbed of this sensation.)

I dunno... maybe I'm not saying anything new, but I do miss the old concepts of death.

[genericuser]

I think games that let you die with no penalty suck.

cough cough Prince of Persia cough. I agree.

The original Prince of Persia had an interesting way to do this.

While it also gives you infinite lives, you only have 60 minutes to complete the game. 

[One of the Beatles]

Yes, the original had a great way of handlig death. It was cool.

[Vylaroth]

I got to admit that I can't stand games that make me lose more than 15 - 25 minutes of progress if my character happens to die. On the other hand, I hate games that have virtually no deaths (Fable 2, new Prince of Persia) and thus there's no setback no matter how bad your performance is. This depends a lot on the game though, e.g. procedurally generated survival or exploration games with no scripted goals can work even with permanent death if the gameplay varies enough with each new character.

I didn't like limited lives or save points scattered at one hour intervals when I was a kid and personally detest them now (thank god for emulator save states!). Even though I understand the major effect of adrenaline pumping in your body when you know two hours of progress are at stake, that adrenaline rush can easily turn into blind anger when you actually die. Games are my favorite entertainment but there's a fine line between having to become better at a game to succeed and feeling that training to play draws gaming further away from fun.

[Maisnon!]

I do kinda miss the days where you'd lose progress by dying, and lose everything by running out of lives.  Or rather, the days when you could get away with such things.

Lives in games have become so meaningless these days.  No game that has them really needs them.  I guess you're not allowed to take progress from the player any more.  And death is, by and large, just as meaningless.  Things have changed, and people won't put up with death really setting them back.  You can always just go to another game if the one starts annoying you.

But what's the point in death if you don't lose anything?  Or even if you don't lose enough?  If there's nothing to fear, there's no reason to really care about what you're doing.  The player can become detached and careless...


I think fear of death is a precious thing nowadays.  Even if it's just so rare...  Does anybody remember trying to collect all the notes from the last two levels in Banjo-Kazooie?  There were 100 notes, and dying would reset them.  So whether you're scaling the giant tree, trying hard to to lose 3/4 of your health by falling, or jumping through fans in the engine room, you really felt the weight of the situation, that one small misstep and you'd lose it all. (In the new XBLA version, though, notes stay collected forever, and the game is robbed of this sensation.)

I dunno... maybe I'm not saying anything new, but I do miss the old concepts of death.

I guess the reward nowadays is not always big enough to keep the player going after the game sets them back a lot.

[shig]

I think ranking after you finish a stage is a nice way around this.

If you die a lot, you get a C were you could have gotten a B or an A.