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[BoxedLunch]

    How do you think penalties should be carried out in games? Like interesting ways of taking care of player death and stuff. Recently, I had this idea of placing a player in an environment where large (but not bottomless) falls would be in a lot of places. Falling from certain heights could cause you to break a limb (think fallout series). If you had a first aid kit you could repair these limbs through a mini-game and continue exploring. But if you didn't have one (or failed the mini-game), you would face penalties to movement or other skills, or, if the injury was serious enough, leave the level, lose in-game time, and come back at a checkpoint or something.

   
     Anyway, i want to hear your ideas about stuff like this.

[AlexanderOcias]

What you're describing as a system would interesting to watch, but annoying to play. Positive feedback should be avoided like the plague (if the player is struggling to jump right, the jumps should become easier, not more difficult).

We should be pushing for penalties that cost as little time as possible, it's a silly resource to waste.
The perfect option is to linearly involve failure (like say, Heavy Rain), but if you absolutely must create some sort of cheap risk, just give the player some very trivial task to do and let them continue from where they left of - don't make them hate your game.

[SundownKid]

The thing is, having to heal yourself seems like a superfluous penalty in such a situation. Having to take the time to climb back out of the hole would work just as well as taking the time to heal yourself. However, if there are enemies around (ex. Left 4 Dead), the healing angle works better since it removes your ability to defend yourself.

You could also try giving the player a penalty and a reward at the same time. For example, if the player falls and hurts themselves, it removes from score/time but makes them take less fall damage. I'm thinking the player could try to fall a lot so that later on it will take less time when there are more difficult areas?

[letsap]

I think of penalizing things like this in terms of redirection rather than penalty a lot of times. For instance, a player intending to go one area is redirected by a missed jump, thrown into a new area or new path to whatever they were looking for, or maybe something new all together but still just as fun. Sort of the way Sonic handled things: Your end goal was still basically the same, only now you missed whatever was up 'there.' You can go back and try again if you want, but it'll be more fun and time effective to press on.

[Core Xii]

Whatever the penalty for failure, don't rewind time unless the future is unpredictable (random).

If the player simply dies, reloads and faces the exact same situation as before, not only is the game repeating itself and you're not experiencing anything new, but it now becomes prone to brute-forcing the solution as well. In other words, it's trial and error gameplay - The worst kind.

[Xion]

I think of penalizing things like this in terms of redirection rather than penalty a lot of times. For instance, a player intending to go one area is redirected by a missed jump, thrown into a new area or new path to whatever they were looking for, or maybe something new all together but still just as fun. Sort of the way Sonic handled things: Your end goal was still basically the same, only now you missed whatever was up 'there.' You can go back and try again if you want, but it'll be more fun and time effective to press on.

yes, this. I love it when, even in failure, I still find neat things. Or in the event of losing in a fight or something, instead of being forced to do it again, have the boss leave out of douchiness ("you're not worth my time!") and then I get up and the penalty is getting nothing. No second chances. No boss loot, no kidnapped friend, no secret exit, no Good Ending. Even if you don't go through all the effort of making the game branch wildly based on your decisions, some changes in dialogue, missed items, low score, w/e - a general sense of the game telling you "you're doing bad" without forcing you through the tedium of constant linear and mandatory success. It's like "damn dude you effed up live with it" not "do it better in five four three two go. Again! Again!"

[Fallsburg]

I think it is highly dependent on the game. Death is an integral design decision that should be made early as it affects every other part of the game.  On the one end you have VVVVVV and Super Meatboy where death is but a temporary setback and you are at most, what, 10 seconds from the place where you died.  On the other end of the spectrum, you have Spelunky and most Roguelikes where death is a huge setback, but because it resets the game and shows off the key feature (random level design) it isn't a huge concern to the player.

Honestly, I feel like those 2 styles are optimal, and which one should be chosen depends on the game.  In other words if your content is pre-generated, death should be a minimal setback, and if it is randomly generated then death should be a big deal (typically).  That being said, there are other factors to consider as well.  Do you want your game to have a constant sense of impending doom (permadeath), is your game balls to the wall crazy and frenetic (minideath), etc. 

[Fifth]

Whatever the penalty for failure, don't rewind time unless the future is unpredictable (random).

If the player simply dies, reloads and faces the exact same situation as before, not only is the game repeating itself and you're not experiencing anything new, but it now becomes prone to brute-forcing the solution as well. In other words, it's trial and error gameplay - The worst kind.

I agree with the theory of what you're saying, but it's certainly not an absolute thing.  If the game can only be played by trial-and-error where you're creeping a little further through the same scenario each time, then it's probably just time to rethink the game itself, rather than how it penalizes.

Naturally, the kind of penalty you want to apply varies not only between games, but also depending on what you're being faced with.  When coming upon new elements, you want a sort of environment where you're free to make mistakes to figure out how things work, but when you're putting all your skills to use in accomplishing some big feat (and it's important that the player is aware of this), I think it's okay to be prepared to lose everything.

It's one of those instances where the consequences should be as deep as the player's understanding of the terms, his responsibility for his actions, and his readiness to take the risk.

That said, I really love the occasions where I know that I've got everything riding on the line and I realize it - say, an hour's worth of time invested - knowing how close failure is and how it's my own abilities keeping me going.  It's a rare sort of thing to find done well, but that sort of tension can really be a beautiful thing.  You just have to make sure the player is ready and understanding.

[PogueSquadron]

I think the penalty for the most part should be reflective of whatever the player's goal is.

In Super Mario Bros., for instance, you get a powerup.  This powerup gives you some insurance against enemies (or a weapon, with the fire flower).  The penalty for getting hit?  Stripping away that insurance.  Making the player feel vulnerable.  Since the goal in Mario is to survive until you get to the end, then naturally it makes sense for "death" to be the biggest penalty of all (thus causing the player to try again).

(Sorry, perhaps that might sound way too obvious, but you always have to look back at history, haha).

Now, with Sonic, the penalty for getting hit?  You lose all of your rings.  However, you can still get them back.  Perhaps Sonic's "penalties" are so much more forgiving than Mario's because in Sonic, it's so easy to get hit?  The penalty is reflective of the rest of the game.  Sonic is running at a hundred miles an hour, so crashing into a spike or an enemy is a possibility (wheras Mario can much more easily avoid enemies).  Getting hit in a Sonic game, for the most part, is more of a setback.  The game, without the ring mechanic, would be far too unforgiving.

An interesting example of 'failure'' was the new Prince of Persia for 360/PS3.  When you fell, you didn't die, but Elika just reset you to wherever you fell.  It was obvious that it was a conscious design choice.  They probably wanted the experience to be as seamless as possible, and negate any frustration on the part of the player.  My take on it was that it stripped away any sense of peril from the game, which in a game like that, I want to have.  When I'm high in the air with nothing below me, I don't want to feel like there's a huge net underneath me.  I would've been fine if they knocked some health off or something.  In the case of PoP, I thought its "penalty for failure" wasn't reflective at all of the circumstances of the game.  Perhaps it would've made sense if the game was more puzzle based or something?  The Wario Land games, for instance, often don't have death at all, but penalties for being hit are still annoying.

Just my two cents....yeah, I think whatever the 'penalty for failure' is in a game, it should work contextually, and should make the game flow the way you want it to.  Maybe it's a puzzle game where a wrong move makes the board of tiles start shaking, making future moves difficult.  Maybe it's a platformer where taking damage makes you vulnerable to certain enemies.  Maybe it's a shooter where taking damage decreases the weapon upgrade you fought so hard for.

Also though - penalties shouldn't upset a player so much that they're not having fun.  For instance, in Pokemon, when you lose all your Pokemon, you white out and go back to the latest Pokecenter.  I think you lose a lot of money, but money can be redeemed.  You still, however, and I think this is VERY important, retain the experience you had when you died.  It doesn't reset you to your last save point.  In an RPG, I think this is very important.  Since so many RPGs are basically time sinks (the player is better because of how much time he puts into the game), you don't want to lose the time you've invested.  In Pokemon, you'll be inconvenienced if you lose, but it won't be that "I just spent 2 hours leveling up and it's all for nothing!" kind of penalty.

[klembot]

I feel like penalties are the wrong way to look at it. If you miss a jump, you already know you messed it up -- you don't need something else to rub your nose in it, as it were. From this point of view, losing health is just a way to force the player to learn how to play the game/prepare for harder levels down the road; you can screw up only so many times before you lose a life and have to repeat the level.

I really like the idea of Sonic's multiple paths to completion as a way to alter difficulty, especially because I never thought about it consciously while I was playing. You're never on the "bad path," so it never feels like a penalty -- in fact I do remember in certain levels, going back and purposefully missing jumps so I could see what was down there.

[moi]

[Fallsburg]

I feel like penalties are the wrong way to look at it. If you miss a jump, you already know you messed it up -- you don't need something else to rub your nose in it, as it were. From this point of view, losing health is just a way to force the player to learn how to play the game/prepare for harder levels down the road; you can screw up only so many times before you lose a life and have to repeat the level.

I really like the idea of Sonic's multiple paths to completion as a way to alter difficulty, especially because I never thought about it consciously while I was playing. You're never on the "bad path," so it never feels like a penalty -- in fact I do remember in certain levels, going back and purposefully missing jumps so I could see what was down there.

I think that not having penalties is valid, but penalties are important for a lot of games.  Super Meat Boy wouldn't exist as a fun game were it not for penalties.  If there was no penalty for jumping into a saw-blade the game would become ridiculously easy and would lose a lot of its appeal.  Some games exist to put a challenge in front of the player and penalties are an integral part of those games.

[Kylotan]

Personally, I like penalties. I know there's a drive to eliminate or reduce them, because some people want games to be "fun" and don't understand why any of it should be deliberately un-fun. But I think that you only truly appreciate the highs when you have experienced the lows.

Some of my greatest gaming moments were playing MUDs when I knew that being killed would wipe out most of my experience gained for this level, setting me back several hours, maybe even days, of effort. That made attaining your next level the sweetest thing, and surviving a closely-fought battle was the most amazing adrenaline rush, because it mattered. But it wasn't just that aspect of player death that concerned you. When you died, your equipment was left exactly where you fell, in front of whoever killed you, and was scheduled to disappear permanently in the next 20 minutes if not reclaimed. So your reincarnated self had to retrieve it somehow, despite being unarmed. Those ad-hoc "corpse retrieval" missions were some of the most nailbiting experiences gaming has given me - a bunch of adventurers hastily brought together to help one of their own, lending him equipment and spell-buffs and grouping up to try and get back to whatever deadly foe slew the first unfortunate and survive long enough for him to gather his equipment and escape.

I beg of current and future game designers: don't remove all penalties for failure. The risk of penalties makes the successes feel more fulfilling and dealing with penalties can be a fun form of gameplay in itself.

[Muz]

In game penalties are good. Out of game penalties are not.

Roguelikes and a lot of online games are stuffed to the brim with penalties. Drink from the wrong pool and you get eternally cursed (or die).

The reason that people don't mind them is because they're not repetitive. There's actually something different to unlock each time you get penalized. And in some cases, you get closer to the Big Goal even if you get penalized. Spelunky does this brilliantly. If you die from one thing, you're given a different level so you don't have to memorize the same button presses.

The wrong way to do it is to penalize the player for things he didn't do. It makes the player frustrated. Games are also about discovery, and too much punishment will slow the player from discovering new things.

And here's a good blog article about how Super Meat Boy gets it right:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/11/review-super-meat-boy.html

[shig]

In game penalties are good. Out of game penalties are not.

Out of game penalties

What?

[Seth]

What I like about roguelikes is that I might accidentally do something with bad consequences (like drink a potion that mutates my character), but I just can't hit reset and start from my last save.  Chances are I'll be invested enough in the game that I have to suck it up and continue onward despite the (possibly permanent) setback. 

[Muz]

In game penalties are good. Out of game penalties are not.

Out of game penalties

What?

Mainly things that you value IRL like time and money. Something like, I put $15 in to make my char have higher strength, then someone puts a spectre with a weaken spell that permanently reduces strength. Or something like spending 15 minutes in the game without a save, then getting killed and having to start over, even though the player knows to avoid whatever killed him later.

On the other hand, killing someone 15 times, when each death costs only 1 minute isn't as bad. As long as you give an out of game reward, like an achievement, or letting them explore a new area.

[gimymblert]

Enter the PAINSTATION! 

http://www.painstation.de/






Beware this is an artgame, if you don't like artgame proceed this way 

[jwk5]

I like penalties that are humorous. I feel better about losing a game when I lost funny. That is what I loved about Shadowgate/Deja Vu/Uninvited, even though using a sword on yourself kills you it is amusing to read the death message you are treated to.



Ridiculous ragdoll physics deaths or exaggeratedly gory deaths are awesome too.

[s0]

Enter the PAINSTATION! 

Sum cool bros representin for Austria, yo.

Also, if that's the future for gaming, I guess I'll have to find something else to waste my time with.