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Instant death / KO and "learn by lost life" in games - Design asset or flaw?
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
This magnificently stupid side argument started in the Castlevania thread a while ago, and I was mostly ignoring it until I came across something that reminded me of it, and I decided to invite the forum to discuss it.
Relevant info from that argument: Some people believe that bottomless pits / spikes that kill you are bullshit and an archaic design of games because, in the 8 and 16-bit era, there was little else design going on or capable of being done. And they feel we've evolved beyond that. Some people think the design is the only means of a challenge. And then there's folks like me who think the design is okay as long as it is implemented well.
So, I've stated my stance already. Dying from missing a jump, or being hit by a boss attack that instant KOs, is perfectly fine by me. As long as it makes sense and is fair enough to be avoided with some skill. Let me give you an example of this design going absolutely wrong (and why I pulled up the new thread button).
Oh man, another one of these spikey falling areas. I'm sure it'll get all narrow but as long as I watch what comes up on the screen scroll, I'll be fine.
Wait. Wait a fucking minute.
FUCK.
Here's the punchline to that -
Mega Man 5 is actually really heavy on the instant death situations. In Napalm Man's stage, there is a hall where spiked walls move at you, and can KO you. They respawn every few seconds no matter where you are. Even when making a move to the next screen over they can get you. Crystal Man's stage has things falling from the roof in irregular patterns over pits you have to jump across. Gyro Man's stage has that elevator where you have to move around platforms lest you be crushed. Not that it matters because there's spikes on the bottom of the platforms, meaning if you jump too high you're fucked.
The second part of my thread title is also represented in the pictures above. Situations where you have ZERO chance of knowing what's coming or zero chance of dodging it. The only way you could know is getting hit or killed by it in the game (as you see above). Another example of this is yet again in Mega Man. Part 2. The second Wily stage boss, the blocks that come together in that purplish room. While they have a definite pattern, you have to learn it before hand. Stand in the wrong spot and bam, you get hit without warning. And while there are places to stand where you know blocks won't come because they already did, it's still an example to serve.
Another example is the boss of the next to last stage of Ninja Gaiden, whose attack you can't dodge at all and you have to beat him down faster than he can you. Not the best example for this, but an example nonetheless.
While I'm inviting people to discuss this aspect of video games, I am not inviting the following:
Relevant info from that argument: Some people believe that bottomless pits / spikes that kill you are bullshit and an archaic design of games because, in the 8 and 16-bit era, there was little else design going on or capable of being done. And they feel we've evolved beyond that. Some people think the design is the only means of a challenge. And then there's folks like me who think the design is okay as long as it is implemented well.
So, I've stated my stance already. Dying from missing a jump, or being hit by a boss attack that instant KOs, is perfectly fine by me. As long as it makes sense and is fair enough to be avoided with some skill. Let me give you an example of this design going absolutely wrong (and why I pulled up the new thread button).
Oh man, another one of these spikey falling areas. I'm sure it'll get all narrow but as long as I watch what comes up on the screen scroll, I'll be fine.
Wait. Wait a fucking minute.
FUCK.
the first and third screen captures are where you have control. The second is the screen transition where you have to wait a second. Now that is bullshit. There's no foreshadowing of what's coming, no chance to correct your "error" - you take the lost life and possibly continue at this point because of terrible game design.
Mega Man 5 is actually really heavy on the instant death situations. In Napalm Man's stage, there is a hall where spiked walls move at you, and can KO you. They respawn every few seconds no matter where you are. Even when making a move to the next screen over they can get you. Crystal Man's stage has things falling from the roof in irregular patterns over pits you have to jump across. Gyro Man's stage has that elevator where you have to move around platforms lest you be crushed. Not that it matters because there's spikes on the bottom of the platforms, meaning if you jump too high you're fucked.
The second part of my thread title is also represented in the pictures above. Situations where you have ZERO chance of knowing what's coming or zero chance of dodging it. The only way you could know is getting hit or killed by it in the game (as you see above). Another example of this is yet again in Mega Man. Part 2. The second Wily stage boss, the blocks that come together in that purplish room. While they have a definite pattern, you have to learn it before hand. Stand in the wrong spot and bam, you get hit without warning. And while there are places to stand where you know blocks won't come because they already did, it's still an example to serve.
Another example is the boss of the next to last stage of Ninja Gaiden, whose attack you can't dodge at all and you have to beat him down faster than he can you. Not the best example for this, but an example nonetheless.
While I'm inviting people to discuss this aspect of video games, I am not inviting the following:
- People to continue the Metroidvania vs. Old Castlevania argument.
- People to insult each other for their taste in game difficulties, gameplay, or design.
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One hit KOs I think are pretty much bullshit - because the first time you see that move (unless you get phenomenally lucky then the game is essentially telling you "I don't like that you have 3 extra dudes, lose one!" Make the attack take off half of my health or something, make it hurt, drive home that if I learn one tell it should be that one, but don't just start the fight and knock me the fuck out. That is the very definition of cheap, and it is the exact same thing as that spike pit in the first post.
Similarly, don't fool me into using all my healing items or whatever on a fight that I am scripted to lose. Just make it a cutscene or something.
EDIT: I suppose that I should qualify my opinions with what level I ordinarily play games on. I used to play on normal for everything as I am not some videogaming superman. Now I play on easy because I like the story of games and hate getting frustrated. It takes a pretty special game for me to play again, but if I do then I crank up the difficulty (Hi, Uncharted!).
Actually, it's a much less interesting argument (from a coaching/learning side) than you'd think. There are a number of factors that go into it, like the cost of the mistake (time), the understanding of why it was a mistake, and understanding how to not repeat it. Skew any one of those too far out of whack and it instantly turns to frustration.
This goes for pretty much any active learning exercise though. The 'instant death' just carries a higher cost than most of the rest.
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Oh hey, I wasn't expecting someone to bring that sort of thing up. I actually like those. When a fight carries on for longer than I think it should, I suspect this sort of thing is at play, so I then give it my best to learn to avoid attacks as best I can in case I'm wrong. If I lose the fight and the game moves on, nothing really lost. If I lose the fight and have to do it again, well, I find out I suck at the game.
It's hard to figure out in RPGs, I'll admit. But in those, they tend to make the damage you take way too punishing to keep up with healing.
Yes, that's right, I wouldn't mind a game in which you never die.
Like Torment. Beat that without ever reloading.
(Torment is different, though)
Like a dynamic "You're just spamming defend / attack" thing? I think they could pull that off with, say, hurting the enemy to a point where they do something, and from then on it's okay to lose.
Aren't there already a ton of them like that?
Edit: Basically if a pit death makes me think of the Ninja Gaiden eagles, it sucks. That's usually what I think of in HH.
I was thinking more along the lines of just looking at your moves towards the end and if you didn't do everything within your power to avoid death (use up every potion that replenishes more than the average attack, attack whenever not trying to stay alive), consider that "not trying" and dump you to the title screen.
There'd be no cue to the player that they were in a state where losing would advance the game because the point is to be evil.
Well do you know that before hand? Cause if so, you know, cool mechanic if it ties into the plot and stuff.
But if it's something where you need a guide to figure out or it would take immense amounts of trial and error to figure out, that's a bad design in my opinion.
In all honesty, that's what it boils down to for me; if it's a mechanic you can figure out through obvious cues or plot elements, fair game, even if they are "hard' to do. If something totally unhinted or unintuitive, that's a bad mechanic.
I think Portal is a somewhat good example; it's generally easy to see the solution to a puzzle when you walk into a room, even though the execution might be hard. Fair mechanic, it's challenging, but you aren't beating your head against a wall trying to figure it out.
HOW MUCH D'YA THINK THAT EMULSION'S WORTH, MARCUS?
There is one except to this rule.
If the game goes, checkpoint, 5 minutes of easy stuff, INSANELY HARD SHIT THAT YOU'LL HAVE TO TRY 1000000 TIMES, checkpoint, I want to choke a bitch. If you have something you know is going to rape me, put the checkpoint before it. Not after. I don't need the checkpoint after. Also, don't put minutes of mind numbingly tedious crap before the last checkpoint and the hard stuff. It only serves to frustrate me, making me perform worse when I finally get to the hard stuff. After a while I can't even make it to the hard stuff any more.
But it is a hard argument in general. Instant death is a pretty blatant anachronism from the quarter munching arcade days. But, how do you make a game challenging without death? Entire genre's are dependent on death. Platformers, side scrolling shooters, first person shooters, Contra.
Pretty much any game that revolves around jumping and shooting.
But then Zelda games would only be an hour long.
RPGs where you 'have to try' before getting booted into a cutscene are any battles that are timed. Sure, it doesn't measure your attack output, but it's supposed to be unwinnable anyway.
Tell me more! (I've never played Fire Emblem)
And Valkyria Chronicles' "save shotdown characters" thing wasn't as threatening as I thought it'd be. It turns out the AI in the game mostly has programmed paths to take to attack still-standing characters. The AI is not triggered to go after a character to permanently down them.
Then again, I never played the hard modes.
Great recent example of good use of checkpoints is Splosion Man: Checkpoints are placed before and after every big single difficult chunk of action within each level. You die a lot (especially in the later levels), but I never felt that I had to go insanely far back and forced to play through some boring, time wasting lead-up to the hard part.
Fire Emblem has a set roster of 30-40 characters. If a character dies, they are gone. Forever. The only way to try to save them is to restart the mission and try not to cock up as badly. And most people, of course, don't want to lose a single strategic option, which means you want as many characters as you want.
It leads to hard missions being even harder if you want to save your characters, because you keep restarting and... it just isn't the best system for a game of its type.
Is it like FFT, where you have 3 turns to either res them or beat the stage (thus saving them), or do they just die forever when they hit 0 hp? If its the latter....yikes.
Are you sure it's a matter of the system not being best for that type of game, or perhaps the game+system not being for the player? Any time there's that sort of punishment in a game, I try to keep it in mind that it's okay for people to die because that's part of the experience of that game.
Well, it might be the intention that they want characters dying to not be the end of the world, but the fact is that you might have two archer type characters in the whole game. If you lose even one, a giant portion of your strategy is lost, so it really really helps to keep people alive in the game. It seems like the missions are designed such that if you are missing characters, they are ridiculously hard. It could be game+player, but most people seem to have similar experiences with Fire Emblem.
they die the moment they hit 0 hp
There's also the fact that there's often no "free battles" (ie; you follow the plotted line) in the Fire Emblem series, meaning losing that mage you spent six battles powering up not only removes that unit from your future options, but you simply can't replace him with a proxy and have it not under-perform for awhile (where that experience would be better served on another unit, or the prior mage in any case), either.
Great game.
Horrible, horribly punishing.
Screen-shift pit die aarRARRRRGHHHG
PSN - sumowot
Yes, in the course of playing the game "normally" - that is, no save scumming or reloading - you will lose a lot of units to unavoidable circumstances. Your best cavalier can take a critical hit to the groin, essentially losing a unit to blind luck. Unforseen reinforcements can come in from behind and mercilessly cut down all your weak, fleshy units pulling up the rear. There was actually a thousand barbarians hiding in that wooded area you sent a lone scout into, and they want blood. Oops.
However, to compensate, the games throw new units at you like fucking candy. It takes a real disaster to have units going out exceed units coming in, but even that isn't too bad, since your Lords alone (the one unit you can not let die - instant game over) can live through damned near anything.
I have played Fire Emblems 6 through Path of Radiance on the hardest difficulty without ever reloading a save. At times the friendly losses got ridiculous - my most vicious beatdown was on Sacred Stones, in which I lost every unit except... Rennac, I believe? - but that's most of the fun! Every playthrough is different, and every loss can be overcome.
All that said, I wouldn't be against future Fire Emblem games having options for saving anywhere, no permadeath and similar to improve accessability, so long as the option remains to forever lose several units every mission for those who like the series for what it is.
I think I was up to Bowser.
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The Contra series is comprised of some of my favorite games. Plowing through one of those gives you a sense of reward, and while a lot of it is admittedly memorization, there's still shit that'll throw you for a loop and there's nothing but raw skill and reflex that can save you.
Some of it is undeniable bullshit. Something about the level design and the insta-death mechanic just doesn't mesh right. If it isn't on the player to avoid certain death, and it becomes something like the MM screenshots in the OP, that's the relic, or the flawed design.
Permadeath would completely change my strategy to Fire Emblem. Right now you have to defend certain characters from even being attacked, just prevent a death. Fire Emblem's design forces you to play conservatively if you want everyone to live. That means you generally can't let your mages/archers roam about without them dying, instead they have to be guarded with your characters that can take a hit.
That mirrors real life a more to me than getting knocked unconscious by a mortar attack or a flamethrower in Valkyria. Of course, Valkyria wouldn't work without the characters that they develop through the game, and it is completely unrealistic to assume that you could manage to get no death playthrough on the first try.
Having some of your characters die is simply built into the game. The actual difficulty of completing the game isn't at all through the roof, but it is going to make you lose some people along the way. That's how the narrative works, and I found it to be liberating and even refreshing more than frustrating.
Then again, I'm someone who will *never* quick save/reload a game to get a perfect outcome. I think this is one of those moments where character permadeath does not equal a true 'game over' state.
Also, instant death doesn't carry as much weight in games with infinite lives/continues anyway (Mega Man).
I'm what you'd call a casual gamer. I play for fun, occasionally, when the mood strikes me. So for me, the lack of death and the lives system in games is good, but I also find that it makes the game easier. Instead of "oh for fuck sake that asshole killed me again!" I get the "oh well, let's do that again" sort of approach. And while that approach is good if I'm only playing for a short period of time to relieve stress or blow off some steam, when I go in for longer gaming stints I always find myself thinking that games need that 'loss of a life' system to be as entertaining.
So it's really a split. For casual gamers, most of the time it's a bad thing. But for hardcore gamers it's a good thing, because they need that system to drivee them into doing better.
Wow...complex issue.
Elika isn't bad. She is just an in-game overlay to a generous checkpoint system. When you die platforming you end up going back to the last safe platform anyhow.