Games that penalize you for playing a certain way

[LaughingAtlas]

Payday 2 prefers that the player do all manner of different missions, enforcing XP deductions (Although I think this was lessened recently) if you did the missions you liked over and over, forgoing the less fun ones. (Go Bank, Election Day, Framing Frame, and Big Oil can all fuck right off, most of all those fuse box bits) I get trying to get people to branch out and do different things in all the jobs, but that probably shouldn't include the ones you fucking despise when all you want is to grind for the upper level abilities. (I'm lvl 97 and, as I'm not interested in Infamy, should never need to worry about XP again! )

 

[happyninja42]

So, I made a mistake earlier today, one that I probably shouldnt have made but I did. I played a stealth build in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and recently got to the first boss. Wow, fuck me, that is a terribly designed boss fight. Ive heard the stories about this games bosses, and thought maybe it was exaggeration, but no, Im an idiot.
The rest of the game feels so good with stealth, im honestly shocked the first boss fight is just shoot guy in face until you win, its such a disservice to otherwise amazing game so far.

Any other stories of games that arent friendly to certain playstyles, at least for a section or two?

This was addressed in the Director's Cut of the game, and the dev's did acknowledge the flaw with the boss fights if you were going stealth/non-lethal. If you don't have the Director's Cut, I suggest you get it, as they've made it WAY easier to take out the bossess with the non combat skills.

I thought that playing lethally in Human Revolution was penalising actually. Lethal takedowns were noisy compared to non-lethal when functionally they are the same and they didn't give as much exp. You also miss out on a tonne of exp if you start shooting since you don't get stealth bonuses.

I don't think it's actually penalizing you, because if you aren't going stealth, then there are a LOT of skills you just don't need to buy. Which means while you aren't getting as much xp, which is true, you also aren't buying as many skills to complete your "build". Playing super stealth, by the time I got to the end of the game, I had tons of Praxis that I just wasn't spending, because the only skills I had left were combat/lethal ones, which I wasn't doing. And even if I had bought all of them I would've had points left over. So yes, you do get more xp as a stealth run, but if you aren't buying combat powers, it really is an excessive amount of xp by the end.

OT: I can't really think of many games that punish you for a particular playstyle, I'm honestly drawing a blank on that at this moment.

 

[PG]

The Elder Scrolls online penalises you for trying to play it like an Elder Scrolls game. I remember one of the missions in Daggerfall asks you to sneak into someone's house to steal a trinket, but because it's an early area there are 20 other people in that house jumping around like twats. It's particularly egregious in dungeons where you can't sneak in with a bow and arrow because there are 20 other people storming through with battleaxes and fireballs.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

RPG's tend to punish you for playing the evil routes. Its not quite as bad as it once was but the options can be along the lines of:

You have rescued the baby, do you?
Ensure the babies home environment is a beacon of virtue and return him to his family - receive a reward (good)
Give the child back, hint that you may want a bigger payment - Better reward sometimes (neutral)
EAT THE BABY - no reward (evil)

Try Planescape: Torment, the game did an awesome job of basically making the evil choice be the "easy wrong", while the good choice is the "hard right".

OP, I know you don't want to spend any more, but the Deus Ex Director's Cut did a really good job of improving the boss fights by giving you multiple ways to fight them instead of just having to shoot the crap out of them. The boss fights when the game was released were pretty much universally reviled.

 

[happyninja42]

RPG's tend to punish you for playing the evil routes. Its not quite as bad as it once was but the options can be along the lines of:

You have rescued the baby, do you?
Ensure the babies home environment is a beacon of virtue and return him to his family - receive a reward (good)
Give the child back, hint that you may want a bigger payment - Better reward sometimes (neutral)
EAT THE BABY - no reward (evil)

Oh come on, there's a reward for eating the baby, you got a free meal! xD

 

[Ghraf]

Payday 2 prefers that the player do all manner of different missions, enforcing XP deductions (Although I think this was lessened recently) if you did the missions you liked over and over, forgoing the less fun ones. (Go Bank, Election Day, Framing Frame, and Big Oil can all fuck right off, most of all those fuse box bits) I get trying to get people to branch out and do different things in all the jobs, but that probably shouldn't include the ones you fucking despise when all you want is to grind for the upper level abilities. (I'm lvl 97 and, as I'm not interested in Infamy, should never need to worry about XP again! )

I don't know how I forgot about the whole fucking Payday 2 Deathwish update debacle. They completely ruined the stealth gameplay with all the changes they made to most of the levels that were actually fun and satisfying to do stealithy. Like day 3 of Framing Frame, when you first start doing it, it can be incredibly difficult to take care of all the guards, cameras, and radios, but once you finally get it figured out and can run through it completely stealth with your friends all working together it was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in a video game. Now they fucking added an extra guard in and changed the perks so there's no way to do it the same anymore. They basically want to force everyone to have to run through everything guns blazing and deal with the retarded new Bulldozers they added into the game. God forbid someone doesn't see their hard work that's meant to make the game incredibly difficult if you fuck up in the first place. It's a huge catch-22 of bullshit.

 

[Stats ^1]

So, I made a mistake earlier today, one that I probably shouldnt have made but I did. I played a stealth build in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and recently got to the first boss. Wow, fuck me, that is a terribly designed boss fight. Ive heard the stories about this games bosses, and thought maybe it was exaggeration, but no, Im an idiot.
The rest of the game feels so good with stealth, im honestly shocked the first boss fight is just shoot guy in face until you win, its such a disservice to otherwise amazing game so far.

Any other stories of games that arent friendly to certain playstyles, at least for a section or two?

An absolute lie. That fight is exactly what you've learned before, or its be really good at shooters if you cant. People see to forget its possible to make him not know where you are. The design of the fight was your supposed to confuse him so he walks into the easy cover sections, allowing you to run up behind him and shotgun him at point blank in the back of the head. And you repeat from there. The third boss fight (I think its the third) and I think it was the second that were the really anti-stealth build ones, because one of them is in a fairly coverless area and the other one is about fighting an enemy who is stealthing you.

He's not lying. Even the game designers admitted that the boss fights were awful and they revamped them completely in the directors cut of the game.

The original boss fights of Deus Ex HR were even outsourced. They are renown for being the worst part of the game, and they're rather jarring when you get to them.

 

[Jadwick]

The worst part is that if you knock someone out and then they're eaten by rats while knocked out it counts as you killing them. A friend of mine was trying to play through the game with no kills and couldn't figure out what kept screwing him over until he released that rats would randomly kill people he knocked out, so from then on every time he knocked someone out he'd pick up their body and move it so that it wasn't laying on the ground. Such a pain in the ass.

I never had a problem with that, but I do have a humorous story of my own.

I was playing a zero-kill play through after I had finished my kill-everyone-and-everything play through and I had gotten through most of the game. I was in the flooded district right before meeting Daud. I blinked up to one of Daud's assassins on a slanted roof and choked him out, and quickly blinked to another before he could spot me. As I choked out the second I happened to turn back to the first body just as it slid off the roof. Rushing over to the edge and looking down I saw the body hit the ground with a crunch.

I knew that this would count as a kill against me, and I considered reloading but then stopped. Of all the coincidences that had to happen to let this poor soul have stood in just the wrong spot so that his unconscious body would roll off the roof we're too astoundingly high that I had to laugh.

I finished a 1-kill play through.

R.I.P faceless nameless assassin.

Edit: on topic; I don't think Dishonored punishes you for killing since I actually liked the bad ending more.

 

[mrgerry123]

Call of Duty penalizes me for playing as a pacifist

 

[happyninja42]

They changed the boss fights in the directors cut? How are they now?

And I wasn't saying they wern't awful fights. Their the lowest part of the game, but the first one still support stealth.

They've basically added options for you to use hacking to take out the bosses. Each boss arena has a new area added,usually a 2nd floor with terminals and stuff for you to hack and activate turrets to fight for you. It's pretty easy actually with the addition of those.

 

[small]

skyrim as a pure mage. you are completely screwed. compared to a regular fighter which need to level up a weapon skill, armour and blocking along with 2 attributes.

meanwhile a mage has 6 different schools of magic, has a spell point system to worry about, all 3 attributes and their destruction spells dont level like weapons plus they have crap animations

 

[NeutralDrow]

So, I made a mistake earlier today, one that I probably shouldnt have made but I did. I played a stealth build in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and recently got to the first boss. Wow, fuck me, that is a terribly designed boss fight. Ive heard the stories about this games bosses, and thought maybe it was exaggeration, but no, Im an idiot.
The rest of the game feels so good with stealth, im honestly shocked the first boss fight is just shoot guy in face until you win, its such a disservice to otherwise amazing game so far.

Any other stories of games that arent friendly to certain playstyles, at least for a section or two?

An absolute lie. That fight is exactly what you've learned before, or its be really good at shooters if you cant. People see to forget its possible to make him not know where you are. The design of the fight was your supposed to confuse him so he walks into the easy cover sections, allowing you to run up behind him and shotgun him at point blank in the back of the head. And you repeat from there. The third boss fight (I think its the third) and I think it was the second that were the really anti-stealth build ones, because one of them is in a fairly coverless area and the other one is about fighting an enemy who is stealthing you.

He's not lying. Even the game designers admitted that the boss fights were awful and they revamped them completely in the directors cut of the game.

The original boss fights of Deus Ex HR were even outsourced. They are renown for being the worst part of the game, and they're rather jarring when you get to them.

They changed the boss fights in the directors cut? How are they now?

And I wasn't saying they wern't awful fights. Their the lowest part of the game, but the first one still support stealth.

I haven't played up to the fight with Jaron Namir, yet, but as for the first two...

They changed the Barrett fight by expanding the upper level of the boss area to better accommodate stealth (also adding an air vent path between the two sides) and putting in breakable walls, behind which are turrets that you can hack. They added an entire upper floor to the Yelena fight, with a laser grid and hackable gas containers (or possibly turrets, I'm not sure; I did the "EMP Shielding->destroy the generators" tactic, and didn't find the upper area until after the fight).

 

[AT God]

I think stealth games are one of the few exceptions to this rule because I believe that they are intended to be played stealthily, and the ones that allow people to play loud usually only do so to increase sales. Deus Ex is an interesting exception because it was always a hybrid of the two styles. I totally agree with you that Human Revolution has some extremely bad balancing, I always felt that Deus Ex intended for stealth but also allowed playing loud, not out of any obligation though, and I always play stealthy and those boss fights were awful. I haven't played it yet but the Directors Cut supposedly fixes those issues.

As for games that penalize you, I don't really mind being penalized if the game has an intended playstyle. I played through Mark of the Ninja again yesterday and I found I wanted to go fast through levels I had already beaten so I was much more ruthless in dealing with enemies, spamming the items and save scumming to try and defeat multiple enemies in open combat without dying. I liked that the game allowed me to do that and accepted the heavy penalty of not getting really any points and also dying a lot whenever an enemy got enough time to fire their guns.

I can't think of any games that penalize you for playing a certain way that isn't justified, aside from games that are just badly designed and punish you for not playing the extremely specific, usually unusual way, the developers intended.

 

[Dalisclock]

RPG's tend to punish you for playing the evil routes. Its not quite as bad as it once was but the options can be along the lines of:

You have rescued the baby, do you?
Ensure the babies home environment is a beacon of virtue and return him to his family - receive a reward (good)
Give the child back, hint that you may want a bigger payment - Better reward sometimes (neutral)
EAT THE BABY - no reward (evil)

Well, you might get a permanent +1 Stamina boost for eating the baby, depending on the game.

I know, I'm a terrible person.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Well, Hitman Absolution is an obvious one.

If you play it non-stealthily, the game actively penalizes you for it by docking your score for that level.

Hitman Blood Money does that too, there's no score (at least not a visible one) but it docks your pay for clean up costs. Also you'd drop in your ranking afterwards.

On top of that if you leave witnesses or forget to steal the tapes from the security cameras you'd gain notoriety which makes it more likely that you'll be recognized in future missions. Don't know why they got rid of that system.

I like it that way though. It encourages you to play stealthily but if its is too difficult or if you're in the mood for it you can just blast your way through part or all of the mission and still succeed. You just take a penalty.

E: In fact from the sounds of it I'm pretty sure all Hitman games penalize you for shooting everyone. Don't know that for a fact though

 

[jdogtwodolla]

Metal Gear Solid 4 as just a shooter.

I read an interview where Kojima Stated that you can play through MGS4 any way you'd like, including as just a third person shooter. Being that this was my first MGS game and that I'm bad at stealth I decided to go for this option.

The enemies can spawn indefinitely. At certain points if you play it as just a shooter than you can keep an alarm going forever and have soldiers spawn until you stop and run away. Paris was designed just for stealth and nothing else so I had a tough time on that one as well.

 

[Stats ^1]

They changed the boss fights in the directors cut? How are they now?

And I wasn't saying they wern't awful fights. Their the lowest part of the game, but the first one still support stealth.

That's the thing, they don't support stealth, at least not really. I mean you can stealth during the boss fights, but the fights obviously want you to just shoot the bosses or throw gas canisters at them.

And I haven't played the new boss fights, but considering that the company itself designed them instead of outsourcing them (which they did due to time constraints I believe), I imagine they're much better.

 

[DoPo]

E: In fact from the sounds of it I'm pretty sure all Hitman games penalize you for shooting everyone. Don't know that for a fact though

You can only get the Silent Assassin rank by being the most stealthy you can be - basically, don't raise any alerts (found bodies, being suspicious) and don't kill (except your target). Specifics around the exact requirements vary slightly per game (for example, in Contracts, I believe, you were allowed you to kill a couple of guys tops) but overall that's the guideline. That's in every game except Codename 47 where being loud just meant you'd have to potentially take on a lot of people and/or run and/or make the rest of the mission harder.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Well almost every game has a way the developers intended you to play. Like you can go FUCK yourself it you want to play a mage in Skyrim.

Peggle is a pain in the ass if you try to clear every peg in every map

And Destiny makes you its ***** if you try to have any fun while playing it.

Bioshock Infinite Burial at Sea part 2 fucks you over if you try to play it stealthy.

and loading up Borderlands 2 on OP8 should just be a loop of Randy Pitchford laughing at you.

and Go screws you if you have the poor luck to pick the white stone

Farcry 3 gives you massive XP boosts if you play stealth but diddly squat if you don't play stealth.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

recently got to the first boss. Wow, fuck me, that is a terribly designed boss fight. Ive heard the stories about this games bosses, and thought maybe it was exaggeration, but no, Im an idiot.

Apparently the boss fights were literally handed off to a totally separate team hence why they're fuckin ultragarbo while the rest of the game is (IMO) really solid. I don't think it's punishing your stealth build though the game is just... like that.

Allegedly that's fixed in the "directors cut" version but I can't confirm or deny that firsthand. I know it's one of the selling bulletpoints on the game itself though.