Games that penalize you for playing a certain way

[beastro]

Everquest was the king of this if you were most any melee class and many casters or priests.

For the most part only Druids and Necromancers could solo well with Wizard's struggling until they got their AoE snare spell.

Ride into the game ignorant back in 2000 and pick a warrior, you could find yourself solo well to about lv8-12 but after that you'd have to meditate to regen health and without healing spells you relied on your 2-3 hp per tick regen which could take you half an hour or more to kill one mob a lower level than you while Necros and Druids could chew through reds and eventually yellows well into the 20s and grind dark blue mobs beyond there.

On the other hand, Druids were fucked trying to group, having the shittiest priest heals, bad DPS, bad HP buffs, worst damage shield for melees than mages and limited utility spells to add to the group while Necros could still provide decent, though less than ideal DPS and when it came to raiding they eventually found a niche feeding mana to healing classes... Druid got shit and were only of use porting guildmates to raids.

I quit in 2003 and they've since fixed a lot of things, but Druids remain limited and Necros up until recently remained among the most flexible of group/solo classes.

With that said, that game made me loath casters and their traditional overpoweredness in RPGs. As much as I dislike WoW, it at least made playing a melee class enjoyable.

 

[Pyrian]

EQ was designed to be played in groups. Even the good solo's are using pets.

 

[BeerTent]

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 also find that doing the higher difficulties, You're either Stealth -OR- Plan B. There is no way to effectively do both, especially with Randoms on Overkill, or on Death-Wish. I find this pretty annoying, because I want to at least have a chance of stealthing with a detection rate below 75. This is kind of impossible to do when you absolutely NEED the armor and weapons on everybody to take on the 6 skull-dozers the game throws at you at once.

Yes. 6 at once.

I took one down while facing three. I figured I EARNED a drink after that. (I was level 0-82.)

On the topic of the XP deductions, I've never had a problem with it. If you just do all of hector's missions instead of just repeating say, Rats... You'll likely never have a problem. And if everything's starting to get around -1%, just rob a bank, and it'll go back to +/-0%.

I'm looking for people who are good, yanno. Not fuckin' brainless and carry a headset. If you're interested in getting back into it, and you're on the east cost. Feel free to toss a line. :3

 

[Demonchaser27]

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?

Yeah this bothers me to no end in games. I'm relentlessly fascinated with roleplaying in games (actual roleplaying) and when a game won't let me play the builds that they promise or make them unviable at any point of the game, it usually frustrates me to where I quit playing said game. Love slow powerful weapons usually, greatswords and sniper rifles for instance.

Dark Souls 2 (whether it's fixed now or not I don't know) had the problem of dex builds being innately weaker and having to spend more souls because their weapons were heavily weaker than most strength ones and their durability is terrible, causing the player to have to carry more weapons on them at all times. This also helped strength builds be more viable since the required 2 - 3 weapons equipped added to the overall weight making strength builds almost a dodge(y?) and speedy as the dex builds. This is especially problematic when considering areas that aren't necessarily large, but have mountains of enemies that if you don't fight them and try to skip them then they will gang up on you.

Borderlands 2 has many problems with this, particularly the further playthroughs you do. Scaling of enemies is absolutely insane. Weapons don't scale as well and are too reliant on good luck to be useful in further playthroughs. Which is why slag is almost a necessity, unfortunately. Levels (which have been a problem for me in borderlands games) are far too incremental. Leveling doesn't ever feel good since you barely see a difference in any thing as you level up. And any form of good feeling that comes from late-game (even though that's a dumb concept to me to have to wait until late-game for it to feel good) is ruined by the heavily scaling enemies. Certain builds are just completely unviable. Zero loses almost all viability outside of his melee build (UVHM's bosses just wreck him and he has little recourse, despite using various weapon types and farming for hours which shouldn't be necessary anyway). Certain enemy types have ridiculous health values and get regen to further imbalance them against certain more careful playing builds. Particularly Rabid variants of enemies which are COMPLETELY broken. They have mountains of health, are usually pretty small and have hard to hit weak points, move insanely fast, and still deal massive damage faster than any other enemy type while still having health regen that scales up exponentially as they go up in level. You know it's a problem when it's far easier to kill and Ultimate badass version of an enemy than it is to kill the smaller rabid versions.