Games that punish you for doing well

[thePyro_13]

Homeworld, RIP. The difficulty of each level is determined by how you performed in the previous level. It pretty much assures you that if you ever get the hang of the game, everything will dial up to 11 and fuck you over.

 

[ninjapenguin1414]

The bonus XP for ghosting levels in Deus Ex:HR is rather small compared to what you would get by going in guns blazing and shooting the whole place to tiny bits.

The leveling system in Oblivion was rather broken too. Before I started using overhaul mods, I actually had to make a custom class that had the skills I used least as main skills so I (and thus my enemies) wouldn't level up too fast.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but don't you get like 500 or 1000 xp (maybe more) for going through a level not getting noticed (as well as the traveler bonus for finding certain areas) and not killing anyone? While killing people only gets you 10 xp or I think 25 with a head-shot. So the only bonus is being able to search for more items which you wouldn't need anyway as long as you are sneaking.

 

[Ocelano]

the second and third disgaea games had bosses which if you could beat would land you a negative game over you would of needed to be well over post game levels to stand a hope in hell(no pun intended) against them

 

[Salomega]

With the whole Dark Fantasy thing the franchise has going on, there are some moments that have choices you can make that seem benevolent, but end up crashing and burning in the long run.

Want to help a Dwarven girl in going to the Ferelden Mage Circle purely for academic study on magic? go right ahead! if you want the Chantry to consider throwing an Exalted March on the Dwarves.

To be fair, I know it was intentional, but I personally find certain parts of the whole Black and Grey Morality thing Dragon Age has going for it pretty hard to swallow.[/quote]

Well, I think you could say the Dragon Age games sometimes do this, but in a different way.

No, no, no. The Chantry only marches on the dwarves if you help Brother Burkle create a new chantry down there by getting permission from the shaperate to have one. If you help Dagna go to the circle she actually helps out a great deal in rebuilding and publishes several books on magical theory as told by a non-magic person, so that actually is a benevolent choice.

 

[solemnwar]

Well, I think you could say the Dragon Age games sometimes do this, but in a different way.

With the whole Dark Fantasy thing the franchise has going on, there are some moments that have choices you can make that seem benevolent, but end up crashing and burning in the long run.

Want to help a Dwarven girl in going to the Ferelden Mage Circle purely for academic study on magic? go right ahead! if you want the Chantry to consider throwing an Exalted March on the Dwarves.

To be fair, I know it was intentional, but I personally find certain parts of the whole Black and Grey Morality thing Dragon Age has going for it pretty hard to swallow.

Actually it's not the Dwarven Girl studying in the Circle that makes the chantry consider another exalted march, it's the dwarf whom you help set up a dwarven chantry in Orzammar. Shit goes down there because dwarves are assholes (it's been a while I can't remember the specifics) and a bunch of people die. This does not please the chantry.

 

[Razentsu]

Inb4 UMVC3. Tore through his first two characters with barely any damage taken? Oh who's up ne-oh fuck

X-FACTOR!

DOWN!

DOWN!

HYPER COMBO K.O!

... Goddammit

It's ok though, the very next game you could be the guy making the hilarious comeback! UMVC3 is about equal opportunity bullshit!

I happen to like comeback mechanics since they make the game more interesting, I can't wait to see the new Overdrives in Chrono Phantasma for example. UMVC3 definitely takes it to the extreme though.

Heh, as silly X-factor is, it can still be pretty hype. It's derpy as hell as a comeback mechanic, but it's definitely more multifaceted than people give it credit for. X-factor can be useful even when you aren't losing. I love it when X-factor is used to push an advantage, or used like a Rapid Cancel to avoid punishment or start a mixup.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

As has been stated above Oblivion, and Skyrim every once in a while, is evil for this. Ground your weapon skills to a decent level so you can do decent damage resulting in a few level ups? Enemies are scaled to negate your efforts. Trained your diplomacy related skills because you like to try being nice? Enemies are scaled to rape you because you had the gall to think you could talk to people. Skyrim is a lot better, but if you grind little more than your speech and barter skills for a long time you end up facing Draugr Omega Deathlords or whatever their called.

I don't think that really counts as punishing you for doing well, I've found that simply prioritizing combat perks keeps me in good shape to fight enemies even if I have only been leveling off a non combat skill. So put perks into say Two Handed first, if there are no more (useful) perks to take then go for your armor perks and if there are no (useful) armor perks to take THEN get a non combat perk. Works wonders.

Anyhoo, Mario Kart...... I hate you.

 

[Lonan]

Was just playing Shogun 2 Total War and I hit a moment known as "Realm Divide". What this means is you've done so well that every single clan in the game is going to declare war on you. The only way you know how close you are to a realm divide is a bar measuring your fame and it's a vague indicator at best. I declared war on a neighbor to help an ally, took two towns and holy crap, suddenly everyone else wants my head on a silver platter.

That's not "BS", that would be the basics of International Relations(IR). It happened when France looked like it was going to take over Spain. The US stopped potential opponents to its power after WWI by demanding the alliance between the UK and Japan be broken up, (a horrible idea, in retrospect) and it would absolutely happen in the era of Japan depicted in Shogun 2 as well. Haven't you played Risk or Diplomacy? Whoever gets most powerful is ganged up on because everyone wants to win themselves, and if it looks like they are about to lose, it is in all their interests form a temporary alliance to keep that from happening. You should play Diplomacy, the favourite game of Henry Kissinger, great game.

This is what potential candidates for Shogun of Japan had to deal with. To me, it sounds like fun to have to take on everyone at once. You might be able to keep it from happening by forming lots of alliances and firm trade relationships, but I haven't gotten far through Shogun 2 yet, good luck.

 

[mokes310]

Racing games and rubber-banding is the worst for me, especially in a game with real cars. I remember being hilariously overtaken by supposedly much slower cars, simply because they got speed boosts. The most efficient strategy then becomes to hang around in the middle, not doing your best, and then trying really hard for the last lap or two. It's bad design and only works for a short while to keep things more equal, until you figure it out and stop playing because the fun goes away.

I remember GRID did this to an alarming degree. I'd be putting down absolute cracking laps, with the competition freshly on my tail...they'd try to pass in a chicane or some other poor location, get spun or hit the wall, and half a lap later, they'd be right back on my ass. On the other side of it, I'd follow directly behind them and their lap times would be nearly 20-30sec/lap off of mine.

This mechanic is great for Mario Kart, not for racing games when cater to a racing fan.

 

[FFP2]

Actually.. the Four Kings fight is this for me. Every time I go slow and try to learn their tells, I seem to forget that it's a DPS race and they murder me brutally. So yes, the game is punishing me by attacking my method to beat the game.

(I hated that dragon too.)

So much for "You can play it any way you want!" mantra that the fanboys love to scream to people that don't like it.

Lilly explicitly tells you, to paraphrase slightly "If you keep doing this you're gonna get stabbed when you Startle the Witch. Back off a bit." You only get that Bad End by trusting the judgement of a visual novel protagonist. You NEVER trust visual novel protagonists.

I had to use a guide to get Hanako's bad end I meant that everything seems normal up until the bad end scene.

 

[samgdawg]

As has been stated above Oblivion, and Skyrim every once in a while, is evil for this. Ground your weapon skills to a decent level so you can do decent damage resulting in a few level ups? Enemies are scaled to negate your efforts. Trained your diplomacy related skills because you like to try being nice? Enemies are scaled to rape you because you had the gall to think you could talk to people. Skyrim is a lot better, but if you grind little more than your speech and barter skills for a long time you end up facing Draugr Omega Deathlords or whatever their called.

I don't think that really counts as punishing you for doing well, I've found that simply prioritizing combat perks keeps me in good shape to fight enemies even if I have only been leveling off a non combat skill. So put perks into say Two Handed first, if there are no more (useful) perks to take then go for your armor perks and if there are no (useful) armor perks to take THEN get a non combat perk. Works wonders.

Anyhoo, Mario Kart...... I hate you.

Now you have a very good point. And in addition, I have never met anyone who actually thought they could get through the game with little more than speech related skills. My point was really more for the off chance that someone does try to play an Elder Scrolls game with little to zero prioritization or development of any combat skills. And honestly I wouldn't have said anything without seeing a comic poking fun at the whole thing. Right here on the Escapists own Critical Miss.

 

[Naeras]

Mario Kart is, by far, the worst offender here. Fuck lightning bolts and blue shells in particular.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 gives you ?? seconds of "fuck you and all your friends"-mode on your last character. It's fun to watch, but it's seriously dumb if you're playing against it yourself.
Some people have mentioned Street Fighter 4 to be in the same lane, and, yeah, in some way I agree, but it's nowhere near UMvC3. Ultra combos usually either require some setup or a blind guess; the setups can be avoided and blind guesses are usually not in favor of the one who makes them.

Other things? Well, RNG in Company of Heroes, XCOM or Fire Emblem, kind of. There's nothing worse in these kinds of games, where unit preservation is alpha omega, to do something that's completely safe on paper and have it blow up in your face because the dice don't like you at this particular moment.

 

[sXeth]

Dark Souls. If you do well, you die less, fight less enemies, and accumulate less souls. Therbey costing you upgrades and making the game radically harder. (Since most people generally get their souls back when they die anyways)

 

[Therumancer]

Well, in some games like Shogun it makes a degree of sense, conceptually everyone wants to be the one ruling Japan and when you get to a certain point pretty much everyone else realizes that they have a common threat to their ambition: you, and figure they can remove you and then continue bickering about who is going to be in charge. I sort of "get" the idea and understand it, it also increases the strategic nature of the game as opposed to keeping it almost entirely tactical.

That said, I do tend to agree that punishing players for getting too far ahead is BS, and not something that we should see going on with game design. Ditto for ways that a losing player can instantly "catch up" it's that kind of attitude that has been driving a wedge between real gamers and casuals. Generally speaking you should not need to play a game made out of high octane masochism like "Dark Souls" to not be coddled, or be made to work at things before you can progress, or have a game where victory is not guaranteed. Rather that should be the general state of gaming in general, being able to fail or not progress should not be something reserved only for games setting out to be insanely difficult.

That said it's interesting to note that "Kart Racing" games became incredibly popular, in part because of the mechancis which people here are complaining about. Namely because they appeal to casuals, which outnumber serious gamers.

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

i think godhand
the game made itself harder everytime you killed someone (i think it was kill not sure) without being hit, when you get hit, it gets easier

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

Dark Souls. If you do well, you die less, fight less enemies, and accumulate less souls. Therbey costing you upgrades and making the game radically harder. (Since most people generally get their souls back when they die anyways)

well not really, if enemies don't give you enough souls to level up, that's not a punishment, that's the game saying: "dude, you're overleveled, get out of here

 

[Autofire2]

> Dark Souls
Dark Souls is fine. Want to grind without dying? Just clear out an area and rest at a bonfire, all the enemies will come back. It's a very well designed game

> Recent Mario Karts
**** casuals is all I have to say. Don't give me that family game BS, I had the original super mario kart and my brother and I at a young age played the hell out of it. There was no Blue Shell. There were no certificates for participation and celebrations for being terrible at something. Ooooh musnt let you win, it will hurt their feeeeeelings.


> Shogun 2 Realm Divide
Ruined the game for me. Was having a great time till then. Horrible design choice. Rome's difficulty wasn't nearly that spikey. It was a great game with a terrible mid-game mechanic.


> Oblivion
Horrible autolevelling for enemies. What's the point of you levelling up at all?

> Skyrim
Better

 

[Xanadu84]

Most games do this. It's called a negative feedback loop, and it helps make a game more casual, more unpredictable, often longer, and frequently puts the focus on the endgame. It can also balance design, or minimize positive feedback loops, which can be just as good or bad. Mario kart is probably the most obvious example.

I'll answer every control point based shooter ever. As you take control points, you must defend more points and the enemy must defend less.

 

[Vegosiux]

Seriously, while the Realm Divide is a bit poor in practice the way it locks you out of diplomacy, I still see it as making sense.

Those enemies are actually taking action to fight back? How DARE they!

 

[Atmos Duality]

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

If you take the lead, the game's environment and item spawns will conspire to try to eliminate you.
I have tested this, it works without fail. If an environmental hazard normally has a random outcome, it will weight its final choice heavily on whoever is in the lead.

(you can bypass this by eliminating item spawns and playing on maps without hazards)

Honestly, the hilarity of Mario Kart's unfairness is actually what makes it work. The game is far more fun when everyone's grouped together, and you have plenty of opportunity to torpedo them with red shells, run over them, boost past them or simply time a drift to perfection. Being out in first for a whole race is boring.

True, but at the same time this also defeats the purpose of a race.
Of course, they might as well make it a brawl on wheels, because Mario Kart stopped being fun the moment it became about snaking.