Is the lives system pointless?

[Diogenes]

The problem with a neverending string of extra lives is essentially the same problem as a game with infinite lives - it promotes almost no skill growth. This was especially true of Secret Rings, where instead of adapting to the occasional bullshit-hard section you were instead encouraged to repeat it over and over again until something different happened.

[Kuzu]

Ya know, since this is more of a general video game thing, shouldn't this be moved to the game section?

[Lady Soniko]

wasn't there a sonic game where you had no set live count? oh yeah Secret Rings and Black Knight if i recall, you just died and spawned back at the start, or a checkpoint.

[MegaMan_EXE]

To me, the question is: "Why do they like to shove extra lives down our throats?"

Every Zone, I end up getting 2 to 3 lives every playthrough. It makes the games too easy. You can fuck up all you want, and not worry about it. Sonic 4 has this issue in the BAG! I start with 4, and end up with 56. Where did the "Oh shit! I can't fuck up!" vibe go?

Now it's: "Aww. Well, I have 45 more lives. * No! Keep the 1-Up system, just don't spam it down our throats EVERY SINGLE GAME!!

PLEASE! I'M DONE WITH EASY AS HELL GAMES GIVING ME EXTRA LIVES EVERYWHERE!! DX

WE WANT CHALLENGE AGAIN!!! Make Extra Lives rare, and don't spam them everywhere!

[Blacklightning]

What's the difference between 5 lives 10 times, and 50 lives once? Am I really learning about the game better by replaying sections that I already know how to do in between trying to figure out the part I actually have trouble with? Honestly if you can beat a game by brute force, I think that says more about the gameplay and level design than the lives system.

[Lady Soniko]

because it's gaming logic to throw lives at you in easier, beginning stages to prepare you for later, harder stages.

besides they removed the 1UP for extra lives after you collect 100 rings, so when you collect an additional 100 rings on top of your original to make 200 you don't get rewarded with another life.

in Sonic 4 episode 1 the casino stage was horrendous for spamming you with lives, that was bad game design.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Super Soniko

[Solkia]

Where the idea of using lives as currency came from is beyond me.

The only time I actually needed to rack up on lives was Eggmanland. Lost about 40-50 live just trying to beat the fucking level, and another 10-20 on Dark Gaia.

[Jango]

Oh God, if Rayman Origins had a live counter.

Definitely is pointless. It's since the invention of save systems. You die *Game Over*, but what is this, I just have to re-do the last level again, not the entire game! You get the idea. Although that also doesn't changes the fact that games have become easier, especially the Sonic ones. See how hard is Sonic 1 or 2, I know people who couldn't finish it 'till this days. The thing is, in this generation, the games developers seems to think a "start all over again" game will be brutal, and in fact they're right.

And an interesting note, back in the 90's the games MUST be hard because of the small amount of space a cartridge had, they couldn't add too many levels, they had to make them harder to extend the playtime. And yeah, it worked. Back in the 90's, as I said.

And yeah, we become better gamers too

Edited July 21, 2012 by Jango

[JezMM]

Actually, I think Unleashed Wii did something like this for the werehog; in the rare cases where you died from damage rather than falling, you'd revive on the spot minus one life. Though it's been a while and I may be wrong. Can't be assed to check.

Yeah that's right. Even pit deaths didn't reset enemies or health bars.

Hell, you want lives to have value again? Bring back an actual game over rather than forcing the player to restart the level they were just on. Sonic games even these days aren't really so long that you'd see that much complaint to having to restart the game anew.

Sorry but those times are long gone. You can't just jump back to stuff like that now. Here in lalala-Sonic-games-are-so-easy land maybe it seems reasonable, but I watched my (not so familiar with Modern Sonic) friend get about 5 Game Overs on the Egg Dragoon in Sonic Generations before defeating it. Having to replay the whole game up to that point each Game Over would have been ridiculous. Hell it was pretty flawed and ridiculous in the old days too. It's kind of why the industry stopped doing it.

Personally, the way I see it, it's pretty simple.

Do lives and Game Overs enhance the game experience? If no, there is no need for them.

I'm just fine with simply seeing the clock keep on ticking as a punishment for death personally.

Still, another option to consider is the trade-off style. In Wario World it cost 1000 coins to continue (from that exact spot, as oppose to restarting the level) if you died (there were a LOT of coins, to clarify). For Sonic this could be something like your total ring counter (though obviously would only be a decent punishment if rings were used to get rewards that DON'T make the game easier (in Generations for example, if it cost you your earned points to continue, it'd suck because it'd reduce rookie players' ability to buy assisting skills).

Like in Wario World, you can still continue if you run out of coins/rings/etc, on the sheer basis of, well, what more do you have to lose? If you suck that much you need the sympathy, lol.

Edited July 21, 2012 by JezMM

[Diogenes]

PLEASE! I'M DONE WITH EASY AS HELL GAMES GIVING ME EXTRA LIVES EVERYWHERE!! DX

WE WANT CHALLENGE AGAIN!!! Make Extra Lives rare, and don't spam them everywhere!

You want hard games?

Look at Super Meat Boy. Look at IWBTG, and its countless imitators. Do you think they aren't hard? These are games specifically made to be brutal, and they sure as hell don't need to limit your lives to do so.

The difference is that "50 lives once" encourages the application of crap level design for no other reason than the fact that it's not really possible to make an infinte-lives game meaningfully challenging without it.

See above. You could argue that IWBTG and its clones are poorly designed, but from what I've seen of Meat Boy it's pretty well done, at least as much as any game with lives, and the difficulty's in clear crazy brutal mode.

What? Fuck no. What on earth made you think I was implying that?

Well okay, what is the solution then, when you lose your progress when you game over? If I game over, can I no longer play later levels (for red rings, rankings, whatever) until I play through most of the game again?

[Blacklightning]

See above. You could argue that IWBTG and its clones are poorly designed, but from what I've seen of Meat Boy it's pretty well done, at least as much as any game with lives, and the difficulty's in clear crazy brutal mode.

Having actually played Meat Boy personally, I'd argue strongly to the contrary. In fact the whole point I was making is that it's level design that would be completely intolerable if lives were an object, and Meat Boy is far, far from an exception to that rule.

Well okay, what is the solution then, when you lose your progress when you game over? If I game over, can I no longer play later levels (for red rings, rankings, whatever) until I play through most of the game again?

Just take the Sonic 3 approach and have an unlockable level select for finishing the game proper if you need some post-game perfectionism. Recording collectibles and such seperately from your saves would be a pretty good help in that too, ala Binding of Isaac. Edited July 21, 2012 by The Cheese

[Lady Soniko]

even though Meat Boy doesn't have a life count (thank god) the fact people stick with retrying their luck at a stage is because a stage is normally only a few seconds or minutes long anyway.

[Diogenes]

Having actually played Meat Boy personally, I'd argue strongly to the contrary. In fact the whole point I was making is that it's level design that would be completely intolerable if lives were an object, and Meat Boy is far, far from an exception to that rule.

Well of course if you add a lives system to a game that's not designed for it things are going to go bad, though I'd say that reflects worse on lives systems than it does on SMB's design.

I still don't see how game overs change anything except for wasting time. If you're the type that's just going to throw Sonics at a problem until one of them makes it through, game overs aren't going to prevent that, they're just going to make it take longer. And how is it supposed to make designers design better levels? If a designer is dumb enough to make crappy levels when there's infinite lives, why is a lives system going to change that?

[Blacklightning]

I still don't see how game overs change anything except for wasting time. If you're the type that's just going to throw Sonics at a problem until one of them makes it through, game overs aren't going to prevent that, they're just going to make it take longer.

Having an actual punishment to dying encourages rationale when faced with tricks of the level design, which in turn helps boost the learning curve because there is an actual, genuine need to learn how best to approach the game's challeneges. Without that, you throw most of the learning curve to shit and encourage trial and error even where trial and error isn't due simply because the game lets you get away with everything and anything scot free, or at best a slap on the wrist. Meat Boy is just the logical extreme in which you throw corpses at the wall and hope one of them doesn't stick to sharp, pointy objects.

And how is it supposed to make designers design better levels? If a designer is dumb enough to make crappy levels when there's infinite lives, why is a lives system going to change that?

You mean besides simple outcry? Problems like blind bottomless pits become a lot more evident when death has any such weight - you either design a game in mind of it and allow the difficulty to form around fatigue and tension, or build a game in mind of trial and error, realize it doesn't work, then design a game in mind of it. Even if ST's game designers are that stupid, I doubt they're going to fuck up that badly more than once.

Not that I offer certainties, mind you - I probably should have put more emphasis on "encourage".

Edited July 21, 2012 by The Cheese

[Candescence]

See above. You could argue that IWBTG and its clones are poorly designed,

To be fair, the whole point of IWBTG is that it's pretty much composed of bullshit level design, and meant to be ridiculously hard in some of the most bullshit ways possible while simultaneously being possible to complete with enough effort and determination. There are people who have successfully finished the game on impossible difficulty, I shit you not.

Oh, and by the way? There's an official sequel to IWBTG, now. It's called IWBTG: Gaiden. Yep.

[Remy]

Having an actual punishment to dying encourages rationale when faced with tricks of the level design, which in turn helps boost the learning curve because there is an actual, genuine need to learn how best to approach the game's challeneges. Without that, you throw most of the learning curve to shit and encourage trial and error even where trial and error isn't due simply because the game lets you get away with everything and anything scot free, or at best a slap on the wrist. Meat Boy is just the logical extreme in which you throw corpses at the wall and hope one of them doesn't stick to sharp, pointy objects.

You can't exactly die over and over endlessly in meat boy and just randomly fluke your way throw the game.

The game has a learning curve, a very solid learning curve which the design and pace of it's levels are key in. If you don't learn the tricks of the stages in meat boy you'll never, ever clear them. No matter how many times you try. Not having to restart the game after an arbitrary amount of deaths allows this. You can examine the level and determine how best to try it because you're not interrupted.

So yeah, life systems are pointless.

[Blacklightning]

You can't exactly die over and over endlessly in meat boy and just randomly fluke your way throw the game.

I could argue somewhat to the contrary, but it's easier to point out that a Sonic game will never be designed as a Meat Boy game in terms of difficulty level. Why are we still making this comparison?

The game has a learning curve, a very solid learning curve which the design and pace of it's levels are key in. If you don't learn the tricks of the stages in meat boy you'll never, ever clear them. No matter how many times you try. Not having to restart the game after an arbitrary amount of deaths allows this.

...the levels are rarely more than three screen-sizes large. You practically see the entire level right as soon as you start, so the level design would be self-explanatory regardless of whether you had a set amount of chances to complete it. Not that I'd correlate level design direction with level design difficulty, mind. Edited July 21, 2012 by The Cheese

[PerfectChaos]

So, what do you guys suggest for a game-over punishment?

[Gabz Girl]

Yes it is! Sonic and the Secret Rings didn't have lives and that worked well, so I don't understand why current games still have this. Lives are almost a thing of the past now. Plus, losing a life when you restart is stupid as hell and unfair.

[Your Vest Friend]

Eggmanland. Dark Gaia.

I don't remember losing many lives on them. :/

[Tani Coyote]

The games would become crazy short if you could start endlessly from each checkpoint. Lives forces you to learn the layout of the stage so after a few tries you get it.

Though making lives harder to get probably is a good idea. For Eggmanland, the lives HAD to come out like candy, since that place was Hell on Mobius. But elsewhere, it can probably be cut.

Then again, Unleashed as a whole had fairly challenging day stages. I even die on Apotos on rare occasions. Once Colors and Gens came about, it became way too easy to beat stages.

[FourCartridge]

So, what do you guys suggest for a game-over punishment?

I'd say delete the save file, but that's something only a hardcore indie title would do. How about *dramatic pinkie to mouth* erasing the player's last few hours of progress?

Or maybe go Metal Slug style and instead of grading on a stage by stage basis, grade on how many continues you used, regardless of how many lives you actually lost.

[Blacklightning]

I don't remember losing many lives on them. :/

Yeah, and there are people who didn't get stuck on the Carnival Night barrel, but I wouldn't say it excuses the mindset behind it.

Uh, punishments? Well I make no secret of the fact I'm pretty supportive of permadeath with stat saving (collectibles, ranks etc) with a level select unlockable for the perfectionists, but if people are after something more lenient than that then I could probably get by with repeating a certain subset of levels rather than the entire game. Like say in Colours, if you happen to run out of lives on the Sweet Mountain boss, you start back at Sweet Mountain act 1 instead, Then if there's a specific moment in the game where you're expected to die a fucking lot to the extent of flow breaking or interference with data retention, you simply make the subset/world/zone shorter to compensate. Think "Terminal Velocity" short.

[Remy]

So, what do you guys suggest for a game-over punishment?

No punishment? punishing for a game over is old fashioned thinking.

Just have people restart at last checkpoint when the die. getting a crappy score at the end of the stage cuz you died is punishment enough

[Blue Blood]

What do people make of the lives system in Unleashed Wii? You start the game with 3 lives and there's no way to find extra lives in stages. It's only when you go to a new level that the counter is reset. You could increase your life total permanently by exploring the Gaia Gates, so from then onwards you would always start with 4 or 5 or whatever number of lives. But under no circumstance could you gain an extra life while in a stage. You had a finite amount of times to attempt a level.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Blue Blood