Win more / Lose more game design

[mindsale]

"Win more" game mechanics reward you for doing well. "Lose more" punish you for doing poorly.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice offers both, frequently to its detriment.

If you're dying often you'll incur a penalty that requires more grinding to undo. Thus, losing more. If you're slaying bosses effortlessly, you'll be given more stamina and attack power and not be encumbered by a death penalty, winning more.

Which other games handicap you for poor performance? Which games over-reward you for doing well? Do you find either enjoyable?

 

[Lant_War]

Dark Souls 2

 

[cyrribrae]

I mean. Mechanically rewarding you to keep going into bigger things is just progression right? Does sekiro actively "delevel" you if you die enough? If not, I don't think it overly punishes you per se.

But.. Every clicker/idle game :p Most rogue-likes for obvious reasons.

 

[KushalaDaora]

Shin Megami Tensei Press Turn combat system.

 

[ThreepQuest64]

Into the Breach and Darkest Dungeon come to my mind. You lose a mech pilot in Into the Breach you'll lose his abilities, which makes the game a bit harder. You lose a lot of power and you have to prioritize power over mechs and/or mission objectives, the latter usually give you great bonuses. So, once you fail, it usually gets worse. Downward spiral.

Same with Darkest Dungeon. You lose your high lvl heroes you have to level up your low level ones at first to engage in that high level dungeon again. If all your stress levels are already full while half the dungeon still lies ahead, you'll have a hard time, because you have to manage and prioritize stress over anything else, or at least you need to balance stress relief and health restore. The game's much easier when you handle both stress and health well right from the beginning. Once it goes south, it usually keeps that way; and every battle can turn this around, usually from good to bad, and from bad to worse.

 

[Zolbrod]

This is one of my major gripes with From's games. I don't mind the difficulty, but I HATE being punished for dying, in any game.
The Dragon Rot mechanic in Sekiro doesn't seem too bad though, but I hate when your health is reduced like in some of the Souls games.

Also, any game with perma-death, I guess?

 

[Cels]

call of duty killstreaks on both sides i guess

you kill more you get stuff to help you kill more easily

you die more to an opponent then the opponent begins getting more stuff to help kill you more easily

 

[solidr]

so, every gacha game in existence?
doing good: more rewards
doing bad: no/less rewards

 

[EeK9X]

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice offers both, frequently to its detriment.

If you're dying often you'll incur a penalty that requires more grinding to undo. Thus, losing more.

Click to shrink...

I haven't played Sekiro yet, would you mind explaining how exactly that mechanic works?

 

[jotun?]

DotA, LoL, etc. Get kills, and you get even stronger. Get killed, and your enemies get stronger.

XCOM. Do well in the beginning of the game, and the rest will just get easier and easier. Lose some soldiers in a tough fight, and that just makes the next fights even harder.

FTL. Being able to win fights lets you get more scrap which lets you buy more upgrades to win more fights. Needing to run from fights because your ship is too weak means you get less scrap for upgrades, so you're stuck being weak while the enemies you encounter just keep getting tougher.

Legend of Zelda. Having full health gives you a beam attack, which makes it easier to beat enemies without getting hit. Once you get hit, you lose the beam attack which makes you more likely to take damage again.

 

[Piston]

DotA, LoL, etc. Get kills, and you get even stronger. Get killed, and your enemies get stronger.

Click to shrink...

LoL has been counteracting this by increasing shutdown gold and actively advertising on the scoreboard how much gold you will get for killing someone. If someone gets really far ahead and is playing risky and die they can really swing the game back towards the other team.